There's much more to the yesterday's story of the "Deep Web" (aka "Dark Web") takedown of Silk Road 2 and arrest of San Francisco programmer Blake Benthall. (The Complaint in Benthall's case is here.) WIRED reports today Operation... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
Global Deep Web Take-Down
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Garrett on Rehabilitating Corporations
Brandon L. Garrett (University of Virginia School of Law) has posted Rehabilitating Corporations (Florida Law Review Forum, Vol. 66, 2014) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: A central goal of federal prosecutors is to rehabilitate corporations, and not just to...
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Obamacare May be Revisted by the United States Supreme Court
On Friday November 7, 2014, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would “consider” a new major legal challenge to the Affordable Health Care Act. This happened three days after voters in the United States voted in the “mid-term” election on November 4, 2014. Mid-Term because it is in the middle of the term of the President of the United States. The balloting was for members of the United States Congress: the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The election results were regarded as a resounding victory for the Republican Party. The Republicans gained voting control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The forced coincidence is not likely an indication of the Justice’s willingness to rule on the Affordable Health Care Act, but to political pundits it resounds as such. For those who want to believe that the Justices are over anxious to gut the Affordable Health Care Act, there…
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The Grievance Committee now moves to confirm the report of the Special Referee
Records reflect that in this first case, in a felony charge, the accused appeared to testify before the Grand Jury without an attorney. Despite the fact that he stated that he could not afford an attorney, he was not afforded the opportunity to apply for legal aid or court-appointed counsel. In the Grand Jury room, he stated that he had not spoken to an attorney about testifying before the Grand Jury, and that he did not know that he had a right to have an attorney in the Grand Jury room after he had signed and sworn to the waiver of immunity. He was then sworn, again signed the waiver, and testified about the incidents in question. He was indicted, charging him with a scheme to defraud in the first degree, grand larceny in the second degree, grand larceny in the third degree (8 counts), and petit larceny (9 counts). He now moves, for an order pursuant to CPL 210.20 dismissing the indictment on the ground that he had immunity under CPL 190.40 with respect to the offenses…
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News Scan
Convicted Killer Accused of Raping Teen: A New Mexico man who spent several years behind bars after being found guilty of murder is facing jail time yet again after being accused of raping and impregnating a 13-year-old girl. Nancy Laflin of KOAT News reports that 64-year-old Eusebio Jasper has been identified as the biological father of the girl's child by DNA, a claim his defense attorney denies. Jasper spent seven years behind bars from 1989-1997 after being found guilty of second-degree murder. Accused Killer may Face Death Penalty: Prosecutors have announced that they may seek the death penalty against a woman accused of murdering a Kansas couple last year. The Associated Press reports that 36-year-old Kisha Schaberg, along with three accomplices, allegedly killed the couple as they sat in their car outside of their home in November 2013. One of Schaberg's co-defendants has testified that the couple was killed in an attempt to gain…
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Commonly Prosecuted White Collar Crimes in Illinois
White collar crimes1 are rarely well-publicized by the local or national news. Only in cases where there are millions of dollars at stake or high-profile victims or perpetrators do white-collar crimes usually enter into the public consciousness. While these cases do occur, the majority of white collar crime occurs at a much smaller level and involves much smaller sums of money. While we may rarely hear about it, white collar crime is aggressively investigated and prosecuted by Illinois authorities and the penalties can extremely serious, potentially including fines, restitution, probation, and even jail time. As a result, anyone accused of a white collar crime in Illinois should be certain to discuss their case with a Chicago white collar crimes attorney as soon as possible. What is White Collar Crime? White collar crime is a broad category of crime that involves nonviolent financially motivated misconduct, often perpetrated by professionals. Some common examples of white…
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Family Court Judge Scolded for Discourteous Remarks
I have some sympathy for Judge Daniel Healy of Solano County, California. As a family court judge he has likely seen and heard it all…and I can readily accept that his intemperate remarks to certain litigants was borne out of intense frustration. Among the worst of his “undignified and discourteous” remarks were the following: In August 2013 Judge Healy was presiding over a family law case where a husband alleged his spouse was driving drunk with the couple’s child in her car. Judge Healy commented that while the two parents may not chronically abuse drugs and alcohol, both of them struck him as “rotten”. He called the mother a “liar” and said “Why don’t you prove to me that you recognize what a train wreck you are?” He also told her lawyer that she should be “grovelling like there is no tomorrow”. In another case Judge Healy rebuked the father for his threatening and vulgar messages to his wife,…
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"In rare case, NYC cops charged with assault over teen's arrest"
This Reuters story, at the Yahoo site, includes a link to the referenced video: Two New York police officers have been charged with assaulting a teenaged boy during his arrest in Brooklyn, prosecutors said on Wednesday, an unusual case in...
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White House to Seek $5.6 Billion for Miltary Operations in Iraq
President Obama has authorized 1,500 additional military personnel to go to Iraq and advise and train the Iraqi forces and Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS. He will ask Congress to approve for $5.6 billion in overseas contingency funds and $1.6... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Friday Open Thread
Our last open thread is full. Here's a new one, all topics welcome. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Hypocrisy Unbound: Welcome to Harvard
The CBS radio station in Boston has the following report about Harvard University, well-known source of bellowing about invasions of privacy and spying out of control:A research project at Harvard University is causing a lot of controversy this morning. The school has acknowledged that it secretly photographed more than 2,000 students in 10 lecture halls as part of a study on classroom attendance. During a meeting Tuesday night, Peter K. Bol, Harvard's vice provost for advances in learning, said that researchers in the Initiative for Learning and Teaching, which Bol oversees, installed the cameras last spring as a way to track attendance. The cameras would snap pictures of students and a computer would scan the images. The names of students whose images were taken have not been released but the revelation has a lot of people talking.Yes, well, I'll just bet it "has a lot of people talking."This is a good one to remember next time we hear some Ivy League…
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Chicago Man Charged with Murder While Out on Bond for Sexual Assault
A Chicago man out on bond for a sexual assault charge was arrested recently for an unrelated murder. The defendant, who is accused of raping three girls last year along with eight other men, allegedly shot two men on Chicago’s west side; one of the men died at the scene, while the other suffered a gunshot wound to the arm. Chicago Defense of Unrelated Crimes This case is a criminal defense attorney’s nightmare – a client, out on bond, gets arrested for committing a second crime. And in this case, the second charge is worse than the first. But it does raise a variety of possible defense tactics, whether it is the same attorney representing the defendant on both charges, or if the defendant has one attorney for the sexual assault charge and one for the murder charge. Of course, the typical defense against both crimes would be present here. Defense against the sexual assault charge would include: Mistaken identity; Lack of DNA evidence tying the defendant to the…
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DiSanto on Identity Crimes and the First Amendment
Philip F. DiSanto has posted Blurred Lines of Identity Crimes: Intersection of the First Amendment and Federal Identity Fraud (Columbia Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Several recent high-profile criminal cases have highlighted the dynamic nature of...
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Why Innocent People Plead Guilty
Roughly 10% of those defendants who were later exonerated by DNA evidence through the efforts of the Innocence Project pled guilty to a crime they did not commit. What would lead a person to do that? Hon. Jed S. Rakoff, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York examines that question in the above-entitled thought-provoking article (found here) in the November 20, 2014 issue of the New York Review of Books. Judge Rakoff, both a prosecutor and a defense attorney before ascending to the bench, examines the institutional pressures that lead innocent people to plead guilty, including the threat of mandatory minimum sentences and the prosecutorial limitation of judicial sentencing discretion via charging (or not charging) offenses that carry such sentences, the imbalance of resources and available information between the prosecution and defense and, in federal court, the prohibition on judges' involvement in the plea negotiation…
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"Charge dropped against AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd"
From CNN: A New Zealand police charge of "attempting to procure murder" against AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd has been dropped, his lawyer said. Rudd, the 60-year-old drummer for the legendary hard rock band, had been accused of trying to have...
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More on Loretta Lynch
Rebecca Davis O'Brien,Devlin Barrett and Andrew Grossman have this profile in the WSJ. I was most interested in the comments of the Federal Defender.Peter Kirchheimer, attorney-in-charge of the Federal Defenders' Eastern District Office, said Ms. Lynch's office was less confrontational than other districts, and more willing to have discussions with defense attorneys."I'm not saying she goes our way, but you can have a meeting with her and have your two cents about policy," Mr. Kirchheimer said. "In a field where the prosecutorial positions can be extraordinarily adversarial, she tries to be somebody you can get along with."Still, Mr. Kirchheimer took issue with her office's harsh policies in drug-courier cases."At a time when the Justice Department has taken the position that you've got to do something about over-incarceration, that's a step in the opposite direction. I'm pretty unhappy," Mr.…
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Jones on Victims in Plea Bargaining
Elizabeth N. Jones (Western State College of Law) has posted The Ascending Role of Crime Victims in Plea-Bargaining and Beyond (West Virginia Law Review, Vol. 117, No. 100, 2014) This Article looks to the nationwide trend of promoting a victims’...
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Translating the Public Defender on Loretta Lynch
Kent noted some of the comments of the chief Federal Defender for the EDNY, where Loretta Lynch holds forth as United States Attorney.I was an AUSA for a few years back in the day, and I want to provide a translation of the Federal Defender's remarks.Defender: "I'm not saying she goes our way, but you can have a meeting with her and have your two cents about policy." Translation: "She goes our way, but I'm not about to say so because I'm licking my chops at the prospect of her running the show at Main Justice."Defender: "In a field where the prosecutorial positions can be extraordinarily adversarial, she tries to be somebody you can get along with."Translation: "Her Office gives away the store."Defender: "At a time when the Justice Department has taken the position that you've got to do something about over-incarceration, [prosecuting drug mule cases is] a step in the opposite…
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The Devastating Ramifications of Having a Restraining Order Granted against You: Why You Need a Qualified Restraining Order Lawyer
The consequences of having a California restraining order granted against you can be severe. If a restraining order is filed against you, it is of the utmost importance to retain the services of a qualified restraining order law firm to come to your defense. If you do not hire a law firm to defend you it is much more likely that the restraining order will be granted against you. If the restraining order is granted against you all of the following consequences may occur:The restraining order will likely be filed with the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System which means if a law enforcement officer stops you, the restraining order will show up on your record for up to 5 years.If there is a restraining order violation you could face up to $1,000 in fines and up to one year in jail.The restraining order can be enforced against you anywhere in the State of California by any law enforcement agency that has been notified of your restraining order.The court may order…
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Watching Amy Phillips
She is assertive without being aggressive. She knows when to push and when to hang back. She is pleasant and well-spoken. She does her homework. She is committed to her clients while keeping a sense of humor. As an avid student of the law, she is always ready to talk things through with you. She is smart in a way I will never be. And I am watching her eviscerate the government’s lawyer at a hearing at which she has raised multiple Brady and other issues. “Well, if you put it that way,” the prosecutor says grudgingly at one point in response to one of her arguments, and I have to hide a smile. This is a complete concession, the government throwing up its hands in surrender, because this is precisely the way Phillips has put it. You work hard. You prepare. You learn the law. You work on your trial skills. But no matter what kind of lawyer you want to be, no matter how good a lawyer you think you may already be, sometimes you just have to sit back in the gallery…
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