DISCLAIMER: CASE RESULTS DEPEND UPON A VARIETY OF FACTORS UNIQUE TO EACH CASE, AND DO NOT GUARANTEE OR PREDICT A SIMILAR RESULT IN ANY FUTURE CASE UNDERTAKEN BY OUR LAW FIRM. Va. R. Prof. Cond. 7.1(b).“I knew you would pull it off,” said my client, after I felt like I had pulled a rabbit out of a hat getting his misdemeanor case dismissed. On our third trial date, the prosecutor finally agreed to dismiss my client’s marijuana possession case after my client followed my roadmap of homework (clean urine drug tests, participating in a drug education program, and performing community service), and I presented his compelling story of how he had finally stopped smoking marijuana, had paid penance through community service, and had a promising career future ahead if we could avoid a marijuana conviction. Without going into details, obtaining this case dismissal was an uphill battle. After our dismissal victory, my client spoke more optimistically than I had…
“I knew you would pull it off,” said my client
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BOSTON SHOOTINGS, POLICE CAMS AND YOU (Part Three)
Well, apparently, we are actually getting started. The Boston Police Department’s body camera pilot program is now being launched with 100 officers selected by a department consultant after none volunteered. Ruffled blue feathers? Maybe. But progress has been made according to Boston University’s NPR station, WBUR, The six-month trial starts today with two days of training. It goes live next month. The 100 officers are said to be racially and gender diverse. According to the police department, 55 of them are white, 29 are black, 13 are Latino and 3 are Asian. Eighty-seven of the 100 are men. You can figure out how many are not, The officers are scheduled to patrol some of the city’s high-crime neighborhoods, college student enclaves and tourist hotspots. Activists had called for this program for a while, since the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, two years ago. Controversy dogged the…
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Value Judgments in the Bluebook
In the harrowing world of the legal publication process, law review editors use the arcane and intricate rules of the Bluebook to dissect, complicate, elaborate, and brighten up citations in an incomprehensible swirl of multi-colored track-changes notes. The time-pressured author will often defer to the editors' suggestions and click the "accept changes" button at an accelerating pace, hoping that a hasty tempo will bring a swift end to the confusing mire of references to various multi-decimaled rules.But often these rules are open to interpretation. Indeed, a quick series of searches of value-laden terms, such as "significant," "relevant," and "particularly" lead to a number of rules that seem suspiciously subjective for such an intricate book of rules.Consider Rule 5.2(c) regarding the proper conduct for quoting a source with a mistake:Significant mistakes in the original should be followed by “[sic]” and…
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Rudy Giuliani's Glass House
The Washington Post has a good editorial today on Rudy Giuliani's baseless attack on Hillary's health. Shorter version: People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. It points to different parts of his speech at the RNC that could... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Study Shows Police Body Cameras Reduce Use Of Officer Force
A new study out of the University of South Florida revealed some not so shocking results – that officers who wear body cameras are less likely to use force than their counterparts who do not wear body cameras. The study examined the use of police body cameras among members of the Tampa Bay police force. The study analyzed the use of force reports of 60 officers who were outfitted with the cameras and 60 officers who did not wear the body cameras. Researchers uncovered that overall use of force among the 120 officers decreased 8.4 percent in the year after half the group got the cameras, and at the same time, officers who did not wear the cameras experienced a 3.4 percent increase in use of force incidents. “Ultimately, the results from this study contribute to the growing body of evidence in support of the utility of body-worn cameras to reduce police response-to-resistance,” the study’s authors wrote. Police Force and Body Cameras The reduction in…
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Fatal Crash near Grace
IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE - generated by our News Release ListServer DO NOT REPLY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Idaho State Police District 5 5205 South 5th Ave. Pocatello, Idaho 83204-2299 (208) 236-6466 FAX: (208) 236-6068 For Immediate Release: 8/25/2016 1:30 p.m. Please direct questions to the District Office On Thursday, August 25, 2016, at approximately 8:20 a.m., a single vehicle crash occurred near 697 Gentile Valley Road, southwest of Grace. A 1999 Ford Expedition, driven by Adam Ewell, age 23 of Murray, UT., was southbound on Gentile Valley Road, when he lost control on a gravel curve, overcorrected and rolled the vehicle. Both Ewell and his passenger, Steven Soderborg, 23 of El Paso, TX. were wearing their seatbelts at the time of the crash. Ewell was transported to Caribou Memorial Hospital and Soderborg succumbed to his injuries at the scene. Next of Kin has been notified and the crash remains under…
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Idaho State Police to Receive Secretary of Defense's Freedom Award During Pentagon Ceremony on Friday
IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE Teresa Baker Public Information Officer Headquarters 700 S. Stratford Dr., Meridian 83642 (208) 884-7122 Fax (208) 884-7087 For Immediate Release: 8/25/16 at 1:40 p.m. MERIDIAN - The Idaho State Police has been named a recipient of the 2016 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award, the nation?s highest honor given to employers for exemplary support of National Guard and Reserve employees. The Idaho State Police is one of 15 employers from the private and public sector across the United States selected from 2,424 nominations submitted by members of the National Guard and Reserve. The Idaho State Police was nominated by three of its employees who are also proud Service members. Idaho State Police Colonel Ralph Powell will accept the award from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter during a ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on Friday, August 26th. "It is with humility and a profound sense of esprit-de corps that the…
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Continuing Repercussions From Supreme Court DUI Ruling
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police must have warrants to draw blood from DUI suspects, defendants accused of DUI in Los Angeles and their lawyers have been working to get any incriminating blood evidence suppressed in their trials. (Those convicted of DUI have been trying to get their convictions overturned.) Such efforts have been successful in many state and local courts throughout the country. California prosecutors and defense attorneys are watching one case in San Mateo County that involves vehicular manslaughter. On October 5, 2013, 27-year-old Zachary Katz drove the wrong way on U.S. Highway 101 and slammed into another car. The crash ejected both occupants of the other vehicle, killing one and seriously injuring another, according to Palo Alto Online. When police officers did a preliminary blood screening on Katz, his blood alcohol content measured 0.15. Two hours later, a hospital test showed it to be 0.13. Both readings are well over the legal limit…
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Coping with Failed Adoptions
Building adopted families is a dream for many people. Perhaps adoption is a choice in the wake of fertility challenges, perhaps adoption is the product of a relative who is unable to care for their own child through CPS, or perhaps building your family has always meant adopting. After all, there are far too many children in state care who also need loving homes. Unfortunately, although well-publicized situations such as the adoptive mother of a Russian child who, after a few years of challenges, put him on a plane and sent him back to Russia (causing international review of Eastern European adoption practices) are rare, what is not rare but seldom discussed is the volume of children who are adopted out of challenging situations. Despite efforts from their adoptive parents, these children end up back in foster care. It is often difficult to reconcile the idea that well-intentioned adoptive parents, who dedicate themselves and their resources to nurturing a child, are…
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Entrapment – Everything You Need to Know
When it comes to catching a criminal in the act, the lengths to which law enforcement may legally go might surprise you. Everyone is familiar with undercover cops and so-called decoys, but how far can governmental forces legitimately go without stepping out of bounds? If they’ve resorted to trickery, fraud or enticing measures to fool someone into committing a crime, they may have entered the murky depths of entrapment. In so doing, they have likely rewarded their suspect with a valid statutory and common-law defense at both the state and federal levels. The entrapment defense comes in two flavors: objective entrapment and subjective entrapment. In both types, it is up to the criminal defense attorney to show that one or more members of law enforcement or other government agency has deliberately induced, encouraged or otherwise tricked the defendant into committing the crime in question. Without that outside pressure, would that person have ever thought of…
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"Where the Death Penalty Still Lives"
From The New York Times Magazine: Twenty states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment. Four more have imposed a moratorium on executions. Of the 26 remaining states, only 14 handed down any death sentences last year, for...
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Shoplifting and Self-Serve Checkouts: A Bad Combination?
As everyone knows, self-serve checkout stations at supermarkets continues to grow exponentially, even at retail store outlets that aren’t purely supermarkets like Stop & Shop, Star Markets or Shaw’s. Personally, I don’t like them as I find them too impersonal, and their expansion will continue to cut jobs in that industry. But the companies that own these store chains can cut a lot of labor costs – and that’s their goal, for good or ill. On the “ill” side of things, though, this technology has brought about an increase in crime – specifically, shoplifting charges. More than one study has determined that the increased use of self-service checkouts correlates with an increase in revenue losses. One such wide-ranging study of retailers in the U.S., Britain and other European countries found that use of this technology produced an average revenue loss rate of 4 percent of gross sales. Since the…
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"Court voids state sex offender registry for imposing unconstitutionally retroactive punishment"
Jonathan Adler has this post at The Volokh Conspiracy, linking to and excerpting the case. From his summary: Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit held that recent amendments to Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) are...
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What Is the Difference Between a Statute and a Case?
The legal system is a confusing place, especially for people who did not go to law school or extensively study the U.S. government in college. One thing that often confuses people who are new to the legal world is the difference between statutes and cases. Both of these are used by judges when they issue a ruling. Seeing how this all works out can help you better understand what's going on, in your own legal situation. The Difference Between Statutes and Cases Simply put, the difference between a statute and a case is where it comes from. Statutes come from legislatures, like Congress or the Maine State Legislature, where people you elect write and vote on proposed laws. These laws, if passed, become statutes. These statutes become the law that we are all expected to abide by. Cases (or case law), on the other hand, come from courts, where judges use statutes and prior cases to resolve specific disputes concerning constitutional issues. Why Cases Are So Important Cases are…
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Accepting the Preposterous as the Premise
SL&P has an entry introducing a paper that argues for legalizing dope. The paper begins as follows:Many who argue against the legalization of marijuana suggest that while its consumption may not be very harmful, marijuana indirectly causes significant social harm by acting as a "gateway drug," a drug whose consumption facilitates the use of other, more harmful, drugs. This article presents a theory of "gateway crimes", which, perhaps counterintuitively, implies that there are social gains to decriminalizing offenses that cause minor harms, including marijuana-related offenses.A typical gateway crime is an act which is punished lightly, but, because it is designated as a crime, being convicted for committing it leads one to be severely stigmatized.I stopped reading there, because, having been around for a few decades, I understand (as does every other more-or-less rational person) that the notion that being convicted of smoking a joint…
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Attention Media: Trump Is A Bigot. He Is Not Trying To Appeal To People Of Color
I woke up to an NPR teaser informing me that Donald Trump is reaching out to African Americans. All over the media the last few days have appeared reports of a Trump Pivot -- a move towards a kinder, gentler Trump who is concerned about the plight of Black America. He is supposedly giving speeches (to white audiences) that he hopes will appeal to people of color. The question breathlessly being asked of panels of experts and pundits is whether this will have any impact on African American voters. It is absolutely crazy-making how the media continues to treat Trump like a normal candidate. He is not a normal candidate. He is not trying to appeal to African American voters. He is a fucking bigot. Hillary Clinton fileted him today, calling him out for building "his campaign on prejudice and paranoia" for "taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of…
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Ohio Supreme Court concludes it violates due process to treat a juve adjudication like adult conviction at later sentencing
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Lamparello on Riley v. California
Adam Lamparello (Indiana Tech - Law School) has posted Riley v. California: The Aftermath and the Unanswered Questions (9 Fed. Cts. L. Rev. 13 (2016)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The cases decided in the wake of Riley v....
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"Judge’s Sentencing in Massachusetts Sexual Assault Case Reignites Debate on Privilege"
From The New York Times: The two women were asleep on a bed after drinking at a party when they were sexually assaulted. A high school athlete pleaded guilty to indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 in...
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New Study Shows ...
The Onion reports:Highlighting the gaping security holes that continue to persist 15 years after the attacks, an encouraging report released Thursday by radical extremist think tank the Caliphate Institute determined that the United States is no safer than it was before 9/11. "Despite efforts to expand digital surveillance and coordinate information-sharing among intelligence agencies, we discovered that the ability of the U.S. government to assess and eliminate potential terrorist threats has not substantively improved since September 11, 2001, which came as a shocking and welcome finding," said Selim Amir, chairman of the fundamentalist K Street research institute, which is staffed by prominent jihadist thinkers, visiting Sharia law scholars, and retired senior members of al-Qaeda. The Onion is, of course, a satire publication. The kernal of truth beneath the satire is how studies by organizations with agendas are so often uncritically reported as if they were…
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