Does anyone else see a judicial discrepancy here?

In sentencing an 18-year-old with "profound mental disabilities" to 100 years in prison for fondling his 6-year-old neighbor, the Lamar County (Paris) judge in the case allegedly said: “In the state of Texas, there isn’t a whole lot you can do with somebody like him.” I guess this Dallas County jury, which gave no jail time to an 18-year-old with no mental disabilities who held a gun to a 17-year-old girl's head and forced her to perform oral sex on him, hadn't heard "In the state of Texas, there isn’t a whole lot you can do with somebody like him.”

Who is this guy?

Perhaps the swastika gives it away, but, if you haven't guessed, this was a picture taken two days ago at the California State Prison at Cocoran of the now 74-year-old Charles Manson. Manson is serving a life sentence there and the picture is the result of periodic updates of inmates pictures by prison officials.

This August will mark the 40th anniversary of what has become known as the Manson killings. Manson and other members of his cult were convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate, then the wife of director Roman Polansky, and six other persons. As for the swastika, Manson carved it in his forehead during his trial. At first, it was an "X," but he altered it until it took its current shape. Once they saw what Manson had done, the young women who were also defendants in the trial, carved x's in their foreheads as well.

(Thanks to Jeff Siegel at the Advocate for directing me to this photo.)

They're our Mexicans, by gum, and if we want to execute them, we will

This story from today's New York Times begins: "Despite pleas from the White House and the State Department, as well as an international court order to review their cases, Texas will execute five Mexicans on death row ..."

But the illuminating part of the story is here:

"On Wednesday, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ordered a review of five of the Texas cases after Mexico complained that the convicts, all men, had not been allowed a chance to talk to a Mexican consul after their arrests, as required under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. But that argument holds little sway in Texas, a place with a long history of upholding the death penalty and of telling other governments to mind their own business."

If this had happened anyplace else but Pasadena

Fortunately, I didn't spend a lot of time in Pasadena, Texas, but it was enough to tell me I never wanted to go back. I won't go into the whys, but my parents moved a lot when I was growing up and I wound up not staying in any one place very long. The clan landed in Pasadena just in time for me to complete the final semester of my senior year of high school. Upon graduation, I left Pasadena behind for college, only two return twice and then only briefly. My mother wasn't so lucky. Within a year, my father died and my mother never moved again until late in her life. But I'll get to that in a second.

My first return visit to Pasadena -- 20 years after I left -- was to attend a party at Gilley's that followed the Houston grand premier of the movie "Urban Cowboy." I had remembered Gilley's as a comparatively small bar on Shaver Street in Pasadena and I had spent time with a lot-less-famous Mickey Gilley there on many occasions. His mega-club, out on Spencer Highway, was the one spotlighted in the movie and it was actually financed and built 11 years after I left town by local con man Sherwood Cryer.

My second trip back came when I learned my mother had Alzheimer's and was about to be placed in an assisted living center in Pasadena that made St. Elsewhere seem like the Mansion on Turtle Creek. I quickly drove to Pasadena, packed my mother along with much of her clothing and other personals in the Jeep and took her to Austin to place her in a facility that, of course, I couldn't really afford.

But that's not the point of this story either. The point of the story is that Pasadena, at the time I lived there, was the most segregated city I had ever lived in. Not because whites were confined to one part of town and blacks to another. No, it was the most segregated city I had ever lived in because blacks did not live there at all. There was not a single black resident of Pasadena when I lived there, in the entire history of the town before I lived there, and for many years after I left. It was revealed, after a myriad of lawsuits were filed, that all the realtors had an unwritten agreement among themselves that they would not sell any property to African-Americans. Apartments also went along with this policy. Blacks were effectively barred from Pasadena, Texas.

That's why this story about a man in Pasadena getting away with the murder of two immigrants (he thought they were blacks) didn't surprise me when I read it. It made me angry, but it didn't surprise me. I felt as though I should be reassured by some police detective who could pat me on the shoulder and tell me "Forget about it, Jake. It's Pasadena."