Illness and reason

Someday, your superior correspondents would like to have a reporter ask a state's attorney general or a county prosecutor a question that has been gnawing at us for some time -- do people in law enforcement believe there is such a thing as mental illness? If so, then was there ever a case in which prosecutors indicated such?

This matter comes up in relation to the trial of Raymond Cook for the murder of a police officer in New Bedford. As those of you who have been following the case know, last week a jury rejected Cook's defense of mental illness and found him guilty of first-degree murder.

But judging from the evidence revealed in the trial, if there were ever a defendant with a severe case of mental illness, Cook is the guy. Nonetheless, the prosecution proceeded with the hypothesis that Cook was faking it and the jury, undoubtedly sickened by the sheer mindless horror and barbarism of his act, went along with this conclusion.

The problem is that our laws treat the issue of insanity in a seemingly black-and-white manner. If someone charged with a crime is found to be mentally ill, that person may be determined "not guilty" because of their lack of competency. And, of course, the threshold for competency to stand trial is extremely low.

Perhaps we should consider something along the lines of the British, who can make a finding of guilty but insane. That might open the door to treatment or a number of other options that don't merely lump the clearly ill criminal in with the simply malevolent.

While Cook, like many others who are serving time in correctional facilities around the country, is quite obviously a threat to the community (and, it would appear, to himself) and some manner of incarceration seems in order, there should be some provision in our judicial system for flexibility in cases like these rather than the stark choice of guilty or not guilty.

P&J don't know about you, but we get a little queasy whenever we hear about someone who is clearly delusional (or weighing in with an IQ measured at under 70) being executed in Arkansas, Texas, or Florida. This would be a natural issue to take up, except for the fact that violently mentally ill folks do not exactly comprise a powerful lobby. There must be a more logical way of dealing with this horror.

Stars fall on Woonsocket

Three cheers for Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who, for the third time, will stage a movie premiere here in the Biggest Little. In the past, Vo Dilun's favorite movie siblings brought the openings of Dumb and Dumber to Warwick and Kingpin to Newport. On July 14, the Cumberland natives will reveal their latest opus, There's Something About Mary, at the Stadium Theater in downtown Woonsocket.

We're not sure about this, but it seems to Phillipe & Jorge that this will be the first time a major-studio motion picture premieres in the City of Side by Each. Of course, a decade ago the likelihood of a major film premiere in Woonsocket would have been about as logical as Dustin Hoffman hanging around downtown Pawtucket for a month or two. To those who will attend next month's opening, we have only one warning -- beware the hair-gel scene.

Meanwhile, this week marks the first Newport International Film Festival, and P&J's pick for a "must see" movie is New York filmmaker Paul Devlin's full-length documentary SlamNation. The film captures the finals of the 1996 national poetry slam contest won by the mighty Providence team. Needless to say, our local heroes were the underdogs in the competition, so it will be interesting to see how director Devlin (who has an Emmy to his credit) scrambled to get footage of the surprise champs.

You'll be able to see SlamNation on Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at noon at the Opera House Theater. The screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the associate producer and a live demonstration from members of the '96 championship squad that featured Taylor Mali, Corey Cokes, Sean Shea, and Bill MacMillan and was coached by Casa Diablo regular Ray Davey. The film is also slated for a limited national release in November that will include showings in Our Little Towne.

Lightning strikes

An anonymous fellow representing himself as "Wind and Rain - Not as Much Money as Thunder & Lightning" recently wrote and called P&J in regard to the Cool Moose Party's Bob Healey and his gubernatorial aspirations. The gist of these correspondences was supposedly in the interest of Democratic Party unity on behalf of Myrth "Peppermint Patty" York.

According to our source, rather than going after Governor Bigfoot and taking precious liberal votes away from the Myrthmaker, Healey should run for lieutenant governor. While we won't bore you with some of the obvious positive/negative aspects of Mr. Wind and Rain's case for why Healey should switch to competing for the number-two seat against two virtual unknowns (sitting Lieutenant Governor Bernie What'shisname and state Senator Charles Fogotdaname), we can think of one argument Wind and Rain might make to Healey.

He could say, "No offense, but one of your opponents has a higher chance of dying in office than you do of winning the governor's seat. In fact, all those Powerball articles say that there is a one-in-two-million chance of being struck by lightning. If the incumbent got zapped while you were lieutenant governor, you would become governor. Actually, Almond is so tall, he probably has a one-in-a-million chance of getting hit -- maybe that's why he stays inside so much."

There you go, Bob. Now that we're into thunderstorm weather, perhaps it's time to give Linc a certificate for a few free golf lessons and a new set of clubs. But leave out the one iron, if you get our drift and the old golfing joke.

This reminds P&J of the Polish undertaker in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow who rows out to sea in hopes of getting struck by lightning "wearing . . . a complicated metal suit, something like a deep-sea diver's, and a Wehrmacht helmet through which he has drilled a couple of hundred holes and inserted nuts, bolts, springs . . . so that he jingles whenever he nods or shakes his head. He wants to know how people behave before and after lightning bolts, so he'll know how to handle bereaved families." Think about it.

But he does float

Always eager to set the record straight, Phillipe and Jorge would like to say that there is no truth to the rumor that Narragansett Bay Commission chairman Vinny "Family Man" Mesolella intentionally opened the discharge gates at the Field's Point sewage treatment plant last week and allowed 500,000 gallons of partially treated sewage into the Providence River -- an act that forced the closing of the upper Bay to shellfishing for seven days in Family Man's efforts to convince the state to put more money into the NBC budget. How could anyone even think this was the case when it was clearly a computer glitch and human error, as the plant operators claimed?

Still, we can't say for sure that, like puffy white clouds forming shapes of people and animals in the sky, one of those blotches of odorous effluent spilling into the Bay didn't indeed look like Vinny the Greaseball from overhead.

On air, he's Venus Frytrap

If you think Vernon Jordan used to spend most of his time trying to get a fat paycheck from Revlon for Monica Lewinsky so she would (for once) keep her mouth shut, don't fret. Big Vern is one hard-working mofo.

As evidence, we give you his attempt to secure a radio license in DC years ago with (truth is stranger than fiction) Ms. Blewinsky's new stepfather. What's more, according to Washington Monthly, which surfaced a piece in US News and World Report, the partners, on their application to the FCC, tried to gain a minority offset credit due to Mr. Jordan's tinted hue.

The FCC did not demand a Starr-esque skin test to verify that Vern was indeed a person of color. But it did have a bit of a problem with the fact that Vern claimed that after working 40 hours a week for his high-powered law firm and spending another 10 as the official token black on various corporate boards, he planned to pop into the radio station and put in a 40-hour week as the station's full-time program director. The FCC reportedly deemed the proposal "incredible."

Hmm, sounds like some other very imaginative tales we've heard from Jordan -- and also like the way some Vo Dilun companies deal with minority ownership issues. "So, ma'am, despite the fact that you're 80 years old and penniless, you are the majority owner and work every day on the construction site, correct?"

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