The question in the title of this post is prompted by this recent lengthy Newsweek article headlined "Women in Weed: How Legal Marijuana Could Be the First Billion-Dollar Industry Not Dominated by Men." Here are excerpts: It seems fitting that a plant called Mary Jane could smash the patriarchy. After...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/bvIBC0YYpXA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
Could (and will) women executives become dominant leaders in the marijuana industry?
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Court examines White v. Woodall, reaffirms grant of habeas relief due to Bruton violation.
Washington v. Secretary, No. 12-2883, 2015 WL 5103330 (3d Cir. Sept. 1, 2015), In an opinion by Judge Fisher, the panel reaffirms its earlier decision granting habeas relief because of a Brutonviolation. At Washington's trial, the prosecution introduced a statement by his codefendant that redacted Washington's name and replaced it with generic terms. One codefendant, Taylor, testified that Washington was the driver, who stayed in the car while two other accomplices entered, shot and killed two store employees, and stole cash from a safe. Taylor claimed Washington entered the store following the shootings and helped remove the cash. Taylor testified at trial and was impeached on cross-examination. Then a detective read a redacted version of the confession of a non-testifying codefendant, Waddy, in which Washington's and a fourth defendant's names were replaced with phrases like "they guy who went into the store" and…
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"Trademark Laundering, Useless Patents, and Other IP Challenges for the Marijuana Industry"
The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper authored by Sam Kamin and Viva Moffat now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: Marijuana law is changing rapidly in the United States today – since 1996, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MarijuanaLaw/~4/csoriqpRxPE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
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Chicago Man Charged with Homicide after Woman’s Fetus Dies in Car Crash
A Chicago man is being held on $2 million bond and is being charged with reckless homicide of an unborn child, among other charges. Bail was set at $2 million Saturday for a man accused of causing a Northwest Side crash that seriously injured a pregnant woman and killed her unborn child. On Wednesday, August 12, the Chicago man allegedly crashed into a parked Mazda Protégé in which the pregnant woman was sitting. Fetal Homicide Laws in Illinois Maybe you were not aware that you can be charged with murder if a pregnant woman’s fetus dies as a result of your action. Illinois statute defines and penalizes for intentional homicide of an unborn child, voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child, involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide of an unborn child, respectively. These statutes define an “unborn child” as any human individual from fertilization until birth. What are the Penalties if Found Guilty of Fetal Homicide? Intentional Homicide of an…
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Do you need to hire a San Antonio Speeding Ticket Attorney?
By Justin Coquat | Traffic Ticket SA If you have a traffic ticket for speeding then you need an experienced San Antonio Speeding Ticket Attorney! You do not have to waste your time going to court. Let a San Antonio Speeding Ticket Attorney go to court so you do not have to. You don’t have to fight your ticket alone. Call The Coquat Law Firm today to see how we can save you time and money. Call now at (210)745-2825! Let a San Antonio Speeding Ticket Attorney fight for you. The Coquat Law Firm resolves thousands of traffic ticket citations every single year. But we do not just work in San Antonio. We also represent clients and fight traffic tickets in Austin, Corpus Christi, San Marcos, and more! We also work with CDLs and Occupational licenses!!! Did you know that speeding is not the only traffic ticket citation that we can fight? We also fight traffic tickets for driving with an invalid or expired license, using a cell…
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Two-vehicle crash on interstate 84 near milepost 46.
IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE - generated by our News Release ListServer DO NOT REPLY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE District 3 Patrol 700 S. Stratford Dr., Meridian 83642 (208) 846-7550 Fax (208) 846-7520 For Immediate Release: 09/04/15 9:10 a.m. Please direct questions to the District Office On September 4, 2015, at approximately 6:40 a.m., Idaho State Police investigated a two-vehicle crash on Interstate 84, near milepost 46. Melissa Gayhart, 35, of Meridian, was traveling westbound in a 2014 Hyundai Elantra. Jason Day, 37, of Leonardville, Kansas, also traveling westbound in a 2016 Peterbilt semi with trailer. Jason changed lanes striking Melissa's vehicle. Melissa was transported by ground ambulance to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise. Both subjects were wearing seatbelts. The two left lanes were blocked for approximately 1.5 hours. This crash is under investigation by…
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Law enforcement steps it up for Labor Day
For the 6 days leading up to Labor Day, Georgia State Patrol and its counterparts in adjoining states step up "safety checks." This means if you are driving out of state for Labor Day or around then, better make sure your car is functioning perfectly (no broken tail lights), trash free (that empty beer bottle from 3 months ago will get you a ticket and maybe worse), your insurance is up to date, and that everyone in the car is wearing his or her seat belt. Expect to be stopped at state lines. After you make sure you meet all the legal requirements for driving, I recommend you do a "walk around" before every trip you take, whether it's a football game a couple of hours away or a favorite vacation spot in the next state, to make sure your car will get you there safely. Walk around your car and: • Ensure your vehicle is properly maintained. If maintenance is not up to date, at the very least have your car and tires inspected before you take a long…
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The Grand Inquisitor (and other campus rape innovations)
There have been a number of interesting and important ideas bantered about on the pressing problem of campus rape and sexual assault discipline, in addition to the tepid grasp of the harm deriving from a deeply screwed up process. Since this is still in its formative stage, and real lives are at risk, it continues to be worth discussion. To a large extent, the confusion derive from misunderstandings, either because the people discussing the issue lack sufficient knowledge and background in what they’re talking about (because that rarely happens on the internets) or they use words and concepts with which they’re unfamiliar, and choose to define them (or undefined them, if that makes their arguments work better), and no one explains why they’re not allowed to just make stuff up. So, this seems like an opportunity to try to unscrew up some of the nonsense. Don’t Be Hating On The Inquisitor In a twit, K.C. Johnson pulled out a bit from lawprof…
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Making Gideon Cry, A Public Defender’s Confession
A pitch was sent out to the blawgosphere yesterday from a flack for the Washington Post about an op-ed by public defender, Tina Peng. I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients. Yeah. And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Got it. Thanks for sharing. It’s not that anyone who gives a damn about the plight of indigent defense minds another op-ed about the inadequacy of funding. It’s worthy of repeating, and the inadequacy impacts defendants and indigent defenders every day, day after day, because we may have screamed about the problem but it hasn’t been fixed. Not even close. On the other hand, it would be more easily accepted if it wasn’t promoted as an epiphany, an issue no one ever thought to raise before, a lone cry in the woods of a horror that society has failed to recognize. But this is in the Washington Post, so it must be newsworthy. Cool. But Peng’s op-ed…
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FAMM’s Julie Stewart Makes Bill Otis Cry
At Reason, Julie Stewart of Families Against Mandatory Minimums goes head on against Bill Otis, the guy who never met a defendant who wouldn’t benefit from a sentence of life plus cancer. And she rips him a new one. Over the past two decades, Bill Otis has become the Paul Ehrlich of criminal sentencing reform. He is always certain in his convictions and nearly always wrong. Moreover, like Ehrlich, Otis likes to scare the public with predictions of certain and impending doom, and he is immune to feelings of embarrassment or humiliation despite being proven spectacularly wrong over and over again…. In fairness, my issues with Bill Otis aren’t sanitary and academic. I think he’s a dishonest, disingenuous, dirty sack of shit, who panders to the angry and fearful with distortions, ignorance and prejudice. Why Otis chooses to take this path is beyond me, but for people like Julie, and me, this isn’t some game to screw people…
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It's an Accusation So It Must Be True
There is one and only one piece of evidence that it was Danny Brown who raped and murdered Bobbie Russell in December 1981. Her son, Jeffery, six-years old at the time, said it was. Danny spent 19 years in prison. Then the DNA came back. Wasn't him. It was, the DNA said, Sherman Preston. That was no surprise since around that time Sherman was implicated in a number of related crimes - always acting alone. In fact, by the time the DNA came back, he was serving a life sentence for a similar crime just a little bit earlier - a crime for which he was convicted in large part based on DNA. Danny got out. The prosecutor dismissed the charges. Innocence triumphs. It was a great day. Except.An investigator from the prosecutor's office had located Jeffery and went across the country to talk to him. Now 27, he said now what he'd said then. It was Danny he saw do that to his mom. And Julia Bates, the elected…
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A reluctant scoop: Changing intepretations of DNA mixtures vex legal system
DNA has often been referred to as the gold standard of forensic evidence. And when comparing a single sample to a suspect, that's true. When DNA evidence includes mixtures of DNA from multiple sources, however, the scientific community is still figuring things out. And it takes years for new knowledge to pass down from the highest-end basic research to the work tables of practicing DNA analysts at front-line crime labs.The most recent such development: improvements in DNA science and interpretation techniques have caused practitioners to change how they calculate probabilities when it comes to singling out a defendant based on DNA mixtures (i.e., when biological evidence includes samples from more than one person). In the most extreme instance, the new method reduced a one in a billion probability that evidence matched a particular suspect to around one in 50, the Texas Forensic Science Commission's Lynn Garcia told the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit…
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Saturday College Football Open Thread
Inauspicious start last night as Boise ad Mich St screwed the pooch for me (1-2 ATS). But today is the day I jumpstart my season. Here are the picks (all 2 units unless otherwise indicated): Southern Mississippi +21 (3 units) over Mississippi... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Treating Alcoholism Instead of Only Responding to Drunk Driving
While drunk driving car accidents, including alcohol-related fatal car accidents, are always problems, there are certain times of year when we see perennial increases in drunk driving incidents. There is a noted increase around the holidays between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day in the fall and winter, along with this time of year, at the end of the summer, when we tend to see a large increase in drunk driving accidents as well. It is for this reason the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) runs its annual “Driver Sober or Get Pulled Over” anti-drunk driving public safety campaign around this time of year. According to a recent news article from the Wall Street Journal, the three-week annual campaign goes from late August through Labor Day. Labor day is one of the times when we typically see big increases in drunk driving arrests and drunk driving car accidents. As our Boston drunk driving accident lawyers have seen all too…
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MIRANDA AND OHIO DUI/OVI CASES: TO REMAIN SILENT, YOU MUST TALK
One of the most frequently asked questions for criminal defense attorneys is about the impact of Miranda warnings. A previous article in this blog explained the holding of the Miranda case. After the publication of that article, the United States Supreme Court decided a Miranda-related case which affects investigations in Ohio DUI/OVI cases. The case of Salinas v. Texas came in a bit under the radar. This Supreme Court decision regarding the protection against self-incrimination did not receive much media attention, and I did not hear it discussed much among lawyers at the courthouses. Although it was not widely publicized, Salinas could have an impact in Ohio DUI/OVI cases. To understand the significance of Salinas, one must first understand Miranda v. Arizona. The holding of the Miranda case seems to be one of the most misunderstood aspects of American criminal justice. As explained in this blog’s 2012 article (“But The Officer Never Read Me My Rights”),…
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Is Springfield's sex offender ordinance in jeopardy? City Council to discuss issue
9-5-15 Massachusetts: SPRINGFIELD – The City Council has scheduled a meeting on Wednesday to discuss if the city's ordinance that restricts where registered sex offenders can live is now in jeopardy by a Supreme Judicial Court ruling overturning a similar law in Lynn. The council will be meeting with a representative of the Law Department to discuss the recent court ruling, and the impact it
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Family Court Intervenes in Case of 16-Year-old Girl Removed From Flight to Join Jihad
Britain’s High Court of Justice has recently been faced with child protection cases that reflect the unfortunate radicalization of young girls exposed to the extreme ideology and values espoused by the self-styled Islamic State. In London Borough of Town Hamlets v. B (2015) EWHC (Fam) August 21, 2015 the Court considered the case of 16-year-old B. who came to the attention of authorities when she went missing from her home. B.’s mother, acting on information received from B.’s brother, advised police she was about to fly to Syria. The police arrived just in time to stop the flight, taking B. into custody. Child protections authorities made an application to Justice Hayden to make B. a ward of the court and secure her passport. After the orders were made, the Social Services Department engaged B. and her parents in a dialogue where they discussed purchasing an internet monitoring device, as suggested by the police. B.’s parents agreed to the plan and were…
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Halloween Precautions: Your Haunted House Doesn’t Scare Lawyers!
Halloween Precautions (Image is in the public domain) Denver, Colorado personal injury lawyer Shaun Kaufman offers advice on how to serve candy without being served with a lawsuit for dangerous home conditions. It’s almost that time of year when people stretch cobwebs on porches, prop plastic inflatable pumpkins and plastic gravestones in front yards, string flashing lights everywhere, and my favorite — arrange mechanized life-sized creeping zombies that crawl and moan. These decorations mean it’s also the time of year to establish safer conditions around your spook house. At my law firm, we handle claims for visitors to unsafe homes, so who better to provide a list of “hot spots” that can help prevent premise injury claims at your residence. Five Safeguard Tips for Your haunted House: Keep walkways dry and clear from anything that might trip your visitors. This includes cords and crawling zombies. Maintain good lighting for…
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DALLAS COURT OF APPEALS EXPLAINS THERE WAS NO WAY CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION IN SEXUAL ABUSE CASE AFFECTED JURY
When there is error during a trial, courts of appeals often say: “it does not matter anyway.” This can be done even as to arguments about violations of constitutional rights, although there is a special rule that has to be applied in that situation.* The Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals at Dallas recently applied such harmless error rule in a Dallas County child abuse case where there was arguably a very serious violation of the defendant’s constitutional right to confront and to cross-examine the witnesses against him; the constitutional right provides that a defendant cannot be convicted with testimony from an unavailable witness when the defendant had no way to ask that witness questions to test the validity of the claims. [*The harmless error rule is supposed to be harder to apply in the context of error involving a constitutional right. When there is a constitutional violation, the Court has to reverse, according to well-established rules, if there…
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Tell President Obama the US Must Do More for Refugees
For centuries, the United States opened its arms to refugees whose lives had been torn apart by war, and those ruthlessly hounded because of who they are or what they believe in. But today, the people of Syria are suffering these hardships on an unimaginable scale, and we’re still waiting for US leadership on the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time. ->TAKE ACTION NOW<- As the pictures of this week have shown, many Syrians who have survived their government’s barrel bombs or the knives of ISIS have died trying to find security. By contrast, the world’s richer countries have only opened their doors for a tiny fraction of Syria’s refugees. Since July 31, 2014, the United States has processed just more than 1,000 Syrians for resettlement. Without US leadership, the international community will never meet the United Nations’ goal of resettling 380,000 Syrians. The refugees cannot go home. In the refugee camps, many are barely surviving on as…
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