There is an interesting fight in Minnesota where State Senator Ellen Anderson made the modest suggestion that the state repeal laws making it illegal for a married woman to cheat on her husband and another statute that makes it a crime for single women to have sex at all. The response of the powerful Minnesota Family Council is to call for the law not to be repealed but strengthened to make it a crime for men to have sex outside of marriage.
Category: Criminal law
If this happy looking man appears relieved, it is because he is. Daniel L. Shilts Jr., 36, of Waldo, Wisconsin was arrested after his fifth DWI and then urinated on the back of the head of the officer taking him to jail. Officers spotted him driving erratically and striking a pole. Then things went from bad to much much worse . . .
It is rare for an inmate to volunteer to turn over a shank, but Rance Johnson, 19, was ready to come clean with the Merced County jail in California.
Continue reading “Concealed Weapon: Prisoner Turns in Shank and Demands Surgery”
We have seen a number of witchcraft prosecutions in the Middle East (here), but the most recent such case is coming out of Toronto where Vishwantee Persaud, 36, is accused of engaging in witchcraft under a little used law. She may, however, have a rather novel defense.
Continue reading “The Witch of the North: Toronto Charges Woman With Witchcraft Crime”
The one thing that you can say is that Tillmon Webb, 33, had unshakable faith. The over 500-pound man sat down in his recliner in March after an injury and waited for God — never getting up for eight months until he died.
I suppose the large tattoo on the neck of Andrew J. Wirth, 24, reading “NOTHING TO LOSE” might have given the court deputies a clue that they were in for trouble at the appearance of the Wisconsin man in court. Wirth is accused of first shooting a couple to death outside a bar after a woman playfully grabbed him. He then tore up a courtroom while yelling at the judge.
Continue reading “Wirth-Less: Man Accused of Double Murder Tasered in Courtroom Brawl”
John Yoo is being defended in court this month by the Administration. Not the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration. As with the lawsuits over electronic surveillance and torture, the Obama administration wants the lawsuit against Yoo dismissed and is defending the right of Justice Department officials to help establish a torture program — an established war crime. I will be discussing the issue on this segment of MSNBC Countdown.
Continue reading “Nuremberg Revisited: Obama Administration Files To Dismiss Case Against John Yoo”
It is billed by the London Police Department Chief as “the best (shooting) range in Ontario.” At $22 million, it is certainly modern but one of the features might sit poorly with judges and civil libertarians.
Continue reading “Canadian Police Department Builds New Firing Range That Helps Train Officers How To Shoot Fleeing Suspects”
D.C. Police Union Chief Kristopher Baumann joined the call from city council members for a criminal investigation into the destruction of evidence in the World bank/IMF protest case where hundreds of people were arrested without probable cause and many hogtied by police. The New York Times has also run an article on the recent report by former Judge Stan Sporkin finding that the evidence was presumptively destroyed on purpose.
Continue reading “Police Union Chief Calls For Federal Criminal Investigation in World Bank Protest Case”
The costs of prosecutorial abuse or invalid convictions are rarely explored in depth by the media (here). Canada has one case that everyone should read. As with some recent scandals involving incompetent forensic prosecution experts in the United States, Canada is dealing with the legacy of disgraced forensic pathologist Charles Smith, who sent people to jail with flawed science and false conclusions. However, few are so unsettling as what happened to Sherry Sherret-Robinson, 34.
Food appears to be the weapon of choice in Florida this week. A couple days ago, we saw a man who was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend with a hamburger (here). Now, Elsie Egan, 53, in Dunnellon, Florida was arrested for allegedly hitting her boyfriend Peter Schabhuttl, 49, several times in the head with a raw steak.
Continue reading “Beef, It’s What’s for Battery: Florida Woman Allegedly Attacks Boyfriend with Steak in Fight Over Bread”
Now here is a defense that you would not have seen just a couple decades ago. Sarah Fowke, 23, was stopped attempting to use someone else’s ski pass at a Colorado ski resort. Ski officials noticed that the pass was for a man named Nicholas Hemstreet and Fowke explained that she was originally a man but had completed a series of sex change operations.
The former Missouri House Speaker and major Republican political figure Rod Jetton has been charged in an alarming series of crimes after a woman accused him of punching, choking, and assaulting her. She also appears to elude to the possibility of a date rape drug, claiming that she blacked out after drinking a glass of wine. Jetton ran for office on a family values platform.
Port St. Lucie, Florida has another AWDS case (assault with a deadly sandwich). Previously, we saw how Matthew Rubin was arrested for throwing a sandwich at his girlfriend, here. Yet, cold-cut sandwiches are widely known by police to be gateway food to hotter items like pizzas and burritos. Now, Daniel Boss, 25, has been arrested for rubbing a hamburger in the face of his wife. The incident appropriately occurred at one of Daniel’s favorite restaurants, Dick’s.
Continue reading “The Boss’s Burger: Florida Man Arrested For Burger Battery”
We recently saw how a taser was used on a ten-year-old girl who refused to take a bath in Arkansas, here. Now, police in Pueblo, Colorado have tasered a 10-year-old boy who threw a stick at an officer and was holding a pipe. Captain Jeff Teschner defended his deputies by saying that the use of pepper spray would have put the officers in danger with an unruly ten-year-old boy.