We previously discussed the shocking sentence handed down by Montana Judge G. Todd Baugh to a teacher who raped a 14-year-old student. Stacey Rambold, 54, (left) was given just 30 days in jail after Baugh found that the victim was “older than her chronological age.” It produced an outcry on this blog and other sites. Baugh then magnified the concerns over his judicial judgment by responding to the outcry by trying to re-sentence Rambold. It left the impression of a judge seeking a longer sentence in direct response to public pressure. The Montana Supreme Court stepped in to order Baugh to cancel the resentencing hearing.
Category: Constitutional Law
The Ninth Circuit ruled last week that La Carl Mertez Dow deserves a new trial in reversing a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton (left) in Oakland, California that it was harmless for a prosecutor to give false information to a jury that Dow was trying to hide a scar in a lineup. The fact that this case had to go to the federal court of appeals to be overturned is a chilling reminder of how our criminal justice system has been warped by the harmless error standard. Courts routinely find constitutional violations in federal cases only to dismiss them as harmless by saying that the defendant would likely have been convicted anyway. The case is Dow v. Virga, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 18468.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
The Show Me state, has been making news lately. Unfortunately, the news it has been making has nothing to do with the St. Louis Arch or the baseball Cardinals, but its legislature’s penchant for attempting to nullify Federal laws that it does not agree with. The State of Missouri is working hard to nullify Federal gun laws and Obamacare.
“If you ever wondered what a 21st century nullification crisis would look like, look no further than Missouri. One hundred and forty eight years after the end of the Civil War, the New York Times reports, “the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them.” Meanwhile, the Show Me State is doing everything it can to effectively block implementation of the Affordable Care Act.” Daily Kos
I guess Missouri wants to Show the rest of the nation that the Constitution and its Supremacy Clause is not worth the parchment it is written on. In case you are not sure what is meant when a State tries to nullify a Federal law, here is a little primer on the subject. Continue reading “Nullification-Missouri Style”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Guest Blogger
In another shining example of “The White Elephant in the room might go away” the City Council of Seattle approved, in an 11 minute consultation, to proceed with acting to implement a large surveillance system on Seattle waterways before a five million dollar Homeland Security grant would be forfeited due to a “use it or lose it” clause. And so far, nobody has decided how to use it.
The system originated from the city seeking and being approved for a five million dollar federal grant to purportedly prevent terrorist acts on the popular waterfront areas of Puget Sound. The system operated 28 cameras connected by a wireless network. It seems the hunger for free money was to be quickly satisfied before any sort of plan or discussion as to the privacy or constitutional implications was considered. The council none-the-less snapped at the money unanimously but now is in disarray as to what to do with this new system.
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
This is an update to a story originally posted here by Charlton Stanley, “Polygraphers trigger fear response in Federal prosecutors.”
Chad Dixon, a 34 year old Marion, Indiana little league coach who ran the “PolygraphExpert.net” website teaching people how to defeat polygraph tests, was sentenced to eight months in jail for threatening national security by teaching government job applicants how to beat lie-detector tests. Teaching such techniques and discussing them is not per se illegal. It is an admitted gray area in 1st Amendment jurisprudence. However, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady found the evidence compelling enough that Dixon had crossed the line when he advised some clients, including two undercover officers, to conceal what he taught them while undergoing government polygraphs. This is in addition to the charges of obstruction and wire fraud Dixon plead guilty to last year.
Nina Ginsberg, Dixon’s attorney, accused prosecutors of trying to turn her client into a “poster child for its newly undertaken campaign” to stop people from using the polygraph disruption techniques. the prosecution had sought a two year sentence, but Judge O’Grady thought that eight months was sufficient. O’Grady said, “There’s nothing unlawful about maybe 95 percent of the business he conducted,” although he added that “a sentence of incarceration is absolutely necessary to deter others.”
As Charlton Stanley’s original column indicated, lie detectors are anything but a lie detector. “[L]ie detector technology has no known statistical properties with regard to detecting deception of any kind. It has not been accepted as science in the scientific community. The only thing scientists seem to agree on is most of these machines measure stress reactions in humans, and to that extent, they can measure stress in people who feel stress—that’s it.”
Deterrent based on legitimate concerns or chilling of free speech in the name of protecting a test of dubious value?
What do you think?
Source: Seattle Times
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe) Guest Blogger
First there was WikiLeaks, then there was Edward Snowden. The drip, drip, drip of information about secretive spy agencies continues. There have been bombshell revelations about the extent to which government agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA and others are invading our most private communications. Of course, spies do what spies do, and that is to spy on whoever or whatever they can get away with. Few people understood the implications of PRISM when news of the program was leaked. Additionally, I suspect that despite revelations of its existence, the full extent of its capability and reach will never be known by the public.
The NSA reportedly paid tech companies millions of dollars to cover the cost of compliance with their “requests” for back-door access to the software package.
Another program to keep in mind is the FBI Stingray operation that sucks up wireless telephone communications. Last May, in the first litigation where the government admitted having Stingray, Arizona Federal District Judge David Campbell dismissed a motion to suppress. Judge Campbell is a George W. Bush appointee. PDF of his ruling is here. Last July, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the Northern District of California, in an effort to learn more about Stingray, and if it is scooping up domestic phone calls.
Continue reading “Encryption and the Spymasters: Is Privacy Dead?”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Presumed cooked.
There is an old adage, “What’s good for the goose is [not] sauce for the gander” or as phrased today “What’s good for the goose is [not] good for the gander”. The implication being that what is good for one is good for all or not good for all if stated in the negated form. A case out of Florida provides a perfect example to give this adage a workout.
The goose is former President George W. Bush.
The member of the gander in this case is William T. Woodward of Titusville, Florida. Woodward is charged with shooting three of his neighbors, two of them fatally, over the 2012 Labor Day weekend.
His defense? The sauce.
Woodward’s attorneys are asserting Florida’s “Stand Your Ground’ law and the Bush Doctrine.
Let’s examine this case in the light of the history and consequences of “Stand Your Ground”, the Bush Doctrine and how an equally controversial foreign policy stance might impact a domestic criminal proceeding.
Continue reading “Good for Goose and Gander? Or Just Foul Play? – The Bush Doctrine Redux”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Arguments by analogy are used to justify a controversial claim by invoking a similar claim in a less controversial instance. While not deductively valid, a good analogy can provide a strong reason to accept the claim. In an effort to drum up support for a military strike on Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said that Syrian President Bashar Assad “now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein who have used these weapons in time of war.” Other war drum beaters are warning about the “lessons of Munich” and Obama looking like Neville Chamberlain. When the analogy is tenuous, the argument becomes ludicrous.
Continue reading “Scraping The Bottom Of The Analogical Barrel”
In Ohio, Athens County Municipal Judge William A. Grim has been reversed in his denial of the right to appointed counsel to a young man accused of interfering with police. While Kelly Kasler, 22, is an adult and her parents declined to pay for a lawyer, Grim refused counsel to her because she was being supported in college by her parents. It was a clearly wrong decision and the concerns over Grim’s judgment were magnified in a case where a citizen is accused of interfering with police.
In a culture of the oppression and abuse of women, Sushmita Banerjee stood out. An Indian married to an Afghan businessman, Banerjee wrote of the rule of the Taliban and her effort to flee the medieval Islamic rules placed on women. Her book “A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife” was an inspiration for women facing religious oppression and was later made into the movie “Escape From The Taliban.” The title proved tragically optimistic. This week, after she returned to her husband in Afghanistan, Banerjee was executed at her home by the Taliban.
Continue reading “Taliban Murders Sushmita Banerjee, Author and Women’s Rights Advocate”
The video below of Michigan State University Professor William Penn on the first day of his creative writing class has triggered an investigation by the university into a diatribe against Republicans. A student filmed the comments (and it was released by a conservative group) where Penn is heard attacking Republicans for “raping” America and refusing to pay taxes. The case will pit values of academic freedom against the need for an open and welcoming environment for students at universities.
Techdirt found an interesting example of how easy it is to censor videos on YouTube. After this faux ad appeared to criticize the control of cable companies, someone filed a defamation complaint and, as shown below, the video was removed. That’s right a faux ad criticizing unnamed cable companies was the basis for a defamation complaint according to the site.
Continue reading “Faux YouTube Ad Draws Real Defamation Complaint”
In its latest attack on the free speech, the Obama Administration has secured a gag order to prevent activist-journalist Barrett Brown and his lawyers from discussing his work exposing online surveillance by the Administration. On this occasion, however, Eric Holder and the Obama Administration convinced a federal judge to go along. U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in Dallas Texas has issued a sweeping gag order to prevent not just Brown but his legal team from discussing the online surveillance. The Justice Department insisted on the order to protect Brown. That’s right, they insist that, if Brown discussed the abusive surveillance by the Obama Administration, it would endanger his right to a fair trial.
We have been following the abandonment of virtually core liberal values by Rep. Nancy Pelosi in her adherence to the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama. From her attack on privacy to her new enthusiasm for war, Pelosi is the truest believer of the true believers surrounding Obama in the Democratic Party. Now she has been sharing a charming little story of how “Mimi” explained to their grandson how we are now at war. It turns out it is all about the children . . . not about the chemical weapons or reports that Obama is playing to turn the tide of the losing war for the rebels. Sort of like Save The Children . . . but with cruise missiles.
Despite the obvious free speech concerns, UCLA’s undergraduate student government unanimously passed a resolution last week to declare that any use of the term “illegal immigrant” is now deemed racist and offensive. It is an example of how anti-discrimination policies are cutting deeply into free speech. Millions of people in this country are indeed here illegally. While many would prefer to use “undocumented workers,” many others believe that these individuals are illegal by definition and should not be allowed to circumvent immigration laws. It is a worthy debate with arguments on both sides. However, I am very uncomfortable with students (who historically have been voiced for free speech) declaring that use of this descriptive term is now considered racist or prejudicial.
Continue reading “UCLA Students Declare “Illegal Immigrant” To Be Racist And Discriminatory”