Murder
The parole hearing for Darrel Anthony Brodely was on Friday, November 15, 2024, at 1900 CET (Montpellier), 1000 PST (San Jose). The hearing was via video conference. In attendance: a judge and prosecutor from the Santa Clara county court, and Brodely and his court appointed attorney. During a parole hearing, the family of the victim may submit statements about the impact of the crime on their lives. As such, also in attendance was an advocate for the victim’s family: my wife and her brother, Annie and Louis. They were there because Brodely had been convicted for the 1992 murder (second degree) of their father, Jean Louis Andre.
On Thursday morning, May 21, 1992, Jean Louis attempted to stop Brodely, who had just robbed a supermarket in the Berryessa district of San Jose. Brodely’s car stuck Jean Louis, then dragged him across a parking lot. He died two days later at the San Jose Medical Center. Several hours after Jean Louis’s death, police arrested Brodely at a motel on El Camino Real in Redwood City.
This was not the first parental tragedy for Annie and Louis. When she was five years old, Annie’s mother died in a motorcycle accident in Thailand. A few years later, Jean Louis remarried, a woman from Taiwan, and soon after Louis was born. In 1987, Shew Jen Chang Andre disappeared, and was never heard from again.
At the time of their father’s death, Annie was twenty-one and Louis was fifteen.
Mayhem
Some years back I asked my mother (born in 1924) where she was on certain, significant days during her lifetime: on December 7, 1941, she was in her dorm rooms at Abilene Christian College; when FDR died (April 12, 1945), she was working at Waco News Tribune and Times Herald.
The 2016 election of someone as repulsive as Trump got me thinking about significant events in my life. A quick recall of a few events since 1961: Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Nixon resigned, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the Saudi terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. After Trump’s election I started making notes for an essay, tentatively titled Welcome to History, but I wasn’t able to really fashion anything out of it, and I put those notes aside. After the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the recycling of the Confederacy’s Lost Cause into the Stolen Election myth, I made a few more notes, but, again, nothing came of it. With Biden taking over, things seemed to have settled down.
Parole hearing
The weeks before the hearing had been stressful for Annie: recalling the death of her father, the years of raising her brother, her own future plans suddenly and drastically changed, and now having to speak at the hearing. We talked a bit about her statement and how to proceed during the hearing; I sat in with her during the video conference.
The hearing was the judge asking Brodely a series of questions. We learned Brodely’s upbringing had been stable, if poor. At some point Brodely got into drugs, then began to steal to support his habit. It wasn’t clear how much of a criminal record he had before this last arrest. In prison his record was mixed. Brodely had been caught making alcohol, and had on several occasions exposed himself to female employees at the prison. He had taken classes to help reintegrate into society after prison.
Brodely’s replies were slow and careful, as if he were remembering what to say, to follow a script. Indeed, he said as much during the hearing: “I was told to make sure I am respectful towards the judge” and “I want to make sure I am saying what is expected of me.” For most of the hearing, the defense attorney’s expression had been neutral, almost bored. When Brodely implied that all his answers were rehearsed and scripted, the defense attorney, asked for a five minute break to talk to his client.
The next phase of the parole hearing were statements from the victim’s family. Annie’s brother spoke briefly about the loss of his father; Annie did not want to read her statement, and instead asked the victim’s advocate to do so. The judge then asked for statements from the district attorney, the victim’s advocate, and for final statements from Brodely. The judge then called for a ten minute break.
November 5, 2024
It turns out Trump wasn’t an accident; instead, Biden was an Indian summer of decency and good government. Now, none of these things mattered: an attempted insurrection, porn-star payoffs, the many Republicans against him, retaining top secret documents, a petulant and feral character, even his mimicking giving a microphone a blow-job. On election day 2024, a narrow majority of Americans decided they wanted Donald Trump to be their president.
In 2016 Trump didn’t grasp what he had, but now he does. Trump has added another business to his portfolio, and like all previous ones, he will exploit it, extract from it, then ruin it. Moreover, this asset has something no casino or golf course has: law enforcement and a military. Shielded by subservient Republicans and his toadies on the Supreme Court, Trump can express to the full extent his sadism: to harass, persecute, imprison, and perhaps, he hopes, even kill those he chooses. Like Putin, Trump can feed his greed, using his position for his own personal enrichment.
Things were different now.
Decision
The judge rejected the request for parole. He concluded Brodely’s behavior in prison indicated he was not ready to be out in society. Moreover, it was clear from his statements that Brodely did not understand the consequences of his actions; he knew nothing about the victim or victim’s family. He did not make any statement to Louis or Annie.
Inmates and asylums
These were some of George W. Bush’s cabinet: Robert Gates, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Condalezza Rice, Michael Leavitt. They were navy flyers, governors, executives at large corporations, Stanford professors, musicians, dedicated public servants. I have a low regard for that administration, but the choices of all are understandable, and if nothing else, each was at least technically qualified for their jobs. None of them had forced sex with women or minors, none repeated Kremlin talking points, none of them were convicted felons, none of them spouted conspiracy theories, no one claimed to have had a brain worm.
The only requirements for this administration are unconditional fealty to Trump; no need, and indeed it’s suspect, for relevant experience, a sense of service, and virtue. Not even Stephen King could have come up with the clown car wrecking ball that will be team Trump. His government of billionaires is setting out to destroy a system in which they made an obscene amount of money, but for some reason they think is a system that is bad for the rest of us. This is known as pulling up the ladder, so no one else can join them. As of this writing, an alcoholic, wife abusing Christian nationalist is the Secretary of Defense; an apartheidist Rasputin and his team of virgin-nerdtwerps are helping themselves to sensitive government data, and the top priority for all department heads is revenge on all who hurt dear leader’s feelings, then afterwards to refashion all sectors of the government to some odd vision of a libertarian Christian theocracy.
Welcome to history
Jean Louis Andre was born into a poor farming family in Quebec. He moved to the United States, served in the military, then worked as an electrical engineer. He bought property in and around San Jose, including a small farm in Gilroy. Weekends Annie had to stay in a trailer on the property and work on the farm; to this day she loathes the taste of kiwis. Although he took advantage of the opportunities available in the United States, there were aspects of its culture he did not care for: instead of a high school in San Jose, he sent Annie to lycée in Montreal, and planned to retire to southeast Asia. That didn’t happen: Jean Louis, trying to so something good, was killed by Brodely.
The United States is wonderful and flawed, like all other countries. Its better moments include the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and Salk’s patent free polio vaccine, as well as so many individuals who contributed to the world: Grace Hopper and Louis Armstrong, Frank Lloyd Wright and Martin Luther King, Jr. Trump threatens all of this.
November opened up to me new worlds with dark horizons: the life of a criminal and a world of downwardly spiraling events. Previously, I had never had anything to do with a murder, a parole hearing, the entire legal system. Previously, I had lived in a world that I assumed was making progress (vague, I know), but I was wrong.
What to do
Speaking during the Day of Affirmation at the University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa, on June 6, 1966, Robert F. Kennedy said:
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.