Tonight we will ring in 2018 at home in McLean, Virginia with my in-laws from North Carolina. New Year’s eve is also my wedding anniversary. Twenty years ago, Leslie and I decided to walk across the street in Old Town Alexandria and get married. Since we dated for eight years, I count the anniversary as our 28th while Leslie insists on counting this year as our 20th anniversary. We will toast our anniversary and the New Year (as we did 20 years ago) with a bottle of Schramsburg Cremant.
Month: December 2017
Ever wonder who is behind those email messages from Nigerian princes promising millions if you could just send some money to help him release his fortune? Well, meet Michale Neu, allegedly a 67-year-old “Nigerian Prince” from Slidell, Louisiana. Neu was arrested and charged with 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering by the Slidell Police Department’s Financial Crimes Division after a long investigation into an Internet scam.
Danny Kay, 26, will greet the New Year as a free man after being convicted of a rape that was based on altered evidence submitted by the alleged victim. His freedom is due not to police work but the work of his sister in law Sarah Maddison. Maddison decided to take a minute and look at the Facebook messages sent between Kay and the unnamed woman who accused him of rape. What she found was that the police used messages that were misleadingly edited by the woman and that the real messages directly contradicted her claims. The police revealed an utter incompetence in the investigation and the prosecutors have expressed no intent in looking at possible charges against the woman who is accused of changing the meaning of the messages from exculpatory to incriminating. This follows an equally shocking reversal where the police were found to have withheld 40,000 messages from the defense in another rape case.
Michael Wilson, 32, is accused of an extraordinary crime in rigging his front door to electrocute his estranged, pregnant wife. Police found the booby trap and arrested Wilson, who is now charged with attempted aggravated battery on a pregnant person and theft of a firearm. (The gun charge is related to his taking his father-in-law’s gun from his wife’s house).
Continue reading “Florida Man Arrested After Allegedly Trying To Electrocute His Estranged Wife”
Like many football fans, Republican Rep. Milo Smith is fed up with the protests by NFL players during the anthem. However, while many fans are staying away from games (setting record low attendance numbers), Smith wants to require NFL owners to reimburse fans who object to the protests. While I have expressed my own opposition to any demonstrations during the national anthem, I have previously stated that the ultimate decision rests with the team owners. Like any business owner, a NFL owner can insist that employees refrain from protests during employment hours and activities. However, this legislation would raise serious legal concerns and would likely not survive a legal challenge.
When Wilmer Lara Garcia allegedly decided to steal a Honda Civic, he wore a rather incongruous choice of teeshirt reading “Trust Me.” He did leave a memorable mugshot however with the Fairfax County police.
Continue reading “Virginia Man Features “Trust Me” Teeshirt in His Mugshot For Auto Theft”
To a layman, the concerns of an attorney can seem quaint or overblown. To an attorney, discussions with a layman can present a problem of translation. That seemed to be the case in a dispute recently between Lindy Lou Layman and well-known attorney Anthony Buzbee. Buzbee took Layman, 29, home after a first date. She was drunk and allegedly proceeded to trash his home — causing more than $300,000 in damage to art including two Andy Warhol paintings.
It has long been known that China has helped North Korea evade international sanctions while professing faithful compliance with United Nations resolutions. Now, U.S. spy satellites reportedly captured photos of Chinese ships illegally selling oil to North Korean boats on dozens of occasions. China has again professed innocence.
Continue reading “US Spy Satellite Captures Chinese Ships Illegally Selling Oil To North Korea”
For the last year, I have been criticizing over-wrought and at times irresponsible legal analysis proclaiming “slam dunk” criminal cases and long-sought “smoking gun” discovery sealing the fate of President Donald Trump or his close associates. This includes months in which legal analysts referred to the crime of collusion despite there being no such crime. Unfortunately, this trend continues with the recent interview of Jill Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor, who told MSNBC that Trump’s recent tweets can constitute “obstruction of justice, witness intimidation, and it’s obstructing justice by saying to agents you better not dig too deep, you better not find anything because I will attack you.” I can see little support for such a position in the criminal code or past cases.
Michael Joseph Oleksik, 23, has a curious crime alleged in Florida. He reportedly became upset when an ATM machine gave him too much money so he proceeded to pummel the machine. It is not clear why he was enraged by being over-paid, but any concern for the bank’s assets did not extend to the machine itself.
Continue reading “Man Arrested For Beating Up ATM Machine After Being Given Too Much Money”
In Minnesota, there is a troubling case brought by Rice County Attorney John Fossum who has confirmed that he has charged a 14-year-old girl with felony child pornography for sending a fellow teen a selfie of herself. In such a twisted logic, the child is both the victim and the felon of child pornography.
Continue reading “Minnesota Teen Charged With Child Pornography For Sending Selfie”
Many of us are excited to see the new biopic “Darkest Hour” on the towering historical figure of Winston Churchill. What is less welcomed is a truly ridiculous warning added to the move that “the depictions of tobacco smoking are based solely on artistic consideration.” It is not even clear what smoking “based solely on artistic consideration” means but is clearly meant as a gesture to those who would immediately run from the film in shock at the scene of a twentieth century leader smoking. It turns out that while, “History is written by the victors,” it is rewritten by cringing Hollywood producers.
Continue reading “Churchill Biopic Features Warning Against Second Hard Smoke”
A feminist activist from the extremist group Femen ran onto the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Monday and tried to steal the baby Jesus. The woman screaming “God is woman” was tackled by Vatican gendarme. The group identified the culprit as Alisa Vinogradova and proudly declared her to be a “sextremist”. This is not the only effort his season to “jack” Jesus. These cases represent a convergence of the Corpus delicti and the Corpus Christi.
Best wishes to everyone celebrating Christmas.
I am in Chicago with the family for Christmas with my 90-year-old mother Angela. We got our wish this year for a white Christmas with a few inches on Christmas Eve. The Chicago Bears completed the perfect Christmas by winning on Sunday. Even though the Browns are the worst team in the country without a single win this year, none of us made any assumptions given the record this year.
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on an annual list of Christmas torts and mishaps. Santas feature prominently this year.
Continue reading “Christmas Torts: The 2018 Listing Of Holiday Mishaps and Madness”