Shortly after Christmas, the Eleventh Circuit barred an appeal from Ronald B. Smith, a death row inmate in Alabama, due to his failure to “properly file” a document by the court deadline. The filing was actually timely but his lawyer failed to include a $154 filing fee or, in the alternative, file a motion that his client was indigent. He was indigent but that did not stop the Eleventh Circuit from barring the death row appeal. The Supreme Court has twice rebuked the Eleventh Circuit for its draconian treatment of such minor rules in capital cases but the judges on that court continue to dispense with notions of equity and proportionality (and justice) in barring such appeals. It turns out that his lawyer was under probation at the time and later committed suicide.
Category: Criminal law
Jason Earl Dean was a man who believed that he had found his soulmate at work at Taco Bell in Ringgold, Georgia. However, instead to turning to eHarmony or ChristianMingle.com, Dean, 25, turned to a pair of handcuffs and a unpromising plea for companionship. He was convinced to let the 18-year-old woman go and then “made a run for the border.” He was arrested two days later by Dalton State College campus police. He was sentenced this week to ten years with four years of actual prison time for false imprisonment.
We have seen virtual adultery lead to real divorces. The question is whether a virtual murder can generate an actual homicide charge. The answer appears to be no after a Chinese father, Mr. Feng, hired professional “assassins” to hunt down and kill his son in his online game. The son was unemployed and the father feared that he was spending too much time in his virtual world.
Continue reading “Father Hires Assassins To Kill Son . . . Virtually”
For those insisting that President Obama is likely to turn over a new leaf in his Administration’s crackdown on medical marijuana, you might want to tell Aaron Sandusky who was just given 10 years in prison for operating three medical marijuana growing enterprises in California. Continue reading “Obama Administration Secures 10 Year Sentence Against Medical Marijuana Grower”
Florida Atlantic University has found itself embroiled in a national outcry over the views of James Tracy, an associate professor of media history. Tracy, 47, went to his blog, Memoryholeblog and held forth on his suspicion that the massacre in Connecticut might have been a government drill or may not even have actually occurred. In a blog entitled “The Sandy Hook Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information,” Tracy wrote “While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.” For those mourning the loss of the 20 children and six adults, it was both an outrageous and hurtful claim — leading many to call for the firing of Tracy. However, as correctly noted by the FAU administration, this was a personal blog and Tracy has every right to espouse such theories.
We have been following the continuing arrests and even prosecutions of citizens who film police in public. (For prior columns, click here and here). Despite consistent rulings upholding the right of citizens to film police in public, these abuses continue. The latest has a different twist. Andrew Henderson not only had his camera taken from him by police in Little Canada, Minnesota but he was charged with violating the the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by filming officers responding to a call.
Continue reading “Minnesota Man Criminally Charged After Filming Police in Public”
Michigan Supreme Court Justice (and former prosecutor) Diane Hathaway has resigned from the state’s highest court after a judicial agency accused her of “blatant and brazen violations” of judicial ethics that include allegations of bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering and lying to investigators. The alleged facts are quite shocking and lead to the question of why Hathaway has not been charged criminally. In 2008, Hathaway launched a successful Democratic campaign to unseat conservative Chief Justice of the Court, Cliff Taylor. Her heavily negative campaign accused Taylor of failing asleep on the bench and declared “If you see justice in the name, he really belongs in the hall of shame.”
Saudi Arabia has another case of a pedophilia dressed up as marriage. In the latest case, a 70-year-old man paid a family $17,500 in a dowry to purchase a 15-year-old girl as a bride. The girl proceeded to lock herself in the bedroom for two days in fear on their wedding night and then fled home to her family. The groom is now demanding that the girl be handed over to him or to get a refund from the family. [Update: a divorce has been issued in the “marriage” and the articles now report the man as 70 years old rather than 90 years old]
Continue reading “Seventy-Year-Old Saudi Man Marries 15-Year-Old Girl [Updated]”
An English woman, Sara Ege, 33, was sentenced to seventeen years in jail in England for beating to death her son and then burning his body to hide her crime. Ege committed the heinous crime after seven-year-old Yaseen failed to memorize the Koran by heart. The defense nevertheless described her as a “brilliant mother.”
The Second Circuit has reinstated a civil rights lawsuit by former airline pilot John Swartz, a Vietnam veteran who sued after he was arrested in New York for disorderly conduct. Swartz, a Vietnam veteran, says that he was arrested after he signaled his displeasure with a speed trap by extending his middle finger in a universal sign of contempt. The officer however insisted that he took the gesture as a cry for help and followed Swartz. The case is Swartz v. Insogna, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 186 (2d Cir. 2012).
Continue reading “Second Circuit Rejects Middle Finger As A Cry For Help”
Brazilian jail guards nabbed the ultimate cat burglar last week at the northeastern Brazilian jail in Alagoas. The cat was found to be smuggling in escape tools after being trained by inmates who where digging out of the prison. It is not clear if the cat will now receive nine consecutive life sentences.
There is a bizarre case involving a well-known race jockey, Paul Quinn, in England who urinated on woman after struggling with her for possession of her cell phone. Quinn was drunk and wanted to make a call. When the woman resisted, he grappled with her and then inexplicably urinated on her. However, it was not the act (which even celebrities have been known to do in close quarters) but the charge that caught my attention: sexual assault.
Boulder Colorado has been embroiled in a rather bizarre investigation into the killing of a bull elk. Reports showed pictures of Boulder police officer Sam Carter allegedly posing with the elk which neighbors considered a local celebrity. They even held a vigil in its honor. Two Boulder police officers are now under investigation by the police department and a criminal investigation by Colorado Parks and Wildlife in the shooting. It is now believed that one officer shot the animal while on patrol. Another officer is then believed to have taken it home for the meat.
Continue reading “Two Boulder Police Officers Under Investigation In Shooting Of Giant Elk”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell. guest blogger
On New Year’s Eve my wife and I saw the movie “Les Miserables”. We’d seen the musical on Broadway and had been enchanted by it. The music from it is superb and this musical fully deserves all the acclaim it has received through the years. As much as I loved the stage version of “Le Mis”, the movie took all of the greatness of the stage and added something to the mix that lifted it into subversive social commentary. That is what I’m going to write about, but first for those who are unfamiliar with either the source book, or the musical adaptation, a very brief synopsis is needed to set the scene.
The story begins after the French Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon. The Royal Dynasty has been restored to power and the freedoms of the Revolution have been lost. The protagonist of this work is Jean Valjean. He was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor because of the ramifications of his stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister. Imprisoned he is noticed by one of his Jailers, Javert, who notes Valjean for his almost super-human feats of strength. Valjean is paroled after serving his time and subsequently breaks parole. He is chased by Javert for the rest of the tale. The plot of the 1,900 page (in French) novel is summarized in detail at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables Details of the play and the movie are available here: http://www.lesmis.com/.
The ingredient added to the movie, which couldn’t have been done on stage were scenes depicting the abject poverty of the common people and the poor. With the visual nature of film and what will probably be Academy Award makeup, costuming and art direction, you can see a recreation of the life of the French lower classes in the 18th Century. These descriptions run true to the original novel which was so rich with detail. The book “Les Miserables” was intentionally revolutionary for its time as best summed up by the author Victor Hugo in the preface to the novel:
“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.”
Hugo’s eloquence above and its implications for our current time is the subject that I want to discuss. Continue reading ““Les Miserables” and the Shape of Things to Come”
As reported in the media, we resumed hearings this week in the the World Bank case (Chang v. United States) with testimony from the top lawyer at the Metropolitan Police Department, Terry Ryan, as well as other officers.