Bela Kosoian, 38, is a handrail felon. The mother of two was taking an escalator down to the Montreal subway on her way to Université du Québec à Montreal, where she studies international law. She ended up handcuffed and held in a small cell for not holding the handrail on the escalator.
Continue reading “Descent Into Crime: Montreal Woman Handcuffed and Thrown into Cell for Failing To Hold Escalator Handrail”
Category: Criminal law
Now this is a fascinating story. For decades, defense attorneys have complained about faux forensic experts who will support any theory or connection of the prosecution. Some of the most controversial are so-called “bite experts,” dentists who claim to match teeth marks on victims and objects to defendants. Attorney Christopher Plourd decided that he had had enough and arranged his own sting operation to show that these paid experts make the evidence fit any theory.
Continue reading “Lawyer Bites Expert: Defense Lawyer Conduct Private Sting Operation to Show Flaws in Expert Testimony”
Derrick Ross took the term “cell phone” a bit too literally. Ross, 38, acquired a cell phone and charger while serving time at Coffeild prison in Texas. Due to Texas habitual offender laws, he has received an absurd 60 years for the violation.
Continue reading “Hidden Phone Charges: Texas Inmate Gets 60 Years For Possession of Cell Phone”
Newt Gingrich found a new level of hypocrisy this week in insisting that the Congress has “an obligation” to investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I have been highly critical of Pelosi who at a minimum appears to have abandoned her duties of oversight for political convenience and at worst is outright lying. However, Gingrich who says that Pelosi is acting in a “despicable, dishonest and vicious” way, does not believe that there is any need to call for an investigation into torture and the commission of both federal and war crimes.
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What is most striking about Dennis Lee Garthus, 42, is not just that he wins the contest as the man who most looks like a freaked out sex offender. It is not that he is habitual offender. It is that his most recent arrest was for downloading (with the screen name “Pantielover”) pornography involving 1 and 2 year old babies. While nothing should surprise me at this state in my criminal defense career, I did not even know that was pornography involving 1 or 2 year old babies.
Continue reading “Police Arrest “Pantielover” With Pornography Showing Abuse of Babies”
There is a truly disturbing story out of Atlanta, Georgia. Morehouse College student Joshua Brandon Norris shot another college student Rashad Johnson three times at a party. This weekend, Norris will be allowed to graduate after receiving an unbelievable light plea bargain while Johnson is at home recovering from his wounds.
CIA Director Leon Panetta struck back at Speaker Nancy Pelosi today in a memorandum to CIA employees saying that she was fully and truthfully briefed in 2002. He indirectly accuses Pelosi of “making hay out” of the CIA and misrepresenting her briefing for political purposes. I discussed the Pelosi story last night on this segment of Countdown.
Continue reading “Haymaker: Panetta Contradicts Pelosi and Says That She Was Fully Briefed”
President Barack Obama continued his replication of the Bush policies today with the disclosure that he will now restart the controversial Bush tribunal system — now to be called the Obama tribunal system. This follows Obama’s adoption of an even more extreme theory of executive privilege in court, the reversal of the decision to comply with a court order and turn over abuse photographs, the continuing effort to extinguish dozens of public interest lawsuits on privacy violations, and the proposed adoption of the Bush policy of holding detainees indefinitely without trial, here. In the meantime, he and Attorney General Eric Holder continue to block the appointment of a special prosecutor despite mounting evidence of war crimes committed by the prior administration. I will be discussing these recent developments tonight on Countdown.
Continue reading “Bush 2.0: Obama To Continue Military Tribunals”
A former high-ranking state department official has come forward with the explosive report that then Vice President Dick Cheney called for the torture of an Iraqi prisoner to establish a link between al Qaeda and Iraq in the midst of the political controversy over the misrepresentations that led to the Iraq invasion. Cheney was one of the main figures pushing this justification, which was found based on false intelligence. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, adds yet another piece of evidence that the torture program was not based on a “ticking bomb” justification and was not based on the faux legal opinions of lawyers like Judge Jay Bybee and Professor John Yoo.
One of the wealthiest Americans has been fined after his enormous yacht was found loaded with dead exotic and endangered animals and animal parts. Tamir Saphir’s yacht was something out of Dr. Moreau’s island — loaded with stuffed dead animals and skins and carved ivory.
Continue reading “Ship of Fool: Billionaire Tamir Saphir’s Yacht Seized While Loaded With Endangered and Exotic Animal Parts”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued her effort to explain past statements on torture and her failure to act to stop a war crime after she was briefed on the torture program. After being contradicted by both documents and one of her aides, Pelosi has now accused CIA officials misleading her in 2002.
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The Obama administration has already adopted extreme executive privilege arguments that dwarfed the arguments of George Bush. It has moved to kill dozens of citizens lawsuits to uncover criminal acts of the government. This week, it refused (despite a court ruling) to release embarrassing photos of detainee abuse. Now, in the continue morphing with the prior Administration, Barack Obama is considering a continuation of the Bush policy of indefinitely detaining suspects without trial. I will be discussing this and other issues today on the Ed Beck Show on MSNBC.
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There has been a long controversy over the ability of the religious right to justify most any position of the GOP on the environment or civil liberties in terms of religious faith. However, the recent Republican effort to embrace and justify torture presented a bit of a problem for the faithful, particularly Christians who worship a man who was tortured to death on a cross. That presented no problem for Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate and leader of the religious right, who has announced that it would have been immoral for the Bush administration not to torture people.
In a major ruling, the New York Court of Appeals has held that the police cannot use a GPS device on a suspect’s car without a warrant — ordering a new trial for Scott Weaver, 41, a burglary suspect. In the meantime, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals came to the opposite conclusion: finding no need for a warrant in the use of GPS devices against citizens for any reason by the police.
Police are reviewing a videotape showing an officer kick a suspect, Richard Rodriguez, 23, in the head despite the fact that the suspect was not resisting and was lying on the ground with his arms and legs spread. The officer then high fived a partner.
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