RARA-AVIS: Baumes Rush

K. Harper (kharper@bgnet.bgsu.edu)
Mon, 1 Dec 1997 15:44:16 -0500 Hi, all:

As Jim Stephenson noted a few days ago, I haven't contributed to RARA-AVIS
in some time due to many, many projects and very little time. There have
been at least twenty messages recently to which I've wanted to reply (and
may yet, if time permits). I couldn't, however, let the query about the
term "Baumes Rush" go by.

At the time TMF was written, New York State and a few others had a law
enforcement tool called the Baumes Law, which allowed for automatic life
imprisonment of any criminal convicted over three times, no matter how
petty the offenses or how old the person was. When Spade inquires, "Baumes
rush?" of Wilmer, he is guessing that the boy left New York for California
(a non-BL state) because he is a three-time loser and is afraid of being
caught again. Wilmer's silence answers the question. Those of you who
have read or seen Sidney Kingsley's play/movie _Detective Story_ know how
career criminals responded to police who tried to arrest them on a fourth
offense. This nothing-to-lose attitude is one reason the Baumes Law was
eventually repealed.

Best,

Kathy

Katherine Harper
Department of English
Bowling Green State University
kharper@bgnet.bgsu.edu
Visit the W.R. Burnett Page at http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~kharper/

#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.