Tim Martin imagining a different imprisonment.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson spent an enormous amount of time at Tim Martin’s sentencing recounting Tim’s medical history in response to a doctor’s evaluation of Tim’s cognitive capabilities. It was an effort to determine if Tim was unhinged at the time he acted with Joanna Smith at the National Gallery of Art in DC.
It’s a common trope. We’ve seen it at hearings, trials, and in popular culture.
But Tim acted rationally and responsibly. So did Joanna Smith, Donald Zepeda, and Kroegeor Green. It’s our leaders that are irrational and unhinged, including Judge Amy Berman Jackson. At Tim’s trial, Jackson prevented Tim from presenting any of the voluminous science that establishes that our survival on Earth is on thin ice (like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this). Or evidence of our leaders near total failure to address the crisis at all (like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this).
Bloviation
Judge Jackson blathered for 35 minutes in her sentencing statement. She ended by giving Tim Martin 18 months in prison for making a mess. In 2023, he and Joanna Smith used washable finger paint on the pedestal and plexiglass case housing a Degas sculpture called Little Dancer of Fourteen Years at the National Gallery of Art. The sculpture wasn’t damaged, no one was injured.
The government’s sentencing memorandum started with a valiant attempt at otherization: “Tim Martin is not from our community.” It then proceeded to recommend the maximum sentence of 5 years, roughly a day in prison for each dollar’s worth of damage: a ridiculous amount of time that doesn’t fit the crime.
By “community”, the government presumably means Washington, D.C., which is where the Degas sculpture around which Tim and Joanna Smith made a mess is located.
We can say with 100% certainty that it’s totally appropriate for a North Carolinian like Tim Martin to protest in DC. That’s true even if “reckless maniac” Jeannine Pirro, the political hack DA that Trump appointed, hasn’t figured out that Washington DC is the nation’s capital. That the National Gallery of Art is the nation’s museum. And that Tim and Joanna Smith’s aim was to influence national policy as regards the fossil fuel disaster that our leaders have ignored, abetted and enabled for decades.
Recklessness
We can also say with 100% certainty that the person who signed the government’s sentencing memorandum most assuredly isn’t from Washington. That would be “reckless maniac” Jeannine Pirro, the political hack DA that Trump appointed. She lives in Westchester County, NY in a $5 million home that she and her ex-husband bought before he was convicted of fraud reportedly tied to organized crime.
Trump pardoned him in 2021. Nice, huh?
The real reason Tim was punished became clear as Judge Jackson read out her sentence: Tim highlights the hypocrisy, greed, and incompetence of our ruling classes, including Judge Jackson, who are aiding and abetting the destruction of Earth in the name of law and order, and of greed.
Judge Jackson spent a huge chunk of time going on about Tim’s collaboration with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). Tim worked as a paid consultant with the BMA while he awaited trial. They worked on an exhibit the BMA is putting together that will highlight Earth’s fossil fuel crisis. Tim got pre-approval from his North Carolina parole officer to participate. So it was all good. Then Judge Jackson saw a photo of Tim with Kevin Tervala, Chief Curator of the BMA, both of them smilingly posing in front of the BMA’s Little Dancer. And it wasn’t good anymore.
That photo, and Tim’s engagement with BMA, gave the lie to Judge Jackson’s crazy sky is falling narrative and to NGA director Kaywin Feldman, when Feldman said she was speaking for the “global art community” by calling for retribution and revenge against him.
Feldman’s attitude might be inspired by her boss, David Rubenstein. He’s the chairman of the NGA Board and a very rich man. Rubenstein styles himself a “benefactor” even as he squirrels away massive amounts of dirty money made off companies peddling fossil fuel poison.
Feldman, who gets paid $1 million plus per year, showed up at Tim’s sentencing dressed like a brand – an ad agency’s representation of an artist. Her flowingly bohemian outfit was no doubt very expensive. And no doubt inspired by the dress of a real artist years ago, who probably struggled to pay rent, just like the folks who millionaire Feldman bemoaned had to get “on their hands and knees” to clean up washable finger paint left on the pedestal and plexiglass case housing the NGA’s Little Dancer.
During the clean-up, millionaire Feldman in her fancy artist garb that cost way more than the folks on their hands and knees would even think about paying, probably stood watching as they did actual work, on their hands and knees.
They’re on hands and knees in more than one sense. Millionaire Feldman luxuriates with her millions. Her billionaire patron continues to poison the Earth. But her minions (the folks on their hands and knees) live precariously – they make do, from paycheck to paycheck, heroically keeping their lives afloat.
Honestly, the disparity between the Feldmans / Jacksons / Rubensteins of the world and the rest of us gets to the heart of the problem we face. They bloviate about the sanctity of a wax representation of a child and spend an enormous amount of money to keep it safe, all the while leading lifestyles that put our children in jeopardy and jeopardize every creature on Earth, blissfully ignorant about the severity of the fossil fuel crisis that’s driven by their wealth.
An irony (there are so many) is this: they’re not even keeping the Little Dancer safe: there’s no art on a dead planet!
At Tim’s trial, the jury was expressly forbidden to consider whether the potential sentence of 10 years + a $500,000 fine was compatible with a crime that, after backing out some of the government’s magical numbers, cost less than $2,000 to clean up, caused no permanent damage, and injured no one. Too, the jurors were not informed that all jurors have the right to decide a defendant is not guilty for any reason whatsoever, including prosecutorial overreach.
Tim Martin didn’t have a chance.
Tim isn’t complaining about his sentence, but we are. Tim’s sentence is ridiculous. It’s absurd. Tim’s sentence is a manifestation of injustice – a reason why the US has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates of any nation on Earth.
Thousands of folks, many brandishing nooses and wrist restraints on January 6, threatening to kill the Vice President and others, walked free after having been pardoned by the same corrupt leader that installed “reckless maniac” Jeannine Pirro, DC’s political hack DA.
If Tim were Black, he’d most likely have gotten a longer sentence. If he’d been tried in a jurisdiction that provides fewer resources to help poor folks get through their legal troubles, and didn’t have OPAH to help, he’d have fared worse.
Our justice system is a farce. An Absurd Farce, that’s what it is.