International media is reporting that Kim Jong-un ordered his ex girlfriend, Hyon Song-wol and members of her orchestra machine-gunned to death shortly after watching one of their popular performances. They were accused of the rather incongruous crimes of making pornography and possessing bibles. The notion of a cabal of bible-thumping pornographers would be laughable in most countries but perfectly consistent in “the second happiest place on Earth.” Indeed, the bizarre environment created in North Korea makes it very difficult to dismiss stories that would initially appear a hoax. The fact that this is considered in the realm of possibility says much about the state of North Korea.
Category: Criminal law
A California Sutter County District Attorney Carl Adams has been named a “person of interest” in the suspected arson of the Yuba City home of Sarah Garibay, 32. Garibay was the mistress of Adams, who is married and the father of three. While Adams could well be entirely innocent, but his conduct in the matter at a minimum raises questions of his fitness to continue in office.
Continue reading “California Prosecutor Named As “Person of Interest” In Torching Of Lover’s Home”
Many people were horrified at the death of 88-year-old World War II veteran Delbert “Shorty” Belton in the parking lot of his Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge. Belton survived the Battle of Okinawa where he was wounded but lost his life in a parking lot at the hands of teenagers Kenan Adams-Kinard and Demetruis Glenn, both 16, in Spokane, Washington. Now, it has been disclosed that Adams-Kinard says that the whole thing was a crack deal gone bad with Belton as the dealer in a type of Geriatric edition of Breaking Bad. The teen said that the whole thing started when they went to get a “zip of crack cocaine from Shorty,”
The attorney for the city of Union, William “Billy” Whitney Jr., 65,, has been arrested after being accused of dismissing criminal defendants in exchange for sexual favors. He was employed as a prosecuting attorney for Union in 2011 and 2012 when the alleged misconduct occurred.
There is a controversy brewing at Tulane Law School where I began my academic career. The law school was the scene of a confrontation between controversial conservative filmmaker and activist James O’Keefe and former U.S. Attorney James Letten whose office handled the prosecution of O’Keefe for his entry in the office of Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu under false pretenses. Letten is now an Assistant Dean at the law school. Letten never explained why he recused himself from the case but O’Keefe suggests that he was responsible for leaking confidential information to the media. In the video below posted and edited by O’Keefe, Letten confronted O’Keefe and accuses him of “terrorizing” his wife and violating state and federal law by appearing at the law school. Letten calls O’Keefe and his crew a bunch of “hobbits” and berates the filmmaker. While I am no fan of O’Keefe, I am afraid that I do not see the basis for the alleged crimes by O’Keefe or the basis for his being held by law enforcement outside of the law school. The school has banned O’Keefe from the campus after the confrontation with Letten.
Stacey Dean Rambold, 54, is a former teacher who confessed to a sexual relationship with Cherice Morales, a 14-year-old girl at his high school — a girl who later committed suicide. Despite the original charge of multiple counts of statutory rape and a sentencing to 15 years in prison, Yellowstone County District Judge G. Todd Baugh suspended all of that sentence but 31 days and then gave him credit for one day in jail. That left a sentence of 30 days for statutory rape.
There is an investigation afoot in England where someone felled one of the Queen’s swans, plucked it, and barbecued it on the riverbank near Windsor Castle. In a throwback to the age of Robin Hood, all swans in England remain the property of the Crown and, until 1988, killing a swan was an act of treason. The Mute Swans remain protected under law.
Continue reading “English Police Hunt Person Who Killed And Barbecued One of Queen’s Swans”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist?” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII – 11
“All war is deception.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
As previously discussed, “we need to differentiate between the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’. Strategy is defined in relevant part by Webster’s as ‘the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war’. Tactics, by contrast, is defined in relevant part by Webster’s as ‘the art or skill of employing available means to accomplish an end’ and ‘the study of the grammatical relations within a language including morphology and syntax’. By better understanding the tactics of propagandists, you not only gain a certain degree of immunity from their influence, but insight into their strategic ends.”
Today we will address strategy and tactics in the form of a case study. The context is the so-called “War on Drugs” and state’s efforts to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational use. The strategy is to exacerbate so called drug crime violence by obliquely attacking the burgeoning states effort to legalize marijuana and those who trade in legal marijuana by deliberately putting them at risk. The primary tactic in question is misdirection. When analyzing propaganda, it’s important to ask who brings the message, what do they want me to think, why do they want me to think it and how do they benefit? The leader of this campaign against the American people? United States Attorney General Eric Holder. Let’s examine the what, why and who benefits from what Mr. Holder wants you to think.
Continue reading “Propaganda 106 – Waging War (A Case Study) [UPDATED]”
Submitted by Charlton Stanley, guest blogger
There is no dispute that jails are overcrowded. Many counties spend millions on new and improved jails, only to have them fill to capacity the first day they open. This is nothing new. Some judges have found themselves faced with the dilemma of sentencing a defendant to jail, but there is literally, “No room at the inn.” Some chief judges have been forced to order felony inmates released before their sentences were up, simply to make room for new inmates.
Some judges, especially at the municipal and county levels, have turned to creative sentencing. Some of the sentences seem to fit the crime and make one smile at the same time, such as sentencing young adults with ‘boom-box’ cars ticketed for loud music to spend anywhere from an hour to all day listening to classical music, jazz, bagpipes and oriental music. There was one judge who played saxophone in a jazz band, and he would throw in a few recordings of his own music. I don’t know how good the judge is on the sax, or whether that might come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment.
There are a number of cases where slumlords were ordered to live in their own slum properties. One of those cases was used as the story line on a TV crime drama program several years ago.
Public shaming has been tried as an alternative sentence. Wearing sandwich board signs in public proclaiming their idiocy to their friends and neighbors, wearing a chicken suit, and whatever else the judge thought appropriate. When the Stolen Valor Act was in effect, one defendant was sentenced to 500 hours of community service working with groundskeepers tending the graves at the nearest National Cemetery. I don’t have a problem with making the sentence fit the offense, but some go too far, and some are far too lenient. Lack of consistency or rules for alternative sentences results in lack of fairness to both victims and defendants. It is the other extreme from mandatory minimum sentences where the judge has no discretion at all.
This weekend, Jonathan Turley, our blog host, debated Professor Peter Moskos on NPR. Mr. Moskos is a former police officer and now teaches law. He has written on the subject of alternative punishment, and the title of his most recent book, In Defense of Flogging, is provocative if nothing else. He also authored a column in the Washington Times entitled, Bring Back the Lash: Why flogging is more humane than prison.
Sorry, Professor Moskos. Fifty years after Dr. King gave his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I don’t think we want to go there.
Ever again.
Continue reading “Alternative Sentences and Punishment: Creative or Inhumane?”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I have to admit that I knew very little about the sovereign citizen movement before I read a New York times article a couple of days ago that opened my eyes to the movement and how some in that movement have attacked government officials and civil service workers. To fully understand how members of the sovereign citizens movement think, one must know a little about their beliefs.
“Sovereign citizens believe that in the 1800s, the federal government was gradually subverted and replaced by an illegitimate government. They create their own driver’s licenses and include their thumbprints on documents to distinguish their flesh and blood person from a “straw man” persona that they say has been created by the false government. When writing their names, they often add punctuation marks like colons or hyphens.” New York Times Continue reading “Sovereign Citizens With a Penchant for Filing Liens”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guset Blogger
Annie Dookhan was a chemist in a Massachusetts Department of Public Health drug-testing lab located in the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Jamaica Plain. Dookhan has been indicted on 27 charges including fabricating test results and tampering with drug evidence. Dookhan allegedly told state police that she’d test a few samples but then list them all as positive, and sometimes would take cocaine from another sample and add to a sample that tested negative so it would test positive. Authorities have since shut down the lab. Dookhan has pleaded not guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and is free on $10,000 cash bail.
Continue reading “Over 40,000 Cases Tainted By “Rogue Chemist””
Hindu leader Asaram Bapu caused an outcry recently when he advised that rape victims like the medical student savagely beaten and gang raped in Delhi could have avoided the attack by simply addressing the men as “brothers” and asking for mercy. He also said that saying a prayer might have avoided the attack. Now the “godman” has been booked on charges of forcing a 16-year-old girl into “unnatural sex” at a Jodhpur ashram. It is not clear if she tried to call him “brother.”
We previously saw the case of a professor who had his child taken away from him (and was barred from his own home) because his son mistakenly picked up a hard lemonade drink rather than just lemonade. By that measure, John Coulter is lucky. He was just threatened with arrest and kicked out of an Arizona Cardinals game after he asked his son to hold his beer while he took a picture.
In criminal law and torts, we often discuss acts of passion as a defense. The most difficult cases are often heat-of-passion cases. There are few defendants who could claim the cause for such heat-of-passion acts as Timothy John ‘TJ’ Brewer. Brewer walked in on his wife having sex in his son’s room. To make thing worse, the man was his own father — fire chief Wesley ‘Corky’ Brewer. TJ Brewer, a former sheriff’s deputy hit his wife, pistol-whipped his father, and threaten to kill his father with a handgun. He has now pleaded guilty to assault and assault on a police officer.
Federal Judge Mark Abel in Ohio has imposed a $15 million damage award on former Somali colonel, Abdi Aden Magan, who tortured human rights advocate Abukar Hassan Ahmed. What was most striking about the decision was the statement that such damages are necessary to guarantee that the United States is not a “safe harbor for those who commit human rights abuses.” Of course, this follows a series of court decisions barring the victims of the U.S. torture program from even getting a trial, let alone damages. Those responsible continue to appear on television from George W. Bush to Dick Cheney to John Yoo. Indeed, rather than punish those who facilitated the torture program, we made one — Jay Bybee (shown right) — a federal appellate judge with lifetime tenure. That particular “safe harbor” is found in the courthouse of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.