Ciceronian Review

Endless Reconsideration

There are two reasons to be interested in Bozung, one good and the other unseemly.  The trial court suppressed a written and video confession.  The state moved for reconsideration of the evidentiary ruling.  The trial court applying Rule 24 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure denied the motion to reconsider.  The problem is, as the Supreme Court, noted, Rule 24 does not apply in such circumstances.  Rule 24 applies post-trial:  "upon motion of a party or on its own motion, a court may grant a new trial . . . ".  Here, the ruling was early in the matter and the state did not want a new trial, it wanted the court to reconsider a motion.  That part of the ruling is not shocking.  The Supreme Court did clarify some cases which, to be fair, at very least suggested that Rule 24 did apply.  (When the Utah Supreme Court takes a moment "to clarify" it usually means that there are prior cases on the subject which are a confusion and it quite can't bring itself to say the earlier decisions are confusing or poorly written.)  Instead of applying Rule 24, a "trial court should use its discretion to rehear pretrial evidentiary motions liberally to allow the whole case to be presented."  Decide the motion on the totality of the circumstances.  This is unsettling part of the decision -- trial courts are directed to liberally grant requests for reconsideration of evidentiary motions -- an invitation to piecemeal litigation and re-litigation.  That the evidence is not newly discovered is not a problem.  All of the cases cited by the Supreme Court involve prosecutorial requests to reconsider an evidentiary hearing, and all of the factors listed by the Supreme Court are phrased so as to favor prosecutorial requests for reconsideration.  I think it is a mistake not to impose a responsibility on parties to come forward with their arguments and evidence the first time.  Where the standards for reconsideration are low, there will be more such requests and every such request slows down litigation and encourages strategic withholding and staging of evidence.

The unseemly reason to be interested in the case is that it developed from the death of the son of the leader of the Eagle Forum. 

Black is Black

In light of the comments on Kulok's art, I went back to look again and reconsider my views.  I looked for the commentary on photography, and the insightful conceptualization, and, well, just looked again.  Nope.  (First, an inconveneint aside -- other work by KuIok (or this) I have found interesting, and I do recommend wandering around the site.)  I don't see anyting interesting in the way of commentary on photography or processes in this project.  First, because I still don't see what the process of creation has to do with or how it connects to photography.  Collect a series of network names on a cell phone, list them in black on a black canvas (is it canvas or something other backing?).  He used a cell-phone which may have had a camera.  Or more likely, the capture of electronic information somehow relates to digital images.  Alright, is a digital image (of a name).  And then these images are printed in black on black.  But that is not enough to get us to a comment on photography that is made by the objects displayed -- and the creation process is not distinguishable from this one, and so everything turns into photography and comment on photography.  A poor result.  I might buy a story about comment on printmaking, but not photography.  Second, the presentation is opaque, and off-putting I think.  There is nothing about the images or presentations that invites one to think further about the project.  To put the point another way, the image do not lead to an investigation of the process or the concepualizing; instead the latter are necessary to care about the image.  I think that is the wrong way round.  (I admit to a predisposition against conceptual art work for reasons to be discussed another day.)  All of the interest lies in the explanation, and that is failure.  Third, I still do not think it much of an idea -- There Are a Million Stories in the Naked City, these are the names of a couple of dozen.

Having gone on about it, let me again note that there is other work by Kulok that I find more interesting and would recommend.