Sedona and Tucson: Who Decides?

This week other than the Egyptian crisis, there have been two stories which were carried in the mainstream media which also demonstrates how regional news and stories get buried by the big box media in the second or third pages of most American newspapers, even less than a month or year after the events.

One was the pending trial of the Jim Jones of Sedona, James Arthur Ray, who was the leader of a for profit organization of "Spiritual Warriors" and Californian who was conducting a lucrative retreat in Sedona, Arizona in which two women and a man perished after being mentally browbeaten from leaving a plastic tent filled with other devotees a little over a year ago and died of suffocation and heat related illness.

The other, of course, was the accused from the Tucson massacre, Jared Loughner, and his trial in which it was recently also reported that due to the fact that he is charged with both federal and state crimes in the incident in which Mr. Loughner used a 9mm Glock (an automatic police weapon) in order to gun down six people, including a federal judge and U.S. Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, it may take "years" for his case to wind through the criminal justice system.

So much for speedy trials, in which the true evidence may be still fresh.

What is interesting about both these cases is the politics which are occurring with respect to the prosecution of them, and just who has jurisdiction and who will be responsible for determining these two individual's fate.

The Sedona incident occurred in Yavapai County, Arizona in a California style "new age" community, and was allegedly committed by an out state resident in which most of the attendees of this paid event were also not Arizona residents, but from the East Coast, Midwest or California. Apparently, due to the media coverage the defense wishes to move this case out of Yavapai County and into Maricopa County (Phoenix) so that the accused can be assured of a "fair trial," in the hopes that Phoenix or Phoenicians would be more likely to be unbiased with respect to the facts and evidence in the case.

Although would state as a former Arizonan, that the media coverage of what occurred shortly thereafter and the interviews with the victims' families were carried far more in the metro Phoenix papers than those in Yavapai County, and those in Yavapai County most likely would not know personally any of the victims.

Witness costs also would not be impacted, since most of the witnesses also were out state residents from all reports.

Mr. Ray's actions brought shame to the State of Arizona, a state in which such an unregulated commercial enterprise could even occur by one who had no medical training or had any true knowledge of even the spiritual practices behind his highly publicized and profitable venture.

Two women were killed, and one older man. Women have far fewer sweat glands than men and thus do not biologically have the means to cool down their bodies, which is why such practices by the American Indian community were restricted to males as a "rite of male passage" into adulthood, and in which a tribal healer was always present.

Our Constitution does specially provide that in any capital offense, the trial must be held in the jurisdiction in which the crime occurred, if the accused is a U.S. citizen and the victims also U.S. citizens.

Mr. Loughner's crime, of course, was witnessed by a great many, all Arizonans.

Mr. Loughner himself was an Arizonan from Tucson and so were all of his victims, whether governmental or civilian, a life is a life.

And the loss of that life at the hands of another is a matter of state, not the federal government.

Between the border situation, and now Mr. Loughner's crimes, it appears the federal government is perhaps failing to carry out its true functions under our Constitution (such as securing our porous and exposed southern borders), while then prosecuting a case which ocurred within state borders that just may have been the result of the political arena and climate in the community in which it occurred.

After all, it did occur at a political event, and purportedly a politician was one of the targets along with other Arizonans. All of the witnesses are Arizonans from Tucson.

If this crime was in no way political, as so many in the media have stated, but merely committed by a "disturbed" loner, and man-child as has been written and widely publicized, then why is the trial now becoming so very, very political?

Rather than Constitutional?