Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Just to set the record straight: Many Trump trial commentators have said that Trump needs only one hold-out juror to avoid conviction. This is true, but it lacks context. The jury of twelve must be unanimous to convict or acquit. If all the jurors cannot agree, we have a hung jury. The state would then have to decide whether to retry Mr. Trump. It should be noted, however, that although the exact rate is unknown, hung juries are not frequent. Getting such data is difficult because no uniform definition of “a hung jury” exists. For example, if five defendants are tried in one trial and the jury convicts four but can’t agree on the fifth, some jurisdictions would record this as a hung jury, while others would label it a conviction, while others would record four convictions and one hung jury. Similarly, when one defendant is charged with a number of crimes, many jurisdictions will consider only what happens to the most serious count. Others will call it a hung jury if the jury could not reach a result on any one count. Without going into methodological details, a study a few decades ago found that the hung jury rate throughout New York state was 2.8%. In other words, rare. Moreover, the little data we have indicate that few of those rare hung juries are hung because only one person won’t agree with the other eleven. One person can hang a jury. It rarely happens. (Drawn from my book, The American Jury System [Yale University Press.])

“What else was an ongoing criminal enterprise complicated by periodic violence for, but to make your wife happy?” Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto.

A lesson for our time? Jacques Chirac was President of France from 1995 to 2007. Allegations of corruption swirled about him. However, a controversial judicial decision concluded that he had immunity from prosecution while he was president. The court gave reasoning similar to what has been said in this country for granting immunity to a sitting president: i.e., he will not be able to perform his duties as president if at the same time he faces prosecution. In France, however, the authorities realized that such protection should end when Chirac left office, and he was indeed prosecuted for and convicted of various crimes when he became an ex-president. He was given a suspended two-year sentence for his convictions. (Chirac had suffered a stroke near the end of his presidency, and his mental health deteriorated after leaving office.) This precedent has not led to the regular prosecutions of ex-presidents in France, as it has said will occur unless Trump as an ex-president is given immunity from all criminal prosecutions.

The performance of the “Vespers” of 1610 by Claudio Monteverdi was marvelous. I expected as much with the twenty-five voices of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. The accompanying Trinity Baroque Orchestra had violins, violas, a cello, bass, harp, harpsichord, and organ, but there was a bonus. The orchestra had not just one but two cornett performers; not just one but two theorbo players; and not just one but—wait for it—three performers on the sackbut. (Sackbut is one of those words, like Lake Titicaca, that I can’t say without smiling.)

As I neared my stop, a woman across the subway car, spotting the book in my hand, asked if I was reading the new Tana French novel. After I said that I was, she wanted to know if it was good. I said that I was enjoying it, but it was too long and was not as good as her last one. The woman got off the train as I did. She asked if I was familiar with the Scottish mysteries of Denise Mina, which she felt were similar to French’s. I was not, and she urged me to try them. Later that week I got one out of the subscription library. She was right. Field of Blood, which introduced the character, Paddy Maheen, is quite good.  And I have also learned that I can get useful book recommendations in all sorts of places including a subway ride. I doubt I will ever see that Tana French fan again, but thank you for the Denise Mina mention.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“On the night of May 28, 1988, my dad took me to a baseball game.” Russell A. Carleton, The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball.

“Trey comes over the mountain carrying a broken chair.” Tana French, The Hunter.

“When white-sheeted nightriders first appeared in the dark Southern night, many people thought they were ghosts.” Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

“. . . I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have done it.” David Diop, At Night All Blood is Black.

“In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

“He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.” Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

“On January 25, 2011, on the first day of the Egyptian Arab Spring, nothing happened in Abydos.” Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution.

“You will notice in just a second that this book actually begins on page 145.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

“He was like the hero in an action movie: cool under pressure, always ready with a quip.” Reid Mitenbuler, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age.

“They had come to the spot in the freshness of June, chased from the village by its people, following deer path through the forest, the valleys, the fern groves, and the quaking bogs.” Daniel Mason, North Woods.

“Probably the strangest way anyone celebrated the accession of King James I of England was when a gentlewoman in the far north of Lancashire organised a mock wedding in a country church, between two male servants.” Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689.

“Mas Arai didn’t think much of slot machines, not to mention one with a fake can of Spam mounted on top of it.” Naomi Hirahara, Snakeskin Shamisen: A Mas Arai Mystery.

“I stood on the ship’s deck in my long underwear and fireproof jumpsuit, watching a pale silver sunrise and gauging the wind.” Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.

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First Sentences

“I sometimes think of the Supreme Court oral arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt on March 2, 2016, as the last truly great day for women and the legal system in America.” Dahlia Lithwick, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.

“I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of blood reaches me.” Colleen Hoover, Verity.

“No one knows where America’s Northern Border begins.” Porter Fox, Northland: A 4,000 Mile Journey Along America’s Forgotten Border.

“The coastal steamer attends faithfully to its course, slipping down the middle of the fjord between the mountains, taking its bearings from the stars and peaks and arriving on schedule at Óseyri in Axlarfjörður, its horn blasting through the blowing snow. In the first-class smokers’ lounge, two smartly dressed travelers from Reykjavík are discussing the village’s faint gleams of light.” Halldór Laxness, Salka Valka.


“In this soundless film, it is winter in Arkansas.” Sridhar Pappu, The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age.

“Mrs Palfrey first came to the Claremont Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in January.” Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

“In the weeks following the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, a group of Chinese executives traveled to Los Angeles for a crash course in influence.” Erich Schwartzell, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.

“When Cal comes out of the house, the rooks have got hold of something.” Tana French, The Searcher.

“As a little boy, lying in his bed, my father would hear the planes overhead.” Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia.

“It was an unmarked car, just some nondescript American sedan a few years old, but the blackwall tires and the three men inside gave it away for what it was.” Stephen King, The Outsider.

“The results of Wisconsin’s 2018 election had to be seen to be believed.” Nick Seabrook, One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America.

“Brown Dog drifted away thinking of the village in the forest where the red-haired girl lived.” Jim Harrison, Brown Dog Redux.

“The sun that rose for the rest of the world that morning was not the one that rose for Lanah Sawyer.” John Wood Sweet, The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“There are few views that can draw noses to airplane windows like those of the Great Lakes.” Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.

“By the third night the death count was rising so high and so quickly that many of the divisional homicide teams were pulled off the front lines of riot control and put into emergency rotations in South Central.” Michael Connelly, The Black Box.

“In the haunted summer of 2016, an unaccustomed heat wave struck the Siberian tundra on the edge of what the ancients once called the End of the Land.”  Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

“The man in dark blue slacks and a forest green sportshirt waited impatiently in the line.” Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderers.

“He had been waiting for the morning, dreading it, aware it couldn’t be stopped.” Karen Abbott, The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America.

“When he was small, he was often mistaken for a girl.” Denise Giardina, Saints and Villains.

“Fiction writers as a species tend to be oglers.” David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments.

“I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person.” Tana French, The Witch Elm.

“I’ll begin with my own beginnings.” Daniel Okrent, The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America.

“Midway between Old Oba-Nnewi Road and New Oba-Nnewi Road, in that general area bound by the village church and the primary school, and Mmiri John Road drops off only to begin again, stood our house in Ojoto.” Chinelo Okparanta, Under the Udala Trees.

“From high up, fifteen thousand feet above, where the aerial photographs are taken, 4121 Wilson Avenue, the address I know best, is minuscule point, a scab of green.” Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House.

“Iron rails the rusty brown of old blood cut across a cracked paved road that leads into the Lowcountry.” Patricia Cornwell, Red Mist.

“Throughout the night of Friday, September 7, 1900, Isaac Monroe Cline found himself waking to a persistent sense of something gone wrong.” Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.