Alabama Judge borrows from Nazis to sentence Wal-Mart shoplifters

Posted by Guest Blogger at 1:59 PM on May 25, 2007.

This is a guest post by regular AlterNet commenter Eddie Torres.

Earlier this month, Judge Kenneth Robertson Jr. of Attalla City, Alabama, ordered two shoplifters convicted of stealing from a Wal-Mart Supercenter to serve a a 60-day jail sentence or stand in front of the store for 8 hours wearing a sign reading "I am a thief; I stole from Wal-Mart."

After the two shoplifters decided to wear the signs, the judge convinced Wal-Mart to allow the sentence to be carried out. However, after the first 4 hours of the sentence had been served, Wal-Mart abruptly changed its mind, stating "…upon further review, we simply would rather the punishment not be carried out on store property."

Before Wal-Mart's higher-ups reversed their position, the manager of the Attalla City Superstore said that "the only comments we've heard so far have been positive… most of them thought it was a good thing… maybe they [the shoplifters] will think twice about doing it." In contrast, convicted shoplifter Lisa Fithian said some people who read the sign described the punishment as "cruel".

America's protections against "cruel and unusual punishment" have been under constant pressure since well before 9/11, with plea-bargaining that is weighted against the poor and uneducated, an informant system that pays criminals to turn in other criminals in exchange for immunity, and sentencing rules that fill prisons faster than authorities can build them.

But why does shoplifter Lisa Fithian's punishment sound so chillingly familiar? Because similar placard-around-the-neck punishments were used by German judges both domestically and in "People's Courts" in occupied territories after the Nazi party rose to power in the 1930s:

The use of placards around the necks of condemned criminals has historically had two specific purposes: to humiliate the criminal and to send a message to the rest of the population. But Judge Robertson in Alabama is not a member of an occupying regime.

He is a cog in a justice system that uses the US Constitution, a 220 year-old document, as the basis of its authority. And it appears that fear of setting a precedent for "cruel and unusual punishment" was not on Judge Robertson's mind at the time of his decision.

More worrisome is the tolerance of unusual judicial methods by a wider population in this event - including (temporarily) Wal-Mart. It brings to mind the 1961 film "Judgment at Nuremberg," where the accused German judge Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster) describes the climate of fear in pre-war Nazi Germany that enabled judges to justify increasingly extreme decisions:

There was a fever over the land… We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. There was, above all, fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, fear of ourselves… What about us, who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we participate? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later…

Judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy) responds to Janning in his closing remarks:

There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the protection of the country. Of survival. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth… and the value of a single human being.

As long as America tolerates Wal-Mart justice and Jack Bauer methods, the world waits for influential Americans to stand up for a higher purpose. The world has been waiting a long time.

Tagged as: judicial system, wal-mart