Gunshots are the soundtrack of America

A shooting range features at Elvis's Graceland.
Adam Fagen via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

'Tis the season for gunshots and sirens.

The last weekend in October, I spent the night at a Memphis hotel near the airport to catch a 5 a.m. flight homeward. I pulled up to the hotel on Elvis Presley Boulevard in the Whitehaven neighborhood to see people running and chaos at the restaurant across the street, Tha Table. Before long, police came streaming in, sirens blaring. A fire engine and an ambulance followed.

Two men were shot and killed. One was the owner of Tha Table; it looks like he came out into the parking lot to confront would-be car thieves, one of whom shot him with an automatic weapon. The other person killed was a bystander "in the wrong place at the wrong time," Fox 13 Memphis said, merely driving by with his three young children in the car on the way to a park.

A man arrested in the shooting, police say found with weapons including an AR-15 and a Glock with switch (converting the pistol into an automatic weapon), blames his companions for firing the fatal shots, Fox 13 reported.

When I left the hotel later that night, to go to a gym in West Memphis, I had to ask police to let me drive out and back under yellow tape that had cordoned off the block.

That shooting occurred as I arrived at the Red Roof Inn at about 3:30 p.m.  Just eight minutes later, two-and-a-half miles down the same road, a 15-year-old was shot at an Exxon station. According to WREG, he was selling water at the side of the road at the time. He was transported by a private car to the hospital and reported in critical condition.

When I came back from the gym, I fueled up at that Exxon, to return my rental car full the next morning. I didn't know about the second shooting until I got back to my room and checked the news about the first shooting.

About 60 hours later, a 19-year-old sitting in his car at a gas station in West Memphis was fatally shot multiple times by another customer, KARK reported. I was long gone, but that shooting took place 500 feet from the gym I had gone to, just around a corner. I learned of that third shooting when I checked the news to see if anyone had been arrested in the earlier two.

It happens that while I was in Memphis and Arkansas, I visited an old friend and mentor I had not seen in many years. He retired in recent years from work in Memphis and told me he wants to move away. He's tired, he said, of having to worry every day about being car-jacked.

I also visited my aunt and uncle at their home in south Little Rock. They've been renovating, and their place looks great, homey. They're very happy there, my uncle said, except only for the unwelcome ring of gunshots at night. Sometimes the shots ring so close to the house that they fear they're being targeted. My uncle, a Vietnam vet, lamented of the contemporary life of youth in the Little Rock neighborhood: "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six."

When I boarded my plane home from Memphis, I overheard one flight attendant telling another that she's looking for a new apartment. She was working through the calculation of finding lower rent, but having to hear gunshots at night.

As I rejoined the world that Monday, I learned about the Lewiston, Maine, shootings, and that the suspect was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had killed 18 people and injured 13 just before I left home for Memphis. Ensconced as I was in my business away, I had not known the details. It was a kind of blessing, I figured, that I didn't know what was happening. While the suspect was at large, I did not know to worry about my wife in Rhode Island or a friend's son at university in Vermont.

I'm not a gun control advocate. I believe the Supreme Court got it right when it said that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. I'm informed by the Second Amendment analysis of my constitutional law professor, William Van Alstyne. I believe that the Second Amendment anticipated the possibility that revolution might one day again be necessary.

At the same time, I don't want life cut short for me, my family, or my friends just because I drove to the park at the wrong time, or a stray bullet pierced the walls of my home. The price of the Second Amendment cannot be that gunshots and sirens are the soundtrack of American life.

Sorry, if you read this far thinking I'd have the answer; I don't. 

I want to be prepared to revolt when the time comes, because I think that corrupt politicians already have aggrandized an excess of power; that they now represent corporations, not constituents; and that the federal legislature has become perhaps irretrievably dysfunctional.

I also want the people I love to be safe against meaningless violence. I don't want to live in the Wild West of the movies.

I want my tres leches and to eat it too.

Arkansas bill would compel admin sharing at two public law schools, saving money for education

On March 29, I testified on a bill in the Arkansas legislature that would consolidate back-office functions of the state's two law schools, making more money available for the educational mission.

Senator Mark Johnson generously invited me to present with him his SB370 to the Arkansas Senate Education Committee. The bill furthers a theme I articulated in a 2011 white paper before I left Arkansas for New England.

In the 2011 paper, I posited that Arkansas might provide more and better opportunities to students at both Fayetteville and Little Rock law schools if the two public schools were not locked into "pseudo-competition," but, rather, shared administrative services as one law school on two campuses. I roughly estimated a savings of $800,000 to $1.2m, which could be used to enhance the program of legal education.

Rutgers University did exactly that in 2015, combining its New York-proximate Newark school into a two-campus institution with its capital-proximate Camden school, despite their locations at opposite ends of New Jersey. Penn State presently is planning to merge its law schools at capital-proximate Carlisle and research-oriented University Park.

Of the 25 states with less than median population in the United States, Arkansas is one of only three with two public law schools. The others are Kentucky and Kansas. Kentucky has five million people to Arkansas’s three million. Kansas has two public law schools only because of Washburn’s unusual history as one of the last remaining municipal universities in the nation. If one compares the states of the Eighth Circuit, only Arkansas and Missouri have two public law schools. Missouri has double Arkansas’s population and also has two private schools.

SB370 does not go as far as the merger I proposed in 2011, as effected at Rutgers and planned for Penn State, but the bill would take a step in that direction by merging back-office functions without affecting student-facing services. There's no good reason for both schools to be maintaining separate operations in advancement, for example. The advancement professional in Little Rock alone earns more than $109,000, plus benefits.

Senator Johnson asked me to address in particular for the committee any potential ramifications for ABA accreditation for the schools, were SB370 to become law. For the most part, SB370 will have no effect at all on accreditation, because the bill does not affect the program of legal education.

As written, SB370 proposes a "joint dean," which was a stumbling block. As long as Arkansas wishes to retain two separately and fully accredited law schools, each will have to have a chief administrative officer, whatever the person is called. The two deans presently earn about a quarter million dollars each per year, give or take, plus benefits. I told the committee, there will have to be two deans. But they need not earn so much in a semi-combined institution. Each of Rutgers's campuses retains a dean, but they split the administrative supplement to their faculty salaries.

Senator Johnson already was aware of the "joint dean" issue and had prepared an amendment for the committee. However, a senator objected to viewing the bill without the amendment engrossed, so Senator Johnson pulled the bill for re-engrossment.  With the legislative session waning, the bill might not have time to come back to committee for a vote. But the idea will remain sound, and I am hopeful that it will have its day. The students of the state's two public law schools all deserve the best and fullest range of opportunities that Arkansas higher education has to offer.

I am grateful to Senator Johnson for his kind and erudite engagement with my 2011 paper and the invitation to join him, and to my friend and colleague Professor Robert Steinbuch for helping to coordinate my visit to Arkansas.

Event celebrates hostelling, honors firefighters

Fire Station 2 today, a hostel and museum.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The extended family of the Firehouse Hostel & Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas, came together last week to celebrate accomplishment, to honor firefighters, and to raise funds for a new annex in support of fire safety education.

The event featured Razorback college football veterans David Bazzel, now a radio personality, who emceed, and Gary Robinson, 1964 national champion (then, now), who keynoted.

Gary Robinson is the younger brother of legendary Major League Baseball third baseman Brooks Robinson, a retiree of the Baltimore Orioles, who had planned to attend but could not. 

Gary Robinson and me.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Robinson brothers graduated from Central High School (National Historic Site) in Little Rock. As kids, they spent time at Fire Station 2, where their father was a career firefighter. In a prerecorded video interview, Gary and Brooks reminisced over the firehouse, their father, and his co-workers.

The sporting legacy of the Robinson family is of course especially meaningful in Arkansas and in Maryland. As I lived in those states between 10 and 20 years each, I've felt a special connection to the Robinsons. My father is a big fan of Brooks, and I was a childhood supporter of the Orioles. Brooks retired in 1977, when I was six.

Linda Fordyce stirs up the crowd.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Long out of service and after years of neglect, Fire Station 2 provided the building that the city of Little Rock and an army of volunteers rehabilitated to serve as the hostel and museum, which opened in 2016. I worked on the firehouse hostel project as one of those volunteers until I left Arkansas for New England in 2011. I took (dubious) honors for having traveled the farthest for the event, edging out a charitable soul from Colorado who contributed more valiantly by populating two tables with local friends.

The Firehouse Hostel and Museum has been the brainchild and passion project of two extraordinary people, Linda and John Fordyce. They conceived of the hostel more than 10 years before the hostel opened in 2016, and they have shepherded the project with nothing short of parental love since. Last week they were in attendance as leaders and coordinators. With characteristic tirelessness, they now are spearheading the drive to develop the annex.

Reep introduces Benton; Bazzel looks on.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Fordyces' passion for travel as cultural education, hostelling as social learning, and the merits of the firehouse as an urban redevelopment project in particular are famously contagious. I could not resist signing on and served in roles as varied as bathroom cleaning and representative to a national meeting of Hostelling International USA.  At the event last week, the enthusiasm the Fordyces still exude was palpable. Many faces I remembered from the 2010s were there and still are vitally involved, importantly including Greg Hart, who lends his accounting wizardry, and Johnny Reep, a retired fire captain of legendarily large personality.

Other presenters and honored guests included Tanya Hooks and Marvin L. Benton. Another Central High alum and a major mover in the Little Rock non-profit sector, Hooks is a board leader for the hostel and museum. Another retired firefighter, Benton is an inspiring advocate for fire safety education, especially for children, and author of a book in that vein, Unfallen Hero.

In Unfallen Hero, Benton tells the near-death, line-of-duty story of having suffered agonizing burns over 39 percent of his body. When doctors said he could never fight fire again, he told the audience last week, he lobbied his superiors for a job in fire safety education. When they questioned whether he would be comfortable appearing before audiences with his disfiguring scars, he said, he answered: "If these scars on me would save just one child, ... it will all have been worth it."

After the example of the Memphis Fire Museum, Linda Fordyce said, the Little Rock museum, with Benton in the lead, hopes to make fire safety education accessible to all children in Arkansas. Fordyce and Benton said that fires and the horrific injuries they inflict are too often easily preventable.

You can support and read more online about the Little Rock Firehouse Hostel and Museum.

Photo is 'copy,' court has to explain to city, police in state record access case under Arkansas FOIA

Professor Robert. E. Steinbuch at the University of Arkansas Little Rock reports a startling case under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)—startling because a lawsuit never should have been necessary, much less an appeal.  Professor Steinbuch wrote in opinion in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Attorney Ben Motal visited the Little Rock Police Department headquarters to inspect and copy an accident report under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The police refused to allow Motal to copy the report by taking a photograph using his cell phone. He sued.

In response, the city filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that a citizen must choose to either inspect, copy, or receive a government record—notwithstanding the metaphysical impossibility of this claim. How can you copy a record without at least somewhat inspecting it—with your eyes closed?

Then, the city argued that a photograph is not a "copy." Remarkably, the trial court judge, Mackie Pierce, agreed. He said that "if the Legislature wanted to give you the right to photograph public records, they could have easily used the word 'photograph.' They didn't. They used 'copy' and 'copying.'"

. . . .

Pierce also dismissed the case because the city relented after being sued, and it provided the records directly to Motal without any need to photograph or otherwise copy them. We see this type of legal manipulation all the time, wherein public entities comply with the law only after being sued and then seek to Jedi-mind-trick their way out of litigation by asserting in court that "there's nothing to see here—move along, move along."

The result too often is that only attorneys and those who can afford attorneys have rights, because they can sue. If you're a regular Joe, you don't have any rights, say the city and the trial judge, because they've orchestrated it that there's no precedent to protect you when the city repeats the same bad acts they did to Motal.

Reversing, the Arkansas Court of Appeals, per Judge Kenneth S. Hixson, ruled in favor of Motal.  Now the city claims it will appeal to the state Supreme Court.  Professor Steinbuch predicts the city will not succeed, despite a dubiously reasoned dissent by Judge Raymond R. Abramson, who would have ruled the case moot ("these are not the droids we're looking for") and parroted the city's argument.  Judge Hixson was an attorney in private practice before going on the bench.  Judge Abramson was a municipal police court judge and a city attorney.

Steinbuch is right in his reasoning and his prediction.  Shame on the LRPD and the City of Little Rock.  They seem to fundamentally misunderstand that a public record belongs to the public.  They are only its custodians.

The opinion piece is Robert E. Steinbuch, "Photo" Finish, Ark. Democrat-Gazette, May 22, 2020.  With University of Arkansas Professor John J. Watkins, Professor Steinbuch and I are co-authors of the treatise, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (6th ed. 2017) (excerpt of prior edition at SSRN), which Judge Hixson referenced.

The case is Motal v. City of Little Rock, No. CV-19-344, 2020 Ark. App. 308 (Ark. Ct. App. May 13, 2020), also available from Justia.