Sleeping on the job makes for good copy

The U.S. Supreme Court recently delivered a victory to a Texas death row inmate convicted of murder who said he had not had a fair chance to defend himself, seeing as how his lawyer had slept through much of the man’s 1984 trial.

According to The Associated Press, the high court refused a request from Texas authorities, who wanted the court to reinstate a murder conviction and death sentence against Calvin Jerold Burdine that a lower court had set aside. The case now returns to Texas, where authorities must decide whether to retry Burdine or set him free.

A spokeswoman for Amnesty International’s project to abolish the death penalty said The Supremes had “served justice by finding it unacceptable that an attorney should flagrantly nap during a trial in which a man’s life is at stake…”

Oh, a guy can still discreetly steal a few winks here and there when the Boredom Quotient weighs too heavily on his shoulders, she seemed to be saying. But to nap fragrantly in open court is the epitome of poor manners. And snoring is definitely out, lest one wake up the jurors.

Had Burdine’s lawyer had the foresight to pack a thermos of strong coffee and a pocketful of anti-doze pills the defendant might have fared better, one might suppose. But the state sees it as a simple open and shut-eye case. Its lawyers argued that Burdine “could not show his trial would have come out differently if his lawyer had stayed awake,” in the words of the AP reporter, in what had to be one of the more remarkable arguments the court had heard in quite some time.

If it makes no difference whether your lawyer stays awake or cat-naps through crucial portions of a trial in which the outcome could well be that you wind up sleeping with the fishes, your goose would seem to be pretty much cooked well in advance of opening arguments. And if the judge happens to be nodding off as well, all that remains in a death-penalty state such as Texas is for you to stick it to the establishment in good shape by ordering your final meal from the pricey side of the menu.

Lawyers asleep at the wheel at such crucial times always make for good news copy, of course. But journalists who conk out when the game is on the line are no less pathetic.

Last weekend, a Los Angeles Times story out of Beijing reported that a reporter and editors of the Beijing Evening News, the Chinese capital’s largest-circulation newspaper, had fallen asleep on the job, with spectacular results.

Not realizing that it was a spoof, a reporter for the paper had picked up from the Internet a story originating with The Onion, a popular satirical “news” publication based in New York, which reported that the U.S. Congress had threatened to move out of Washington unless a fancy new Capitol was built. Without citing a source, editors in Beijing who were likewise duped, published it as a straight news story, complete with phony architect’s sketch.

When informed that the story was bogus, the paper’s editor in charge of international news adamantly ruled out a correction. Pressed by the LA Times reporter to comment on the article’s total lack of truth, he fell back on a popular maxim of western newspapering which maintains that at such times the best defense is a good offense.

“How can you prove it’s not correct?” he asked. “Is it incorrect just because you say it is?”

Among serial nappers in the media are those behind-the-scenes television sad sacks responsible for cranking out the identification lines that sometimes run across the bottom of your television screen to help you get the picture during a newscast.

“Meddybumps” was the line under a Down East scene on one local channel earlier this week.

“Bar Harbor Commerce Comitty” read another a few minutes later, confirming a suspicion that the station’s news crew often operates without adult supervision.

Perhaps I should let sleeping dawgs lie, especially those that lie so close to home, but to me the snooze of the week was this lead paragraph of an AP story out of Houston published in this newspaper (and many others), on what apparently was the copy editor’s day off:

“Punctuated by fireworks and a locomotive steaming across its outfield track carting oranges, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane re-christened the Astros’ stadium Minute Maid Park Wednesday…”

To be punctuated by fireworks on your big day would be quite enough, one might suppose. But add to the punctuation a locomotive carting oranges and it’s got to smart something wicked. It should keep a guy awake, though.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.