BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

ADD 1, 4/27/22 AFTERNOON — THE PLANET has two items of interest involving public safety. The first is from the Pittsfield Police Department. It is their official, preliminary internal investigation of the fatal shooting of Miguel Estrella on March 25. The officer who fired the fatal round was Nicholas Sondrini. The district attorney’s office is conducting a separate, independent investigation.

THE REPORT:

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY APRIL 27, 2020) —  Stepping back as best we can to take an outside view of our coverage of The Tucker Case (TTC), THE PLANET reflects on how strange it is to go from Andrea Harrington’s perceived chief critic to becoming the district attorney’s whipping boy, taking the blows on her behalf for daring to provide honest coverage.

To go so quickly from the adulation of the Hate Andrea Athletic Club Irrespective of Circumstances or Evidence (HAACICE) to the insertion in one of the Allman Brothers’ biggest hits marks a dizzying change of altitude (not sure if it’s ascension or descension) not many could handle. Ah, but such is the life of a muckraking journalist.

Fear not, however. We have the equip to live in the environmental highs and lows. The Secret Squadron arsenal includes both F-9 Panther oxygen masks and a hyperbaric decompression chamber to not only handle but flourish in Everest to Death Valley extremes, 29,991 feet above  to 251 below sea level. That’s almost as far as the distance between Credibility and the location of the Pittsfield City Council’s dais every other Tuesday night.

Walk a mile in our Cole-Hahns and consider our position: You know everybody, everybody knows you (friends, foes), and you end up exiled in the DMZ somewhere in the middle of those opinionated extremes.

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In a forthcoming peer-reviewed article that analyzes THE PLANET‘s coverage of this case the Bacon Level (Alabama) Review of Journalism, the authors note how TTC justified this board’s relentless attention as shown by our extended coverage. The respected journal finds that our coverage of TTC fits all the obligations of actual news:

• Journalism’s first duty is to report the truth as best as humanly possible.
• Journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens, that is, Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski.
• The essence of journalism is verification of factual material.
• The necessary ingredient of opinion is solid reasoning.
• Journalists must remain independent of the people they cover.
• Journalism serves as an autonomous watchdog of power and those who hold it.
• Journalism must provide a forum for public input, discussion, debate, and deliberation based on an absolute reliance on First Amendment rights.
• Journalism should do its best to make coverage relevant, interesting, and lively.
• Journalism keeps coverage proportional, particularly on stories with significant social implications.
• On stories “with legs,” journalists must inexorably pursue the byways and tributaries.
• Journalists are duty-bound to exercise and express the tenets of personal conscience.

We believe THE PLANET and THE PLANET alone among all local media has checked each of these “boxes.”

Certainly, the intensity of reaction to our coverage, both ways, proves the point.

We wouldn’t have it any other way. Hot reaction, up and down, confirms the vey purpose of this board, which is THE PLANET‘s endeavor to put our mouth where our money is by offering a free marketplace of ideas for anyone and everyone with Something To Say. Our belief in free speech is so emphatic we even give safe haven to those who have nothing or little to say, this being the internet and all. That holds true for every story we author, edit, and publish, this being the 2,388th in the series.

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With regard to TTC, we gratefully accept the votes of confidence and compliments of our work for obvious reasons. Contrary to some public opinion, THE PLANET isn’t a machine, computer, robot, or soulless super-genius. We aren’t a ruthless, hard, unyielding, intimidator. News flash! We are human. Can you imagine? We have a poet’s head and a lover’s heart. We enjoy praise for obvious reasons. At the same time, we love pushback. Critics can be the sandpaper that smooths out the bumps of coverage. Critics can try to destroy you in the counterpoint of healthy debate. That’s how it should be. In so doing, they point out the flaws of your position. Learning to accept such criticism as diagnostic sharpens the edges of words when you intend them as to be double-edged blades for cutting bad things like hypocrisy, injustice, and corruption down to size, whether it be institutional rot or personal putrescence.

Some criticism can be dismissed out of hand because of its preposterous nature. Three of our favorites in TTC:

• “They” “got” to us. Not sure who “they” is. Our background’s clean, as any blackmailer would discover, save for that five-cent pack of baseball cards we lifted from Marian’s Variety Store in 1960. That was the day we learned that crime doesn’t pay: All five cards were doubles, including Herb Moford, Wayne Terwilliger, and Herb Plews. Not a Williams or a Mantle to be had. Next one:
• “They” bought us off with envelopes of cash. Again: Who “dey?” Not only did that ridiculous theory cause gales of laughter here at the Fortress, but we also found it telling, since that is allegedly one of the ways “things get done” in “vibrant, dynamic, diverse, inclusive, and equitable” (VD DIE) Pittsfield. We wouldn’t know anything about that, of course. Number three:
• Our support of the D.A. is part of our master plan to flatter her, with the payoff being an exclusive interview. For the best answer to this, see the fifth bullet point in our “rules of journalism” above.

Some criticism can be forgiven because of ignorance.

Example: We heard THE PLANET was irresponsible for opining on the case before obtaining and examining the full text of Judge Agostini’s ruling.

Right.

Let’s us explain. We knew our Z-Agents would send us the document, and when they did, we would read it — all the lines, precedents, footnotes, and invisible words hidden between the lines, the ones for which experienced scribes always look. And after we read the document, we would comment further. That was the plan. Meantime, we relied on digests provided by colleagues. It was enough to responsibly write on the essences of TTC. Again, experienced scribes and ink-stained wretches know how to do that. Years of deadlines doth make expedients of us all.

Next, we heard THE PLANET was lazy because we didn’t just go to to the Superior Court clerk and ask for the grand jury files. Where do you even begin with something like that?

Answer: You don’t. You left it waft from view like the black smoke that drifts out of the Vatican chimney when the conclave of cardinals has failed on a ballot to elect a new pope.

Eye, ya yai! As we will explain below, obtaining grand jury files can’t be legally done, and THE PLANET isn’t about to go around and try to do something that stupid.

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Some knocks, though, are warranted, at least when seen from the issuer’s point of view.

For example, one of the valid critiques of our TTC columns came from one of our most prolific attackers, John Q. Public. (S)he was first to point out that the mention of the Tuckers’ weight was a non sequitur. We agree. Had no place at the table at all, banquet or not.

You’ll recall the poetic license we took when mentioning that after Judge Agostini’s ruling, “900 pounds” of Tuckers “waddled” away without having to face trial. The “900 pounds” was a deliberate exaggeration to make a point. We doubt they even tip the scales for a combined 800 pounds, and the “waddle” was more like a leisurely traipse of the kind one assumes when stepping through cow pies in a farmer’s field or evading steaming dog piles to avoid doing “The Slide.”

Point is, THE PLANET agreed on the critique of the weight thing and have not mentioned it since. It became too heavy a topic.

In fairness, though, THE PLANET does remind John Q and everyone else that we when we mentioned the corpulent nature of the two then-defendants, we were not writing a legal brief.  We left that to Judge John Agostini, who did an excellent job. The good judge couldn’t comment on rotundness for reasons we completely understand and with which we agree, although such a comment would probably be the most obvious immediate impression that hits a person, especially one not writing a legal opinion, when seeing either one of the Tuckers for the first time, let alone both. It is, we must say, rather like one’s first glimpse of the Hoover Dam. It’s a lot to take in on a first viewing.

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On the other hand, as a scribe writing under protection of the First Amendment, we were not and are not bound by relevance as it’s defined legally. Relevance in a free press can venture into the non-legal areas so as to better convey the emotional color, the connotations, of a story. It’s a trick writers have been using Sasquatch eloped with the Abominable Snowman. It also involves the writer’s conscience, as our Rules of Journalism state.

Being thus freed, as self-respecting every member of the Fourth Estate should be and insist upon being, we judged the obesity of Cassandra Barlow-Tucker and Matt Tucker to be emotionally relevant, for we were trying to compose a “feel,” a “tone” of our dismay, sadness, and disgust over the fate of 10-month-old Kristoff Zenopolous, the foster child in their care who died unattended and unmedicated from complications of strep and pneumonia. Grand jury indictments do not emerge from thin air (nor from whole size XXXL cloth, for that matter) and all the more so for successful grand jury indictments.

The Catholic Church defines sloth, one of its Seven Cardinal Sins, as “sluggishness of soul or boredom because of the exertion necessary for the performance of a good work. The good work may be a corporal task, such as walking; or a mental exercise, such as writing; or a spiritual duty, such as prayer.” Does this not apply to the Tuckers? We will not answer. We leave that to you, citizens and patriots all.

The Tuckers’ weights weren’t legally relevant. Agreed. For the fullest and most robust journalistic commentary, fair game. The references to fat were meant to be stinging not out of any personal animus (we have only love in our hearts for all individual humans, including the Tuckers) but out of a more-pressing need for justice — more specifically, for We The People to have the opportunity through a jury of our peers to issue a verdict of guilty or not guilty.

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THE PLANET took their weight as a reasonable indication (not definitive and certainly not “proof” or even “evidence” in any legal sense) of an unhealthy lifestyle, attitude, and diet. Deeper than that, we thought it logical and within bounds to speculatively see in the Tuckers a case of two troubled souls (aren’t we all) trying to eat their way out of and escape from deep, emotional infections. Only they know, though the body does testify. Food is often the shovel to bury unhealed psychological wounds into a pit in the soul. Plugging that into the fact that they are (or were) serial foster parents, called by one commenter “baby farmers,” THE PLANET wondered how could it be good for a child to be in such a household. Specifically, how good could it be for a sick, 10-month-old baby with an undeveloped immune system? Not good, apparently, when coupled with four nagging facts:

1. The infant could not shake his respiratory troubles in the months with the Tuckers.
2. The infant died after not being looked upon once in 12 hours or so in his last day on earth.
3. He died with no trace of medication, not even Tylenol, in his system.
4. The grand jury’s indictment was tossed over procedural mistakes and not because of a finding of insufficient evidence.

As for grand juries, they function differently than trial juries. Generally, 16 to 23 people serve. They are randomly chosen. The proceedings are conducted in secret. Press is not allowed. The identities of the jurors are kept even from the defense team and the judge. The only ones in the room besides the jurors are witnesses, who testify under oath, and prosecutors. Evidence is secret subject to legal penalty if secrecy is violated. None of the testimony is made public.

Grand juries do not decide guilt or innocence. KEY POINT. They rule on the evidence. If the grand jury thinks the state has produced reasonable cause to believe in guilt of the accused, it issues an indictment. After hearing the prosecution make its case and not finding enough evidence to indict, they dismiss the case. The verdict to indict or dismiss requires a simple majority. For example, on a jury with 23 people, 12 are needed to for a legally binding finding.

GRAND JURIES DO NOT RULE ON INNOCENCE OR GUILT.

We The People of Berkshire County have been denied a jury-trial verdict — the ONLY way TCC can be put to rest to the satisfaction of all. In the case of a dead baby less than a year old who died under suspicious circumstances, anything short of a jury trial will not suffice.

As idealists, THE PLANET believes in our criminal justice system, as imperfect as it may be. If the Tuckers are truly innocent, a fair trial will find them so. They can then walk away with that finding, so restored, which they would deserve as much as and perhaps more than the citizens of Berkshire County.

We The People need and demand a jury trial. Only then can we live with a legal determination, be it guilty or not guilty. If guilty, it will have helped in the cause of healing. If not guilty, the Tuckers can walk away free to their waiting consciences.

Peace be upon all.

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“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it” — Jonathan Swift.

LOVE TO ALL.

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