KVAL Bookends Their Coverage with News of Tyson Barrett Mann's Dismissal

Being falsely accused of rape in the age of the Internet goes farther than just concerns of prison and embarrassment among friends of family.  The whole world gets to know about it just by googling your name. 

After this case was resolved with a dismissal of all charges, Arnold Law Office aggressively contacted all media outlets who had covered the indictment requesting equal coverage of the dismissal.  KVAL was the most recent news outlet to post about the dismissal on their website.

Mike Arnold,
Criminal Defense Attorney
Eugene, Oregon

Client's False Rape Charges Dropped after 2 years

If law enforcement would play "truth seeker" instead of "true believer" false accusations against innocent men would be less common. Hopefully the Corvallis Police Department learned a valuable lesson from this utter waste of taxpayers funds.

Mike Arnold,
Eugene, Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyer

Val Hoyle: North Eugene's Next House Rep

Val Hoyle is the perfect fit to fill the House District 14 seat vacated by Democrat Chris Edwards. I had the pleasure of serving as treasurer of the Democratic Party of Lane County (DPLC) when she was our party chairperson. I watched her come in with a passionate plan and implement it with that tough, no-nonsense Bostonian charm that all who know her quickly grow to love and appreciate.

With her at the helm of the DPLC, participation swelled and objectives were realized. She's a tough, passionate leader who will serve the Bethel/River Road area well. I respect Val Hoyle a lot. When she is referred to the Lane County Commissioners for consideration, I will be contacting Faye Stewart asking him to vote to appoint her.

by C. Michael Arnold,
Attorney at Law
Arnold Law Office, LLC

Photo of Val Hoyle walking with Juine Chada outside Junction City High School before President Clinton's appearance in April 2008.

1.14.09 - Salad Bar of Rights: We don’t get to pick and choose

As published in the Eugene Weekly, December 18, 2008:(http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2008/12/18/views1.html)

Rick Levin’s cover story commentary, “Bang Bang, Shoot Shoot” (12/4), perpetuates a common flaw in anti-gun rhetoric that somehow the Second Amendment is about hunting rights. The Second Amendment and the Oregon Constitution do not say that there is a “right to keep and bear sporting goods.” The primary purpose of these constitutional provisions is to protect citizens from tyranny — not to preserve a right to shoot deer.

Levin neglects to even point out that the Oregon Constitution affords its citizens broader protections than the Second Amendment and specifically covers self-defense.

Levin is also quick to point out that there are more than 30,000 people shot to death each year in this country. He neglects to point out how many of those deaths were in self defense or by criminals against an unarmed victim. Additionally, this statistic does not take into account how many crimes are deterred and deaths prevented by citizens with a firearms.

Furthermore, Levin fails to point out that in the last 100 years, governments have murdered millions more people than were killed by common criminals. More importantly, those government-sponsored murders were preceded by gun control laws making the citizenry easier to control and kill when they were unable to resist.

It is amazing how quickly we forget the gun control laws of the Soviet Union, Nationalist China, Nazi Germany, Communist China and the Khmer Rouge that preceded their killing of more than 60 million people. And that still leaves us to ponder the gun control legislation that preceded the death of the one million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turkey, or the indigenous peoples and other political enemies killed at the hands of Guatemala or genocide at the hands of government in Rwanda and Uganda. Our Founding Fathers knew the threat of a government to its people, hence the Second Amendment. History has unfortunately reaffirmed this lesson again and again.

We do not get to pick and choose which constitutionally guaranteed rights we will support like we are at a salad bar of rights. It is disingenuous to complain about the neo-cons stepping on our civil liberties (First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments) — by their dispersing lawful assemblies, illegal wiretaps, deprivation of the right to counsel, torture, etc. — but completely ignore what the Framers found so important of a right that they listed it #2. We should protect all of our civil rights, including the right to keep and bear arms.

Of course, kudos to Levin for visiting the Baron’s Den for target practice. However, that one experience does not adequately hide his contempt for firearms and those that use them. His contempt was obvious in demeaningly comparing gun range patrons to the “Wild Bunch after a spume of unregenerate violence” and to “children sparking cherry bombs.”

Truth be told, gun ownership isn’t all about having hee-hawing good redneck fun. Actually, most firearm owners see target practice as a necessary responsibility. Anecdotes about isolated experiences at the gun range only work to perpetuate a stereotype and do nothing to further the journalistic standards that we expect out of the EW.

C. Michael Arnold is a Eugene, Oregon, trial lawyer, farmer and lifelong Democrat.
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Here is Levin's Response to my op-ed piece: http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2008/12/31/views1.html

Smoking GunA Writer’s ResponseRick Levin

Anti-gun-control advocates love to wax patriotic when it comes to the Second Amendment and their right to arm themselves against tyranny, but the Constitution-thumping poetry they trot out is full of mixed metaphors, half-truths and conveniently decontextualized facts. For instance, in his Dec. 18 Viewpoint, C. Michael Arnold takes issue with me....

Predator Control = Sustainable Agriculture

As published in the Eugene Weekly on July 26, 2007:

COUGARS MENACE FARMS

Please keep in mind that a moratorium on predator control can be inconsistent with sustainable agriculture, global warming policy and a healthy environment ("Cougar Kill: Will Oregon hound cougars to death," 7/19).

I can already imagine the conversations at the Market of Choice about those evil cougar hunters as your readers peruse the shelf for their locally grown, antibiotic-free lamb and free-range chicken. All the while, shoppers are clueless of the connection between our local hunters and what they consider their guilt-free sustainable meat choices. However, our food supply is all about balance and sacrifice.

On our farm we balance killing raccoons with protecting a flock of 70 flavorful free-range chickens (no, chicken doesn't really taste like chicken), turkeys and ducks that are free from antibiotics, inhumane quarters and clipped beaks.

We balance killing skunks with protecting hundreds of thousands of our nation's biggest pollinator and with our desire for a healthy, unprocessed sweetener without a huge carbon footprint from shipping.

We balance killing cougars and coyotes with protecting our beef calf, herd of Boer meat goats and our three little piglets. Alternatively, I suppose we could buy grocery store meat shipped via an enormous carbon footprint and fed grain through chemically dependent corporate farming techniques.

Being omnivores isn't pretty. As much as I don't enjoy killing predators and harvesting our livestock, I prefer that vastly over assuming that meat magically appears in the grocer's freezer. Consequently, the tools of our farm will continue to include the hoe for removing garden threats and firearms for removing pasture threats.

C. Michael Arnold, Creswell

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Here are some responses (Eugene Weekly 8/9/07):

PRETTY VEGETARIANS

While I applaud C. Michael Arnold's awareness of his carbon footprint (7/26) and his efforts to live sustainably, I fear he misses the obvious and simple solution to his discomfort in killing predators and livestock. Don't do it!

As he states, "being omnivores isn't pretty." So don't be one. Becoming a vegetarian would eliminate his discomfort, save the lives of his farm animals and the predators he currently competes with and maximise his ability to live in a sustainable and healthy world.

I agree with and appreciate his pointing out that shoppers are clueless regarding "what they consider their guilt-free sustainable meat choices." There simply is no such thing as a guilt-free meat choice.

For more information check out http://www.goveg.com/

Bryan Wilson, Eugene

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My response: I agree that vegetarianism would be the total solution. It is far more sustainable than livestock. For instance, the energy (calories) needed to grow feed for livestock nets meat calories that are far, far lower than the orignal calories. So instead of growing grain for cattle, it's more efficient for us to eat that grain. However, this misses the fatal flaw to this logic: hamburgers.....yum.....

- Mike Arnold, 1/16/08

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BLOODY FOOTPRINTS

Although I applaud C. Michael Arnold (7/26) for his foray into sustainable farming with a smaller carbon footprint, I query why your alternative footprints have to be soaked in cougar blood. As you're obviously not a "cat person," I wonder what you have against using dogs to keep the purring panthers at bay. Enter the noble Great Pyrenees, bred specifically to defend your free-range critters against coyotes so you can sleep easy and save your shells. Scads of evidence from Montana farmers prove conclusively the ever-vigilant furballs fare equally well against cougars, wolves, raccoons, fishers, foxes and even skunks. If you really don't enjoy killing predators and would be happy to just scare them away, then it's a no-brainer.

After living in a teepee through two Montana winters with nothing between the Rattlesnake Wilderness and me but some cold canvas, straw and whatever wits I could get to function at -20§ F, I soon learned what it was like to be stalked and confronted by a cougar. The best survival advice I found is to not act like prey — jumping up and down, waving my arms and shouting "I'm not prey!"

Hunting such an invisible and majestic animal with or without dogs is barbaric, inhumane and ineffectual. Let's look at it another way — cougars need more room. There is still a movement to create wilderness corridors connecting their dwindling postage stamp ecotones from North to South America called the Path of the Panther, and Oregon should pounce on it if we desire any wilderness heritage at all. Sound better than paying for the new NAU Superhighway?

A.F. Nash, Eugene

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My response: Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGDs) are a wonderful solution for cougars, bears, and coyotes. However, I can't rationalize fifty pounds of dog feed a week to protect our small farmstead.

2.5.07 - Impotent Expressions of Frustration: Evaluating student threats that use a magic word

I would like to look specifically at how to best assess student threats. I am concerned mainly with how to handle impotent expressions of frustration and anger that include a zero-tolerance “magic word,” such as “gun” or “kill.” I recognize the need to circle the wagons to protect other students but I don’t necessarily always want there to be an out-of-school suspension pending an evaluation, especially when a “threat” is equivocal and not imminent. I also don’t expect a building principal to have to bear the weight of making threat assessment decisions on his or her own.

Despite the media’s portrayal, schools still remain some of our safest places in America. We could probably debate all day long about why we went from a nation with “nothing to fear but fear itself” to a nation of fearing everything. As an aside, in my opinion the media spews fear to keep people glued to 24-7 news stations, and the governments tend to spew fear to stay in power and to keep us from questioning the government’s policies. Consequently, operating in a state of fear when these impotent expressions occur is somewhat understandably but not necessarily in the best interests of the students.

One possible alternative to a building administrator bearing the burden of making a threat assessment is to have a Student Threat Assessment Team that immediately addresses a situation. This was done in the Willamette Education Service District with their Student Threat Assessment Team. This paradigm recognizes that threats are commonplace in schools, students typically do not act on their threats, and those who plan violent attacks often don’t threaten their victims beforehand. It also recognizes the economies of scale in doing this through an ESD.

Their system is designed to look at targeted violence (plotting and planning ahead to harm someone) versus reactive violence (a visceral response to an emotionally-charged situation which often cools down when the situation is addressed quickly). This system requires cooperation among agencies including representatives from law enforcement, juvenile justice, mental health, child welfare, school districts and the ESD.

The Willamette ESD system was put into place to help curb schools’ overreaction to threats in light of ORS 339.250 (requiring the principal to consider “[r]equiring the student to be evaluated by a licensed mental health professional before allowing the student to return to the classroom setting.”). Willamette ESD recognized that this process was cumbersome due to the time it takes to get the evaluation, the lack of qualified evaluators, and possibly the lack of a qualified evaluation process.

Their process breaks down like this for the most part:
- Administrator determines if there is a need for the school’s onsite safety team to review a situation. If it is unfounded, then he/she doesn’t refer it.
- School’s safety team (administrator, counselor, law enforcement officer and someone who knows the student, such as a teacher or case worker): They determine if a heightened assessment is needed. If not they institute a safety plan (monitoring, behavior modification, increased supervision, etc.).
- If heightened assessment is needed, the student is given in-school suspension and the ESD’s Student Threat Assessment Team comes in to investigate. They can do a safety plan which includes a recommendation for suspension pending a mental health evaluation. Their job would be to scurry around shortly after an incident occurs to gather facts about the situation. They would interview all the fact witnesses, the teacher that knows the student best, and the parents to do an initial common sense assessment.

ADVANTAGES OF A THREAT ASSESSMENT TEAM:
It keeps academically vulnerable students at school if they are not a real threat, and it gets the real threats into the system quickly. The current system has the tendency of treating all “magic word” threats the same, causing the community resources to be spread too thin and causing the district to be seen as one that cries wolf.

This process allows a qualified group from outside the system to make a decision about the threat level. Juvenile Court judges struggle over decisions like this on a daily basis, but they get the input of child welfare, attorneys, and law enforcement. It’s a lot to ask a principal to make a decision about the threat level without giving him the resources needed to make such a decision. Systems that appear to have zero-tolerance to “magic word” threats have a chilling effect on the students notifying administration of threatening comments. In other words, if students think a jokingly said comment will get blown out of proportion, they will withhold the information. This is not the way break the student code of silence.

Disadvantages of this system:
It is time and resource intensive in establishing and implementing, which necessitates ESD’s involvement. However, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The current interpretation of the statute tends to send angry and frustrated students home pending an evaluation where they have time to go from reactive violence to targeted violence (if they are truly risks). Out of sight out of mind doesn’t always address the problem and can make it worse.

Willamette ESD has a PowerPoint slide show which can be viewed in its entirety through the link below. I have attached their flow chart. I strongly recommend reading the linked material, especially the real-life examples of its implementation.

http://www.wesd.org/instr_svcs/files/safe%20schools/aesa%202006%20student%20threat%20assessment%20powerpoint.pdf

11.27.06 - "I'm a Democrat - and gun control is for the birds"

The column linked below was published in The Register-Guard (Sunday, November 26, 2006) as a response to Michael Moore's "A liberal pledge" which has been circulating around the internet lately. Please forward this to your liberal and conservative friends who may be gun-banners or liberal-bashers. We, Democrats, don't pick and choose from our rights like a salad bar; we believe in protecting all of our civil rights, including the right to bear arms. "Liberal" and "pro-gun" are not mutually exclusive. Feel free to comment; I won't delete any of them, even if you disagree.

Register-Guard column: "I'm a Democrat - and gun control is for the birds"

Blog Site of the Gun Owners Caucus of the Democratic Party of Oregon: http://bluesteeldemocrats.blogspot.com/