SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
Write a letter
news@bakercityherald.com
EDITORIAL
Don’t trim
prison terms
It might surprise you to learn that some members
of the Oregon Legislature believe convicted rap-
ists, murderers and people who exploit children for
pornography in certain cases spend too much time in
prison.
Among the issues lawmakers need to address —
the effects of the pandemic, most obviously — molly-
coddling felons can certainly be reserved for a future
legislative session.
Yet the Legislature is considering Senate Bill
401. It would replace Oregon’s system of mandatory
minimum prison sentences for certain violent or
especially heinous crimes — a system in place since
voters approved Measure 11 in 1994 — with one that
would give judges the authority to impose prison
terms for such crimes.
Oregon district attorneys, most of whom oppose
the bill, say its passage would result in people spend-
ing less time in prison — up to 40% less — after be-
ing convicted of crimes including fi rst-degree sexual
abuse, fi rst-degree kidnapping and fi rst-degree
assault, along with rape and murder.
Lest you think the current mandatory minimum
sentences are excessive, consider that a person con-
victed of fi rst-degree rape will serve eight years and
four months. Exploiting a child for pornographic pur-
poses brings a sentence of fi ve years and 10 months.
The harm these criminals cause to their victims, of
course, has no release date.
Although correlation doesn’t always equate to cau-
sation, it is beyond dispute that violent crime rates
in Oregon have dropped by more than 50%, to the
lowest level since the 1960s, since voters approved
Measure 11.
It’s conceivable, of course, that a signifi cant num-
ber of Oregonians have changed their mind about
mandatory minimum sentences over the past 27
years. If legislators believe that’s so, then they should
give voters a chance to replace the current system
rather than making the decision for them.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Cameras build trust in Chauvin trial
Editorial from Minneapolis Star
Tribune:
The eyes of the world are on Minne-
apolis.
On its citizens, as they react to the trial
of Derek Chauvin, accused of murder-
ing George Floyd last year in a killing
that sparked riots locally and protests
globally. But also — finally — on one of
its courtrooms. For the first time in state
history, the trial is being livestreamed
and available for Minnesotans — and the
world — to see.
The coronavirus is partly the reason
for livestreaming. The public and news
media have a right to witness court cases,
especially those with such consequence,
and sensible social-distancing protocols
significantly restricted courtroom access
for the Chauvin trial. There’s also the
need for transparency, the currency of
trust in any endeavor.
It’s about making available “an instru-
ment of government which is for many
people very opaque,” Professor Jane
Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for
the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the
University of Minnesota, told an editorial
writer.
Viewing the judicial process can
increase confidence in the jury’s verdict.
“I think it’s important for [citizens] to see
what’s happening,” Kirtley said. “I would
say that about any deliberation. But given
the very strong emotional reactions that
many in our community, if not communi-
ties around the country and even the world
have had, it would be very difficult for those
communities to accept the verdict if they
did not know what kind of evidence was
presented that led up to it.”
Trust in the system can compound
throughout the community, Leita Walker, a
partner at the Ballard Spahr law firm, told
an editorial writer.
“Our hope is by livestreaming this people
are able to watch it and see how the justice
system works, that it builds faith in that
system, and it has sort of a cathartic effect
on our community,” said Walker, a media
law attorney who represented a coalition of
media outlets, including the Star Tribune,
that advocated for livestreaming the trial.
Until now, Minnesota has been known
for its restrictive cameras-in-the-courtroom
policies and only allowed audio and video
recordings after a guilty plea or a guilty
verdict.
“So far the audiovisual coverage of the
Chauvin trial has been no big deal, and I
hope that policymakers in Minnesota and
elsewhere see that and realize that we
can and should provide that as a matter of
course,” Walker said after jury selection and
the first day of the trial. “It shouldn’t only be
something we do during a pandemic.”
The policymakers who made livestream-
ing this possible, including Hennepin
County Chief Judge Toddrick Barnette and
Judge Peter Cahill, deserve credit. Without
any apparent compromises to the gravity
of the proceedings, livestreaming is al-
lowing the world to witness the system of
justice designed to give every defendant
a fair trial. Their example should guide
decision-making on transparency in
future court proceedings.
As Walker explained, “When journal-
ists can collaborate with the court to show
the public how the judicial process works,
everyone wins from that.”
Two farewells: to a colleague and an author
In theory I could tally how many
times Chris Collins’ byline has
been published in the Baker City
Herald.
But this task, alas, will have to
remain theoretical.
I just can’t devote myself to a
single task for the next month or
so, what with newspapers to as-
semble, hikes to take and limbs to
gather in my yard after the latest
spring norther whips through our
willows, which shed worse than the
shaggiest terrier.
I expect that even if I had no
other commitments, it would be
the heavy work of multiple weeks
to compile anything approaching a
complete record of Chris’ contribu-
tions to this newspaper over the
past four decades.
Adjectives fl ood my thoughts at
the prospect.
Immense.
Gargantuan.
Overwhelming.
But as I contemplate Chris’ ca-
reer at the Herald, which ends this
week with her retirement, another
description, this one requiring two
words, fl oats to the surface of that
mental fl ood.
Consummate professional.
This phrase, I think, defi nes
Chris’ tenure more even than its
longevity and consistency, though
both of those are substantial.
The quality of her work, besides
benefi ting multiple generations of
Herald readers, also inspired her
colleagues.
I remember nothing about my
fi rst day in the Herald’s news-
room. This bothers me in no small
measure, and never mind that it
happened almost 30 years ago.
JAYSON
JACOBY
But I do recall, and with consid-
erable gratitude, how comforting
it was to work with a reporter as
experienced and competent as
Chris was, and is.
I feel the same, three decades
later.
This is the second time in the
past year I have marked such an
occasion. I feel sad now as I did
then. Just about a year ago I bid
farewell to Chris’ husband, S. John
Collins, whose photographs had
graced the Herald’s pages since
1978. His job was among those lost
to the pandemic.
I have adjusted to John’s
absence, though the void he left re-
mains. I suppose I will do the same
in the wake of Chris’ retirement.
But when the issue bearing
the last of her many thousands
of bylines has come and gone, a
new gap will appear, a new loss in
the Herald’s journalistic tradition,
which dates back 151 years.
Chris was an integral part of the
paper for a quarter of that period.
This is a legacy, a record of
recording the events and the people
that defi ne this place, that simply
can’t be replaced.
By comparison, counting Chris’
bylines would be a simple, if time-
consuming, exercise.
✐
✐
✐
Beverly Cleary created the fi rst
literary characters I could actually
imagine riding past my house on
their bicycles.
Or seeing at the library.
Or playing dodgeball with on
the school playground.
(A game, at least in my experi-
ence, most often played outdoors,
and on courts of crumbling
asphalt. When you fell — and you
did, or at least I did — any ex-
posed skin became encrusted with
shards of blacktop. If you were
fortunate you could pluck off most
of these without pulling away bits
of skin in the process.)
Cleary, who lived in Portland
as a child and used the city as the
setting for her beloved series of
books, died last month. She was
104, which seems to me an accu-
mulation of years wholly appro-
priate for so prolifi c an author.
Cleary’s best-known charac-
ters, sisters Beezus and Ramona
Quimby, their neighbor Henry
Huggins, and of course Henry’s
dog, Ribsy, weren’t alone in the
worlds, fi ctional and historical,
that I inhabited in my earliest
days as a reader.
(I was born in 1970 and could
no more have missed Cleary’s
books than I could have avoided
Casey Kasem’s Top 40 count-
down, disco, Shrinky Dinks and
the Atari 2600, among much else
that defi ned the pop culture of my
childhood.)
I suspect I spent more time
immersed in the exploits of Frank
and Joe Hardy, and following the
itinerant Ingalls family.
But as much as I relished those
series, the pictures those books
painted in my mind weren’t quite
so vivid as those that Cleary cre-
ated with her prose.
The Hardy boys were teenagers,
for one thing, and I was six or so
when I fi rst made their acquain-
tance.
They drove cars.
They piloted speedboats.
They even fl ew airplanes.
I had a bicycle.
I didn’t have a fi ngerprinting kit
or a photo lab. I didn’t know the po-
lice chief and I didn’t get mixed up
with robbers, conmen and a variety
of other unpleasant thugs.
I could while away most of a day
care-ening from one predicament
to the next with the Hardys and
their chums, such as Chet Morton,
Tony Prito and the inimitable Biff
Hooper.
But I couldn’t envision actually
knowing any of them, they were
so different from my friends, their
exploits so much more dramatic
and eventful than my small town,
middle class childhood.
The Ingalls family, though
having a theoretical advantage
over the Hardys — they were real
people — were also, as denizens
of the 19th century, people whose
experiences had little relevance to
a boy born in the last third of the
20th.
Theirs was a world without elec-
tricity and automobiles, to cite the
technologies that best exemplify
the gulf between that era and ours.
(Also, I feel compelled to note, a
world in which human eliminatory
functions were utterly ignored.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, though in
every other respect a writer with
a keen memory for detail — her
description of her Pa fashioning
a log cabin door takes up several
pages — never, so far as I recall, so
much as hinted at the existence of
outhouses much less their con-
struction or function.)
But the Quimbys and the other
kids who lived on Klickitat Street
were recognizable to me from the
fi rst chapter.
Indeed, when I rode my bike on
the endless and seemingly never
boring circuits of my own street —
North Fern Avenue — it seemed
to me a place not greatly differ-
ent from the one I read about in
Cleary’s books. The only notable ex-
ception is that Beezus, Ramona and
Henry lived in Portland, Oregon’s
biggest city by far, while I lived in
Stayton, which in those days had
little more than 4,000 residents.
But Cleary’s books are about neigh-
borhoods, not cities, and almost all
of her descriptions, of sidewalks and
fences and yards and schools, were
immediately comforting to me in
their familiarity.
Today’s young readers perhaps
are confused on occasion by Cleary’s
books. I can imagine a kid wonder-
ing why Beezus didn’t just use
her cellphone to call her parents
when Ramona scraped her knee,
why Henry didn’t think to resort
to Google when confronted with
a particularly vexing homework
assignment.
But for all that I believe Cleary’s
characters are timeless, their lives
as compelling, as the 21st century
continues its inexorable and some-
how terrible advance, as they were
in the 20th.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.