Saved by the Cell

Publicity is the very soul of justice.

— Jeremy Bentham

Journalists have voiced near-universal praise for Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old who filmed the murder of George Floyd with her cell. 

Her footage all but convicted Floyd's killer.

She deserves our praise. 

Her cell made the law work.

Eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham thought the law's purpose is "to govern;" that is, to keep us safe. 

But to govern, the law must be enforced—and enforcement is everyone's responsibility. 

The law, he said, "governs through the governed."

Because it depends on the governed, the law is highly fallible—because we are. The corrective, Bentham said, is publicity. 

Publicity, he said, "keeps the judges on trial."

"It is through publicity alone that justice becomes the mother of security. Without publicity, all other checks are fruitless."

Without publicity, the law is toothless; but with it, the law can prevail, as it did yesterday.

HAT TIP: Thanks go to historian Jon Meacham for inspiring this post.

Kidnapped!

The inventor of the PDF, Chuck Geschke, who died last week at 81, was kidnapped at gunpoint from his workplace 30 years ago.

On a Tuesday morning in May 1992, in the parking lot of Adobe's headquarters in Mountain View, California, Mouhannad Albukhari and Jack Sayeh beckoned Geschke to their car. 

The two Syrian terrorists snatched Geschke at gunpoint, blindfolded him with duct tape, and drove him first to a local motel, then to a bungalow "safehouse" sixty miles away.

Over the following four days, Albukhari and Sayeh repeatedly phoned the executive's home demanding $650,000 (the amount Geschke thought his wife could raise).

The FBI told Geschke's family to pay the ransom. So on Friday night, Geschke's daughter put the money in a bag and drove 75 miles to the seaside town of Marina, where she dropped the bag on a dead-end road. Mouhannad Albukhari was hiding in wait just a few feet away, unaware the FBI had set up a dragnet. Nine hours later, after a roundabout helicopter chase, FBI agents nabbed him.

"After a gentlemanly discussion," an agent told the Associated Press, "he agreed to do the right thing and to take us to where Mr. Geschke was being held by Mr. Sayeh."

Geschke was freed and the two kidnappers arrested and convicted for life.

Geschke said at the sentencing, “There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that these two individuals planned to murder me."

NOTE: A gripping, moment-by-moment account of Gescke's ordeal can be found in this four-part newspaper series from 2009:

Part 1: A dramatic kidnapping revisited
Part 2: Two days of terror, uncertainty
Part 3: Chuck’s dramatic rescue
Part 4: Aftermath of a kidnapping