North Carolina prosecutor Eric Bellas, 45, has been placed on administrative leave and removed from the high-profile murder case of Zahra Baker following his arrest this month. What is strange is the charge: drunken bicycling. I do not wish to make light of drunken bicycling, but is it really such a crime that warrants removal from a murder case?
Continue reading “North Carolina Prosecutor Removed From High-Profile Murder Case After Being Arrested For Drunken Bicycling”
Category: Criminal law
When an eleven-year-old boy was hit by her car, driver Brittany Gonzales, 21, reportedly did not just drive on like she didn’t care. According to witnesses, Gonzales stopped and got out of her car. Unfortunately, she simply retrieved her hubcap and proceeded to drive away — leaving the boy in the road.
Continue reading “Colorado Woman Allegedly Hits Boy on Bike, Stops Car To Retrieve Hub Cap, Leaves Boy In Road”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
I’ve lived in the Boston area all my life. I, therefore, have read a lot of news stories about the Bulger brothers—Billy, a once powerful politician, and Whitey, the
fugitive mobster who had been “evading” capture by the FBI since 1995. Both my husband and I were astonished when we heard the news that Whitey Bulger had finally been arrested by the FBI in Santa Monica, California, a few days ago. We have doubted for a long time that the FBI seriously wanted to find Whitey. After all, agents at the Bureau had once looked the other way when the mob boss committed serious crimes–including murder–while he was serving as an informant for them.
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
The bedrock of modern Western jurisprudence is the supposition that we are free to choose our actions from a range of choices. Some of these choices are socially acceptable and we deem them “legal.” Other choices made in specified contexts are socially unacceptable, and we deem these “illegal.” For those extremely unacceptable actions denominated as “crimes” we reserve progressive punishments to deter their occurrence. Gratuitous violence is one of the most important of these condemned actions, and we have striven for centuries to overcome this endemic feature of our nature. The basic assumption being that we can deter conduct that is the product of free will by imposing undesirable consequences on the actor. How have we done? I suppose the obvious answer is that despite a multitude of approaches ranging from severe punishment to compassionate rehabilitation, we haven’t yet mastered a way to banish senseless violence from our midst. Perhaps it is time to question that basic assumption that violence is purely volitional conduct.
Continue reading “When “Gage Is Not Gage”: Neuroscience And The Law’s Assumption of Free Will”
For years, many of us have been noting that the United States continues to violate international law and the sovereignty of foreign nations in some of our military assaults on terror targets. We have often asked how we would respond to countries like Mexico sending military personnel into our territory. Well, it happened this week when three military trucks loaded with Mexican soldiers crossed the border at Bridge Number Two into the U.S.
Continue reading “Mexican Invasion! United States Objects To Mexican Troops Briefly Entering U.S.”
We have been following the case of self-help guru James Ray, who was criminally charged in the deaths of three people in his Arizona sweat lodge. He has now been found guilty of negligent homicide, though he was acquitted on the manslaughter charge. Once again, I believe the verdict shows the wisdom of the jury system. The jurors reached a fair result given these facts.
Continue reading “Self-Help Guru James Ray Convicted in Sweat Lodge Deaths”
Ok, I assumed that this story was a hoax until I found the mugshot. In a criminal charge that seems written by the Saturday Night Live, Willard Yoder, 26, was arrested in Connersville, Indiana for sending lewd messages to a 12-year-old girl and then going to her house. Unfortunately, that is no so remarkable. However, Yoder is Amish and showed up in a horse and buggy in Rush County. No, there was no extremely slow chase, just a “plain” arrest.
Continue reading “Amish Man Arrested For Alleged Sending Lewd Photos To Minor And Showing Up At Her House in Horse and Buggy”
Recently, in Kuwait, we saw a blogger sued by management at a Benihana for a bad review. Now, A Taiwan court has gone one better: it sentenced a blogger to jail for criticizing a restaurant food as “too salty.”
Continue reading “Blogger Jailed For Calling Food At Taiwan Restaurant “Too Salty””
We have been following the case of fashion designer John Galliano who went on trial Wednesday for making anti-Semitic comments in Paris. It is part of the growing trend in the West of the criminalization of speech. It is not clear what came off more pathetic yesterday, the drug-wasted Galliano or the French court.
Continue reading “Designer Galliano On Trial For Bad Language”
There is a new report of police arresting a citizen because she videotaped them (below) — this time from her own front yard. According to his report, a woman named Emily Good was arrested after videotaping an arrest of a man at a traffic stop in Rochester, New York.
Ohio is about to change state gun laws to allow people to wear concealed guns into facilities that serve alcohol, including bars, restaurants, and sports stadiums. Republican Gov. John Kasich is expected to sign the bill.
Continue reading “Ohio Moves Toward Allowing Concealed Weapons In Bars”
Portland officials were shocked this week when a security camera captured a man urinating in a city reservoir of treated drinking water. Others were equally shocked by the city’s response — it flushed 8 million gallons of water down the drain.
Continue reading “Portland Dumps 8 Million Gallons Of Treated Water After Man Urinates In Reservoir”
This is precisely why clowns scare some people. A Chicago teen went up to a man dressed up as a clown, pulled a gun, and demanded money. The clown promptly grabbed the gun and shot and killed the kid. It turns out that the man was an off-duty police officer who was participating in a South Side fundraiser for a day-care business. (Clown shown here is not a picture of the officer)
Continue reading “No Joke: Teen Pulls Gun On Clown, Clown Shoots Teen”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
It’s been nearly a decade since the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman.” In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret federal grand jury has begun calling witnesses in its investigation of the death of “the Iceman”. Manadel al-Jamadi was killed while in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib and got his nickname from an attempt to keep his body cool and make him look less than dead.
There is a rather bizarre case involving a 20-year-old man, Deshon Marman, who entered a plane wearing baggy pants and failed to pull up his pants fast enough for a US Airways pilot who had him arrested at San Francisco International Airport.
Continue reading “US Airways Pilot Orders Evacuation Of Plane and Arrest Of Man Wearing Baggy Pants”