11-28-2014 Maine: AUGUSTA, Maine — Adults in Maine with autism and intellectual disabilities will receive housing and other support services through the state's Medicaid program under a class-action lawsuit settlement. The settlement, completed Monday in Kennebec County Superior Court, was welcomed by Gerald Petruccelli, the plaintiffs' attorney. "The best of it was that we worked
Adult Maine residents with disabilities to gain Medicaid services with lawsuit settlement
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Regulators issue numerous citations against residential care home for people with disabilities
11-28-2014 Washington: SPOKANE, Washington — Federal regulators have cited a state-run home for people with disabilities for a long list of violations, including strapping residents to chairs in front of TVs and forcing them to face a wall for hours at a time. It was the second time in less than a year that a surprise inspection led to citations at Lakeland Village Nursing Facility in Spokane
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Talking (Very Frankly) About Sex On Campus
11-28-2014 Tennessee: "Losing Your (Concept of) Virginity." "Negotiating Successful Threesomes." "Vagina 101." These aren't your parents' college classes. Consider this a syllabus for Sex Week, a series of workshops, discussions and screenings dedicated to, well, you know what, that are becoming popular – and controversial – on campuses around the country. Yale University held one in 2002 and
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Friday Open Thread
Who's going shopping today? I'm taking the day off, which means I won't be on line much. I hope all Talkleft visitors had a wonderful holiday. I looked at so many store ads my eyes are blurry. At least I forgot about ISIS for a few... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?
The fact that professional football players are idealized, not to mention paid a far better salary than they are likely to get in any non-sports related occupation, it’s perfectly understandable that the public would focus, and focus hard, on such outrageous misconduct as Ray Rice sucker punching his fiancé (later wife) in an elevator. And it’s similarly understandable that the NFL come under severe negative scrutiny for trivializing it until a very bright light was shined on its callousness. So what explains cops? Conor Friedersdorf explains: And there is another American profession that has a significantly more alarming problem with domestic abuse. I’d urge everyone who believes in zero tolerance for NFL employees caught beating their wives or girlfriends to direct as much attention—or ideally, even more attention—at police officers who assault their partners. Several studies have found that the romantic partners of police officers…
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Los Angeles Sheriff's Department to improve wheelchair access for jail inmates per agreement
11-28-2014 California: LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has given initial approval to an agreement that requires the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to improve conditions in its jails for inmates using wheelchairs and others with impaired mobility. U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson's preliminary approval Monday of a 23-page settlement agreement with the ACLU of Southern California
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Idaho Prison Director Brent Reinke steps down from post; resignation effective immediately
11-28-2014 Idaho: BOISE, Idaho — Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke announced that he was stepping down from his post Tuesday after leading the department since 2007 through a highly public scandal involving a private prison, overseeing two executions and enhancing the department's oversight of contracts. Reinke submitted his resignation letter during a special meeting of
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Official tells Kansas lawmakers about staffing shortages in state prisons
11-28-2014 Kansas: TOPEKA, Kansas — State correctional officers are being put at risk because of critical staffing shortages in state prisons, the interim director of the Kansas Association of State Employees told a legislative committee. Rebecca Proctor told the Joint Committee on Pensions, Investments and Benefits about instances of inmates attacking guards at the Hutchinson and Lansing
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You’re Ugly And You Dress Funny Too
There is no shortage of assertions that the harm suffered by words is real, so much so that those contending that hurtful words must be criminalized are no longer expected to explain why. It’s understood. Thus, an intermediate appellate opinion out of Iowa discussed by Eugene Volokh either reflects a return to sanity or an abomination, according to which side you take. The facts are somewhat interesting, at least for those of us who were unaware that there are so many young women who go by the nickname “T-bitch” that it creates confusion. On February 20, 2013, three high school classmates got off a school bus on the way home after school. After exiting the bus, D.S. yelled, “T-Bitch,” to get the attention of her friend T.B. The victim in this case, also having the initials T.B., thought D.S. was yelling at her so she turned around and said “what?” to D.S. D.S. replied to the victim, “I wasn’t talking to you, you…
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Latest New York recidivism numbers provide more to be thankful for
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Florida Ranks Poorly in Sealing of Juvenile Records
According to Judge Jay Blitzman, "if you believe in second chances . . . you have to believe in expungement." Our Palm Beach and Broward County juvenile criminal defense lawyers couldn't agree more. If someone makes a mistake during their youth, that mistake shouldn't necessarily follow them around for the rest of their life, limiting their options and tarnishing their reputation. Unfortunately, Florida has been given a rating of 3 out of 5 stars by the Juvenile Law Center, which composed a scorecard rating the availability of ways to expunge/seal a juvenile criminal record in each state. And that isn't even the worst part of the story.
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Texas Justice calls for state's death penalty to be abolished
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Can we effectively quantify the benefits (and any costs) of reduction in marijuana arrests?
The question in the title of this post is prompted by this recent Reason commentary by Jacob Sullum, which is headlined "A Cannabis Crackdown Contracts: After rising dramatically, marijuana arrests are falling and the trend seems likely to continue." Here are some data and context from the piece: In 1992,...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/Ol_N9gEUuk0" height="1" width="1"/>
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DWI BLOOD DRAWS
DWI Blood-Draws Require a Search Warrant: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (Tex. Ct. Crim. App.), ruled on November 26, 2014, that if a person suspected of a DWI offense refuses to provide a blood specimen pursuant to the Implied Consent and Mandatory blood-draw provisions of the Texas Transportation Code, then police must obtain a search warrant. The Court stated: We hold that a non[-]consensual search of a DWI suspect’s blood conducted pursuant to the mandatory-blood-draw and implied-consent provisions in the Transportation Code,when undertaken in the absence of a warrant or any applicable exception to the warrant requirement, violates the Fourth Amendment. State v. Villarreal (No. PD-0306-14). This ruling follows Missouri vs. McNeely, an April 2013 United States Supreme Court case that held the Fourth Amendment requires police to obtain a search warrant to search your blood if there is no emergency or other exigent circumstances. Further, I have…
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ARRESTED PROTESTORS PONDER MURDER, PROBABLE CAUSE AND FERGUSON (PART ONE)
Here is hoping you had a great Thanksgiving. Here’s hoping you enjoy “Black Friday”. And here is a story that contains nothing for you to enjoy or be happy about. As you no doubt have heard from various sources, the grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., has returned its decision regarding the death of the late18-year-old Michael Brown and the allegations against Police Officer Darren Wilson. You have no doubt also heard about the aftermath which included protests in various locations including Ferguson and Boston. The Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog has certain insights into these events that you may not have realized. Some of them are from knowledge of the criminal justice system. Some are from my experience of so many years as a criminal defense attorney. Some are directly from my time as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, New York. Sorry, this is not going to be a one-parter. Some issues are simply too complicated and important to our survival as a…
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Toward a Pragmatic Normative Framework for Criminalization, Part 3
In this post, I will begin an exploration of the implications of deterrence aims for criminalization. By criminalization, I mean the decisions about what conduct to make criminal under what circumstances, and what level of punishment to associate with different crimes. As I discussed in the previous post in this series, I believe the overarching objective that should animate criminalization decisions should be the enhancement of social trust. Building trust is a difficult, but critical, objective for a diverse, individualistic society like ours, in which economic and social vitality depend on regular interactions between strangers and near-strangers. Acute, pervasive fears of victimization in such interactions would cause a social breakdown. One way that the criminal-justice system builds trust is through the deterrence mechanism — that is, threats of hard treatment for those who harm the persons or property of others. Let’s call these…
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The Fourth Amendment, File-sharing and Sexual Exploitation of a Minor
After Rick Welsh was convicted of, and sentenced for, “five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under the age of fifteen” in violation of Arizona law, he appealed. State v. Welch, 2014 WL 6092867 (Court of Appeals of Arizona 2014). On appeal, he argued, among other things, that “the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained from his computer without a warrant, claiming its acquisition violated his rights” under the 4thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution. State v. Welch, supra. As the Court of Appeals noted, the case arose after, in December of 2010,Tucson Police Department Detectives Dan Barry and Steve Sussen, as part of a police training seminar, found `files of interest’—images or videos potentially related to child pornography—while browsing a shared computer network to which Welch belonged. They obtained a search warrant and seized Welch's computer, modem, external hard…
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Panetti dissents lament failures of habeas corpus for the indigent
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that made the biggest national headlines this week was their decision to kill mentally ill capital murderer Scott Panetti. Nearly all the attention focused on Judge Tom Price's surprising John Paul Stevens impersonation - an on-the-way-out-the-door declaration that the death penalty should be abolished after personally authorizing hundreds of executions on the court. Talk about living with regrets!I'll leave the death penalty pro and con debate to others (and would thank commenters to do the same). Instead, the most interesting part of Price's dissent to me was his discussion of innocence cases, DNA exonerations and the lack of funding for attorneys to file habeas corpus writs for indigent defendants. Price wrote:Perhaps more importantly, society is not less convinced of the absolute accuracy of the criminal justice system. A 2012 study by the University of Michigan and Northwestern University law school ranks Texas…
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Kuersten on Sexual Assault in the Military
Andreas Kuersten has posted Sexual Assault and the Military Petri Dish (Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 3, pp. 91-97 (2014)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The military is held to a higher standard in preventing sexual assault and...
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Ignition Interlock Devices Would Be Required in All New Jersey DWI Convictions Under Proposed State Senate Bill
A bill that was recently approved by the New Jersey State Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee (NJSBA) would change the requirements for ignition interlock devices (IIDs) in driving while intoxicated (DWI) cases. Under current New Jersey DWI law, an IID is only mandatory for second or subsequent convictions, or in cases where chemical testing shows a sufficiently high blood alcohol content (BAC). The proposed bill would make IIDs mandatory in all DWI cases across the state. The New Jersey Assembly passed a companion bill in June 2014. A previous version of the bill was passed by the state Senate, but not the Assembly, in 2013. State law defines an IID as a device that “permit[s] a motor vehicle to be started only when the driver is sober.” The device must be installed on the dashboard of a DWI defendant’s vehicle. Prior to starting the vehicle, the driver must blow into the device, much like with an Alcotest machine or other breathalyzer. The device…
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