Open and Shut Case -- Pt 2
In the Iowa vs. Heemstra case that I spoke of yesterday, for me the person of the deceased victim, Tom Lyon, didn't come "alive." Maybe I missed the testimony about what a great guy he was. Certainly the Court TV luminary Nancy Grace saw him that way, but I take everything that that egregiously ugly-minded woman says with a very large grain of salt. So he had substance only in the testimony of his killer, Rodney Heemstra, and in that of one of his neighbors named Michener, a woman with utter dismay and tragedy deeply etched around her unblinking eyes. She is another widow who nevertheless seems to be bravely carrying on with her farming alone. She spoke of how Lyon did farm-type things for her -- at pay.
On the other hand, because he was the perp and because he was right there testifying for all he was worth in the desperate attempt to retain some sort of a livable future, Heemstra was vivid, and the issues surrounding him are what I think made this trial important.
Actually Heemstra committed more than one crime.
The first was deciding to carry a gun in his pickup. When a person does that kind of thing, whether or not he admits it to himself, it usually means that he has brought himself to that most unacceptable of points: he is ready to take a human life. Admittedly there are now six billion human lives swarming all over the planet. Nevertheless, on a cosmic scale, in which it took several billion years of happy accidents to create a mechanism as elaborate as ours, and of which there's nothing comparable for zillions of miles in all directions, a human life is truly a rare and precious thing and never to be taken lightly or at all.
Heemstra's second crime was that he took the gun out of his pickup though Lyon hadn't shown a weapon, and not only that but also he pointed it at someone, in this case Lyon, and not at the man's feet or his knees either but at an especially critical spot, Lyon's head.
Heemstra's third crime was that in that volatile moment of arguing with a man whom he saw as his constant tormentor, out in the bruising cold of a lonely Iowa road at 3 in the morning, he put his finger on the trigger.
I think that the TV and film industry does the American public an extreme disservice by showing so many scenes in which a character likewise produces a gun as casually as he would scratch his head, and just as easily points it at someone with his finger on the trigger. That sight always makes me cringe.
Even the worst gun nuts, like my neighbor H., will tell you that all that is a big no-no, especially because the involuntary action of an already nervous finger, made more nervous by the stress of a situation, gives a high probablility of accidentally squeezing the trigger.
It's my guess that Heemstra's intent was not to shoot Lyon but to scare him off for good, so as to end all that rigmarole about the water on that contested farm and the ownership of the property itself. But it was at night and undoubtedly too dark for Lyon to fully make out the two clues that might have made him see the danger he was in: the rifle and Heemstra's face. Sadly, according to the only surviving witness, Heemstra, Lyon didn't back down and instead continued to taunt him.
Ms Grace and other Court TV commentators roundly condemned the extreme profanity that Heemstra testified came out of Lyon's mouth, while saying that other witnesses didn't see Lyon that way. But Ms Michener, obviously a fine, sincere, upright church-going lady, testified that Lyon told her that he "ran that a-- h---'s a-- off that farm" every chance he got. (I am pleased to continue her first-letter convention, which she used with the permission of the judge.)
If it is true that Lyon, despite the gun, continued to shower Heemstra with invective, then that means that he, too, committed a crime, that of being the inveterate bully and hassler, and the jury must have considered that point while taking 11 hours to reach their verdict of Heemstra being guilty as charged.
Who knows? Maybe there had been earlier incidents in Heemstra's life -- he looked to be relatively mild-mannered -- stretching as far back as his childhood, when he had similarly been pushed and bullied and hassled. Though it may be eventually dropped and forgotten by the bullier, that sort of behavior is never forgotten by the one who was hassled. And that behavior should always be stopped in its tracks, whether it is committed in a schoolyard or on an international scale by a superpower.
In that light, then, it could be that Lyon paid for wrongs committed by others in some distant and now forever vanished past.
The firing of the bullet came as a huge surprise to them both, and it crushed both their lives. Now Lyon is dead, and Heemstra is condemned to a living death spent for the rest of his days in a penitentiary and in his memory of a frigid pre-dawn morning on a country road, far from all his beloved farms that he so enjoyed buying and running himself ragged visiting and choreing. There's plenty of tragedy there for all, and no saving Grace.
On the other hand, because he was the perp and because he was right there testifying for all he was worth in the desperate attempt to retain some sort of a livable future, Heemstra was vivid, and the issues surrounding him are what I think made this trial important.
Actually Heemstra committed more than one crime.
The first was deciding to carry a gun in his pickup. When a person does that kind of thing, whether or not he admits it to himself, it usually means that he has brought himself to that most unacceptable of points: he is ready to take a human life. Admittedly there are now six billion human lives swarming all over the planet. Nevertheless, on a cosmic scale, in which it took several billion years of happy accidents to create a mechanism as elaborate as ours, and of which there's nothing comparable for zillions of miles in all directions, a human life is truly a rare and precious thing and never to be taken lightly or at all.
Heemstra's second crime was that he took the gun out of his pickup though Lyon hadn't shown a weapon, and not only that but also he pointed it at someone, in this case Lyon, and not at the man's feet or his knees either but at an especially critical spot, Lyon's head.
Heemstra's third crime was that in that volatile moment of arguing with a man whom he saw as his constant tormentor, out in the bruising cold of a lonely Iowa road at 3 in the morning, he put his finger on the trigger.
I think that the TV and film industry does the American public an extreme disservice by showing so many scenes in which a character likewise produces a gun as casually as he would scratch his head, and just as easily points it at someone with his finger on the trigger. That sight always makes me cringe.
Even the worst gun nuts, like my neighbor H., will tell you that all that is a big no-no, especially because the involuntary action of an already nervous finger, made more nervous by the stress of a situation, gives a high probablility of accidentally squeezing the trigger.
It's my guess that Heemstra's intent was not to shoot Lyon but to scare him off for good, so as to end all that rigmarole about the water on that contested farm and the ownership of the property itself. But it was at night and undoubtedly too dark for Lyon to fully make out the two clues that might have made him see the danger he was in: the rifle and Heemstra's face. Sadly, according to the only surviving witness, Heemstra, Lyon didn't back down and instead continued to taunt him.
Ms Grace and other Court TV commentators roundly condemned the extreme profanity that Heemstra testified came out of Lyon's mouth, while saying that other witnesses didn't see Lyon that way. But Ms Michener, obviously a fine, sincere, upright church-going lady, testified that Lyon told her that he "ran that a-- h---'s a-- off that farm" every chance he got. (I am pleased to continue her first-letter convention, which she used with the permission of the judge.)
If it is true that Lyon, despite the gun, continued to shower Heemstra with invective, then that means that he, too, committed a crime, that of being the inveterate bully and hassler, and the jury must have considered that point while taking 11 hours to reach their verdict of Heemstra being guilty as charged.
Who knows? Maybe there had been earlier incidents in Heemstra's life -- he looked to be relatively mild-mannered -- stretching as far back as his childhood, when he had similarly been pushed and bullied and hassled. Though it may be eventually dropped and forgotten by the bullier, that sort of behavior is never forgotten by the one who was hassled. And that behavior should always be stopped in its tracks, whether it is committed in a schoolyard or on an international scale by a superpower.
In that light, then, it could be that Lyon paid for wrongs committed by others in some distant and now forever vanished past.
The firing of the bullet came as a huge surprise to them both, and it crushed both their lives. Now Lyon is dead, and Heemstra is condemned to a living death spent for the rest of his days in a penitentiary and in his memory of a frigid pre-dawn morning on a country road, far from all his beloved farms that he so enjoyed buying and running himself ragged visiting and choreing. There's plenty of tragedy there for all, and no saving Grace.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:14 AM
1 Comments:
It's interesting to note that Heemstra was the only witness to this event.
He admitted shooting and killing Lyon. And his testimony is the only
description of the event. Can we believe the man? How do we know that he didn't get out of his truck with his gun and his headlights on blinding the victim and shooting him in cold blood. That seems more reasonable to me than this little guy confronting a much larger and stronger man who he admittedly was afraid of.
And if indeed it was done in self defense why did he drag Lyon down the road a good mile ripping the flesh off his face and dropping him down an old well face first. He even had to pull off the road on to an adjacent field to hide so the folks in an approaching vehicle wouldn't see his prey. That sounds like he was really pissed at the guy, not the unfortunate accident he portrays.
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