Baltimore is outraged over the video below showing two teenage girls laughing as a man is robbed and then shot at a Chinese carryout. After Darren Brown and David Jefferson (both 17) shot the man, the carryout reportedly did nothing to help him, refused to let him behind the counter for protection, and continued to take orders.
Category: Criminal law
Now, this is what you call a case of first impression. In Willmar, Minnnesota, Scott Wagar, 50, was upset with kids toilet-papering his house in that common homecoming adolescent practice. He decided, therefore, to spray them with . . . . fox urine.
Continue reading “Urine A Lot of Trouble: Minnesota Man Sprays Teens with Fox Urine”
It appears that officers of the Humane Society of the United States may be caged themselves at Gitmo. This week, the Center for Consumer Freedom ran a huge ad in the New York Times accusing the Humane Society of the United States of helping an animal-rights terrorism group raise money. The CCF represents the fast food, meat, diary and alcohol industries and has attacked such groups as Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD).
Superior Court Judge James Orlando of Pierce County, Washington has ruled that a 91-year-old man with proven dementia and a delusion disorder is still competent to stand trial for murder. Orlando held that competency is a “fairly low standard” that does not appear to exclude demented defendants like Joe Conway Elder.
Continue reading “Elder’s Law: Demented 91-Year Old Found Competent to Stand Trial”
New York Judge Thomas Spargo has been indicted for attempted extortion and attempted bribery. A former Albany County Judge, Spargo is accused of pressuring an Ulster County lawyer to give him $10,000 in 2003 and he was forced from the bench in 2006.
Just when the nightmare of John Ashcroft has receded in many minds, he’s back to remind us how we became an international pariah for our abandonment of fundamental legal principles and why the Supreme Court and other courts have ruled repeatedly against the Bush Administration. In the video below, Ashcroft scoffs at the suggestion that detainees deserve a fair trial, revealing his evident contempt for the rule of law.
Continue reading “Ashcroft “Stunned” People Think Detainees Deserve Due Process”
There is another interesting case to emerge from the New Hampshire Supreme Court. A former district court bailiff, Robert Theriault, 51, was charged with prostitution after offering a couple $50 to allow him to videotape them having sex. The Court ruled in the opinion below that the state could not prosecute him for prostitution on first amendment grounds since this is precisely what people do in making pornographic movies — which constitutes protected speech. One could call this the Isherwood Defense from Christopher Isherwood’s 1955 movie class, “I Am A Camera.”
Continue reading “I Am A Camera: New Hampshire Supreme Court Overturns Prostitution Conviction for Adult Movie Maker”
A Dallas police officer has achieved a certain fame after the video below captures him tasering himself after a chase with a suspected car thief.
Continue reading “Video: Officer Tasers Himself After Car Chase”
There could be a major criminal case emerging from Lynchburg, Virginia where prosecutors have charged Ronald Wojdyla, 57, with child pornography for superimposing his picture over a picture of an 11-year-old girl. It is a continuation of the debate over computer-generated porn, though in this case it is a real girl — only the sexual contact is fake. As the name might suggest, Lynchburg is not the place that one should test such fine points of pornography law.
Three students at the Chapin High School in El Paso, Texas seems to have fallen under the Red Queen of Hearts rule of “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.” Three high school students were disciplined after they were accused of lacing brownies with laxatives — and later confessed under investigation by the school. There is only one problem: the Armstrong Forensic Laboratory Inc. in Arlington found the the brownies contained pure, uncut . . . brownies.
A teenager and his family in Oklahoma is discovering the troubling consequences of our sex offender and statutory rape laws. Ricky (his last name is being withheld at his request) had sex when he was 16 with a girl who allegedly told him that she was 16. She wasn’t and prosecutors charged him with having sex with a 13 year old. He pled guilty and was sentenced to a two years probation — and registry as a sex offender for ten years. While the judge would three years later expunge that record, Oklahoma still insists on registering him as a high-risk sex offender — forcing him to live like a pariah and satisfy the various restrictions put in place for recidivist child molesters.
You might want to be a bit careful giving your overnight to the UPS guy at the corner. Police in the Arizona Department of Public Safety officials seised 2,118 pounds of 2,118 pounds of marijuana from a fake UPS truck. It brings a new meaning to the slogan, “What Can Brown Do For You?” Among other things, it can bring some good Hawaii Maui Waui to our door.
Continue reading “The “P” Stands for Pot: Drug Dealers Using Fake UPS Trucks”
The taser abuse stories continue to roll in. In the most recent case out of El Reno, Oklahoma, police stopped a driver who appeared uncooperative in getting out of the truck. They tasered him only to learn later that he was in diabetic shock.
Continue reading “Man Goes Into Diabetic Shock . . . Police Taser Him”
Two former prison guards, Shawn Freeman and Wesley Lanham, have been sentenced for federal prison for 14 years and 15 years respectively for allowing inmates to rape an 18-year-old locked up overnight on traffic violations. U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves sentenced the two in an important — and rare — punishment for the prison rape — a largely ignored epidemic in our prisons.
Continue reading “Prison Guards Sentenced for Allowing Inmates to Rape Teen”
Edward G. Kelly, 51, a defense attorney in Fall River, Massachusetts has pleaded innocent to a bizarre criminal allegation: that Kelly pretended to be a district attorney employee to tell government witnesses on the telephone that they did not need to show up for court.
Continue reading “Lawyer Accused of Impersonating a District Attorney Employee to Keep Witnesses From Appearing in Court”