Hi RIck, Mary, Amos, etc... Rick DON'T REACH FOR A CIGGY MAN!!!! Reach for a guitar!

In one respect I have to speak as a lawyer because I have restraints on my speach in this case, as part of what I know is still confidential. But, Mary that which I know explains why this is not a pattern of behavior. Now, Rick, as to looking one way and the other. One thing to understand about ALL people and people's racialized as "Gypsies" one thing to understand is that they live in the state of being out of place. As your Black friends will tell you, that in certain places and situations, they know that they are looked at suspiously by folks around them, no matter how mainstream they are, it is a fact of Race in the US, if not in America. For Travellers and Roma it is a matter of being permanently "out of place" as the "other".

Looking right and left is a constant in the life of these communities racialized as Roma. Before Roma go anywhere, they say to each other, Arrack sa jas, "watch as you go..." Some one asked a group of Roma with me, what they would say in the old days before the wagons started, and one Rom said, laughing, Arrack o Gyzhen, whatch out for the non-Roma. Roma and Travellers are subject to pretextual arrest, constant harassment, and as a result in public, they can appear to be "acting guilty" when they are worried and cautious, and in fact, the exculpatary evidence in this case will explain this further.

We who know and love these folks have a huge burden, as the nation has been told something, and shown a video that shows part of what we have been told, and the comentary has filled in the rest. Perspective in video is everything. What the video does not show is a punching, a beating, what it does show is a slapping, a bad slapping that should not have happened and under the normal cercumstances of Madelyne's life, this would not have happened and has not in the past. Her confusion at her own loss of temper is clear in her abondoning the caution of her culture to speak to the nation and say she did what she is accused of, her confusion at her loss of temper is seen in the fact that she returned to Indiana quickly when she could have been away until the intial furror passed, as would have been normal in her culture and in fact in many people's culture... I am not defending the slapping and shoving. It was ugly and wrong, but that is not to say I agree with the presentation as fact that she beat her child. You should note that even in the throes of unusual rage for her, she is placing the child in a car seat. Well, all I have to say is let one of you who has not experienced a moment of unusual rage in your life cast the first stone, everyone else present your kids to Child Protective Services to be placed with strangers.

all the best, Larry