Connecticut Judge E. Curtissa R. Cofield is at the center of a firestorm after an arrest for drunk driving during which she hurled racial epithets at a black police officer. She also succeeded in striking a police cruiser with her BMW. Cofield, who is also black, is now the subject of both a criminal proceeding and a proposed legislative investigation.
Continue reading “Connecticut Judge Arrested for Drunk Driving After Hitting Police Cruiser and Hurling Racial Epithets at Black Officer”
Category: Courts
In what may be the first acoustic Eighth Amendment violation for cruel and unusual punishment, Fort Lupton Municipal Judge Paul Sacco has sentenced noise violators to listen to music that they do not like. I can barely stand hearing I Write the Songs once a year in an elevator. I often claw at the door to get out a floor early. On the serious side, it is the latest in a dangerous trend of novel punishments where judges appear to have sport with citizens pulled before them.
Continue reading “I Write the Sentence: Judge Sentences Noise Violators to Listen to Barry Manilow”
The Supreme Court has refused to grant review of the strange case of Jarek Molski, an advocate for the disabled who has been barred from filing any more lawsuits after bring over 400 complaints under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
One of England’s first black female judges is embroiled in a bizarre fight in the court with her daughter. The case has the English bar all atwitter and has finally reached this side of the pond. Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, has sued her daughter Constance Briscoe (who is s part-timejudge) for libel over a tell-all book– pitting two judges against each other in a judicial version of Mother Dearest.
Continue reading “Mother Jurist: English Judge Sues Barrister Daughter Over Tell-All Book”
Over the last seven years, Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. has been forced to pay $12,000 in child support, jailed four times and estranged from his four children. It all began to unravel seven years ago when he signed a certified letter from Dauphin County Domestic Relations in 2001 and found himself covering the support of a child of another man. In the meantime, the real father — Andre Sharpe — has been living with the girl for the last four years.
A curious demand was made of the Supreme Court last week in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, where the Court is considering a seven Aphorisms monument in a city park where a 10 Commandments monument already stands. Robert Ritter, president of the Jefferson Madison Center for Religious Liberty, asked the Court to postpone the scheduled oral arguments “until such time as the Court publicly discloses … that a literal translation of the Hebrew on the tablet that Moses is holding on the Court’s South Wall Frieze is opposite of the Ten Commandments….” The Court appears to have ignored the demand.
In what could be an extremely important constitutional case, Laura Schubert (now Laura Schubert Pearson) has filed a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court in Pleasant Glade Assembly of God v. Schubert. Schubert lawsuit alleging false imprisonment and assault by the pastor and the church was dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court, which held (6 to 3) that any trial would unconstitutionally entangle the court in church matters.
The Children’s National Medical Center in Washington is going to court to seek a court order to terminate life support for a 12-year-old boy in a case raising parental and religious rights. A ventilator and medications are currently keeping Moti Brody of Brooklyn, N.Y. alive but his Orthodox Jewish parents do not recognize brain death in their religion.
Continue reading “Orthodox Jewish Parents Fight Hospital to Prevent Termination of Life Support for Twelve-Year-Old Boy”
Juror No. 4 has been located. If you recall, the trial of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was thrown into disarray by the death of the father of Juror No. 4. In the latter matter, efforts to locate Juror No. 4 were strangely unsuccessful. Now, Marian Hinnant has come forward and admitted that she lied about her dad dying and went to California for a horse race. Her dad is very much alive.
Continue reading “Stevens Juror Admits that She Lied About Dad — Went to Horse Track”
The New York Times has misspelled her name over a dozen times since 2001 but it is finally stating publicly that, for the future, it will be Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and not Ginsberg. However, starting today it will be John Paul Stephens.
Continue reading “It’s Official: New York Times Says it is Ruth Bader Ginsburg Not Ginsberg”
An ex-judge has apologized after the McCain campaign and Republicans denounced her email sent to Jewish voters in Pennsylvania suggesting that presidential candidate Barack Obama taught members of a community group “to commit voter registration fraud.” She also compared a vote for Obama ignoring “the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s.”
Continue reading “Ex-Judge Apologizes for E-Mail Comparing Obama’s Election to Holocaust”
Steven Parker, 42, has received a new trial by unanimous vote after his 2006 conviction for child sexual assault on a 11-year-old child was thrown out due to the placement of a screen around him at trial so his alleged victim could not see him.
Continue reading “Nebraska Supreme Overturns Child Assault Conviction”
First there was the gross prosecutorial misconduct. Then there was the juror misconduct. Now, another juror has left after the death of her father — suspending deliberations. Sen. Ted Stevens’ trial has had all of the sense of control and predictability as a falling locomotive.
For most of the trial, many observers were waiting for the infamous temper of Sen. Ted Stevens (R. Alaska) to be unleashed before the jury. It now appears that the attention should have been directed on the ninth juror from the left. The other jurors have formally requested that Judge Sullivan replace Juror Number Nine who has reportedly been causing a ruckus in the jury room. It is only the latest problem in this star-crossed trial. Prior evidence of prosecutorial misconduct now joins juror misconduct in the trial of Ted Stevens.
Continue reading “Trouble in the Stevens Jury: Juror Number Nine Triggers Hearing”
A federal court has issued an interesting ruling after the arrest of various members of the Mongols motorcycle gang: gang members, their family and their associates are enjoined from wearing, licensing, selling or distributing the gang’s logo. It is a novel and questionable order, in my view, by U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper.
Continue reading “Judge Bars Gang Members and Associates From Distributing Mongol Logo and Symbol”