An enjoyable read and almost fair to the real John Wood

Judge John Wood, whom my father and uncle, both now deceased trial
lawyers, both had cases in front of, was one of the worst judges who
ever walked the earth. He was a ruthless hack who enjoyed dealing in
other people's misery. Wood's vicious sentencing cost the government
tens of millions of dollars in prison expenses and destroyed the lives
of many people who were not hardened criminals but people who made a
mistake and were punished out of proportion to their crime.

My father and uncle had far too much respect for the law to have ever
said it, but I will. Judge Wood's killing was bound to happen and it
was no tragedy, no disgrace to the country. While I can't say that
Charles Harrelson (or for the sake of argument whoever else may have
shot Wood) was any kind of hero, and while I cannot advocate killing
anyone as Wood was killed, sometimes bullies and tyrants are bound to
be gunned down. Wood was both, and a lot of basically decent and
law-abiding people acknowledged that in this case a bad thing had
happened to a bad person. Indeed, Wood's lawful but vicious behavior
was as damaging to society as those of any of his drug defendants

A similar case is in the news as an aging film actor of modest talents
and careeer is accused of killing a woman who had had a long career of
fraud and bunco schemes which victimized mostly elderly, lonely, and
inoffensive, if pathetic, victims. How do we as a society react to such
a situation? In both these cases, we have a clearly criminal homicide,
and no one save hard-boiled anarchists would say that the killers
involved 'did right': but only a fool or a hapless prosecutor forced to
try the case would say that it was a truly heinous or uncalled-for act.

I njoyed many other aspects of the book as well, including discussions
of Marty Houltin and his marijuana flying activities. I knew Houltin
when I was a young student pilot and saw what he could do with a light
airplane, particularly the awkward and slothful Piper Cherokee, that
were almost beyond belief. Everyone, smuggler, lawman or pilot, who
knew Houltin regarded him as possibly the finest lightplane pilot on
earth, and he was generally very well liked by those who flew even
though it was widely suspected he was at least complicit in stealing
airplanes-the story was that he only stole planes that had full
insurance and on more than one occasion stole and parted out or ditched
insured airplanes whose owners had asked him to in order to get out
from under a market albatross or hangar queen.
Overall, it's an interesting read.