The bizarre "work card" system perpetuated in Clark County (Las Vegas) Nevada is constitutionally dubious in the first place.
The system was originally justified under the rationale that -- in order to assure tourists that Las Vegas gaming is on the up and up -- it would help for the city's main industry to be able to brag that police have run a criminal background check on every Vegas casino dealer.
Yet the system has now metastasized till everyone from bus boys to bookkeepers -- even exotic dancers whose work never takes them near a casino cage -- have to apply for precisely the kind of "government work permit" familiar from many a more repressive foreign regime.
Nor is this "merely a formality." Not only does Metro now maintain an entire separate office where citizens line up to be fingerprinted, but the system also gives city and county authorities the handy option to "pull a work card," with none of the public outrage that might be expected if law enforcement personnel in other jurisdictions attempted not merely to summon a suspected malefactor to court, but also to arrange for him to be routinely fired from his job in the meantime.
Never afraid to come to the aid of a "politically incorrect" profession, the ACLU went to bat last fall for exotic dancers denied Clark County work cards -- or threatened with having their cards suspended -- after they've been charged with prostitution.
Not once the ladies have been (start ital)convicted(end ital) of this misdemeanor, mind you (with its $1,000 fine or six months in jail.) What the ACLU objects to is cases where women have been denied their right to work simply because they've been (start ital)charged(end ital) -- before their cases even come to trial.
Well. Such uppity behavior apparently raised the ire of Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell, who Thursday announced his department will no longer plea bargain routine charges of prostitution or soliciting, except in the case of first-time male offenders.
"The defendant will either plead guilty or be tried," Mr. Bell stormed in his press conference, specifically sneering that if the ACLU wants a trial before a topless dancer is denied a work card, it can have a trial.
"You better be careful what you ask for or you might get it," the chief prosecutor said, in tones more frequently heard in area schoolyards.
Now, as in cases where unhappy police officers stage "job actions" by rigorously enforcing every traffic law on the books -- bringing traffic to a grinding halt -- we shouldn't miss the opportunity to step back and take a look at the several absurdities which Mr. Bell thus unintentionally exposes.
If the perpetrators of such crimes are really a danger to society, why aren't they all being brought to trial already, instead of being "bargained down"?
If the answer is that the justice system would grind to a halt if Mr. Bell held a jury trial for every minor case involving prostitution, drug possession, and other victimless crimes, then the real answer is for the state Legislature to revisit such pointless statutes, repealing laws which are logistically impossible to even-handedly enforce (laws against common activities which become dangerous or unsavory only when they're prohibited, anyway), since the existing system obviously grants too much discretionary power to police and prosecutors to enforce the laws selectively -- an open invitation to favoritism and corruption.
It's also worth noting that by announcing this new policy, Mr. Bell has given the ladies in question precisely the power to snarl the county's courts: All they have to do is demand a jury trial, each and every time.
(Mr. Bell scoffed at concerns about court delays Thursday, asserting prostitution cases "take about five minutes." My, what thorough justice the courts seem to be dispensing down on South Third Street. Jury selection in 90 seconds? And just wait till the defense attorneys start calling expert witnesses, and informing jurors they have a right to acquit if they simply find the law ridiculous.)
But it's unlikely it will come to that. Unfortunately, Allen Lichtenstein, an ACLU attorney, called this one right when he commented that Mr. Bell was "acting in a fit of pique. What we asked for was a basic adherence to constitutional principles."
In fact, so hasty was Mr. Bell's original Dec. 9 policy memo on this question that it appears he's had to revise it is as goes along. The original memo specified only female (start ital)exotic dancers(end ital) charged with prostitution would fall under the new "no-plea-bargain" policy -- a blatant example of discrimination.
And even as currently revised the policy leaves plenty of new room for appeals and reversals, given the selective enforcement against females, while male participants in these "crimes" will still be allowed to walk free after attending some graphic slide show on the horrors of syphilis.
What prosecutor Bell has done here is to vent his personal ire at the ACLU -- regardless of who has to suffer the unnecessary consequences. How petty.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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