Christopher Roupe, 17, was a ROTC student at at Woodland High School in Georgia who dreamed of serving his country in the Marines. That dream came to an end when he answered a knock on the door of his trailer home. He found himself face-to-face with Euharlee police officers who promptly shot him to death. An officer said that she saw a weapon in his hand. It turned out to be a Wii controller.
Category: Criminal law
Police have finally arrested the “Catch Me If You Can” motorcyclist who taunted police with the video below showing him dangerously speeding through traffic at more than 100 miles per hour. He is Alberto Rodriguez, 26, who has (surprise) a criminal record and a demonstrated lack of judgment and self-preservation.
Continue reading “Motorcyclist Who Taunted Police To “Catch Me If You Can” Gets Caught”
We have another highly disturbing case involving a police officer who abused and arrested a citizen for recording an encounter. I have previously written about the first amendment right to videotape officers. The courts have consistently upheld this right despite efforts of prosecutors like Anita Alvarez in Cook County to put citizens in jail for such recording. However, police officers continued to misrepresent the law and seize cameras or threaten citizens with arrest. In a cellphone recording (available here), Florida mother Brandy Berning is roughed up and arrested by Broward Sheriff Deputy William O’Brien after he tries to seize her cellphone as evidence of the crime of recording him.
Rep. Gail Finney, a Democrat from Wichita, has created a bit of a stir in Kansas with new legislation that would allow parents, teachers and caregivers to spank children hard enough to leave redness or bruising. While most parents assume that they already have such authority, Finney is worried that physical punishment and restraint is increasingly being viewed as a form of abuse. It raises an interesting question of whether societal standards have changed to the point that the old-time spanking is now a questionable practice from a legal perspective. Notably, the bill would actually limit the number and kind of spanks allowed to parents.
Remember former Chicago Representative Mel Reynolds? If you recall, he resigned from his congressional seat in 1995 after he was convicted of 12 counts of statutory rape, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. Well, he is back in the news after an arrest in Zimbabwe. You guessed it. He is charged with allegedly possessing pornographic material and violating immigration laws.
Continue reading “Ex-Rep. Mel Reynolds Arrested in Zimbabwe”
Believe or not, it has been 25 years since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a death fatwa for Salman Rushdie — promising paradise and reward to anyone who killed the author simply because he wrote a book with what was viewed as blasphemous to Islam. For civil libertarians, it was a defining moment where Islam was pitted against the most basic and cherished values of free speech. The world was shocked by the decision even from the radical Iranian government. However, we have not heard much of the fatwa in years. Just to prove that the Islamic clerics remain as fanatical and anti-speech as they were in 1989, senior cleric Ahmad Khatami renewed the call to kill Rushdie and declared that the “historical fatwa” is “as fresh as ever.” What is clear is that, while the world views the fatwa as an example of religious extremism and insanity, the Islamic cleric remain proud of the death order as a pure expression of Islamic law and values.
by Charlton Stanley, Weekend Contributor
The Hawthorne, CA Police Department has a history of assaultive behavior toward the public. The department’s activities have been reported on this blog before. In one incident, Hawthorne officers Tasered an autistic child, then when his parents complained, they returned and arrested him a week later. Last year, the same Hawthorne Police arrested a man for videotaping them in a public space, then shot his dog when it ran to his side.
About a year ago, Jonathan Meister, a deaf man, was loading his car with some personal belongings, including his snowboarding equipment. There had been several robberies in the area recently. A neighbor yelled at him, but Meister, being deaf, did not hear the call-out, so the neighbor called the police. When the police arrived, the officers watched Meister as he carried some items into his car. When Meister saw the officers, he sat his boxes down and walked toward them, trying to use American Sign Language to let them know he is deaf.
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
Somewhere out there Mildred Loving must be smiling and wondering how things could change so much since 1967. You might recall Ms. Loving as the African-American and Virginia resident who had the audacity to marry a white man and then procreate in the Virginia of the 1960s. Charged with violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, an anti-miscegenation law which criminalized marriages between members of different races, the case was heard in Hanover Courthouse, where liberty’s most eloquent spokesman, Patrick Henry, once argued the famous Parson’s Case. Circuit Court Judge Leon Bazile, whose portrait still hangs in the hallway of the new courthouse, sentenced the couple to one year in prison suspended upon the condition they would leave their home state. In doing so, he announced to the world that Virginia would not step so quickly away from its historical racism:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
Continue reading “Loving For All In Virginia: Getting It Right The Second Time Around”
by Charlton “Chuck” Stanley, Weekend Contributor
Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department
Murphy, NC
This morning, I had been working on another topic when my cell phone rang one time. I looked at the number on the caller ID, which came from 216-206-xxxx. I looked up the number on a internet reverse lookup service. The call “originated” in Euclid, OH. Except it didn’t. If I had called that number back, my call would have been re-directed to an offshore number, most likely in a Caribbean country.
So far, in the past week, I have received at least a half-dozen such calls. I did not think to write all the numbers down before deleting them from my phone.
Continue reading “One-Ring Phone Scam: When not to return a call”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Utah Legislator Greg Hughes is proposing a law he believes will address successfully some of the DUI incidents that happen within the state. The proposal is in the working stage and has been under several revisions but in essence the device would be installed in bars under incentives from the state so that bar patrons may use the device to test their sobriety levels so that they may make informed choices on whether to drive or not. The measure includes an immunity from civil and criminal liability on bar owners if a customer’s breath alcohol level is high and the customer drives away and the data would not be available to law enforcement to provide a hesitation free attraction.
While the goal of the device is certainly laudable, could the devices be counter productive as indicated by experience with law enforcement breath test devices and their shortcomings?
Continue reading “Utah Considering Placement Of Breath Test Devices Into Bars”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
While many, primarily Islamic, countries have received much press regarding flagrant abuses of religious and non-religious persons or views, seven of which have death penalty offenses for crimes such as apostasy, the true impact for most of the worlds citizens are not as stark but can be often a suffer a form of punishment, repression and imprisonment of some kind for their beliefs.
The international Humanist and Ethical Union published a broad and comprehensive study of world governments listing laws, social constraints, and customs of government for nearly each nation. The study provides a deep insight into how even subtle restrictions on atheists and subscribers to differing religions or non-religions can have a chilling effect on the expressions of their citizens and it is often this subtlety that can become a form of suppression of dissent in surprising areas.
Continue reading “International Humanist And Ethical Union Publishes Comprehensive Global Report On Athiest and Non-Religious Rights”
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)”
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”