The Ninth Circuit ruled last week that La Carl Mertez Dow deserves a new trial in reversing a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton (left) in Oakland, California that it was harmless for a prosecutor to give false information to a jury that Dow was trying to hide a scar in a lineup. The fact that this case had to go to the federal court of appeals to be overturned is a chilling reminder of how our criminal justice system has been warped by the harmless error standard. Courts routinely find constitutional violations in federal cases only to dismiss them as harmless by saying that the defendant would likely have been convicted anyway. The case is Dow v. Virga, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 18468.
Category: Criminal law
A reader on Reddit captured this image of a motorcycle cop not only texting while driving but texting with both hands. It is not clear whether he is reporting himself to his colleagues for ticketing.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
The Show Me state, has been making news lately. Unfortunately, the news it has been making has nothing to do with the St. Louis Arch or the baseball Cardinals, but its legislature’s penchant for attempting to nullify Federal laws that it does not agree with. The State of Missouri is working hard to nullify Federal gun laws and Obamacare.
“If you ever wondered what a 21st century nullification crisis would look like, look no further than Missouri. One hundred and forty eight years after the end of the Civil War, the New York Times reports, “the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them.” Meanwhile, the Show Me State is doing everything it can to effectively block implementation of the Affordable Care Act.” Daily Kos
I guess Missouri wants to Show the rest of the nation that the Constitution and its Supremacy Clause is not worth the parchment it is written on. In case you are not sure what is meant when a State tries to nullify a Federal law, here is a little primer on the subject. Continue reading “Nullification-Missouri Style”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
This is an update to a story originally posted here by Charlton Stanley, “Polygraphers trigger fear response in Federal prosecutors.”
Chad Dixon, a 34 year old Marion, Indiana little league coach who ran the “PolygraphExpert.net” website teaching people how to defeat polygraph tests, was sentenced to eight months in jail for threatening national security by teaching government job applicants how to beat lie-detector tests. Teaching such techniques and discussing them is not per se illegal. It is an admitted gray area in 1st Amendment jurisprudence. However, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady found the evidence compelling enough that Dixon had crossed the line when he advised some clients, including two undercover officers, to conceal what he taught them while undergoing government polygraphs. This is in addition to the charges of obstruction and wire fraud Dixon plead guilty to last year.
Nina Ginsberg, Dixon’s attorney, accused prosecutors of trying to turn her client into a “poster child for its newly undertaken campaign” to stop people from using the polygraph disruption techniques. the prosecution had sought a two year sentence, but Judge O’Grady thought that eight months was sufficient. O’Grady said, “There’s nothing unlawful about maybe 95 percent of the business he conducted,” although he added that “a sentence of incarceration is absolutely necessary to deter others.”
As Charlton Stanley’s original column indicated, lie detectors are anything but a lie detector. “[L]ie detector technology has no known statistical properties with regard to detecting deception of any kind. It has not been accepted as science in the scientific community. The only thing scientists seem to agree on is most of these machines measure stress reactions in humans, and to that extent, they can measure stress in people who feel stress—that’s it.”
Deterrent based on legitimate concerns or chilling of free speech in the name of protecting a test of dubious value?
What do you think?
Source: Seattle Times
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Presumed cooked.
There is an old adage, “What’s good for the goose is [not] sauce for the gander” or as phrased today “What’s good for the goose is [not] good for the gander”. The implication being that what is good for one is good for all or not good for all if stated in the negated form. A case out of Florida provides a perfect example to give this adage a workout.
The goose is former President George W. Bush.
The member of the gander in this case is William T. Woodward of Titusville, Florida. Woodward is charged with shooting three of his neighbors, two of them fatally, over the 2012 Labor Day weekend.
His defense? The sauce.
Woodward’s attorneys are asserting Florida’s “Stand Your Ground’ law and the Bush Doctrine.
Let’s examine this case in the light of the history and consequences of “Stand Your Ground”, the Bush Doctrine and how an equally controversial foreign policy stance might impact a domestic criminal proceeding.
Continue reading “Good for Goose and Gander? Or Just Foul Play? – The Bush Doctrine Redux”
Various news sites are reporting that Alireza Forghani, prominent Khamenei strategist and former governor of southern Iran’s Kish Province, has warned that the daughters of American officials will be kidnapped and raped by Muslims in response to any Syrian attack. He would presumably include President Obama’s daughters in a latest insight into the twisted religious fanaticism of Iranian officials. The quote is all-too-believable for Forghani who previously called for the eradication of Jews in Israel. He also previously proclaimed “In the name of Allah, Iran must attack Israel by 2014.”
In Ohio, Athens County Municipal Judge William A. Grim has been reversed in his denial of the right to appointed counsel to a young man accused of interfering with police. While Kelly Kasler, 22, is an adult and her parents declined to pay for a lawyer, Grim refused counsel to her because she was being supported in college by her parents. It was a clearly wrong decision and the concerns over Grim’s judgment were magnified in a case where a citizen is accused of interfering with police.
In its latest attack on the free speech, the Obama Administration has secured a gag order to prevent activist-journalist Barrett Brown and his lawyers from discussing his work exposing online surveillance by the Administration. On this occasion, however, Eric Holder and the Obama Administration convinced a federal judge to go along. U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in Dallas Texas has issued a sweeping gag order to prevent not just Brown but his legal team from discussing the online surveillance. The Justice Department insisted on the order to protect Brown. That’s right, they insist that, if Brown discussed the abusive surveillance by the Obama Administration, it would endanger his right to a fair trial.
Some jurisdictions have curtailed or even eliminated K-9 teams due to liability — reducing the majority of dogs to drug and bomb sniffing units. That is clearly not the case in Livingston, Montana. Mark Demaline, who cooks at the Park Place Tavern, was attacked late at night in his workplace when police found a door unlocked after hours and sent in a police dog named Bobi. What is most astonishing is not just the lack of an apology by police but the insistence of Chief of Police Darren Raney (left) that the dog “did what he was supposed to do.”
There is a controversy in Durham where Police Chief Jose Lopez is accused of making a vile statement about a public defender. Lopez allegedly stated that the public defender deserved to be shot in a crime because he representing accused criminals. If true, Lopez would appear to not only agree with Dick in Henry IV that “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Continue reading “Durham Police Chief Accused Of Saying That Public Defender Deserved To Be Shot”
A videotape out of Hawthorne, California (15 miles out of Los Angeles) is raising questions not only about police arresting a man for videotaping them in public but shooting the man’s dog when it comes to his aide. Warning: the arrest of Leon Rosby, 52, shown below, is a disturbing video with a graphic scene of the shooting of his dog, Max.
There is a criminal case out of Syracuse that once again seems to confirm that evolution is at best a work in progress for our species. Andy and Nayel Ashkar and their father, Nayef, truly qualify as some of the lowest forms of humanity after they allegedly conspired to rip off maintenance worker Robert Miles who won a $5 million lottery ticket. The men worked at the convenience store of their father, The Green Ale Market, in October 2006 and told Miles that the ticket was worth only $5000 and bought it from him for $4000. They waited seven years to claim the ticket but lottery officials were suspicious. Miles has now received his money and at least one brother has received his just desserts.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
A story four days ago caught my attention and I thought I’d present it for discussion. In recent years many have claimed that there is a “war on religion” taking place in America. This “so-called war” has been the result of many rulings that have tried to enforce the cherished principle of “freedom of religion”, but of necessity could also be called “freedom from religion.” When I was young most of the stores in my neighborhood were required to close on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. This was a hardship for Jews that celebrated their Sabbath on Saturday and Muslims that celebrated their Sabbaths on Friday. It affected Asian merchants, with their own native beliefs, that didn’t have a formal Sabbath. Many of these “blue laws” have been repealed because of the reality that they are showing preferential treatment to one particular religion, in a country that is made up of many religions and whose Constitution is believed by many to ban such preferential treatment.
The Supreme Court’s most important case on “blue laws” is McGowan vs. Maryland.
“The Supreme Court of the United States held in its landmark case, McGowan v. Maryland (1961), that Maryland‘s blue laws violated neither the Free Exercise Clause nor the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It approved the state’s blue law restricting commercial activities on Sunday, noting that while such laws originated to encourage attendance at Christian churches, the contemporary Maryland laws were intended to serve “to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens” on a secular basis and to promote the secular values of “health, safety, recreation, and general well-being” through a common day of rest. That this day coincides with Christian Sabbath is not a bar to the state’s secular goals; it neither reduces its effectiveness for secular purposes nor prevents adherents of other religions from observing their own holy days.[9]
There were four landmark Sunday-law cases altogether in 1961. The other three were Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U.S. 617 (1961); Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961); Two Guys from Harrison vs. McGinley, 366 U.S. 582 (1961). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws
I personally disagree with the SCOTUS decision in these cases and think that the logic used is disingenuous. The purpose of the Sunday “blue laws” was of course to promote religious attendance and encourage that attendance at Christian services on Sunday. A secondary reason was one of respect to Christianity and its belief that the Sabbath day of rest demanded in the Ten Commandments was Sunday. To say that it was to serve as a “uniform day of rest for all citizens” is frankly an untruth and adds intent to these laws that was never present in their imposition. This week though another ruling came down in what I see as a related case involving what I see as our right to have “freedom from religion” and I would like to add that to the discussion. Continue reading “Higher Power or Else!”
We have had a long litany of stories where we have criticized the Saudi Sharia system and the Kingdom’s treatment of religious minorities and women. So, when the Kingdom does something progressive, it is equally important to note it. This week, the Saudi cabinet passed a ban on domestic violence and other forms of abuse against women. That may seem a bit long in coming — by a few hundred years — but it is a major breakthrough for women given the Islamic clerics who still insist that beating your wife is ordained by God, as expressed in the Koran.
If David Wayne Jordan, 36, goes to prison, he is likely to be viewed as the modern Robin Hood. In this case, the man of Bellingham forest was using his skill with a bow to bring marijuana to the men of Whatcom County Jail. The arrow with a small baggie of pot missed the alleged target, the second-floor recreation area. After his arrest, Jordan insisted that he was aiming at a squirrel. Presumably, the squirrel would eat the pot, become disoriented and then fall to its death outside of the prison wall.