The Train Man

Posted on September 21, 2007 in California Watch Justice Suicide

Los Angeles’ latest show trial is about to convene: a judge removed one of Juan Manuel Alvarez’s public defenders so the tribunal may proceed.

“The public is interested in knowing, hundreds of people want to know,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders said of the January 2005 train accident near Glendale, in which 11 people died. “I’ve reached the end of my rope.”

According to witnesses, Alvarez parked his Jeep Cherokee on the tracks, doused it with gasoline before getting out to watch the collision. It’s a classic mentally ill pattern — get all the fixings ready for the big self-immolation, then change your mind at the last minute. Alvarez probably had no clue that the forced meeting of his car and the train would be so fatal to so many. His mind was in a different place, resistant to clues.

His defense is expected to plead insanity — saying that Alvarez wanted to commit suicide but had a change of heart — but this will be hard to prove. Jurors want raving maniacs, slathering at the mouth, eyes bulging from their sockets, and calling out obscenities or unfathomable utterances. Alvarez’s purposefulness will strike them as a willful act: the prosecution will say that he wanted all those people dead. And because the mood of the judge, the county, the state is to have forceful resolution of the case, they will vote for the death penalty.

The law and the mood of the People is slanted against the mentally ill. Alvarez is no Andrea Yates. Worse, he is a latino in a state which is becoming increasingly paranoid about invasions from the south. I expect nothing less than the death penalty but that doesn’t mean I want it or think it is right.