Category: Lawyering

Lawyering, Religion, Society

On The Wrong Side, Again … But Maybe Some Self-Growth

By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor

feature-faith%20crisis_520It’s Sunday and I made a rare visit to church today here in Richmond to test the waters after Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s historic ruling overturning  Virginia’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.  I was curious because the two Roman Catholic Bishops in Virginia had taken a keen interest in gay marriage ever since newly elected Attorney General Mark Herring had declined to defend the state’s ban on the practice in Bostic v. Rainey and after Governor Terry McAuliffe had refused to appoint a special counsel to take over the defense of the ban. The two presiding bishops in Virginia, Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde and Richmond Bishop Francis DiLorenzo, had issued a joint statement vowing to soldier on against the right of gays to marry. The good bishops instructed that:

 “No politician should be able to reverse the people’s decision … We call on the attorney general to do the job he was elected to perform, which is to defend the state laws he agrees with, as well as those state laws with which he personally disagrees.”

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Lawyering, Society

Frank Maco Responds To Criticism Over Woody Allen Case On The Blog

445px-woody_allen_2006Last week, I ran a column on the controversy surrounding the renewed allegations of child abuse by Woody Allen and the suggestion of the former prosecutor, Frank Maco, that he might sue Allen for defamation. The piece expressed deep skepticism over the potential for a defamation claim and further questioned Mr. Maco’s public comments after he decided not to bring charges. I was recently contacted by Mr. Maco who shared his view of the underlying facts and the suggested lawsuit. I felt, particularly in light of the criticism on this blog, his response should be run in its entirety to give his side of the story. Below is that response.

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Constitutional Law, Courts, Criminal law, Free Speech, Justice, Lawyering, Politics, Religion, Society

Loving For All In Virginia: Getting It Right The Second Time Around

By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor

Mildred_Richard_Loving_1967Somewhere out there Mildred Loving must be smiling and wondering how things could change so much since 1967.  You might recall Ms. Loving as the African-American and Virginia resident who had the audacity to marry a white man and then procreate in the Virginia of the 1960s. Charged with violating Virginia’s  Racial Integrity Act of 1924, an anti-miscegenation law which criminalized marriages between members of different races, the case was heard in Hanover Courthouse, where liberty’s most eloquent spokesman, Patrick Henry, once argued the famous Parson’s Case.  Circuit Court Judge Leon Bazile, whose portrait still hangs in the hallway of the new courthouse, sentenced the couple to one year in prison suspended upon the condition they would leave their home state. In doing so, he announced to the world that Virginia would not step so quickly away from its historical racism:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

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Academia, Constitutional Law, International, Lawyering, Media, Society

William Mitchell College of Law Professor Sues School Over Being Banned From Campus

WilliamMitchellErlinder_C_Peter_print-199x300William Mitchell College of Law Professor Peter Erlinder has filed suit against his own law school after being banned from campus for allegedly inappropriate and possibly threatening conduct. Erlinder claims that his conduct is due to post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his jailing in Rwanda. This lawsuit follows another lawsuit by a John Marshall Law Professor who says that a disability has caused him to act oddly and experience outbursts toward colleagues and students. [For full disclosure, years ago, I had brief interaction with Professor Erlinder in a case after I came on as lead counsel. Professor Erlinder’s role in the case ended soon after I became lead counsel]. In one prior communication, an administrator said that a doctor had expressed a concern that “Prof. Erlinder might go postal …. ” (Erlinder challenges that veracity of that statements and alleges that the doctor has denied that he ever made such a statement). He is seeking both compensatory damages ($50,000) as well as punitive and treble damages (in addition to injunctive relief such as reinstatement).

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Criminal law, Lawyering, Media, Society, Torts

Former Prosecutor Announces That He May Sue Woody Allen Over Child Abuse Column

445px-woody_allen_2006Woody Allen continues to be a virtual fountain of interesting criminal and civil cases. Over the weekend, Allen responded to an op-ed in the New York Times in which his adopted daughter, Dylan, 28, who accused him again of sexual abuse. In Allen’s responsive op-ed, he again denies the allegations and blames an overzealous prosecutor. While unnamed, it could only former Litchfield State’s Attorney Frank Maco. Now Maco is suggesting that he may now sue Allen for defamation.

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Congress, Constitutional Law, Courts, Criminal law, Free Speech, Justice, Lawyering, Media, Politics, Society, Supreme Court, Uncategorized

All In a Day’s Work

220px-Houston_Gun_Show_at_the_George_R__Brown_Convention_Center

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor

On February 7th, 2014, the sad reports were compiled from the deadly day before.  On Thursday, February 6th, at least 24 people were shot and 14 of them were killed.  Two of the dead were small children.  The shootings and killings were from cities and towns all across the country.  A 17 month old girl was accidentally shot by her 3 year old brother in North Carolina.

A 13-year-old was accidentally shot and killed while playing with a shotgun in the state of Washington.  In Seattle, Washington, a man was shot and killed by a fellow tenant.  A man in his 30’s was shot several times and critically wounded in Owasso, Oklahoma.  A 18 year man was shot and killed at his uncle’s home in South Carolina.  These and others were all wounded or killed by gunfire on February 6th, 2014.  Just one sad day out of many. Continue reading “All In a Day’s Work” →

Bizarre, Courts, Criminal law, Justice, Lawyering, Society, Testimony

Think You Can Rely On Your Local Crime Lab For The Unvarnished Truth? Think Again

By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor

Forensic-Science-S_2132330bA 2009 report by the National Research Council (NRC) passed quietly into the night (except in legal and forensic circles) while barely garnering more than a ripple in the public’s psyche. It should have been a tidal wave given news last December  that a  48-year-old New Jersey man, Gerard Henderson, who spent 19 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, was done in by faulty crime lab work. Henderson was convicted largely on “bite mark” evidence. Bite mark evidence is a process used to exam indentations and anomalies on a victim’s body and  ostensibly made by human teeth which are then matched to a defendant’s dentures in an effort to prove that he/she was the perpetrator of the crime. Convicted in 1995, Henderson proved that state testing of the bite marks on the back of 19-year-old victim, Monica Reyes, was deeply flawed and conducted without sufficient safeguards to insure its reliability.

Independent forensic scientists working for Project Innocence could not reproduce findings by the state crime lab which is the gold standard for scientific verifiability. Henderson became one of the more than two dozen people wrongfully convicted of rape or murder  since 2000 as a direct result of flawed bite mark evidence analysis all duly attested to as accurate by the local crime lab.

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Courts, Criminal law, Justice, Lawyering, Military, Society

Second Worker at the Military Records Center in St. Louis Sentenced

National Record Center St Louisby Charlton “Chuck” Stanley, Weekend Contributor

Last week, I reported on the deliberate misfiling, destruction, and throwing away files at the Records Center in St. Louis.  Although an audit showed several employees were outside normal limits for error rates, only two were serious enough to warrant charges.

As I described in the earlier story last week, one of the men, 28-year-old Lonnie Halkmon, entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government records. Halkmon was sentenced to forty hours of community service and two years probation. He could have gotten up to six months in jail on that charge.

Engram was responsible for the destruction of more than a thousand records. He destroyed some of them, threw 241 away in the woods near the Center, and took others home with him where he tossed them in the trash.

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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Lawyering, Torts

Former Police Officer Awarded $9 Million After Spending Almost 20 Years In Jail On False Charge

smallbadge-1gavel2Clyde Ray Spencer, a former motorcycle patrolman, was secured a $9 million damage award from a federal jury after spending nearly two decades in jail on a fabricated case. The jury found that two of his colleagues at the police department fabricated evidence and possibly coached witnesses to convict him of sexually abusing his two children. Retired Clark County Police police Sgt. Michael Davidson and retired Detective Sharon Krause have been accused of the most serious violations in the case.

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Courts, Lawyering, Politics, Society

Judge In Amanda Knox Trial Under Investigation For Post-Verdict Comments

foxy-knoxy-machine-gunThe recent trial of Amanda Knox has highlighted serious flaws in the Italian legal system ranging from shoddy investigatory standards to sentence aggravators based on defense arguments (implication other parties) to criminal penalties for defaming the police or prosecution. While we often discuss the flaws in our own system, the Knox litigation has been an embarrassment of legal process. However, the system does apparently police misconduct by judges in public statements, an area of recurring concerns in this country by justices and http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/07/judge-in-casey-anthony-case-publicly-proclaims-his-belief-in-her-guilt-and-dishes-on-case/ alike. Florence judge Alessandro Nencini made comments after the trial on the defendants and defense strategy that has triggered not only an investigation but raised new defense arguments for reversal.

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Courts, Criminal law, Lawyering, Society

Lawyer Allegedly Offers $1 Million To Anyone Who Disproves Client’s Alibi . . . Law Student Disproves Theory But Florida Court Rules Lawyer Does Not Have To Pay Up

220px-United_Airlines_-_N14219_-_Flickr_-_skinnylawyer_(1)200px-Nelson_SerranoThere is an interesting ruling in Florida where U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell has ruled that a Florida lawyer, James Cheney Mason, does not have to pay on a $1 million challenge that he made in a television interview. Mason offered the money to anyone who disproved his client’s alibi in a murder case. Then South Texas College Law Student San Dustin Kolodziej took him at his word and said that he disproved the defense theory for Nelson Serrano (left). Mason then refused to pay up and now Honeywell is allowing him to keep the money. The case involves a unilateral contract sometimes called a “prove me wrong” case where someone offer payment to anyone who can prove the offeror wrong regarding a particular claim.

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Courts, Lawyering, Politics, Society

Alito: It’s Fine The Court Is So Unpopular

225px-010_alitoI have long criticized the increasing public appearances of Supreme Court justices who appear to be maintaining a type of popular base of supporters on the left and the right. It is the age of the celebrity justice. Scalia and Sotomayor were in the news this week attracting headlines with commentary on cases or political issues. However, it was the comment of Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. yesterday that was the most striking. Alito dismissed new polls showing that the Court was at a near record low in respect and approval at some 43 percent. Alito said that it did not bother him at all, which (judging from his past conduct) should not come as much of a surprise.

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Bizarre, Criminal law, Lawyering, Society

Casino Jackpot: Georgia Lawyer Becomes National Sensation With Local Superbowl Commercial

casino5n-4-webWhile the Superbowl was a bit of a bust, lawyer Jamie Casino is being widely heralded as scoring a touchdown with his local commercial during the game in Georgia where he tells his life’s story as an advocate for clients. Since I have already ventured into film critique this morning with the students of Columbia, I might as well say my peace about the film of Mr. Casino despite the overwhelming popularity of the commercial. I found the commercial below to be unprofessional and self-serving and just a bit creepy. What is striking about this story is that it was not long ago when such an advertisement would have been viewed as an ethical breach. I did not support those earlier rules against advertisements. However, Casino has a history of such commercials that trade content for flashy effects along the lines of a car salesman or infomercial pitchman.

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Courts, Lawyering, Society

North Dakota Supreme Court Suspends License Of Criminal Defense Lawyer Accused In Conspiracy To Kill Witness

mugshotsThere is an interesting decision out of the North Dakota Supreme Court this week after it suspended a lawyer as a precautionary act following his indictment. Henry Howe has only been charged and has been released on bond, but the Court still suspended him in an emergency action. The action raises concern over the presumption of innocence and the ability of prosecutors to effectively halt a lawyer’s practice (and earnings) with an indictment. On the other hand, the Court viewed the evidence as sufficiently strong that it had to act to protect clients pending the outcome of the case. That case however could take a year or more.

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Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Lawyering, Politics, Religion, Society

Saudi Arabia Passes Law That Defines A Terrorist As Anyone “Undermining” or “Offending” The State

200px-Coat_of_arms_of_Saudi_Arabia.svgSaudi Arabia has long been criticized as a feeder nation for terrorists, including some of those who attacked this country on September 11th. Well, the country is finally cracking down with its own counterterrorism law but it turns out that the law may have more to do with political dissidents than religious fanatics. Civil libertarians are denouncing the law that would allow the arrest of any reformer or government critic as a terrorist.

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