in the dark

Severely and seriously needing a major distraction from tension, upon waking this dark predawn and sitting here with computer in lap and black coffee in white cup on the dark chest beside (in the room's darkness the chest corner where between sips the coffee cup rests is invisible, so a white envelope or white napkin is kept on that corner for visibility to help me avoid sitting the cup down on empty space), I googled "n" which brings up news netflix nba nba playoffs nike nordstrom et al, tapped news, then selected NPR (which I've never selected before, usually selecting BBC, then maybe going back and selecting Fox then CNN for the dark comedy of difference). 

Read about the small plane collision in Alaska, wondering how ten people who were rescued could have lived through a plane collision, must have been very low, on takeoff or landing, 

Then to NPR coverage of the Supreme Court going on the defensive about their apparent contradictory handling of death penalty cases:



https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/722868203/supreme-courts-conservatives-defend-their-handling-of-death-penalty-cases

What brought it on is cases that on surface may look the same have different underlying facts to be considered and influence each justice's opinion.

Have your own view about the death penalty, you will anyway, one thing that intrigues me, over against anguished victims' families' need for emotional closure of some sort, a moral but not legal issue, is the condemned saving up claims and filing them as appeals one by one over the course of twenty or thirty years as delaying tactic, perhaps the most startling claim at the last minute, hours or a day before the scheduled execution. This is not lost on the justices, who evidently can be quite frustrated, as this cited situation makes clear. But it's the system, isn't it. Every system is a game to be played.

Meantime, it's a career, isn't it, the death penalty is a business. Lawyers for the state are kept busy and lawyers for the condemned create billing hours extended over the course of their entire career. Cynically, my wonder is who the defense lawyers are billing if the condemned client is, as not unlikely for most condemned people, penniless? Bill the state?

It can be googled and explored, and maybe I will in order to extend my own purposed distraction.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/14/magazine/the-lawyers-of-death-row.html