Judge Brenda Branch in Halifax County, N.C., was not satisfied with simply sentencing Tonie Marie King, 21, for drunk and disorderly. So Branch sentenced her to write an essay entitled “How a Lady Should Behave in Public.” As with most shaming or novel sentences, Branch was instantly a national celebrity receiving praise from people for caring enough to fashion her own brand of justice. I am not one of them. As many of you know, I have long been a critic of such sentencing where judges seem to merge law and entertainment to the thrill of citizens. Judges are not appointed or elected to instruct women on being ladies like some Miss Manners issuing advice from a criminal docket.
Category: Criminal law
Last night saw an extraordinary confrontation between the defense and the court in the George Zimmerman trial. The defense is seeking to use photos and material from the phone of Martin. The most serious issue is that the defense claims that the government had this material since January and only recently gave it to the defense — another allegation of withholding evidence by the prosecution. The judge and the lawyers are clearly exhausted and I think the schedule is a bit too punishing. I realize that the jury is sequestered and want to go home. However, these days are diminishing the professional ability and clearly the personal restraint of the judge and lawyers alike. While I do not think that the defense should get a few days to rest, I do think that schedule has been unnecessarily demanding and even a few hours of more rest would be in order. I realize the jurors and courts have limited time but I have never agreed with the punishing schedule of many trials. However, I am more concerned with the delay in turning over this evidence until June.
Continue reading “Meltdown: Judge Walks Out In Tense Exchange With Zimmerman Counsel”
Tulsa pastor Rev. Gregory Hawkins, 54, of Zion Plaza Church in North Tulsa has reportedly admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old girl who is five months pregnant with Hawkins’ child.
Continue reading “Tulsa Pastor Confesses To Sex With 14-Year-Old Girl At Church”
We have another Saudi royal on the criminal docket. The latest family member of the House of Saud was arrested in Santa Ana for human trafficking where a Kenyan woman gave a familiar account of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. She said that her passport was taken and she was forced to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week for virtually no money. Meshael Alayban, 42, is one of the wives of Saudi Prince Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al Saud.
Continue reading “Saudi Princess Charged With Human Trafficking in California”
There are some crimes that appear to be punishment in themselves. In Oklahoma, a woman had an unnerving experience of going to the bathroom at a Sand Springs water park only to look down and see a man staring back at her from inside the septic tank. It was Tulsa resident Kenneth Enslow, 52, who was pulled out of tank and charged with being a peeping Tom.
Continue reading “Tulsa Man Arrested Inside Septic Tank As Peeping Tom”
China is facing a new food scandal over fake eggs. Sellers are offering eggs on the street for about 6 cents cheaper than stores. When Chinese buyers take them home they find that they taste funny and the yolk quickly mixes into the rest of the egg. The reason is that they are not eggs but a concoction of resin, algae, wax, and other ingredients.
Continue reading “The Incredible Inedible Egg: Chinese Face New Food Threat of Fake Eggs”
It appears that there is something worse than fake eggs. Chinese police in Guangxi raided a storage site and found decades-old chicken feet — some dating to the cultural revolution in 1967. A criminal gang smuggled chicken feet, beef tripe and cartilage from Vietnam — some 20 tons of bad meat and chicken feet that were processed with bleach and other chemicals to hide the smell.
Continue reading “Mao Meat Sale: Chinese Seize Chicken Feet and Meat From 1967”
We have previously discussed the often unhinged reaction to jokes and postings referring to violence by authorities. It is certainly understandable and commendable to take such postings seriously, but even when all available evidence points to a juvenile exchange or bad joke, the cases seems to go into autopilot with prosecutors and police insisting on absurd charges. That appears to be the case of Texas teenager Justin Carter who has been held for over four months due to a single sarcastic posting on Facebook for “terroristic threats.” This case shows, once again, prosecutors and police showing no judgment or logic in the handling of such cases.
Police in San Francisco have asked for people to watch this video to try to identify the thug who gratuitously kicked a woman in the face after robbing her. The woman was walking in the area of Market and Castro during Pride celebration when she was set upon by a group of five black males and a black female who beat her and robbed her. That is bad enough but this guy truly shocks the conscience in his cavalier kicking of the woman in the face.
When Jessilyn Eisman, 16, crawled out of her friend’s wrecked car in Iowa, one friend (Chrishaun Moten, 17, right) was dead and two others seriously wounded. She called for the other driver to call for an ambulance but she says that Hilberto Velasquez-Ramirez, 31, refused. She says that he looked like he was going to drive away so she grabbed his keys and ran for help. Now Velasquez-Ramirez, who was drunk and driving without either insurance or a driver’s license, says it was the fault of the teenagers.
It is often difficult to get actual charges against a police officer, but former St. Louis Officer Rory Bruce, 35, was an exception. After all, it was a police video that clearly showed him verbally abusing a teenager and then sucker punching him while handcuffed. One would think it would be an easy conviction, even without the testimony of the 16-year-old boy. That is if the judge watched the video. She did not. Judge Teresa Counts Burke showed no reason to actually watch the video before ruling and now the police union is demanding that the department rehire Bruce.
Submitted by Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends
I learned that justice never ends
I learned that murderers die for their crimes
Even if we make a mistake sometimes
And that’s what I learned in school today
That’s what I learned in school.”
–Tom Paxton, “What Did You Learn in School Today?”
When Rick Scott was in the hospital business, his company specialized in billing Medicare for services that were not performed. Now he is governor of a state that specializes in sending people to death row for crimes they did not commit.
Florida conservatives love the death penalty. Since it was reactivated in 1979, 75 people have been executed. In the past two years, Florida has sentenced more persons to death than any other state. And Gov. Scott is setting records of his own, executing eight prisoners to date, the highest rate of any Florida governor in the past thirty years. But despite this carnage, the current death row population still exceeds 400 people, larger than the entire population of many small towns. This is at least partially due to the fact that Florida is one of only two death penalty states that do not require a unanimous jury recommendation of death. Alabama requires a 10-2 vote. Florida is decidedly more majoritarian; a 7-5 favorable vote is sufficient.
Florida also leads the nation in another grim statistic. Since executions have resumed, 24 death row inmates have been exonerated, far more than in any other state. This means that for every three persons executed over the past thirty years, one additional death row inmate has been found innocent and released. One would think that given this statistic, combined with Florida’s history of botched executions and chronic underfunding of agencies charged with defending those on death row, the legislature would be looking at ways to improve the system. And one would be wrong. On June 14, 2013, Gov. Scott signed the Timely Justice Act, a bill that is intended to hasten executions. Continue reading “Fast Tracking the Death Penalty”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Virginia State Judge Margaret Spencer has an interesting decision tomorrow – one that could affect more than the criminal case involving the executive chef for Virginia’s Governor, Bob McDonnell. On the third floor of Richmond’s John Marshall Courts Building, Spencer will hear that Chef Todd Schneider was denied due process of law because the prosecutor at the time, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, had a political and personal conflict of interest that influenced his decision. Schneider’s lawyers, Steven D. Benjamin and Betty Layne DesPortes, contend that Cuccinelli, who is the GOP candidate for governor, was tied personally and politically to a Virginia businessman whose crumbling empire has launched FBI and State Police investigations as well as political headaches for McDonnell. Those ties, and Cuccinelli’s representation of McDonnell, made criminal charges against Schneider for allegedly stealing food from the Governor’s Mansion a political witch hunt, they say. They have asked for a complete dismissal of all charges.
Continue reading “Will The Virginia Governor’s Race Boil Down To A Cook?”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Guest Blogger
Recently the FBI’s “Next Generation Identification” project was funded by congress to bring significantly enhanced identification and recognition capabilities to government agencies. The system relies for the most part on individual data collected from local law enforcement and state departments of motor vehicles or licensing, that is fingerprint, booking photos, and most recently driver license photographs.
With the advent of greater storage, computational, and recognition technologies the ease of facial recognition has increased. Coupled with the impetus on the federal level, reportedly, to identify terrorists and criminals the technology is now being utilized under a fundamentally different approach.
Continue reading “Facial Recognition and Driver Licenses: Identification or Data Collection?”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
While I‘ve been trying to take a break from all politics and news as I bask in the glow of my family staying with me this week, I’ve nonetheless been fascinated by the fall of Egyptian President Morsi, in what must be described as a military coup. I’ve never been a fan of coups as I expect is true of most of us, yet the fall of Morsi has raises issues that I think are far more nuanced than appear on the surface. The salient facts are that after too many years the corruption of the government of Hosni Mubarak (who had been installed by the Egyptian military) led to severe economic issues and dissatisfaction with totalitarian rule. This then led to such massive protest that the military felt compelled, or justified to remove him. Mubarak’s removal was cheered, but then the clamor for free elections arose and after 18 months of martial law elections were held, as the first step towards transitioning to democracy and formulating a constitution.
The Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood was:“Founded in Egypt in 1928as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,” It’s stated purposes was to: “to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood In a country such as Egypt, with its’ long history of totalitarian rule, the concept of political parties was not strong. Through its 85 years history the Brotherhood became the most stable opposition faction in the Egyptian political scene and was the main focus for opposition to whoever ruled Egypt by dint of the Egyptian Military’s backing. Such has been the success of the Muslim Brotherhood that it has branched out to have a significant presence in 20 nations around the world, many without a Muslim majority, such as the Russian Federation, the Indian Subcontinent, Great Britain and the United States. Therefore when the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 took place, the now legal “Brotherhood” was in an excellent position to vie for political power and formed the “Freedom and Justice Party” as its electoral arm. It won more than 40% of the parliamentary seats and its candidate Mohamed Morsi won election as President with 51.73% of the vote. His chief opponent had been a man who served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister. The Egyptian voters were faced, I think, with a “Hobson’s Choice” of Presidential candidates and chose what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? What I will attempt to examine here is a question which is framed as: “Are Religious Fundamentalists capable participating in a pluralistic democratic society?” Continue reading “Morsi, Democracy and Problem with Fundamentalist Politics”