The Future in Chicken Guts

The art of aruspicy is still relatively common for practitioners of voodoo. It’s the art of divining the future by analyzing the entrails of sacrificed chickens, the practice of which can be traced all the way back to the Bronze Age Mesopotamian cultures, which used a wide variety of animals for this purpose. Until very recently, I would have simply dismissed such a notion as pagan poppycock. Now I’m not so sure.

I believe I’ve seen the future in chicken guts.

Senator Julia Lynn is preparing a bill in the Kansas Senate that would make cockfighting a Class 10 Non-Person felony, punishable by a loss of property for the offender. That sounds reasonable to me, but it caused me to wonder why such a bill was being proposed. What I found was a story about a cockfighting operation that was broken up right here in my neck of the woods. Disturbing, to be sure, but the image of the future contained in those chicken guts sent chills down my spine.

Not being a voodoo practitioner myself, I pulled out my own super-secret divination equipment to confirm this reading. I’ll tell you my findings in a moment, but first, let me give you a little back story.

On June 25, 1998, Murillo Fernando Tapia was arrested after a two year investigation for operating a cockfighting operation. He was charged with 172 misdemeanor counts of cockfighting, one for each fighting cock found on the premises. Each of those misdemeanors carried a penalty of up to one year in jail. That makes sense. If you were caught with one fighting cock, I’d imagine you’d be tried for one count, two for two, etc. After all, we probably shouldn’t treat a person who fights one cock the same as someone who operates a huge operation like this, should we?

Apparently, in Kansas we should. Mr. Tapia was sentenced to a one-year diversion program – no jail time if he refrains from breaking the law any more for one year. One wholly unreliable rumor reports Michael Vick as saying, “Hmm…I wonder if the Chiefs need a quarterback.”

How did Mr. Tapia receive such a light sentence, less than the maximum penalty for even one of the 172 misdemeanor charges filed against him? Well, either he had an awesome defense attorney, a lackluster prosecutor or some combination in between. The answer is that he had a defense attorney with a long buddy-buddy history with the man prosecuting the case.

Paul Morrison, the disgraced ex-Attorney General was defending Mr. Tapia (I guess business is slow for Paul these days), and Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe was prosecuting the case. You may recall that Steve worked with Paul for something like 15 years prior to Paul running for and winning the AG position, at which time Paul’s replacement in the DA’s office, Phill Kline, terminated Steve’s employ. Paul Morrison’s defense of Mr. Tapia involved questioning the evidence in court hearings, although I have a hard time understanding exactly how the seizure of 172 fighting cocks after a two year investigation can really be questioned. It seems to me that the Sheriff’s office ought to be pretty irritated by that defense. Paul also argued that it was unfair to stack so many misdemeanor charges up against his client. Unfair? Really? Is that the defense? Is it “unfair” because your client didn’t commit these crimes, or because Phill Kline filed the charges?

Apparently it worked, because Steve Howe uttered his best Rochester impression (“Yes, Boss!” for all you young whipper-snappers) and plea bargained the diversion deal. Said Howe, “It would have involved a week of trial and pay for outside experts to fly in and testify, he said. Also, Tapia was a first-time offender and met the criteria for diversion.” With such tough prosecutorial acumen, it’s easy to see why Phill sent him packing! What are the “resources” of the DA’s office supposed to be used for, other than prosecuting cases deemed so heinous that they demand an immediate change to the Kansas penal code? If you’re suddenly struck by an image of smoky back room deal making, then you’re certainly not alone.

What does this portend?

In 2007, Phill Kline, then Kansas Attorney General, filed 107 charges against Planned Parenthood, most of them misdemeanors. He continued this case as the Johnson County District Attorney, facing numerous legal stall tactics that caused the case to creep along until Steve Howe won the DA job from him in January 2009. Throughout this battle Paul Morrison served as nothing more than one more speed bump along the way, as he tried to fight to have the evidence in Phill’s possession confiscated by the courts. Does “questioning the evidence in court hearings” sound like a familiar tactic?

In light of the cockfighting case, and the years of happy camaraderie between Paul Morrison and Steve Howe, the odds are of this cases being prosecuted aggressively are about the same as Keanu Reeves winning an Oscar. I can just see the press release now (written in chicken entrails), “Well, it would have taken a long time to prosecute this case…and a lot of money, too, what with having to fly in experts and all that other stuff. Because Planned Parenthood is a first offender, and it was “unfair” of Phill Kline to stack so many charges against them in the first place, whether or not they actually committed those crimes, I’ve decided to plea bargain this case down to a diversion. No penalties will be incurred if Planned Parenthood can find it within themselves to avoid killing any viable late-term babies for one year, and they have to promise to keep better, non-fabricated or fraudulent records for the next twelve months.”

What did my divination equipment tell me when I asked the question, “Is Steve Howe going to drop the ball in prosecuting Planned Parenthood?” The words that floated up to me through the depths were ominous. “It is decidedly so.”