According to Suffolk County prosecutors, Nikolas Papadopoulos was driving his Mazda Tribute at least 59 miles per hour on the Arborway in Jamaica Plain in September of 2013, when something went tragically wrong. His car hit a raised curb, began to roll, and then struck a pickup truck driven by Kevin Cellucci. As a result of the accident, several people sustained catastrophic injuries. The Boston Globe reported that Papadopoulos attempted to resolve his case yesterday, in which he is charged with negligent operation of a motor vehicle, by way of a plea. However, when the judge told the now 19-year-old U-Mass Lowell student that she would send him to jail for a year, Papadopoulos withdrew his plea and the case was scheduled for trial on March 3rd. This case illustrates the difficult legal question of what the appropriate punishment is for a defendant who negligently causes unspeakable injuries to innocent victims. In Massachusetts, most crimes require the…
Massachusetts Judge Says She Would Send U-Mass Lowell Student to Jail for Horrific Jamaica Plain Car Accident
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"For Ferguson Grand Jury, Details and Responsibilities Are Abundant"
From The New York Times: Routinely, grand juries are virtual rubber stamps for prosecutors, approving the proposed indictments after hearing from a few witnesses and getting the bare outlines of the incriminating evidence. But the Ferguson case, laden with incendiary...
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Piqua OVI Checkpoint (Nov. 15, 2014)
Piqua OVI checkpoint tonight from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m along County Rd. 25A. Please plan in advance and designate a sober driver. Stay ahead of the checkpoints! If you want to receive updated information on sobriety checkpoints, enhanced traffic enforcement, saturation patrols and other important developments that affect you, sign up for text alerts on the main page of this blog. Text alerts will be sent directly to your mobile device/smartphone in the location you choose in the Miami [Read the full post. . .]
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Toward a Pragmatic Normative Framework for Criminalization, Part 1
What conduct should be made criminal, and how should the severity of different crimes be graded? Consider a few scenarios: A college student grows marijuana in a small garden behind his house. He and his housemates consume the entirety of the crop. An author writes disturbing fictional stories of child molestation, which he posts on his public blog. A grown victim of childhood sexual assault comes across one of the stories and reads it, causing intense psychological trauma. A careless (but sober) driver drifts over the centerline of a two-lane highway, colliding with an oncoming vehicle and killing the other driver. A woman hires a hit man to kill her husband, who is having an affair. Shortly thereafter, she thinks better of it, and cancels the hit. No one is physically harmed. After being mugged, a woman purchases a handgun for self-protection. One night, as she is walking alone in a high-crime neighborhood, a panhandler approaches her and…
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The Confrontation Clause in Illinois DUI Cases
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right for the accused to confront his accuser. This language seems straight-forward enough, but the scope and limitations of this right is ever evolving. Two Supreme Court cases appeared to be moving in a direction more favorable to defense attorneys, but a recent Illinois case has muddied the waters and moved the courts away from guaranteeing the rights of the accused. A defendant who is on trial for his freedom should be guaranteed the right to confront a person who is helping the prosecution by providing evidence in favor of a guilty verdict. Many of the cases involved in this controversy include the admission of a blood-alcohol test when the person who performed the test is unavailable to testify. Admitting this evidence promotes fraudulent testing practices and manipulation by the testing laboratory, many of which are administered by law enforcement agencies. National Research Council of the National…
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Minteh on Narco-Terrorism
Binneh S. Minteh (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) has posted Narco-Terrorism - A Risk Assessment of Global Terrorist Linkages to the International Drug Trade on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Global security analysts have exhaustively examined the nexus...
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Carl Spector New York DWI Attorney Leaving Manhattan Criminal Court with his Client Bartolo Valastro, The Cake Boss
Carl Spector New York DWI Attorney Leaving Manhattan Criminal Court with his client Bartolo Valastro, Buddy, the Cake Boss.
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The Cake Boss Leaves Court With His Attorney Carl Spector After his Arrest for DWI in New York City No Bail Was Set
The Cake Boss Leaves Court With His Attorney Carl Spector After his Arrest for DWI in New York City
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Rape victim wants registry retroactive
11-16-2014 Iowa: In 1983, Kathleen Carr was a 23-year-old overnight clerk at a 7-Eleven store in Des Moines. About 3:30 a.m. on a frigid February night, an 18-year-old named Clifford Freeman III walked into the store on Hickman Road. He wore sunglasses and a shower cap, and was armed with a shotgun and a straight-edge razor. After robbing the place, Freeman forced Carr to drive her Volkswagen
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Selbstleseverfahren, Band 83
Noch nie hatte unser Selbstleseverfahren derartig viele Links zum Lesen spannender Artikel der vergangenen Woche. Genau das richtige für einen trüben Sonntagvormittag im November. Viel Freunde mit unserem juristischen Wochenrückblick! Foto: PlaceIt.net Haftstrafen für Manager: Die meisten kamen mit Bewährung davon UBS-Händler im Chatroom: „Die Compliance sitzt uns am Arsch“ Gerhard Schröder und Carsten Maschmeyer: Eine innige Beziehung Vorwurf gegen Berliner Bundespolizisten: Jagd auf Unschuldige Mehr Einbrüche, mehr Überfälle – aber Polizei und Justiz schauen nur zu? Queeres Kickboxen und Liebesbeziehungen im LKA-Auftrag? Jura ist einfach, nur die Studierenden sind zu dumm – So einfach ist es nicht, Herr Fischer Umfrage unter (Jura-)Studenten: Hoher Druck, harte Prüfungen, schlechtes Klima „Der Staat begibt sich auf gleiche Ebene mit Kriminellen“ BVerfG: Ermittlungen nach Tod von…
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Avvo Avarice
When I reviewed Avvo’s latest effort, Avvo Advisor, my perspective was whether this notion, clients reaching out to lawyers for a 15 minute consultation for $39, could provide a meaningful service to clients. Clients. That’s where my head went. But as Sam Glover at The Puddle relates, I may have completely, totally missed the point. But now I realize that’s not really the point of Avvo Advisor. Although some clients will certainly get the advice they need, it’s really a lead-generation service for lawyers. Granted, lead generation services for lawyers are a dime a dozen. I get please-write-about-our-company requests from lead-generation companies almost daily. They mostly follow a similar model: the company finds the potential clients, you pay a fee for each “lead,” and you do the legal work. The problem is that a lot of the leads are tire-kickers looking for free advice or just dead-ends (wrong jurisdiction, wrong practice area, etc.).…
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Prisons, Off The Hook
In posts at Hercules and the Umpire, Nebraska Senior Judge Richard Kopf has posed questions relating to the use of empirical proxies to ascertain the likelihood of recidivism. One questions why poverty, of highly correlated with recidivism, shouldn’t be considered. While some have seen his raising this question as a reflection of his disdain for the poor, and by extension, minorities because of their disproportionate representation among the poor, I see it as an effort on his part to find a better, more reliable, methodology to sentence than what is used now. Judge Kopf is big on empiricism. The current method, which might be best described as “gut sentencing,” may have its virtues in that it allows advocates to use whatever factors present themselves, and to make as persuasive an argument as possible that the sentencing factors of §3553(a) are best served by a particular sentence. That said, it remains, without a doubt, a hit…
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Physical Helplessness, Mental Incapacity and the Difference Between the Two
byJill Paperno, Esq.Author of Representing the Accused: A Practical Guide to Criminal DefenseSometimes our clients are charged with engaging in sexual contact with complainants who are old enough to consent, but claim that based on their mental or physical condition, they could not. The penal law provides for prosecution if a complainant is physically helpless ormentally incapacitated. The distinction between a complainant who is physically helpless and one who is mentally incapacitated. is very important because if a defendant is charged with sexual conduct with someone who is mentally incapacitated, and the incapacity was based on the complainant’s voluntary consumption of alcohol or drugs, the defendant may not be convicted. So it is important to understand the distinction between physical helplessness and mental helplessness, to raise the issues based on the distinction in grand jury motions, and to address the issues, when appropriate, at trial. …
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ISIS Executioner Beheads Peter Kassig and Many More
All day Saturday, ISIS supporters were teasing the release of a new video with English translations. They finally released it sometime after midnight. It's called "Although The Disbelievers Dislike It" and is 15 1/2 minutes long. I've... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Thought Rape By The @NYTimes, Courtesy of Yale Law’s Jed Rubenfeld
In one corner, Jed Rubenfeld, a professor of criminal law at Yale Law School, formerly of the United States Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. In another corner, the New York Times, the paper of record, the Grey Lady herself. And in between, every person who read this bizarre and absurdly irresponsible op-ed, entitled “Mishandling Rape.” Almost every “fact” alleged in the piece is either false, baseless or grossly misleading. At the same time, Rubenfeld’s “fixes” cover nearly every conceivable base from claiming rapists almost always get away with it while falsely accused rapists are wrongfully convicted. OUR strategy for dealing with rape on college campuses has failed abysmally. Female students are raped in appalling numbers, and their rapists almost invariably go free. Forced by the federal government, colleges have now gotten into the business of conducting rape trials, but they are not…
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NFL WEEK 11
Ten days ago the Bengals lost to the Browns and Cat QB Andy Dalton had a 2.0 QB rating. Could it be any worse? We don't like to go against teams coming off a bye, but the Bengals have peaked. The Saints are coming off a tough OT loss and we like good teams to bounce back. Saints at home -7, which is a big number, but it's the way to go. And here's a shocker....the Bears stink, the Bears are coming apart, they have no D, their QB is awful, and they will beat the Vikes at home today giving 2.5. Speaking of dysfunctional, look in the dictionary and see a picture of the 2014 Redskins. They are in disarray, a part of the team supports QB Colt McCoy and a part supports RGIII. But they are a better team than the visiting Bucs, who picked a coach- Lovie Smith, who will never make a team a real winner. He is a very good Def Co-ordinator, and just out of his league as a HC. Skins are -7 at home and in some places -7.5. It's a big…
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As we wait . . .
The result of the Ferguson, MO grand jury investigation into the shooting death of Michael Brown are scheduled to be announced any time now (authorities indicated that the results could be made public as early as yesterday). No one but the grand jury knows what that result will be. That would not be the case, were the situation reversed. If a black man in Ferguson had shot a police officer (who, unlike Michael Brown, would have been armed) then other black men - members of the shooter's gang - surrounded the area a prevented the officer's body from being removed from public view for hours, there would be no question of the outcome of any grand jury investigation. Those men, if they lived through the ordeal, would be charged and the shooter would not be at home with his family on paid administrative leave. Maybe there would be reasons not to charge the shooter in that case, but is there any chance, really, that those reasons could ever result in a vote not…
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Newport Beach Physician Indicted on Child Pornography Charges
A federal grand jury indicted Dr. Mark Rettenmaier, 62, of Newport Beach, on two counts of possession of child pornography. Rettenmaier, who specializes in gynecologic oncology is alleged to have possessed the child porn images on November 20, 2011 and February 14, 2012 on a computer and iPhone. According the indictment, the offenses occurred both in Orange and San Bernardino counties. The California Department of Consumer Affairs which is the governing body of the California Medical Board shows Dr. Rettenmaier still maintains an active license. If convicted, Dr. Rettenmaier faces lifetime registration as a sex offender which would automatically cause his medical license to be revoked.
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Anaheim Physician Charged with Sexually Assaulting Patient
Dr. Sri Wijegunaratne, has been charged with sexually assaulting a patient at a Riverside medical marijuana clinic. According to records, Dr. Wijegunaratne is prohibited from practicing medicine while he is out on bail in his criminal case. A female patient reported to authorities that she was sexually assaulted on May 19, 2014 while he was working at the clinic. The Riverside County District Attorney's Office filed two felony counts, forcible penetration and sexual battery. This is not the first time Dr. Wijegunaratne has faced criminal charges, In 2013, a federal grand jury found him guilty of sex counts of health care fraud and conspiracy. While out on bail pending an appeal, Dr. Wijegunaratne faces 27 months in federal prison.
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Dallas considers opening levees to invited graffiti
Dallas has been tepidly experimenting with the idea of "free walls" for graffiti artists (see prior Grits coverage) to divert them from private property, reported the Dallas News (Nov. 15), but the real game changer could come from a different government source. The story concluded:The Police Department’s experience with graffiti is one that Trinity Watershed Management has been watching closely as it seeks ways to mitigate vandalism on the bridges over the river, said Dhruv Pandya, the watershed’s assistant director.Street artists were allowed to paint the underside of the Commerce Street bridge during the city’s last Trinity River Wind Festival. For Pandya, that has meant a slight change in attitude as he looks at ways to allow street painting legally — and to keep it only where it’s allowed.“We have 30 miles of levees and we have concrete structures,” he said, “and there’s nothing but gray.”Bingo!…
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