(1) when the border guard ordered him to do so, and

(2) after the guard had already repeatedly punched him in the face while he was sitting in the car.

I hope you’re formulating some plan to throw our support the way of Dr. Watts.

Please tell me there’s something I can do.

Apparently it’s also perfectly OK for law enforcement to blatantly lie about it afterwards.

None of this matters.

But asking the question: “What’s the problem?” gets you convicted to a jail sentence.

If that’s not fascism I don’t know what is.

The people paid to be in certain situations (police, referees, coaches, whatever) need to be the grown up and not come down to the level of the child personna. People crossing at borders are allowed to ask “Why” as much as they want and yes it must get annoying, but the job is to keep the peace. Not keep the peace by any mean necessary.

Someone stating he/she was a juror has commented on the timesherald website:

“proudinjun wrote:
As a member of the jury that convicted Mr. Watts today, I have a few comments to make. The jury’s task was not to decide who we liked better. The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts “obstructed/resisted” the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He’s not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge.
3/19/2010 2:01:10 PM”

http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20100319/NEWS01/3190308/Jury-remains-out-in-Watts-trial?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:e3d49247-c265-47a6-9721-5713e32cc7ed

I suspect that even if a juror who decided Peter’s fate tells it like it is as quite similar to Peter himself stated, there will be those who still want to make it out as what it most definitely was not.

This is a bit like Stockwell Day on the Niagara River. Watts was leaving the US to return to Canada, not entering that benighted land. He was stopped by US officials, not Canadian ones, under what authority I can’t imagine.

Now the prosecutor is seeking a habitual criminal ruling to enhance his sentence! This is fascism, pure, everyday American fascism, coming soon to a place near you.

And to answer the comment about moving to a country that actually has real human rights protection: what country on Earth has decent protections?

To Friedrich Nietzsche is attributed the following:

“Everything the State says is a lie, & everything it has is stolen.”

“You will find that I have consistently followed one idea through all my life, I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others : Might makes right.” –Carl Panzram

It’s sad to see how many people will suck up to a sociopath as soon as one manages to get a uniform. It’s not like there’s any shortage of psychos…

“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” –Ted Bundy

In my rape analogy, Dr. Wells could be a grandmother delivering a batch of cookies to a charity bake sale, or he could be thirteen year old on her way to choir practice. The point is, the frightened will look for reasons that the victim was not making herself vulnerable to attack; the grandmother looked too young, the choir girl trusted the choirmaster to give her a ride, therefore they must be guilty. This is ridiculous, and it gets harder to do when the victim is, for example, a six month old baby or a quadriplegic. Which is why those sorts of examples are invoked, to get it through people’s heads that rape is not about the victim being seductive, it is not about a desire, on the part of the perpetrator, to hurt someone. The drunken sorority girl was NEVER asking for it. All of this is an uphill battle in a society in which people can read “Lolita” and come away with the message that the child was a seductress, instead of a victim who was kidnapped and kept as a sex slave.

Ah, it’s a sick sad world indeed.

And the folks who insist that Dr. Wells should have behaved this way or that way, that this was his fault, they are the most frightened of all, you can fairly smell the fear coming off them, they are rank with it.

And “choking him”? I’m sure the 51 year old science-fiction author flew into a blind, Canadian, lumberjack rage and mysteriously overpowered the officer, dragging him into the car to choke him, before getting out of the car with his wood cutting axe to attack the rest of the border patrol. And I’m sure at some point, according to the officers, his car had turned into a moose by that point.

Needless to say, I’m advising all of my friends to stay well away from America for the next little while, and refuse to go down there any time soon. I bet you they’ll say he’s a terrorist next. :/

Are there any grounds for an appeal? Somehow, a law that amounts to “don’t ask questions” doesn’t seem very constitutional.

Also, I’m not clear on this – was this the State of Michigan prosecuting him, rather than the federal government? It sounds like it. If he doesn’t appeal, or loses his appeals, it seems appropriate to mount a really big petition drive for a pardon. And another one to get this law fixed so that asking questions isn’t a felony.

First, the officers have every right in the world to search your car as thoroughly as they deem fit. The fact that Dr Watts was protesting such a search seems odd to me.

Second, the officers have the obligation to control the situation. My girlfriend once exited my car at the Woburn-Coburn crossing between Quebec and Maine, and she was instantly swarmed by officers. She was firmly but nonviolently put back in the car. The officers explained that they can’t have people wandering around outside their cars while they are being searched or passed through customs- this is for the safety of other travelers and the officers themselves.

I wasn’t happy about how strongly they reacted, but the bottom line is: lesson learned. Don’t get out of your car at a border crossing.

I should add that, this one experience aside, I have found the US border guards to be exceptionally polite, chatty, reasonable people. Maybe it’s because I tend to cross at rural locations (St Stephen/Calais, Thousand Islands, Woburn/Coburn)? Perhaps. But I certainly find the US guards much nicer than their Canadian counterparts, who are rude.

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And under “obstruct” is “failure to comply with a lawful order”, and it’s explicitly stated that violence on the part of the perp is not necessary for a conviction. Basically, everything from asking “Why?” right up to chain-saw attack falls under the same charge. And it’s all a felony.
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So what it came down to, ultimately, was those moments after I was repeatedly struck in the face by Beaudry (an event not in dispute, incidentally). After Beaudry had finished whaling on me in the car, and stepped outside, and ordered me out of the vehicle; after I’d complied with that, and was standing motionless beside the car, and Beaudry told me to get on the ground — I just stood there, saying “What is the problem?”, just before Beaudry maced me.

Some of these US immigration people are not mentally balanced, they have an unhealthy disrespect for people backed up by unfair, unequal laws that pretty much let them get away with anything. Bad combination. The best thing to do is to NOT confront them, let them do their thing and let them feel ‘big and then get through.

It’s unfortunate this situation took place and I hope he gets out of it without going to jail.