There is a bizarre case out of New Jersey where Michelle Hurley is charged with choking her husband nearly to death with a lamp cord. The victim, 50, was unconscious when the police arrived and remains hospitalized in critical condition.
Category: Criminal law
India has yet another case of religious vigilantes murdering neighbors to punish what they view as a blasphemy. Mohammad Akhlaq and his 22-year-old son were dragged from their house by around 100 villagers in Dadri and Akhlaq beaten to death on the outskirts of Delhi. The cause? A rumor that they had butchered a cow. Mohammad Akhlaq’s older son Mohammad Sartaj, 24, is an engineer with the Air Force.
Continue reading “Muslim Man Beaten To Death By Hindu Mob After Rumor That His Family Killed A Cow”
When Stephanie Hernandez, an Arkansas mother of a 3-year-old and an 8-month-old daughter, was found dead recently, the police did not have to look far. They simply checked out social media and found a picture of her boyfriend, Rafael Gonzalez, pointing a gun at her head. Hernandez was killed just hours after the pictures were posted on Snapchat.
There is an interesting controversy out of New York county where Acting District Attorney, Madeline Singas in Nassau County has prohibited prosecutors from owning a handgun. This is a curious way for an “acting” district attorney to start if she wants to be an actual district attorney since I believe that rule is unconstitutional. Prosecutors like other citizens have a second amendment right to own a gun. [Update: Singas has withdrawn her clearly unconstitutional condition on prosecutors]
There is a deeply disturbing trial unfolding in Germany involving another “honor killing.” Asadullah Khan, 51, strangled his 19-year-old daughter to death for bringing dishonor on his Muslim family after she stopped wearing the Islamic head scarf and continued to see her boyfriend and was then caught shoplifting condoms. The father and mother, Sharzia, 41, then dressed the dead body of Lareeb, put the corpse into a wheelchair to bring it to a car, then drove from Darmstadt to a remote forest where they rolled her down an embankment (she was found the next day). Both are charged and the key witness against them is their daughter Nida. The parents are from Pakistan and Khan speaks little German.
Continue reading “Muslim Couple On Trial For Strangling Daughter In “Honor Killing” in Germany”
I have long been a critic of the use of shock belts, particularly in courtrooms. Those concerns were magnified this week when Judge Jack Skeen or his deputies shocked criminal defendant James Calvert for failing to stand while addressing the court. Calvert had a long history of disrupting the court proceeding.
Continue reading “Texas Prisoner Reportedly Shocked For Failing To Stand While Addressing Court”
Most of our parents told us about not bragging but John Mogan, 28, and Ashely Duboe, 24, appear to have missed that (in addition to a notable large number of other lessons in their lives). Mogan, a parolee, had allegedly just robbed the Savings Bank in Ashville, just outside of Columbus. He and Duboe celebrated by posting pictures with the cash.
Jonathan Harrington, 21, thought he had a great joke when he heard that the University regularly inspected dorm rooms for drugs. Harrington took powdered sugar in lines to look like cocaine on his desk with a rolled up dollar bill and seven aspiring pills. The university police proceeded to do a field test and declared it to be real cocaine — leading to Harrington being charged with felony drug possession.
Stephanie Marie Moore, 20, is the latest person who had been felled by a self-inflicted social media wound. Moore’s Snapchat picture riding sea turtles went viral and led to her arrest for animal cruelty this weekend in Melbourne, Florida.
Last week, Qatar’s Sheik Khalid bin Hamad Al-Thani first took a dangerous high-speed race through the streets of Beverly Hills and then allegedly told a reporter that he could kill him given his diplomatic immunity (which he didn’t have) . . . . and then fled the country in contempt of U.S. laws. Now, a Saudi prince has been arrested at a hillside compound near Beverly Hills after allegedly trying to force a worker to perform a sex act on him. Saudi prince Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud was arrested on suspicion of forced oral copulation of an adult. The arrest followed the reported sighting of a woman covered in blood trying to escape the compound by climbing an eight-foot wall. He is now accused of sexually abusing and beating at least three women during a three-day party in his $37 million Beverly Hills home.
Continue reading “Another Arab Prince Faces Criminal Charges In Beverly Hills”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Yazidi Rights Groups, Non-Governmental Organizations, and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq Petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute ISIS for crimes against humanity and genocide for the terrorist organizations atrocities committed against citizens in Iraq and Syria.
Ekurd Daily reported how the new effort to bring legal accountability to actors in the war torn region.
Members of Yazda International and Free Yazidi Foundation, backed by the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq (KRG), met with ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda today to present their new report outlining how [ISIS] fighters have slaughtered, enslaved, and raped thousands of Yazidis since it invaded their communities in the Nineveh province in northern Iraq last August. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls remain captive as sex slaves among IS militants.
These acts of violence committed by [ISIS] fighters against the Yazidis and other non-Muslim minorities in the region have been documented before. But Murad Ismael, co-founder of Yazda, told VICE News his group’s report provides further evidence of abuses against Yazidis at the hands of foreign fighters. According to the report, there’s an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people from Australia, Jordan, Europe, and beyond fighting for [ISIS].
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
We have followed the plight of several reporters for the news medium Al Jazeera who were imprisoned and subjected to various appeals on behalf of the prosecution to ensure their place amongst the incarcerated, accused under dubious evidence of involvement with terrorist organizations and the crime of reporting of false information. The courts even went so far as to accuse them of doing the work of the devil. (HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE)
For over a year there has been much outcry in the world media and the public about the abuses against free speech, journalists, and citizens; especially focused it was on these reporters. Now, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi grants a pardon to these Al Jazeera reporters.
Continue reading “Egypt President Pardons Imprisoned Al Jazeera Reporters”
We discussed this week the case of two Texas teenage football players who viciously attacked a ref under orders from one of the coaches. The shocking incident was captured on videotape. Now an eighteen-year-old Linden High School (NJ) football player is on videotape (below) pulling off the helmet of an opponent’s helmet and then hitting him in the head with it. After an outcry, supporters insisted that the opposing player had used a racial slur and cheated. Once again, however, (as with the same allegation in Texas) a physical assault is not a justified response to either alleged act.
We previously discussed the bizarre case of Cook County prosecutor, Sarah Naughton, who was involved in a drunken, swearing, biting incident at a sex shop after a Cubs game. The Illinois Supreme Court has now accepted a consent suspension for Naughton.
The Clinton email scandal continues to get worse by the day with State Department officials directly contradicting the long-standing account given by Hillary Clinton. Clinton has long maintained that she turned over a portion of her emails (those not deleted as “personal”) after receiving a letter that went to her and three of her predecessors: Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice as a routine inquiry. The gist is that there was nothing alarming about her exclusive use of a server under her control rather than the secured State Department system. State Department officials now confirm that the request was specifically related to the discovery that Clinton was using a personal email system as her exclusive means of communication. This revelation occurs the same week that the FBI has announced that it has already retrieved some of the emails and that the Clinton staffers who “wiped” the system did a poor job that left the material easily accessible — deepening the earlier concerns over the presence of what is now confirmed to be classified material on Clinton’s unsecured server. The FBI sources described Clinton’s IT person as “not very good.”
Continue reading “State Department Contradicts Clinton’s Long-Standing Account On E-Mails”