As we have discussed, there seems to be a rising level of intolerance in academia and campuses for opposing views. A recent international conference showed this intolerance in the response to former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court Justice Rajinder Sachar in his speech on “Radical Islamism.” In an effort to address stereotypes and intolerance shown Muslims, Sachar noted that 95 per cent of beef traders in India are Hindi. The reaction was an immediate walk out with some academics demanding that Justice Sachar not be allowed to continue and turning off the lights and fans.
Category: Criminal law
There have been an uptick in stories challenging statements made by presidential candidate Donald Trump such as his account of watching thousands of people cheering the destruction of the Twin Towers in New Jersey. One such factual dispute comes from a retweet on Trump’s account that shows dark-skinned man wearing a bandana, a dark shirt and military-style pants and holding a handgun sideways. The image is accompanied by the rather surprising figures based on an unknown source called “Crime Statistics Bureau – San Francisco” on murders committed by blacks versus whites. It is an example of why retweets can be so dangerous.
Continue reading “Trump Retweets Wildly Inaccurate Figures on The Rate of Blacks Killing Whites”
Police have arrested the man allegedly shown in a despicable and disgusting attack in New Orleans. The man was caught on a surveillance camera dragging a woman down a street Friday morning and then shooting fourth-year medical student Peter Gold, 25, when he tried to help the woman. Gold is a genuine hero and is recovering for a gunshot to the stomach. The man on the videotaped has been identified as Euric Cain, 21. Cain’s signature or mark appears to be a profane gesture for anyone coming across his Facebook site.
The Obama Administration has responded critically to the decision from an Israeli court to give an Israeli border police officer just community service for his entirely unjustified attack on an American teenager. Tariq Khdeir, 15, a Palestinian-American, was beaten by the officer, whose name has been withheld by the courts to avoid any further repercussions for him or his family. The beating was filmed after the officer caught the teenager near a riot in East Jerusalem in July 2014. Despite this evidence (and no evidence of just cause) the Israeli court gave the officer just 45 days of community service and a suspended prison term of four months.
We have long discussed our close alliance with Saudi Arabia despite that country’s denial of the most fundamental human rights for women, non-Muslims, journalists, and political dissidents. While the State Department continues to vaguely reference “reforms” in the Kingdom, the Saudi Sharia courts and religious police continue to generate shocking medieval cases where people are flogged or executed for exercising free thought or associations. The latest outrage is the death sentence given Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian poet and leading member of Saudi Arabia’s contemporary art scene. He has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam, being an atheist (which he denies) and insulting Saudi Arabia. Many view his real offense as being his embarrassment of the infamous religious police (mutaween) in Abha after he posted a video of their lashing a man in public. As is often the case in the pseudo, “courts” of Saudi Arabia, he was denied counsel and any real opportunity to present a defense.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
An inmate who previously escaped from a detention facility in Chicago filed a lawsuit against the government demanding ten million dollars in damages resulting from his escape caper failed to convince the Seventh Circuit of his claim’s merit, but the court at least acknowledged his lawsuit “gets credit for chutzpah.”
The jailbreak occurred in 2012 when plaintiff Jose Banks and a cellmate rappelled down seventeen stories down a high-rise corrections center using a rope constructed of sheets and dental floss. He managed to hail a cab and evade law enforcement for several days before recapture.
Banks claimed among other things that he suffered emotional injury from the trauma of fearing for his life as he dangled from the makeshift rope used in his escape.
Harvard Law students have started a campaign to drop the historic seal of Harvard because it is tied to an 18th-century slaveholder. The students organization, Royall Must Fall, have held campus demonstrations demanding the removal of the seal. The three sheaves of wheat on the seal come from the Royall family crest (which raises the compromise possibility of just replacing that portion of the seal attributed to the Royall family). Third-year law student Alexander Clayborne insists that the effort is part of “[o]ur larger goals include decolonization of the law school in general and decolonization of the law school curriculum.”
We have previously discussed the curious pattern of people with past crimes seeking employment in law enforcement . . . only to end up as a defendant rather than an applicant. The latest to join this ignoble group is John Wesley Rose, 25, who applied for a job at a Michigan sheriff’s department despite an outstanding warrant in Kentucky on sexual assault charges.
It appears that the Obama Administrations is not alone in pursuing journalists in the search for whistleblowers and leakers. Emiliano Fittipaldi has revealed that he has been interrogated and faces charges from Holy See prosecutors. He was given a Vatican summons to appear to answer questions about his recently published book “Avarice.”
A Florida Appellate Court has ruled in favor of Patrick Neptune, a man who was barred under a clearly unconstitutional ruling from criticizing a local police officer on the Internet. Neptune accused Miramar Police Department Officer Philip Lanoue of first cutting him off in traffic and then following him home and giving him a ticket. After Lanoue sought a stalking injunction, a court issued an order including a bar on his criticizing the officer on the Internet.
San Francisco police and prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation following the posting of videotape in the Mission District showing two Alameda County sheriff’s deputies beating 29-year-old Stanislav Petrov. Petrov is still recovering from his injuries and the incident is being compared to the Rodney King beating. The video shown below is quite disturbing.
We have been following the rapid decline of free speech rights in Europe and Canada. Germany has long been the subject of criticism from the free speech movement. The country has long criminalized speech dealing with World War II and the Nazis. While the real benefit of those laws has been questioned given the long existence of a neo-Nazi groups in the country, prosecutors continue to bring troubling charges against those who voice unpopular or obnoxious beliefs in prohibited areas. The latest is Ursula Haverbeck, an 87-year-old German Neo-Nazi grandmother who has been sentenced to 10 months in prison after being found guilty of denying the Holocaust. She does not believe that the Holocaust was real but, rather than leaving the matter to open debate, the Germans are imprisoning her for either not changing her mind or not staying silent about her views.
In Missouri, there is a deeply unsettling crime involving two boys, aged 13 and 14, where Tanya Chamberlain, 43, was brutally stabbed in the face, neck, chest and hands. After killing her, the two teens went on a joyride with her dead body propped up in the front seat. The case again raises the question of when minors should be be tried as adults in our country.
Today I have the honor of moderating a remarkable panel at the World Bank as part of its Law, Justice, and Development week. The panel entitled “Clean Solutions for Dirty Money: Closing the Implementation Gap” will look at the current status of the global anti-money laundering (AML) legal regime and the need for possible reforms, including such questions as whether there is any concrete, empirical evidence that the regime actually works and whether the compliance costs associated with the regime outweigh whatever effectiveness there is in the system. There are also growing questions over the “opportunity costs” associated with the existing AML regime such as the huge amounts of money being spent on compliance as well as humanitarian costs associated with the restriction on money transfers and movement.
Continue reading “Turley To Moderate Panel On Money Laundering At World Bank”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Simple marijuana possession is legal in several states and is likely to be in others in the future. Yet, the taint of a marijuana conviction on record can be a limiting factor for the convicted seeking employment and other benefits–Especially for engaging in an act that is essentially legal in green states. While certainly the courts are under no present obligation to expunge these records, morally it can be argued that state legislatures should put this social handicap to a rest.
Continue reading “It’s Time To Expunge Minor Marijuana Conviction Records In Legal States”