Our friends in the Excuse Factory, sometimes known as the "criminal defense bar," often tell us that poverty is the "root cause" of crime.  They seldom say directly  --  since it would be too easy to disprove  --  that criminals act as they do to to fend off starvation.  But time after time, the implication, sometimes sharp and sometimes prudently fuzzy, is that they steal because they lack life's basic material goods.  To hear them tell it, half the people in the dock are Jean Valjean.

I am not a criminologist, and I make no pretense of knowing why thugs are thugs.  But in almost two decades in the U.S. Attorney's Office, not one time did I encounter a defendant who stole, mugged or swindled to keep body and soul together.

This fact was brought home again tonight when I read this story.  It would appear that over the weekend, a Baltimore police detective was killed so that his assailant could get, well, something other than his bag of groceries.  What the assailant wanted was his parking space.  The killer, evidently less than overcome with contrition (or even any genuine longing for the space) was arrested a few hours later, having a good 'ole time at a nightclub with his girlfriend.

I guess we won't see the "parking space syndrome" as the defense this time  --  although, with the defense bar, you never know.