The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently released its monthly Complaint Report for October, in which the CFPB focuses heavily on credit card companies, specifically calling attention to cardholder complaints alleging unfairness and lack of understanding of credit products or practices. The heavy volume of complaints of this type may forewarn increased CFPB scrutiny of the practices at issue, even if technically lawful. The CFPB started taking consumer complaints as soon as it got off the ground in 2011. In 2012, it launched a Consumer Complaint Database. Since that time, the CFPB has fielded more than 700,000 complaints. According to the CFPB, a company has 15 days to respond initially to both the consumer and the CFPB and is expected to close all but the most complicated complaints within 60 days. In general, most credit card issuers respond in a timely manner. The most recent complaint report indicates that credit card complaints…
CFPB Shines Spotlight on Credit Card Complaints
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Primus on Indigent Defense Culture
Eve Brensike Primus (University of Michigan Law School) has posted Culture as a Structural Problem in Indigent Defense (Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 100, 2016, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Indigent defense lawyers today are routinely overwhelmed by excessive...
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Soliciting Prostitute Charge Dismissed For Man Going Through Citizenship Process
Our Columbus Luftman, Heck & Associates office recently helped a 28-year-old foreign man in Dayton who was charged with soliciting a prostitute and possession of criminal tools. The man responded to a prostitution ad posted by police and was caught in an embarrassing circumstance. Our client installs fiber optics on cell phone towers and was [...]The post Soliciting Prostitute Charge Dismissed For Man Going Through Citizenship Process appeared first on Columbus Criminal Attorney.
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"Death sentences are down across the country — except for where one of these guys is the defense attorney."
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As Forensic Analysis Techniques Improve, Experts Spotlight Risks of Secondary DNA Transference
By Andrew Z. Giacalone Lukis Anderson had no idea why he was sitting in a California jail awaiting trial for a crime he was adamant he didn’t commit. According to prosecutors, Anderson’s DNA had been found under the fingernails of murdered San Jose millionaire Raveesh Kumra. That, they said, was enough to put Anderson at the scene of the crime. But as Anderson maintained his innocence, he also presented a compelling alibi. He could not have possibly committed the crime, his defense attorneys argued, because at the time Kumra was murdered, Anderson was being treated at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center after passing out drunk in downtown San Jose with blood alcohol levels at five times the legal limit. However, despite the alibi, the question still remained: how did Anderson’s DNA end up on Kumra? In a news article from 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported how prosecutors would soon discover that the same two paramedics who had treated Anderson for…
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The Spokeo Lawsuit: Databases Are Riddled With Errors
Spokeo and other low-cost or free information sites on the web spew out a lot of garbage, and that can do a lot of harm. This blog takes no position on whether a private right of action exists under the Fair Credit Reporting Act even when no concrete harm can be demonstrated from bad information at Spokeo or other sites. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Spokeo v. Robins after a federal appeals panel in the Ninth Circuit decided that a plaintiff had standing to sue Spokeo because it got a bunch of details about him wrong. The stakes are huge. eBay, Facebook, Google and Yahoo! all filed amicus briefs backing Spokeo. What interests us about Spokeo and other low-cost or free databases on the web is that their results are often a little bit wrong or completely false, but people who do not deal in information on a daily basis do not know this. Sometimes there’s no excuse. If a person is in charge of populating his LinkedIn or Facebook profile, how can…
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Big Pot Crashes and Burns in Ohio
Ohio's obnoxious marijuana legalization initiative went down to a crushing defeat yesterday, Christopher Ingraham reports in the WaPo.Voters rejected the measure with 64 percent opposed and only 36 percent in favor. It was defeated in every single one of Ohio's 88 counties, some of which voted against the bill by huge margins, according to preliminary numbers: 55 percentage points in Holmes County. 60 in Mercer. 65 in Putnam.The bill was likely doomed to fail from the get-go for a variety of reasons. It was an off-off election year, where voters are older and more conservative. Ohio has never exactly been a bastion of marijuana culture. And most crucially, the bill would have created a state-mandated oligopoly on the production of marijuana, with a handful of the measure's wealthy backers as the primary beneficiaries.…
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SF Voters Boot America's (Possibly) Worst Sheriff
It wasn't too much of a surprise to see persons of sense prevail in Ohio. The Buckeye State is, after all, the essence of middle America. But here is some more good election news from a place that does not give us much. Vivian Ho and Michael Cabanatuan report for the San Francisco Chronicle:Former Chief Deputy Sheriff Vicki Hennessy won her bid Tuesday to unseat Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who cast himself as an innovator in the hidebound law-enforcement community but was dragged down by a series of personal and professional controversies.In the race to lead the agency whose primary role is overseeing San Francisco's jails, Hennessy ran a low-key campaign that drew support from the deputies' union and nearly every politician at City Hall. She called herself an effective manager. Mirkarimi claimed she was too much of an insider to push through needed…
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DOES ONE DRINK AN HOUR KEEP YOU UNDER .08?
THE ONE DRINK AN HOUR RULE Have you ever heard of the “One Drink an Hour Rule?” According to this rule, if have only drink per hour, your blood alcohol level (BAC) will remain under the legal DUI limit of .08%. (One drink is roughly defined as 1 1/4 ounce of hard liquor, one beer or one glass of wine.) Is this true? Well, it depends. There is actually no hard and fast rule and a variety of factors can affect your BAC. Things such as your weight, whether you’re eating while you are drinking, and whether you are male or female will influence your blood alcohol level. For example, a female who weighs 110 pounds and has only two drinks in two hours will almost certainly have a BAC of over .08%, while a man weighing over 210 pounds might not register a BAC of over .08% until he has had four drinks during those two hours. Different body types process alcohol differently for several reasons, including body fat content and the concentration of the liver enzyme…
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Drug Deaths Becoming a 2016 Presidential Election Issue
Heather Haddon has this article in the WSJ with the above headline. The subhead is "New Hampshire poll participants put it above jobs and economy as something candidates should address."I am pleased to see this important issue getting attention. However, there is a big difference between saying this is something candidates must address and coming to a consensus on how to address it. One thing we don't need is vague, boundless faith in "treatment" without an awareness of how difficult it is to keep addicts in treatment.
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Individual-Reaction Execution Claims
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to a Missouri murderer. AP reports:Death row inmate Ernest Lee Johnson, who was convicted of beating three people to death with a claw hammer, was scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Missouri state prison in Bonne Terre. But the Supreme Court on Tuesday night granted a stay while the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considers whether a complaint from Johnson was properly dismissed.Johnson, 55, claims that the execution drug Missouri uses could cause painful seizures because he still has part of a benign tumor in his brain, and surgery to remove the rest of the tumor in 2008 forced the removal of up to 20 percent of his brain tissue.Two cases is a little early to declare a trend, but this is the second case in a row where the murderer is claiming that an execution protocol would be cruel as applied to him because of some individual medical condition, as opposed to its use generally. In Florida, the…
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Consensus Emerging Russian Plane Crash Likely a Bomb
Intelligence experts in the U.S. and elswhere are now saying a bomb brought down the Russian airplane in Egypt. The U.K. and Ireland have suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh. Wilayat Sinai released another audio message today taking credit.... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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News Scan
SF Sheriff Loses Reelection Bid: The San Francisco Sheriff central in the national debate over "sanctuary cities" lost his reelection bid Tuesday. Fox News reports that 54-year-old Ross Mirkarimi was thrust into the national spotlight in July, when illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle after being released from his jail three months before, despite a request from federal immigration officials to keep him detained for deportation. Mirkarimi responded to criticism by defending San Francisco' sanctuary city policies, "taking the practice to a new level under his leadership." Other high-profile controversies continued to plague Mirkarimi, including flunking a marksmanship test and having his driver's license temporarily suspended for failing to properly report a minor accident while driving a department-issued car. Mirkarimi will be succeeded by Vicki Hennessy, a former sheriff's…
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Crash Eastbound I84 at 239
IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE - generated by our News Release ListServer DO NOT REPLY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE District 4 Patrol 218 West Yakima, Jerome, ID 83338-5904 (208) 324-6000 Fax (208) 324-7897 For Immediate Release: November 4, 2015 5:35 p.m. Please direct questions to the District Office The Idaho State Police is investigating a crash eastbound Interstate 84 near milepost 239. Both eastbound lanes are currently blocked. More information will be released as it becomes available. HG/KB -------------
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Skolnik on Reasonable Suspicion
Terry Skolnik (University of Toronto - Faculty of Law) has posted The Suspicious Distinction between Reasonable Suspicion and Reasonable Grounds to Believe (Ottawa Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Canadian criminal law distinguishes between the thresholds of...
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One vehicle crash westbound I-84 at milepost 64
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: 11/4/2015 6:10 p.m. Please direct questions to the District Office On Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at approximately 2:51 p.m., the Idaho State Police investigated a one-vehicle, injury crash westbound I-84 at milepost 64, five miles east of Boise. Patti Barnard, 61, of Moses Lake, Washington, was westbound in a 1998 Lexus ES 300. The vehicle went off the left shoulder, overcorrected, rolled, and came to rest partially blocking the left lane. Barnard was wearing her seatbelt. She was transported to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center by ground ambulance. The lanes were blocked for approximately an hour and a half. The crash is under investigation by the Idaho State…
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*Update* Crash Eastbound I84 at 239
IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE - generated by our News Release ListServer DO NOT REPLY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE District 4 Patrol 218 West Yakima, Jerome, ID 83338-5904 (208) 324-6000 Fax (208) 324-7897 For Immediate Release: November 4, 2015 6:24 p.m. Please direct questions to the District Office ******Update***** One lane of travel is now open. HG/KB ***************** The Idaho State Police is investigating a crash eastbound Interstate 84 near milepost 239. Both eastbound lanes are currently blocked. More information will be released as it becomes available. HG/KB -------------
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Koehler on Bribery Enforcement
Mike Koehler (Southern Illinois University School of Law) has posted The Uncomfortable Truths and Double Standards of Bribery Enforcement (Fordham Law Review, Vol. 84, 2015) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In recent years, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement...
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Lanes open Eastbound I84 at 239
IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE - generated by our News Release ListServer DO NOT REPLY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE District 4 Patrol 218 West Yakima, Jerome, ID 83338-5904 (208) 324-6000 Fax (208) 324-7897 For Immediate Release: November 4, 2015 7:13 p.m. Please direct questions to the District Office ****Update**** All lanes of travel are now open. HG/KB ******Update***** One lane of travel is now open. HG/KB ***************** The Idaho State Police is investigating a crash eastbound Interstate 84 near milepost 239. Both eastbound lanes are currently blocked. More information will be released as it becomes available. HG/KB -------------
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Marijuana Legalization News
Jurist reports on Ohio voter's rejection of marijuana legalization here. The New York Times discusses a recent foreign development under the headline Mexico’s Supreme Court Opens Door to Legalizing Marijuana Use. In part: The vote by the court’s criminal chamber...
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