Right before five people in a car ran a red light and crashed into a wall in Ontario, California, one of the occupants sent a tweet reading: “Drunk (expletive) going 120 drifting corners.” He followed it up at 1:20 a with “Driving tweeting sipping the cup (expletive) yolo I’m turning it up.” YOLO means “You Only Live Once. A few minutes later, all five were dead in the 2005 Nissan that crashed into the backyard of a house. The tweet was sent by @ink2flashyy belonging to Ervin McKinness, 21 (shown left).
Category: Courts
Former Superior Court Judge Ernest B. Murphy will not be receiving disability payments in addition to his multimillion dollar libel award against the Boston Herald. Murphy filed for disability pension based on a claim of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression linked to receiving hate mail and death threats due to his ruling in a rape case. The Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts found unanimously that the Contributory Retirement Appeal Board was correct in denying Murphy the disability pension.
Continue reading “Massachusetts Judge Denied Disability Pension For Hate Mail”
A Florida appeals court has ruled that George Zimmerman is entitled to a new judge. In a 2-1 decision (below), the Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled Judge Kenneth Lester has to go. Zimmerman accused Lester of “gratuitous, disparaging remarks” he made as part of his bail bond proceedings. Lester accused Zimmerman of “flout[ing] the system” when he failed to report outside donations. That would normally not result in a forced recusal but Florida is one of the states that makes disqualification mandatory when the motion is “legally sufficient.”
Judge Vincent Sgueglia of the Tioga County Family and Surrogate’s Courts has been censure in a bizarre case after he took a loaded .38-caliber Smith and Wesson that discharged in his chambers. There is no rule preventing judges from packing heat in chambers in New York but the state Commission on Judicial Conduct declared that Sgueglia, 70, should not have approved his own concealed-carry permit.
Continue reading “New York Judge Censured After Accidental Discharge Of Weapon In Chambers”
Judge Elia Cornejo Lopez has been accused by Texas lawyer Nat C. Perez of a rather unique form of abuse: cookie coercion. Perez has filed an unusual motion for recusal that lists, among other complaints, Lopez’s alleged pressure on Perez to buy her daughter’s girl scout cookies. He suggests that a couple boxes of “Thanks-a-lot” would go a long way with Lopez and that he refusal meant he could not “Tag-a-long” in cases. . . but he did get a judicial “Shoutout”
Continue reading “Thanks-A-Lot: Texas Attorney Accuses Judge of Pressuring Him To Buy Girl Scout Cookie”
New York Family Court Judge Bryan Hedges, 65, thought that he had resigned from the bench in Onondaga County in April after allegations that he sexually abuse with 5-year-old deaf niece. However, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct decided to retroactively remove him from the bench and bar him from ever holding a judicial office again in the state of New York despite that fact that the incident occurred 40 years ago and before he become an attorney. It presents an interesting case on the reach of judicial ethics for judges.
Massachusetts Judge Cheryl Ann Jacques is facing a bizarre misdemeanor larceny charge for allegedly misrepresenting the features of a combination crib-and-playpen set she sold on Craigslist. Jacques, 50 sold the Graco Pack ’n Play to Tracey Christopher, 39, for $75. It sells for roughly $150 new. Christopher insisted that there were parts missing but that Jacques refused to return her money. On both this allegation and a prior ethics charge, the level of scrutiny does not appear (in my view) justified by the underlying allegations.
They may be Supreme but they are also apparently Supremely forgettable. Two-thirds of Americans polled cannot name a single sitting Supreme Court justice. Of the relatively few who can remember a name it is that of the Chief Justice John Roberts. The least well known is Justice Stephen Breyer. Only one percent could remember them all.
Continue reading “Breyer Who? Two Thirds of Americans Cannot Name A Single Sitting Justice”
Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson issued an important ruling on Wednesday that rejected a motion for a preliminary injunction of the Pennsylvania Voter ID law. Since these motions are based on a determination of the likelihood of prevailing on the merits, the decision has a significant impact not only for the case but cases around the country. Even if one disagrees with Simpson’s decision, the 70-page opinion below is well-reasoned and will be, in my view, difficult to reverse in the appeal to the state supreme court (which is divided evenly between Republican and Democratic jurists). With one Republican justice, Joan Orie Melvin, fighting criminal corruption charges, the Court is divided three to three along party lines. However, there is no reason to assume that these jurists will all vote in line with their political affiliations as opposed to their view of the law. A tie on the Supreme Court would result in a decision upholding the decision. I will be discussing the case this morning on CNN.
Continue reading “Pennsylvania Judge Denies Injunction Of State ID Law”
Civil libertarians have been concerned for years with the move toward greater use of the military in domestic operations by both President George W. Bush and now by President Barack Obama. The military continues to shift resources for prepare for large-scale domestic operations. Most recently, the Marines moved to create a battalion to allow the military to “be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, carrying out forensic work, and using biometrics to identify suspects.” Now the Small Wars Journal, a respected publication closely followed in the U.S. military, has published an article entitled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future” by retired Army Col. Kevin Benson of the Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Jennifer Weber, a Civil War expert at the University of Kansas. It lays out not just the military but the legal basis for military operations to crush domestic insurrections in the United States.
By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
In 1984 Leonard and Harriet Nobelman purchased a condominium with the assistance of an adjustable rate mortgage loan from American Savings Bank. Six years later, the Nobelmans encountered financial difficulties and filed Chapter 13 proceedings in bankruptcy court. At the time of their filing, their mortgage balance, including accrued interest and late fees, was $71,335.00 and the fair market value of their home was only $23,500.00. Accordingly, the Nobelmans proposed a reorganization plan which treated the difference between the mortgage balance and the fair market value, a total of $47,835.00, as unsecured debt.
Under bankruptcy law, the reclassification of indebtedness exceeding the value of the collateral from secured to unsecured status is known as a “cramdown.” This is a commonly used device that effectively “strips” the lien of a security interest down to the collateral’s value. It enables a debtor to retain property while insuring that the secured creditor will recover at least as much as it would realize from a foreclosure sale of the property.
The problem is that as a practical matter, unsecured creditors, whether in reorganization or straight liquidating bankruptcies, seldom receive any of the amounts owed to them. So American Savings Bank, staring at the potential loss of more than half of the mortgage principal, filed an objection to the Nobelmans’ plan. The ensuing litigation odyssey required three years and produced a Supreme Court decision that has particular significance in the current housing crisis.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
If you ever wondered why the Justice Department is investigating the office of Maricopa, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, this latest story may be all you need to read. Recently, the Maricopa Sheriff’s office arrested and detained Briseira Torres and alleged that she was an illegal alien. Why is this one arrest such an important story? The short answer is that Sheriff Joe’s office and possibly the Prosecuting attorney ignored the most credible exculpatory evidence that was already in their possession. Briseira’s long form Birth Certificate, attested to by the State of Arizona as accurate, was left out of the record provided to the Grand Jury! Continue reading “Sheriff Joe’s Office Lies Again”
On paper, David Holzbach, 52, would appear to have reached an ideal position in life. The married prosecutor with 24-years experience had a secure $129,000 a year job with the Danbury State’s Attorney’s office. However, this year he was fired after an investigation in bizarre conduct photographing women in office and outside his office, including surreptitious photos in courtrooms using a spy pen.
Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is facing trial for 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 attack at Fort Hood. Before that trial can occur, however, Hasan is facing a sanction that understandably fails to concentrate his mind as much as the looming death sentence: a second $1000 fine for failing to shave for court. While the military requires personnel to be shaven, Hasan is citing his Islamic faith as requiring him to appear in a beard. He has now been held in contempt of court twice for failing to shave by the judge, Col. Gregory Gross.
Continue reading “Major Hasan Sanctioned For Failing To Shave For Court In Fort Hood Case”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
It seems that almost everywhere you look, some State is trying to reduce the number of early voting days, purging the voting rolls and making it harder for citizens to cast their votes. The State of Florida has recently attempted to remove legitimate voters off its voter rolls and the State of Georgia recently attempted to restrict the time when a military absentee ballot can be counted as I wrote about earlier on this blog. Georgia Now, we have some hard evidence of just who is getting removed or impacted by the various State’s attempts to cure the imagined Voter fraud problem! Continue reading “Just Who Gains From Voter ID Laws?”