There is a creepy but provocative issue raised by an advertisement in Barcelona, Spain this month. The posters offered “abuse-free child pornography” that asked viewers to “Send us naked photos of when you were a child. For child pornography without abuse. +18 Yes to Pedophilia. No to Abuse.” The posters were later taken down, but they raise a challenging (if admittedly unsettling) legal question. If people are turning over pictures of themselves as children (without any prior abuse or sexual acts depicted), does it still constitute child pornography? Update: The articles on this story reported that the posters were displayed by JCDeaux, an advertising firm. However, I have communicated with a representative of the company who has stated that it had no role in the posters and “JCDecaux is investigating this unauthorized insertion of the poster in our bus shelter in Barcelona. We removed the poster as soon as we were made aware of it.”
Continue reading “Spanish Campaign Asks For Donation Of Childhood Photos As “Abuse-Free Children Pornography” (Updated)”
Category: Criminal law
Even as a former resident of New Orleans who truly loves the city, I have been a long critic of Nagin who I met a number of times through the years. I was mystified and irritated by the failure of the voters to toss out Nagin from office after his shameful performance during the Katrina disaster. Nagin was widely ridiculed for his virtual absence during the disaster as he stayed in his hotel room overlooking the city. Moreover, the national media fawned over the young, handsome mayor even as he made unhinged comments and pranced around like a prima donna. In the meantime, Nagin set out to profit from the disaster both politically and personally. Nevertheless, the voters of New Orleans reelected one of the worst mayors in the country as they sought federal funding for disaster relief. He is now a convicted belong after a jury found him guilty on 20 of 21 federal corruption counts, including bribery. It is one of the least surprising legal stories of the decade. His conviction should cause some in the Democratic party, in the media, and particularly among the voters of New Orleans to consider their own complicity in enabling this corrupt, narcissistic politician.
Continue reading “The Big [Not-So] Easy: Nagin Convicted on 20 Out of 21 Counts”
We recently discussed the decision by the Los Angeles district attorney not to charge officers who shot up a vehicle of an innocent man because they were acting in “an atmosphere of fear and extreme anticipation.”Officers were on edge in the search for cop-killer Christopher Dorner (right). We now have a decision in the shooting that proceeded the McGee case where eight Los Angeles police officers fired over 100 times. Margie Carranza, then 47, was cut by flying glass while her then 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez was shot in the back. You guessed it. No one will be fired or even suspended.
Woody Allen continues to be a virtual fountain of interesting criminal and civil cases. Over the weekend, Allen responded to an op-ed in the New York Times in which his adopted daughter, Dylan, 28, who accused him again of sexual abuse. In Allen’s responsive op-ed, he again denies the allegations and blames an overzealous prosecutor. While unnamed, it could only former Litchfield State’s Attorney Frank Maco. Now Maco is suggesting that he may now sue Allen for defamation.
Continue reading “Former Prosecutor Announces That He May Sue Woody Allen Over Child Abuse Column”
Sometimes one has to acknowledge the possibility that there is a God . . . with a wicked sense of humor. In Iraq, a commander at a terrorist camp was teaching a class on suicide bombings with a belt packed with explosives. There is now an opening on the faculty after the instructor accidentally blew himself up with his suicidal students. It was a case of Publish or And Perish.
Northern Virginia is reeling from the murder of a beloved music teacher, Ruthanne Lodato, 59, in her Alexandria home. I have a connection to the victim. We lived in Alexandria before moving to McLean and Ruthanne led the music class for three of my four children. It was a wonderful music class called Music Together Alexandria at the Del Ray United Methodist Church for toddlers. While I only knew her through the class years when my children were toddlers, Ruthanne was a wonderfully warm and giving person. We are all devastated by the news and the community has rallied around the effort to find the man shown in police sketches.
Continue reading “Beloved Music Teacher Murdered In Alexandria As Police Search For Killer”
Gloria Eun Hye Lee is facing the type of charge that you do not want to put in front of any jury. The Las Vegas a pet shop owner is accused of torching her own store. The problem is that she allegedly decided to leave 27 puppies inside in the arson attempt.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
On February 7th, 2014, the sad reports were compiled from the deadly day before. On Thursday, February 6th, at least 24 people were shot and 14 of them were killed. Two of the dead were small children. The shootings and killings were from cities and towns all across the country. A 17 month old girl was accidentally shot by her 3 year old brother in North Carolina.
A 13-year-old was accidentally shot and killed while playing with a shotgun in the state of Washington. In Seattle, Washington, a man was shot and killed by a fellow tenant. A man in his 30’s was shot several times and critically wounded in Owasso, Oklahoma. A 18 year man was shot and killed at his uncle’s home in South Carolina. These and others were all wounded or killed by gunfire on February 6th, 2014. Just one sad day out of many. Continue reading “All In a Day’s Work”
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
A 2009 report by the National Research Council (NRC) passed quietly into the night (except in legal and forensic circles) while barely garnering more than a ripple in the public’s psyche. It should have been a tidal wave given news last December that a 48-year-old New Jersey man, Gerard Henderson, who spent 19 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, was done in by faulty crime lab work. Henderson was convicted largely on “bite mark” evidence. Bite mark evidence is a process used to exam indentations and anomalies on a victim’s body and ostensibly made by human teeth which are then matched to a defendant’s dentures in an effort to prove that he/she was the perpetrator of the crime. Convicted in 1995, Henderson proved that state testing of the bite marks on the back of 19-year-old victim, Monica Reyes, was deeply flawed and conducted without sufficient safeguards to insure its reliability.
Independent forensic scientists working for Project Innocence could not reproduce findings by the state crime lab which is the gold standard for scientific verifiability. Henderson became one of the more than two dozen people wrongfully convicted of rape or murder since 2000 as a direct result of flawed bite mark evidence analysis all duly attested to as accurate by the local crime lab.
Continue reading “Think You Can Rely On Your Local Crime Lab For The Unvarnished Truth? Think Again”
by Charlton “Chuck” Stanley, Weekend Contributor
Last week, I reported on the deliberate misfiling, destruction, and throwing away files at the Records Center in St. Louis. Although an audit showed several employees were outside normal limits for error rates, only two were serious enough to warrant charges.
As I described in the earlier story last week, one of the men, 28-year-old Lonnie Halkmon, entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government records. Halkmon was sentenced to forty hours of community service and two years probation. He could have gotten up to six months in jail on that charge.
Engram was responsible for the destruction of more than a thousand records. He destroyed some of them, threw 241 away in the woods near the Center, and took others home with him where he tossed them in the trash.
Continue reading “Second Worker at the Military Records Center in St. Louis Sentenced”
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
Teen idol and Canadian citizen Justin Bieber just entered the consciousness of serious adults but it wasn’t for his singing or making their teenage daughters swoon. No, Justin set the world ablaze due to a pot smoke-filled airline cabin and a felony arrest for egging a neighbor’s house. And lest you think the American Congress has better things to do than follow the shenanigans of today’s latest pop star, think again. At least one senator has called for his deportation and an on-line petition to jump-start that process has gathered 100,000 signatures.
Members of Congress are shocked, shocked this week. No this Claude Rains moment was not over the hundreds of billions spent on unpopular wars or the creeping economy or the evisceration of civil liberties in America. No, that stuff is just fine. What had members struggling in front of reporters to avoid being sick in the halls of Congress was Edward Snowden. Yes, it is the latest classified hearing and the latest unclassified outrage to convince Americans that it is Snowden that they must fear despite polls saying that Americans fear their own government as much or more than terrorism. Thus, House Armed Services Committee members left the meeting and called again for Snowden to be captured and thrown in prison for life, if not executed. I previously wrote a column that a strong argument could be made for a presidential pardon, but the renewed effort to turn public opinion likely reflects a growing international view of Snowden as a whistleblower.
Continue reading “House Members Renew Call For The Capture Of Snowden As “Traitor” and Spy”
Clyde Ray Spencer, a former motorcycle patrolman, was secured a $9 million damage award from a federal jury after spending nearly two decades in jail on a fabricated case. The jury found that two of his colleagues at the police department fabricated evidence and possibly coached witnesses to convict him of sexually abusing his two children. Retired Clark County Police police Sgt. Michael Davidson and retired Detective Sharon Krause have been accused of the most serious violations in the case.
There is an interesting ruling in Florida where U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell has ruled that a Florida lawyer, James Cheney Mason, does not have to pay on a $1 million challenge that he made in a television interview. Mason offered the money to anyone who disproved his client’s alibi in a murder case. Then South Texas College Law Student San Dustin Kolodziej took him at his word and said that he disproved the defense theory for Nelson Serrano (left). Mason then refused to pay up and now Honeywell is allowing him to keep the money. The case involves a unilateral contract sometimes called a “prove me wrong” case where someone offer payment to anyone who can prove the offeror wrong regarding a particular claim.
The California Highway Police appear to have spent little time in making an arrest in a recent crash in Chula Vista, California. Unfortunately, the officer arrested a fire fighter who was struggling to help the seriously injured driver and other victims.