In high-profile cases, clients will sometimes ask defense counsel how they should look in a mug shot that will be plastered across the media. There are different schools of thought, but John Edwards clearly went with the smiling “I Can’t Believe These Guys Are Doing This” shot.
Continue reading “Prisoner Elected Most Likely To Succeed”
Category: Criminal law
We have been following the trend against free speech rights of students and the disciplining of students for speech outside of school. This includes the opinion in Doninger v. Niehoff with then Judge Sotomayor. Now, the Third Circuit has handed down a major victory for free speech in rejecting a parody on MySpace as the basis to discipline two teenagers in Pennsylvania. The case is J.S. v. Blue Ridge Mountain School District, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 11947 (June 13, 2011).
Continue reading “Court Rules Against School in Disciplining of Teens For MySpace Parody”
Police in Los Angeles are searching for a stolen 780-year-old religious relic of St. Anthony of Padua. What is fascinating is that I cannot find a single article saying what the relic was — clothing, teeth, bone, or other object. I would love to read the police report under description of property. In the meantime, Catholics are praying to the patron saint of lost and missing items . . . St. Anthony of Padua.
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Charles DuBose, 55, is accused of the heinous act of shooting Ivhan`e Merritt, 11, for the offense of playing on his front lawn in Cleveland at 10:40 p.m.
Continue reading “Cleveland Man Charged With Shooting 11-Year-Old Girl Playing On His Front Lawn”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Until last week, I had never heard of an organization called Personhood USA. Then I read a post about it on Think Progress titled Anti-Abortion Groups Push To Outlaw Contraceptives By Redefining Personhood. According to the
Think Progress piece, Personhood USA has been quite successful at pushing legislation in a number of states that would “redefine life as beginning at the moment of fertilization…”
Dr. Dan Grossman, an obstetrician/gynecologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said that the medical community has been in agreement that a pregnancy begins “once implantation occurs.” Only about a half of fertilized eggs, however, actually implant into a woman’s uterus and result in a pregnancy. The rest of the fertilized eggs never begin dividing, never implant, or spontaneously abort. In fact, some spontaneous abortions occur so early in a woman’s pregnancy that she may not even be aware that she is pregnant.
Police are searching for this man who, despite efforts of locals to stop him, axed down a 20-foot gingko tree in Brooklyn. The arborcide may have been committed by a former tenant at the nearby apartment building.
Continue reading “A Tree [Does Not] Grow in Brooklyn: Video Captures Arborcide Attack”
Deputy Dist. Atty. Juliet Schmidt, a member of the L.A. district attorney’s Public Integrity Division, is under fire after sending a letter to a law firm in a conflict-of-interest case that first suggested that its client “might” be exonerated and then asked if the firm would give her nephew of job. That is, of course, a conflict of interest itself.
The New York Times has an interesting twist on the Weiner scandal: one of the women, Gennette Cordova, stated that she was sent the infamous underwear pictures without any invitation or prior sex talk with Weiner. That raises the question of whether a charge could be investigated for a type of virtual flashing or other offense. I will discussing this issues tonight with CNN’s Eliot Spitzer.
Continue reading “Virtual Flasher? Can Weiner Be Charged With Federal Violations In Tweets”
Tennessee legislators have passed an extraordinary law that makes it a crime to “transmit or display an image” online that is likely to “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to someone who sees it. Violations can get you almost a year in jail time or up to $2500 in fines. The law, in my view, is unconstitutional and a direct threat to free speech.
Continue reading “Tennessee Makes Posting Images A Crime If They Are Viewed As Distressful To Third Parties”
In an important decision, the Ohio Supreme Court has struck down the statutory rape law as applied to defendants younger than 13 years. We have seen continued abuses of statutory rape laws where two minors are involved, but prosecutors charge the boy for sex with a minor. It is an opinion (below) that could be considered by other courts to consider this use of statutory rape laws as well by governors considering commutations for defendants charged as minors.
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Carl Muggli, 49, has been arrest for second-degree murder in Minnesota of his wife, Linda Muggli, 61. Spousal murders are unfortunately nothing new, but the weapon in his case is rather novel: a 3,000-pound totem pole. While a woman was killed this week by her husband’s casket, totem poles remain an unexplored area of criminal weaponry.
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In Stockton, California, Kenneth Wright was at home with his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 when a SWAT team burst into his home at 6 a.m., dragged him out on the lawn, threw him to the ground, and put the family (including the kids) in squad cars. His alleged crime: default on student loans. On top of the overkill in using SWAT teams to target defaulting students, the city got it wrong. They were looking for Wright’s estranged wife. The D.O.E. now insists that it was not just about loans but part of a criminal investigation that it was carrying out.
Continue reading “California Family Hit With SWAT Raid . . . Ordered By The Department of Education”
Ryan LeVin, 36, will be able to actually live in “a prison of his own making.’ The scion of a wealthy Chicago-area family, LeVin killed British businessmen Craig Elford, 39, and Kenneth Watkinson, 48, while driving his $120,000 Porsche 911 Turbo. He then lied to police, left the scene of the accident, and blamed the accident on a friend. Yet, Broward Circuit Judge Barbara McCarthy decided no jail time was needed because the wealthy LeVin offered to pay the families of the dead men. Instead of 45 years in prison, McCarthy gave him two years home incarceration in his luxury home.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has issued a decree to ban men working in lingerie shops. Saudi clerics previously opposed women working in lingerie shops and even issued a fatwa banning such jobs.
Continue reading “Does This Bustier Make Me Look Fatwa? Saudi Arabia Bans Male Lingerie Salesmen”
There is a sharp disconnect between two prank stories this morning. When Tyrell Morton put an inflatable girl in the girl’s bathroom at his high school, he ended up with a felony charge and a potential jail sentence of eight years. However, when three eighth-grade girls from Dunbar Middle school in Florida tackled an 11-year-old boy and stripped him naked (and proceeded to videotape him and taunt him), they were let go as a simple prank in bad taste.
Continue reading “Florida Boy Attacked, Stripped Naked in Public, and Videotaped By Three Girls — Resulting In No Charges”