There is a sad story out of London that is a commentary on the mutating influence of anonymity on the Internet. Brenda Leyland killed herself after being confronted about her online abuse of the parents of the missing girl Madeleine McCann. Sky News tracked her down as the troll responsible for thousands of hate filled messages to Kate and Gerry McCann, whose three-year-old daughter went missing in Portugal in 2007. Continue reading “Death of a Troll: Suicide Highlights The Perils and Prosecution of Anonymous Speech”
Category: Criminal law
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Blogger
Can religious beliefs actually retard our intuitions for justice and fairness? Research seems to suggest it might well. The Christian religion has imbued Western thought with the fundamental belief that God presides over a just world – one where sin is punished and rightly-held beliefs and actions are rewarded. We see this attitude in every aspect of human interaction. Today, in some sparkling sports stadium an earnest athlete is bound to thank his deity of choice for the good fortunes that befell his team or his game changing performance. By extension, the loser ( a value loaded word if ever there was one) will decry his lack of luck. From the Book of Job to Pinocchio and Cinderella, this belief in what some psychologists call “immanent justice” or “The Just Word Hypothesis” seeks to explain our plight and our success. It also hardens our attitudes about the poor, victims of crimes and those folks either buoyed or sunk by pure chance.
The Book of Job gets us into the mindset. A saintly man if ever there was one as the Bible itself acknowledges, God allows Satan to test Job with all manner of suffering to determine his worthiness. Stripped of his wealth, prestige and power, Job then loses his children and ultimately his health and vigor. Still, Job endures and never ever curses his fate – or his God. He does consult his friends for some inkling as to the cause of his travails. Their answer, which comes like a thunderclap is: “Behold,” one of them declares, “God will not cast away an innocent man, neither will he uphold evildoers” (Job 8:20). Classic “Blame the Victim” mentality from this coterie of advisers.
Puzzled but resolute, Job however concludes that despite his worldly righteousness, he can never know divine justice and according to the story prostrates himself silent before his Master’s “Just World.’ For that, he is rewarded with the resumption of his wealth and status. He even replaces his children with seven new ones. The clear message to the world however is the same: God handles the world’s justice and we are powerless to exact our own except on only the most superficial level.
Jesus himself gets in on the act in the New Testament. Addressing the multitude in the Sermon on the Mount, he has two distinct things to say about justice and our expectations of it: Blessed are…..those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled. (Matt. 5:6) and Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:10). In modern speak, “Don’t worry God will handle it in his own way and, if you let him do so, you’ll get the whole enchilada. The pearly gates, the mansions, those singing and harp-playing cherubim … you, my faithful believer, get it all.”
Continue reading “Religion, Justice and The Just World Hypothesis”
While President Barack Obama continues to assure the public that he is protecting privacy and the press, his Administration continues to do precisely the opposite in court with comprehensive attacks on civil liberties. A good example is the continued abuse of two-time Pulitzer prize winner and New York Times investigative reporter and author James Risen. Risen continues to be threatened by the Justice Department with arrest because he is protecting the identity of his sources. Risen spoke this weekend and observed simply that “Obama hates the press.”
Continue reading “New York Times Reporter: “Obama Hates The Press””
Ashley R. Tull, 30 of Selbyville, Delaware was busted for drugs in an especially costly way. Her 4-year-old daughter mistakenly brought packages of heroin to school and, thinking they were candy, handed them out to friends. Now, Tull faces not just charges for Maintaining a Drug Property but three counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child (based on her three children).
There has been some predicable and understandable objections to the selection of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, as this year’s commencement speaker for Goddard College in Vermont. Faulkner’s widow and others have decried his recorded appearance from Mahanoy state prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania. However, as is all too often the case, politicians have responded to such good-faith objections with a highly questionable, poorly crafted law that allows victims to seek injunctions in future such cases.
We have yet another scandal involving an underaged student and a teacher. However, the scandal in Gretna, Louisiana is different in that it involves two teachers in an alleged ménage à trios. Shelley Dufresne, 32, and Rachel Respess, 24, are accused of having group sex with a male student at Destrehan High School, about 23 miles west of New Orleans. What was most striking to me is how, if the allegation is true, these teachers put their lives and liberty at stake for such a relationship. The teenager reportedly bragged to friends that he was having sex with not one but two teachers.
Continue reading “Two Louisiana Teachers Arrested For Alleged Group Sex With Teenage Boy”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I have written in the past about our large financial institutions and their uncanny ability to break the law and escape any criminal penalties at the corporate or personal level. If the Department of Justice had actually indicted a Bank of America official and procured a criminal conviction, that Bank of America official could have assisted the corporate office in their no-bid contract to handle all of the federal prison systems inmate financial services and email services.
“A few blocks north, however, at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center, there exists a market that Bank of America has locked down, literally. For the 790 federal prisoners incarcerated at MCC, Bank of America controls the provision of money transfers, e-messaging and some telephone services.
The bank’s monopoly extends across the federal Bureau of Prisons system—121 institutions housing 214,365 inmates. Since 2000, Bank of America has collected at least $76.3 million for its work on the program.” Readersupportednews That would be $76.3 Million dollars in the Bank of America coffers without any need or worry about having to compete for this latest sweetheart deal. Continue reading “Banks Have the Federal Prison System Handcuffed”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Today we feature the City of Everett, Washington, a city with a few rather interesting municipal codes. Several ordinances on the book should serve as both lessons in unconstitutionality and comic relief. From prohibitions on certain public gatherings, to regulations on ducks to criminal impersonation of crossing guards, Everett can bring an assortment of entertainment for the unsuspecting tourist.
Continue reading “The Laws Of Everett, Washington: The Unconstitutional And The Bizarre”
When the Obama Administration sent in a team to investigate civil rights violations in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, some of us expressed doubt over the basis for such a charge as well as the timing of the federal move into the case. Indeed, I was highly skeptical of how the case was charged and prosecuted. Now the Washington Post is reporting that, after two years of investigation, Justice officials do not believe that they have sufficient evidence to bring federal charges.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson has sentenced former Sorrento Police Chief Earl Theriot Jr. to probation with no jail time after he lied to the FBI about an alleged sexual assault of a woman under arrest. Theriot will have to pay just $2,500. No state charges have been brought thus far against Theriot for the alleged assault of the 42-year-old woman who was arrested for public intoxication.
This is Mikie Sawyer, 26, who is accused of being a demonstrably horrible person . . . and an accused felon. Harry Sander, 80, was at Applebee’s when he said Sawyer was speaking loudly with various obscenities. Sander reportedly asked Sawyer politely to stop the foul language in the family restaurant and Sander allegedly proceeded to cuss him out and punch the octogenarian in the face. Please promise me that this will make it to a jury. Hopefully, Sawyer will to take the restaurant’s new slogan literally: “See you tomorrow”.
Warning: this story contains foul language.
Officials have informed Ohio State student Anthony J. Wunder, 21, that he will be stripped of his full scholarship as a result of his running on to the field in the second quarter of the game between the Buckeyes and the Cincinnati Bearcats. The incident went viral with pictures of assistant Buckeyes coach (and former OSU linebacker) Anthony Schlegel tackling Wunder. It appears that linebackers never truly forget their techniques or training.
Continue reading “Wunderkind: Ohio State Student Stripped Of Full Scholarship After Football Stunt”
We have been discussing the alarming and baffling migration of Muslim men and women from the West to join the blood-soaked Islamic State or ISIS forces as they behead and murder their way through captured territories. While the vast majority of Muslims are disgusted by ISIS, the chilling reality is that there is a large portion of people who do not just support but long to behead and torture other people. Oklahoma is facing precisely that reality in two cases involving Muslim men who appear to identify with ISIS and relish the concept of beheading people in the name of Islam. It is a fatal attraction that may explain the thousands flocking from the West to the ranks of the Islamic State.
Stacey Dean Rambold, 55, is heading back to jail after his resentencing as a sex offender. After a light sentence of just 31 days in jail for the statutory rape of Cherice Moralez, 14, Rambold was given a sentence of 15 years in prison. Moralez committed suicide in 2010 before the case went to trial.
It appears that the Uber Taxi driver discussed today is not the only person who is reportedly using the “she asked for it” defense to sexual assault. The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office is blaming a former state prison clerk for her own rape in litigation against the prison. The 24-year-old typist was working at the state prison at Rockview in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in 2013 when she was choked unconscious and raped for 27 minutes by Omar Best, an image convicted three times previously of sex-related crimes. Worse yet, Best had been transferred from a different state prison for assaulting a female assistant but the prison still allowed him unsupervised visits with female employees.
Continue reading “The Best Defense? Pennsylvania Blames Prison Employee For Her Own Rape By Inmate”