When the sniper's bullets started to fly inside the beltway, none of us knew who – or where – was next. For the past three weeks, everyone has been on edge, anxiously watching our fuel supply inch towards empty, and planning our next visit to the gas station with the same care that we might plan a wedding. At one point, police suggested we “zig and zag” if we had to go out in public, but that's hard to while you're pumping gas. So all of us have been more or less nervous.
Now that the accused killers have been apprehended, it's possible that the next installment will be even more unnerving.
The sniper killed victims in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The “authorities” are now arguing over who will try the accused killers first.
A liberal prosecutor in Montgomery County, Maryland, wants to use the case as the basis for a run for state attorney general. Of course, most of us in the region would prefer a prosecutor who kept his eye on the case, and not his political fortunes. Perhaps the “authorities” will agree, and allow the case to be tried elsewhere. But don't hold your breath.
As far as justice is concerned, Montgomery County is a black hole. I leave to others to flog the notorious disdain for whites of Police Chief Charles Moose, as well as reports that he was so opposed to racial profiling that police discovered and released the sleeping killers ten times in the two weeks before their final capture, because Moose insisted they were looking for a white man. Flog away.
There are more fundamental arguments against trying the case in that venue, and they are best understood in the light of other brutal murders tried in that jurisdiction.
For the record, allow me to recall, with pain and sadness, one such travesty, eight years ago. The facts are pretty straightforward. You can draw your own conclusions.
One night back in 1994, Dan Huston, a young lawyer from a big Catholic family in Iowa, parked his SUV near the Metro in Wheaton (Montgomery County), Maryland, just outside of the District of Columbia line; he and his date then headed to a nearby bistro.
When they returned to the parking lot, they were attacked by four thugs intent on stealing the vehicle. The thugs shot Huston, killing him. The young lady, although shot multiple times at close range, miraculously survived.
Just another brutal killing in the murder capital of the world, right?
Wrong. And brace yourself, gentle reader, because the truth is not pretty. In fact, it stinks.
For you see, the thugs in the parking lot had been under surveillance for twenty minutes by the Montgomery County police (now headed by Chief Moose) from the top floor of a parking garage across the street. A policewoman and her companion had watched the thugs going from car to car, trying the door handles; she watched as Mr. Huston and his date, returning from the restaurant, approached his car. She watched as the thugs hid until they could attack the pair. Then she watched as the thugs shot them again and again.
As the Washington Post put it at the time, she “witnessed the crime through binoculars from atop a nearby parking garage.”
Dan Huston was killed. Then, and only then, did Montgomery County's finest spring into action. The brave policewoman observer actually called for backup! Then she tore down three levels of the parking garage in her police cruiser, undoubtedly at great risk to life and limb. Later, several police canine units apprehended the suspects.
When I saw news accounts of this travesty a day later, I called the Wheaton substation of the Montgomery County Police Department – the one from which the valiant woman in blue served. I asked the officer who answered the phone, “how could this be allowed to happen?” I was amazed. Her answer was candid – and chilling.
“You don't understand,” she exploded. “If we stop those people, question them, harass them in any way, we could be sued. We could lose our car, we could lose our house – the county won't back us, the union won't back us. We'd be on our own.”
“Why in the world,” I asked, “would she be sued?
“Well, the murderers were black.”
Ah. Since the murderers were black, the policewoman could lose her house if she intervened before the murder was actually committed. Dan Huston lost his life; the valiant but calculating woman in blue kept her house. A small price to pay: houses are very expensive in Montgomery County.
The thugs were eventually tried. Montgomery County prosecutors made major errors in prosecuting the case, but the defense was even worse, so the killers went to jail. (The whole stomach-turning story is available in the appellate court's decision confirming one of the convictions. None of the killers got the death penalty.)
It appears that the Keystone Cops in Montgomery County haven't learned anything since 1994. I can’t help but wonder, was that same fear on the mind of the police who stopped the snipers ten different times during their killing spree, and let them go ten times? One look in the trunk, and it would be all over. But hey, they might have lost their house, their car. And the county wouldn’t back them.
As if this sordid legacy weren’t bad enough, now we have a trial to deal with. A sniper trial in Maryland would be a joke. Montgomery County houses one of the greatest concentrations of liberal federal bureaucrats (read: jury pools) in the world. Juries in the sniper trials, if they are held there, will be made up primarily of government workers, because no one else can afford to take so much time off (federal workers are paid full salary, at taxpayer expense, when on jury duty. That's why so many juries wait until morning to finalize their verdicts: bureaucrat jurors get the rest of the day off).
If Maryland gets to try the snipers first, mark my words, it will be a classic farce. You will long for Marcia Clark. You will long for Johnnie Cochrane. You may even long for Cato Kaelin.
But, most of all, you will long for justice. And, in Maryland, it's unlikely you'll get it. But be patient, and be brave: eventually they'll be tried in Virginia.
October 28, 2002
