Many stories that we discuss raise concerns whether police officers and other public officials sometimes get advantages as criminal defendants. The case in Pennsylvania of former Scott Township police Chief James Romano has raised precisely those same concerns. Romano has agreed to a plea deal to admit that he had sex with an alleged victim and witness in a case that he was investigating. He reportedly told the witness not to admit to the sexual relationship and faces a charge of hindering prosecution. That is all pretty straightforward, but Romano has demanded that he not be actually sentenced for seven years to guarantee that he gets a pension. So far, it appears to be working.
Category: Lawyering
US-based Belgian writer Misha Defonseca became an international celebrity after publishing her best seller novel, “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” — the incredible story of how a Jewish girl was cared for by a pack of wolves after running off into the forest to escape an abusive household. In 2008, Defonseca admitted that the story was made up, her real name was Monique de Wael, and she was never Jewish. The case is Mt. Ivy Press v. Defonseca, 85 Mass. App. Ct. 241, *; 2014 Mass. App. LEXIS 42.
By Charlton (Chuck) Stanley, Weekend Contributor
The sad case of Cook County (Illinois) Judge Cynthia Brim has been discussed on this blog previously here and here. To sum up, she had a mental breakdown while holding traffic court on March 8, 2012.
She went on a paranoid rant, accusing police of targeting minorities for traffic tickets. For the next 45 minutes, she rambled on about her childhood as well as describing at least five prior hospitalizations for mental illness. During her rambling outburst, she told her audience she was once removed from the courtroom by paramedics after a previous breakdown.
Witnesses reported she said, “Not only men have balls, but women can have balls too. You just have to grow them.”
Continue reading “Mentally Ill Judge Cynthia Brim Removed From the Bench”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
In an interview with the BBC, Lawyer Samiullah Afridi said his defense of Dr. Shakil Afridi Would end due to continual death threats against him over the last two years. Samiulla, who is not related to his client, had at one point left the country out of fear for his safety.
We previously discussed the worsening situation for lawyers in Pakistan defending those accused of infamous crimes and civil rights issues in the Murder of Attorney Rashid Rehman.
The legal profession this week lost one of our best and bravest. Pretending to be potential clients in a matrimonial case, two people entered the law firm of Rashid Rehman Khan and shot him to death. Rashid Rehman, a coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), had faced death threats for years after he courageously represented a university professor accused of blasphemy. Unable to kill the accused, Islamic extremists appear to have now killed the lawyer. Rehman never flinched in his commitment to the rule of law and to this country.
We often discuss civility on this blog and we have had some serious challenges to our rule from those who have denounced civility as a standard, including the hosts of some blogs. Indeed, we have discussed the gradual decline of civility and courtesy in society from sporting events to television. Now the California bar is taking a commendable stand and requiring new lawyers to take an oath to behave with “dignity, courtesy and integrity.” That may surprise you if you assumed that such a commitment is already express in the oath of lawyers in all states. It is not and the change was a direct response to what the California bar found was (much like our own experience) a rapid decline in civility among lawyers.
Continue reading “California To Require New Lawyers To Swear To Civility In Practice”
There is a truly shocking lawsuit that has been filed in Toronto in which Sharlene Simon, 42, is suing Brandon Majewski, 17, (left) despite the fact that he died in a terrible accident that also seriously injured his friend, Richard McLean, 16, and hurt Jake Roberts, 16. Simon struck the boys from behind in her SUV and she is now claiming emotional damages stemming from the fact that the boys were “incompetent bicyclists.” She is suing the boys, their families, the city, and even the brother of one of the boys in seeking $1.35 million. While we have seen a couple of truly despicable lawsuits, this one just may set a new low among bottom feeders.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty-(rafflaw)- Weekend Contributor
If you were like me, you may never have heard the term “Communications Management Units” before. They are basically a section of a prison where certain prisoners are housed with limited or no access to communications or family visitations. The reason very little was known about the CMU’s is that when they first were initiated at prisons in Indiana and Illinois, their existence was kept from the public.
“The units opened almost in secret in 2006 and 2008. Critics say they flouted federal law by not publishing the proposed rule and opening up a period for public comment.” Readers Supported News If a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights had not been filed in 2010, we may never have known much about these abusive tactics in our domestic prison system. Maybe the harshest aspect of being sent to the CMU was the realization that you may never know why you were sent there or how you could get out of it. Continue reading “Communications Management Units and Prisoners Rights”
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
Author’s Note: Grace Under Pressure is an ongoing series of posts honoring everyday people who courageously make positive differences in their own lives and consequently in the lives of others. It is my own personal affirmation that unexpected heroes live among us and that their service is quiet but unshakable proof that virtue really is its own reward – and ours, too.
A Pittsburgh area teen thought he was doing the right thing to end his bullying but his audio recording of the abuse only resulted in criminal charges for wiretapping. Sophomore Christian Stanfield had endured a miserable school year at the hands of two classmates who tripped, shoved and even attempted to burn the 15-year-old with a cigarette lighter. Pleas for help to his teacher went unheeded for the teenager who suffers from comprehension delay disorder ( a brain disorder involving slower processing speed for information than is normal) ADHD, and an anxiety disorder. So last month Christian decided to get the proof he needed to make school officials listen. Sitting in his math class, he activated his Ipad as his tormentors launched another verbal fusillade. “”They were talking about pulling his pants down, and some things I can’t repeat, and laughing and cutting up like it was a big joke, it was not a joke, not at all funny,” said Christian’s mother, Shea Love, who heard the recording at her kitchen table that afternoon.
Continue reading “Grace Under Pressure: Bullied Teen Christian Stanfield Fights Back”
We have recently discussed attacks on lawyers for simply doing their jobs in representing accused individuals. It is truly vile and McCarthyist trend that seeks to punish professional working within our criminal justice system. It is particularly offensive therefore when a large, presumably respectable organization unleashed such an attack. However, that is precisely what the Republican Governors Association has done in the attack ad below against State Senator Vincent Sheheen (left) who is being opposed because he represented people accused of crimes. To its credit, the South Carolina Bar Association has stepped forward to denounce the ad as containing “uncivil, misleading political rhetoric.” It is a shameful and shocking ad that attacks the very notion of due process guaranteed by our Constitution. The ad is designed to help Gov. Nikki Haley in her reelection campaign.
While President Obama ran on a pledge to be the most transparent presidency in history, critics have charged that — as with promises to protect civil liberties and international law — Obama has done precisely the opposite of what he promised. His Administration has radically expanded the national security state while fighting every effort in court to challenge unchecked executive powers, including his successful effort to get Congress to dismiss dozens of public interest lawsuits over surveillance, torture, etc. The latest effort of the Obama Administration was to refuse to release even redacted version of legal memoranda on Obama’s use of drones to kill U.S. citizens. I have previously written about Obama Kill list policy in columns and blog posts. What is interesting is that the Obama Administration shows utter contempt for the federal courts in first claiming that any release of redacted classified legal arguments would endanger national security and then, after the district court yielded to the government, proceeding to discuss the very same information in public when it suited the Administration. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finally said enough. The problem is that the district court did not exercise its authority to reject the clearly excessive claims of the government. It is only because the government contradicted itself — not the facially overboard claims made before the district court. The case is New York Times v. United States Department of Justice, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 7387. The case highlights the extreme hostility shown by the Obama Administration to both transparency and the media.
We only recently passed the 20,000,000 mark last February but we just hit 21,000,000, according to WordPress. Congratulations everyone. This has been a banner year for the site with a continuing increase in traffic, links on other sites, and new voices on the blog. These milestones are coming faster and they give us a chance to look at the spread of our regular readers and commentators. As always, I want to offer special thanks for our weekend contributors: Mark Esposito, Eliane Magliaro, Mike Appleton, Larry Rafferty, Charlton Stanley and Darren Smith. The increasing traffic on the site is gratifying and reaffirms that there are many people looking for mature and civil debate. Even among the top ten sites, I believe that we offer a unique forum of different views and backgrounds in the discussion of law and politics (and a few quirky items).
Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Weekend Contributor
We have seen and heard the claims from Donald Rumsfeld and others that the leaked Senate torture report is off base because the enhanced interrogation techniques were not only legal according to the Office of Legal Counsel, but they also produced results. Putting aside the idea that just because an allegedly illegal act is claimed to have been successful in producing actionable intelligence, does not make it any more legal or illegal, is there a reason why we should listen to the participants who authorized the waterboarding and other torture procedures when they claim that all is well?
Now it seems that Donald Rumsfeld has company. “In an uncompromising and wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, his first public remarks since he was linked to the program in 2007, James Mitchell was dismissive of a Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture in which he features, and which is currently at the heart of an intense row between legislators and the agency.
The committee’s report found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell, a retired air force psychologist, were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls.
But Mitchell, who was reported to have personally waterboarded accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remains unrepentant. “The people on the ground did the best they could with the way they understood the law at the time,” he said. “You can’t ask someone to put their life on the line and think and make a decision without the benefit of hindsight and then eviscerate them in the press 10 years later.” ‘ Reader Supported News Continue reading “The CIA Psychologist Who Designed the Torture Program Claims It Was Not Torture”
There have been a long list of studies and articles on the problem of false testimony by police officers. Most officers that I have met or represented would not testify falsely. However, there is cultural pressure to hold “the thin blue line” to support other officers. That appears what is occurring in a recent scandal out of Chicago. In a Skokie courthouse, five officers (three from Chicago and two from Glenview) took the stand and lied about what occurred in a drug arrest. What is relatively rare is that the prosecutors appear to be seriously considering criminal charges.
I recently wrote a column on the expanding scandal over General Motor’s release of the Cobalt and other vehicles with a defective ignition switch that may have killed over a dozen people and injured scores of others. The defect was reportedly found during testing and constituted the perfect storm of negligent designs: it would first shut off the car; cut the steering; and disable the airbags. Mary Barra, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of GM, told Congress that GM never puts costs ahead of safety (even though documents show GM pricing out the fix and rejecting it as too expensive). Now Barra and GM have quietly asked a federal court to protect it from product liability lawsuits due to its bankruptcy. It is like a second bailout from the government — this time through the courts — so that the company can keep billions in the federal bailout while barring recovery of billions for deaths and injuries caused by the company.