The Onion explains it all.
How Voting Works
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KANW
Joe Monahan will be on tonight at 5:00 for a preview of the election.And tomorrow starting at 6:30.Go to KANW's website and listen.Best coverage of the election by far by anybody. No need for CNN, FOX, or anybody else.
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New Law Requires Mandatory Prison Sentence for Certain Sex Crimes
If you or a loved one is charged with allegedly committing a sex crime, the importance of retaining an experienced Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer is huge. Why? Because California lawmakers passed a bill, AB 2888, requiring mandatory prison sentences for specific types of sexual assault crimes. Under current state law, a person convicted of rape using physical force must serve time in prison while other types of sexual assault carry more lenient sentences, such as probation. The new law requires mandatory prison sentence for individuals convicted of committing sexual assault on the unconscious or those incapable of giving consent due to intoxication. The new law was passed unanimously by the state legislature and signed by Governor Jerry Brown in September 2016, according to the Washington Post. The Brock Turner Effect The legislation was inspired by the decision of a Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge not to sentence Brock Turner, a Stanford University student,…
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BGer 4A_99/2016: Fallstricke bei Teilklagen in der ZPO
Ein Arbeitnehmer verklagte seinen Arbeitgeber für Boni in der Höhe von Fr. 30‘000.—. Er machte geltend, er habe fürs Jahr 2011 Boni in der Höhe von Fr. 180‘000.—, ebenso viel im Jahr 2012 und Fr. 120‘000.— im Jahr 2013 zugute. Anmerkung des Autors: Eine Teilklage von nur Fr. 30‘000.— kann aus prozessökonomischer Perspektive Sinn machen, da bei diesem Streitwert das vereinfachte Verfahren gem. Art. 243 ff. ZPO zur Anwendung kommt.Die erste Instanz und das Obergericht des Kantons ZH schützten die Klage des Arbeitnehmers. Das Bundesgericht sah es allerdings anders, dies aus prozessualen Anforderungen hinsichtlich Präzisierung bzw. Individualisierung des gemachten Anspruchs. Das Bundesgericht hielt fest, dass hier Forderungen aus unterschiedlichen Lebenssachverhalten (die Ansprüche umfassten drei verschiedene Perioden) eingeklagt sind, weshalb mehrere Streitgegenstände vorliegen, welche in…
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The Supermodel Exception To Immigration Enforcement
A client of ours is a non-supermodel accused of working without authorization and not disclosing it on H-1B visa applications. That is, the same issue Melania Trump is being accused of.Read this excerpt from a Notice of Intent to Deny and see how USCIS is treating my client. For the record, I believe they are wrong on the law and I'm fighting it. Back in September, Melania famously tweeted she was 100% in compliance with US immigration law. Her husband's attorney reviewed some of her history and - plausibly - suggested a perfectly legal sequence of events. What was most glaringly missing from the attorney Wildes' carefully worded letter is a certification that Melania Trump followed US immigration law "100%" - or even that she was generally compliant. Melania is the one that makes that leap, not the lawyer. All the letter does is briefly review her immigration history - which as I said, sounds plausible - and refutes some of the media…
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News Scan
UT Officer Killed in Hit and Run, Three Suspects in Custody: A Utah police officer died early Sunday after being struck by a fleeing vehicle that had been stolen by three suspects, who have been taken into custody. Matt Canham of the Salt Lake Tribune reports that Officer Cody Brotherson, 25, a three-year veteran of the West Valley City police department, was struck and killed by the vehicle as he was attempting to lay down a set of tire spikes during a police chase that began when officers observed three individuals steal the car. The chase lasted less than three minutes, ending when the stolen car was eventually run off the road and disabled. The suspects, all of whom are under the age of 18, fled the scene but were later arrested. It is not clear at this time whether the suspects intentionally hit Brotherson. Brotherson is the first West Valley City officer killed in the line of duty since the city was established in 1980, and the second…
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DWI Crime Labs and the Presidential Election “It’s not the crime that gets you…it’s the cover up”
On the Watergate scandal, Nixon was quoted as saying, “It’s not the crime that gets you…it’s the cover up.” Nixon knew that he may have avoided the whole Watergate scandal if instead of lying and covering his tracks, he had admitted his wrongdoing early on. Mismanagement is one thing; obstruction of justice is not forgivable. Now in the wake of the Wikileaks email dumps, we are finding that our government isn’t as bad as we thought it was, it’s much worse. How does this massive government corruption parallel drug and alcohol arrests in Texas, specifically driving while intoxicated or DWI arrests? A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about mistakes being made in the Houston and Dallas crime labs. Recently, new information has surfaced about the cover up by Texas crime lab scientists. Today, we know that one state forensic scientist that I discussed earlier will no longer perform services as an expert…
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Interesting array of distinctive sentencing articles in Louisiana Law Review’s Fall 2016 issue
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Split Fourth Circuit panel concludes Virginia’s geriatric release program insufficient to save juve LWOP sentences from violating Graham
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"Idaho mom loses custody of children after giving daughter marijuana butter to relieve seizures"
The title of this post is the headline of this new FoxNews article, which starts and ends this way (with links from the original): In early October, 3-year-old Madyson began suffering from seizures and hallucinations after coming off of a prescription anti-psychotic medication that was being used to treat a...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/QkyTH3uq_qg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
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"Extreme Prison Sentences: Legal and Normative Consequences"
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Poll Analysis Kerfuffle
The things people get angry about ... James Taranto has this amusing column in the WSJ about a spat between two polling number crunchers, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, a source I read frequently and have mentioned on this blog a number of times, and Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post.The dispute is that "Silver thinks Trump is an underdog with a decent chance of winning, while Grim maintains there is almost no chance that Trump will win." Okay, they disagree. Is that something to get mad about?Over the weekend Grim fired at Silver with a Puffington Host post titled "Nate Silver Is Unskewing Polls--All of Them--in Trump's Direction." Those are fighting words among poll nerds, and Silver responded on Twitter with a universal, if unquotable here, fighting word: "This article is so [unquotable seven-letter adverbial participle] idiotic and irresponsible."Read the full column for more on this dispute.Further down, Taranto…
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Pizza Hut Employee In Seminole County Accused Of Having Sex With Teen
A Seminole County man is accused of having sex with a teen he met online, according to the Winter Springs Police Department. The 23-year-old Casselberry man was arrested last week after being interviewed by police. According to police, the man, who works at a Pizza Hut, contacted a 13-year-old boy through social media. He is accused of driving the teen to a hidden driveway near Tradewinds Road and Moss Road in Winter Springs where he allegedly engaged in multiple sex acts with the teen. The 13-year-old boy told police he didn’t know the man’s name, only that he worked at a Pizza Hut. Investigators apparently used the information provided by the teen to locate the Pizza Hut where the man worked and showed his picture to the store manager who identified him, according to the police report. The man now faces multiple charges including sexual battery of a victim aged 12 to 18, using a computer/electronic device to solicit a minor and production of child pornography. A…
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California Supreme Court Endorses Key Proposition 66 Reform
One of the key reforms in Proposition 66 is a requirement that one of a death row inmate's challenges to his conviction and sentence be assigned to the original trial judge. The challenge in question is called "habeas corpus" and is separate from the appeal on the trial record, which will continue to go to the state supreme court.Today, the California Supreme Court, quoting an earlier Court of Appeal ruling, said, "When the judge assigned to examine and rule on the habeas corpus petition is the same judge who presided at the petitioner's criminal trial, 'there is no judge better suited for making a determination of the issues raised in [the] petitioner‟s petition' ...." This statement appears in today's unanimous ruling in Maas v. Superior Court, S225109, a case concerning when a habeas corpus petitioner may challenge the assigned judge.This confirms what we have been saying all along. To decide a challenge to…
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Perlin on Mental Health Courts
Michael L. Perlin (New York Law School) has posted 'Who Will Judge the Many When the Game is Through?': Considering the Profound Differences between Mental Health Courts and 'Traditional' Involuntary Civil Commitment Courts on SSRN. Here is the abstract: There...
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Crain’s Chicago Business: Lawsuit blasts new Airbnb regulations
Crain’s Chicago Business: Lawsuit blasts new Airbnb regulations by Alby Gallun: A group opposed to the city’s new restrictions on Airbnb and other home-sharing services has sued to block the regulations, arguing that they’re unconstitutional. Calling the new ordinance “literally … Continue reading →
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Is It Mandatory To Have Nine U.S.Supreme Court Justices ?
Just the other day someone asked me if the U.S. Constitution requires nine Supreme Court Justices. I did not know the answer so I looked it up. The short answer is the U.S. Constitution does not state the precise number of justices. The constitution gave Congress the power to decide the number of justice. Since The Judiciary Act of 1869, the number has been set at nine with no change. Is the Senate violating the Judiciary Act of 1869 by not acting on the vacancy created by Justice Scalia's passing ? Is there a time limit or can the senate refuse to act on the vacancy ? I guess I will read the act in the next few days.
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ABA Publishes Bucket of Falsehoods Just Before Election
"October surprise" has come to mean a story damaging to a candidate that is sprung in late October, too late to be effectively refuted with the truth. "A lie gets half way around the world before the truth can tie its shoelaces," as the saying goes.This year, with election day on the unusually late date of November 8, we have November surprises. One of the worst is this op-ed published in the Sacramento Bee under the bylaw of Linda Klein, this year's President of the American Bar Association. The article urges people to vote no on Proposition 66.What does a civil attorney from Georgia know about the California death penalty and the proposal to reform it, you might ask? Nothing, it would seem. This article is obviously ghost-written by anti-66 partisans. It has one of the highest densities of false and misleading statements that I have ever seen in a newspaper opinion piece.The article begins by touting how wonderful…
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National Study Suggests Blood Tests Cannot Accurately Measure Marijuana Impairment
A recent study suggests that blood tests are not an accurate method to measure whether an individual is driving while impaired by cannabis. The current legal blood levels can lead to impaired drivers going without punishment, while others are wrongfully convicted. The study was released last month by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The AAA found that drivers can have a low amount of THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) in their blood and be impaired, while others can have higher levels and be fit to drive. Marijuana is not metabolized in the same way as alcohol. A person with a BAC of .08 or more is considered too intoxicated to drive. However, it is not possible to say the same thing about a person with five nanograms per milliliter of blood of THC, absent additional evidence. (Five ng/ml is the level used to find impairment by Washington, Colorado, and Montana.) The difference between the body’s metabolism of alcohol versus marijuana is significant because…
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West Virginia Supreme Court Says Drunk Driving is Illegal on Private Property
In West Virginia, people often drive their ATVs on their own property after drinking a few beers. The West Virginia Supreme Court, however, struck down this common cultural practice in a decision last month. In a 4-1 opinion, the state high court ruled that the DMV can lawfully revoke driving privileges for drivers caught driving under the influence on private, as well as public, roads. The case came up to the state high court from the Monroe County Circuit Court. In February 2012, Monroe County resident Joshua Beckett crashed his ATV on a family-owned farm. Beckett was taken in an ambulance to Greenbriar Valley Medical Center for treatment. A hospital blood test indicated that his blood-alcohol content was over twice the state’s legal limit. Beckett was charged with DUI. A magistrate dismissed the charge, but his license was revoked for 45 days. Beckett appealed. The circuit court ruled for him, reasoning that his actions did not occur on public land. The DMV appealed…
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