Dan never liked discussing medical matters in public so he isn’t about to start now, but passed away due to long illness with serious complications towards the end. That’s all he has authorized me to release.
Dan says it’s been a pleasure writing for you and also knowing various people including his family, long-time friends, and associates, all of which he appreciates.
He also says it’s been interesting hearing from some of the more, ahem, “interesting” commenters — he didn’t necessarily agree with them but they did spice up things to make life and the blog interesting.
What most people never realized was that this was not an easy case to follow. Not just because it was so large with so many people involved, but because it was also a sad story to write about — it left a lot of people hurt (defendants’ families, friends, victims/survivors, members of the community, other VRS providers that may fail due to rule changes).
It’s just a terrible situation all around, but unfortunately, that’s the reality of court. Court is rarely a pleasant place to be; if you’re part of a court case, it means everything has gone badly wrong.
So why did he write about it? Because in the beginning, there were a lot of rumors about the real facts; he wanted to clear that up and also to try to provide more timely information to the community instead of relying on very few newspaper articles. He also wanted to educate the community about how the federal justice system works.
It was a difficult choice for him to decide to go ahead and write about it; he had some sleepless nights and just a feeling of like this being a negative situation was dragging down the soul. But ultimately, he decided that if done properly, the positives can outweight the negatives.
So he went ahead and did it. Just because he said it was a pleasure for him to write for you doesn’t mean it was easy for him to do it but it was a labor of love and dedication to want to see it done after every single VRS case had all defendants either acquitted, appeals exhausted, or sentenced.
Dan wasn’t sure what he would write about post-VRS cases; he thinks he’d like something he could research with obtainable data and then whip up posts from it, preferrably on more positive topics.
He asked the blog be left up for at least a while because there’s a lot of information contained. Long-term, depends on if one of his trusted associates is willing to host the domain and blog somewhere.
The blog will likely have no new post or case updates. [email protected] email will no longer be read; only Dan read it himself and insists on senders’ privacy so that mailbox was destroyed. No backup copies of it exists; it is completely gone now.
It’s difficult to find someone willing to put in a lot of time, effort, research, reading, understanding of basic legal concepts in the federal justice system, willing to write and follow all VRS cases until fully done with, so it seems unlikely to have further updates.
He wishes well to all sides involved in the VRS cases, and to the wider Deaf community. Also greatly appreciates all the good people he had the honor and privilege of meeting throughout his life.
Robert Hansen
Longtime trusted friend of Dan’s and a former work colleague
Phoenix, Arizona
P.S. He has instructed me to not allow anyone smear his memory on his own blog despite his human imperfections because he does not have a fair opportunity to defend himself so I (Robert) will not approve any off-topic or negative comments to this post.
I will also not be approving any further comments to other existing posts, either, per his instructions. The blog is effectively closed at the moment except for comments to this post.
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