Member Submission: Schadenfreude
I recently discovered this word, schadenfreude. A German word whose meaning is defined as the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another.
I have a friend, currently in a Tennessee jail, who I have previously written about. He was accused of possessing child pornography. He denies having done this, but the feds have ‘evidence’. We’ve all heard these stories, and most of us, stuck in this hell of cancel culture, now know that what we are told is often not the truth. We know that LE has a financial incentive to create crimes, as well as firsthand knowledge that the police, prosecutors, judges, and society itself refuse to play fair at the mere hint of impropriety with a child. Be that hint fact, or fiction. A real child, or a manufactured decoy. Someone with no history of any impropriety, or a person known to struggle with their own sexuality. All are considered as one – a child predator.
My friend, Brian Cain, was put on heavy restrictions pretrial. He was given an ankle bracelet that kept him in house arrest. He was not able to help his sick, elderly parents, who previously regarded him as their caregiver. He was not allowed to mow his yard, or even get his own mail. He was not allowed internet of any kind. He merely lived in his home, for almost a year, cut off from society except for a flip phone. Until he couldn’t.
Being arrested for a crime he did not commit, having all his assets confiscated by the courts for ‘bail’, as well as the assets of his elderly parents, his job lost, his friends warbling between disbelief and confusion, and what appeared to be a no-win court trial looming in his future, my friend decided to run.
I am aware of two other people who have attempted this feat. One succeeded. One did not.
Brian was apprehended shortly after removing his ankle bracelet by a group of U.S. Marshalls. He remembers around six to eight of them.
He was found in a basement, sitting on the floor with his hands raised above his head. Brian is not a large man, not overly fit or muscular. Nothing about him, or the position in which he surrendered, would suggest a fight would ensue. Yet the Marshalls surrounded him and preceded to punch, kick, drag, and generally beat him. He cannot remember all the details of his ordeal.
Of course, the question raised is why exactly he should have been physically beaten by a group of beefy, adrenaline packed men when he was cornered and clearly surrendering peacefully. We will never know the reasons the Marshalls will give their superiors for this beating, if any request for such an explanation is even afforded.
But I personally wonder about the mentality of those who participate in these impunity ridden attacks. Could it be that these men (and potentially women) believe they are doing the ‘right’ thing? Because of the charge associated to this man? Are there adults who believe it is right to beat a man who has surrendered and is not fighting back? All that needs to be done is to restrain his arms and hands and escort him to the car. Or is this the real nature of the men who take the assignment of LE, Marshalls in this case? I do not know.
Yet the word schadenfreude does bring me some understanding. We’ve all experienced a level of complicity with pleasure when someone gets ‘what’s coming to them’, or even just going along with the gang when a friend or coworker is being mocked. But schadenfreude holds the element of malice, something we hopefully do not feel when teasing a friend, or if we do feel such malice, we are ashamed of that emotion.
Does schadenfreude increase if there is no threat of repercussion to such actions? Such as the impunity LE receive from virtually all of their actions? And at what point does one person in the group not speak up and try to stop what a non-agitated adult would clearly see as a transgression to one’s civil rights as an American citizen?
Seeing a boot print on the back of an inmate’s shirt, who is clearly addled or unconscious, surely would make me speak out. Wouldn’t you?
Written by Lady Justice Myth
Schadenfreude is similar to Karma.
Schadenfreude is when a law enforcement officer has to endure the same treatment by law enforcement he’s doled out to the public.
Karma is when a law enforcement officer beats someone then trips and breaks something on the way back to his car.
Both are just rare elements of the universe correcting itself
Problems with this story. I have never heard, for example, of a Federal court seizing assets for bail. In the Feds, I thought, bond is normally unsecured, unlike in state courts. And if he is ‘accused’ but still in jail and not yet convicted nor exhausted his appeals, is his attorney OK with his story being presented this way to the public, if it has not been raised in court?
But more significantly, we are declaring him to be innocent while admitting that the Feds have sufficient evidence to the contrary. And we are making this declaration based solely on the defendant’s say-so and our own assumptions about the justice system. This creates a problem for FAC. Because FAC is not going to win its battles by declaring that its members were innocent (even though certainly some were). Instead, FAC has had to grapple in the real world with tougher questions: what do we do with people who have been guilty? And how do we help society understand that crimes are often committed by otherwise law-abiding people whom you wouldn’t suspect?
But preemptively declaring someone innocent allows us to fool ourselves into avoiding facing these issues. It also raises other problems. If he ultimately pleads guilty, admitting in his plea colloquy that he did what the government says he did, we will look foolish for having published this, won’t we? Ditto if a jury finds him guilty.
Our Media Committee has raised awareness of the millions of abuse images out there and how hard it is to combat them. Are we now taking the position that no one’s viewing them?
And his guilt or innocence is not even relevant to the story, is it? Would we be ok with a guilty person having their assets seized for bond? Would we be ok with a guilty person being beaten by US Marshalls? Of course not! So what does guilt or innocence even have to do with it?
I don’t want to discourage Lady Justice Myth from more Member Submissions or from her other great work. But for us to assert a defendant’s guilt or innocence, combined with his other unsubstantiated allegations about the courts, puts both us and him in a difficult position.
Thank you Jacob for your reply.
I wrote this submission at Brian’s request and using the information he, and his parents, has given me. The public constantly and consistently hears only the version LE, and the sensationalized media, create for the public, so I have no qualms about the pov in this piece.
As for the bail, a quick search for federal bail took me to the online Cornell Law library and 18 US code 3142, section c,1,b,xii- execute a bail bond with solvent sureties. Or, specific to TN, is 2010 Tennessee Code
Title 40 – Criminal Procedure
Chapter 11 – Bail
Part 1 – Admission to Bail
40-11-122 – Bail bond secured by real estate or sureties.
Before 2017 I had never heard of men arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for meeting adults through adult websites. Yet here we are.
Is being accused, convicted, imprisoned, and put on the registry harder for those who have committed the crime vs those falsely accused? Both scenarios seem very ‘real world’ to me. That is not a debate I would wish to take on, nor do I feel such a comparison would prove anything but divisive.
I have faith that FAC can help all of its members, regardless of one’s original intent, factual incidents, court proceedings, and public opinions.
Do not worry that I will be discouraged by your rebuttal. I welcome it. I, too, did not believe such things could happen in this country. I wish I was still willfully blind. How simple those days seem to me now.
Be well and thank you for your response.
Thank you for this, and for fighting for him. It’s so true that the media over-rely on law enforcement as their source, and we need to counter that. But this case so far thankfully seems not to have attracted media attention. Even if it has, his first priority right as he awaits trial is not to win a the media battle, but to fight a legal battle in court, and sometimes the two priorities can conflict.
Another poster below pointed out that he is presumed innocent, and that’s absolutely correct. Our position is that he is presumed innocent and should be treated as such. But that’s not the message of the Member Submission, which asserts our view that he is in fact innocent of the charges, that (most will read it this way) we have pre-determined that the justice system, including this court, is so dysfunctional that any finding of guilty to the charges would be a miscarriage of justice. Which could be true, but it would be safer for his court not to see that message associated with him and his family while adjudicating. And we might be compounding that risk by accusing the court of having wrongfully seized his assets (and thank you for consulting the TN code, but I don’t think the TN code applies here, only the Federal code).
So maybe for his own legal benefit and that of his family, we tone down parts of this Member Submission? He has retained the Bosch Law Firm to fight for him, and I don’t want to get in the way of them doing their jobs unless they think we’re helping. There are surely other ways we can help him.
I have to vehemently disagree with your position here.
“But preemptively declaring someone innocent allows us to fool ourselves into avoiding facing these issues. It also raises other problems. If he ultimately pleads guilty, admitting in his plea colloquy that he did what the government says he did, we will look foolish for having published this, won’t we? Ditto if a jury finds him guilty.”
He IS pre-emptively innocent – until proven guilty! That is supposedly a bedrock concept of our legal system. Also, it is well known that many people plea guilty to crimes they did not commit, so as to spare their family the pain of trial, to prevent the possibility of getting falsely convicted at trail and receiving a greater sentence, or a whole host of reasons. I do not mean this offensively, but the perspective you write from makes it seem like you are a prosecutor – trying to defend the system, but with a fundamental misunderstanding of how its supposed to protect our civil rights.
“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
-Albert Einstein
This is a huge problem with people working in our legal system. Many see and know the truth, yet they allow the evil ones to continue carrying out their evil behaviors. Failing to act to stop the evil behavior makes them guilty of the evil behavior too.
I’m uncomfortable with how the court may view this submission while his case is still being adjudicated.
We will be here for him, but for now, he needs to work with his lawyer.
I don’t recommend absconding while awaiting trial.
Instead, I’d do what FAC recommends, which is comply with the law, even when the law is hard.
Especially don’t abscond if your sick elderly parents depend on you, because you won’t be helping their situation if you do.
Are we publicly declaring, before his trial begins, that his judge, and the system of which the judge is a part, is incapable of granting him a fair trial? How certain are we that (a) the evidence is obvious crap, and (b) this court will nevertheless deny any motion to suppress obvious crap evidence?
And even if we are correct on the above, do we believe broadcasting our personal observations on the justice system, in a public forum
accessible to the court, will help him and his lawyer fight this case in the courtroom? If not, how sure are we that we are helping him more than harming him?
He is presumed innocent— in a court of law. Let’s not leave out that part. FAC is not a court of law and, prior to trial beginning, is in no position to presume anything either way.
This forum is often seen as a safe place to vent our frustrations with the justice system. It is also accessible to the courts and to the public. I respectfully ask my fellow FAC members and volunteers, let’s not do this to him, yet. Can we rethink this well-intended Member Submission?
Sorry for the multiple posts, and thank you again for not taking them personally.
By the way, FAC Legal Committee, since you have spent hundreds more hours working with lawyers than I have, if you reply and say, calm down, we’ve already vetted this and it’s no big deal, then I’ll shut my mouth I swear!
Catch 22 situation unfolding. “Legal” sites are either being censored or closing all together in fear that ALL sex on the internet will be banned
Very interesting article:
https://www.aol.com/onlyfans-debate-over-safe-place-214628240.html