How would you like to be up for a double murder and then learn that your lawyer was sleeping with your wife during the trial? That is what Robert Caulley learned after he was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder of a father and mother. Then he learned that his now ex-wife (no surprise there) was sleeping with his lawyer, James D. Owen. Owen is now trying to keep his license while admitting that he violated the core ethical rules governing our profession. Not only did he have an affair with the wife of a client, but could be viewed as having an incentive to shackle the cuckold. If his client were to lose, it could be viewed as a good way to get rid of an inconvenient husband.
Category: Lawyering
We previously discussed the case of Kent and Jill Easter, two California lawyers arrested for allegedly planting drugs in the car of a nemesis on the PTA board. The case has turned even more bizarre with Kent Easter blaming Jill Easter for the crime. The couple is separated and, after the arrest, Kent Easter learned that his wife was involved in an affair.
Continue reading “California Lawyer Turns On Wife In Bizarre False Imprisonment Case”
We have often discussed the abusive expansion of copyright and trademark laws. This includes common phrases, symbols, and images being claimed as private property. (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). (For a prior column, click here) This trend is being fueled not only by powerful lobbyists who sometimes seem like they control both Congress and the White House but law firms that have made this a virtual cottage industry. There are a large number of law firms on retainer to bring these actions and artists and companies that do little to limit them. The latest example was brought to light by the good people at Techdirt which posted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) letter to Reddit informing them that they had violated copyright laws with a posting of an individual known as heisenberg69 with this image satirizing Office Depot.
Continue reading “Office Depot Allegedly Threatens Reddit Over Parody Of Company Logo”
This month, defense attorney Drew Justice faced a rather bizarre motion from Assistant District Attorney Tammy Rettig in Tennessee. Rettig was upset that Justice was referring to the prosecution as “the government” — a common description used by both counsel (including prosecutors) as well as judges. Rettig moved for Justice to be ordered not to be call her the government. Justice responded to this clearly absurd and frivolous motion with a request of his own: He asked to be called “Captain Justice” “Guardian of the Realm.”
Continue reading “Oh Hail, Captain Justice, Guardian of the Realm”
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
On an August afternoon in 2008, Hickman County, TN resident Robert Andrews was working on a trailer in his yard when two deputy sheriffs pulled up in front of his house, along with three caseworkers from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. They approached Mr. Andrews and asked permission to go inside his home. They did not have any kind of warrant or court order, so Andrews told them they did not have permission to enter his home.
Despite his refusal, all three caseworkers and one of the deputies entered the home and searched the place. They also took each of his four children aside for interviews out of his earshot. Then the officials left. Neither Andrews nor his wife, Patti, was ever accused of a crime in connection with the visit. They were not afforded the opportunity to contact a lawyer or have a lawyer present for the interrogations of the children. At no time before or since that incident was any member of the Andrews family ever accused of any crime in connection with that visit.
In March 2002, a police officer in Cuyahoga County, Ohio kicked in Nancy Kovacic’s door, allowing caseworkers to enter her home and seize her two children. The children were placed in foster care, where they stayed 10 months. There were no criminal charges of any kind against Nancy Kovacic. Her attorney, Jay Crook, told reporters, “Caseworkers can’t just make a judgment call and say, ‘Well, I don’t like this, and with the power of the state, I’m taking these children,’ ”
The children are now grown and were part of the lawsuit. They report being abused while in foster care. They have been in therapy for several years due to the trauma of being removed from their mother. Mr. Crook added, “Without that neutral arbiter, that magistrate, that judge; even over the phone, you have lost all your due process safeguards.”
Those events at the Andrews home led to a lawsuit against the caseworkers. There was also a similar lawsuit from another family in Ohio. Both cases ended up in front of the Sixth Circuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit used the cases to specify that caseworkers, like police, are agents of the State, and therefore controlled by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. This is the first time a Federal appeals court has specified that caseworkers from children’s services departments must abide by the Constitution.
More over the flip, including the full text of both Sixth Circuit decisions.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
A recent decision by the Justice Department has opened the doors to a possible test of whether the government’s widespread use of wireless wiretaps is constitutional.
“The Justice Department for the first time has notified a criminal defendant that evidence being used against him came from a warrantless wiretap, a move that is expected to set up a Supreme Court test of whether such eavesdropping is constitutional.” New York Times Continue reading “Criminal Defendants and Wireless Wiretaps: One Small Victory?”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
I’d only planned to write one guest blog this weekend, but this morning on Huffington Post I saw a video from a TED lecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_%28conference%29 The lecture was from Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus who has been studying false memories since the 1970’s. She links what she discovered with one of the failings of our Criminal Justice System, with the false memories reported in court. This is an 18 minute lecture but it is well worth your time and bears directly on the topics we discuss here on the Law Blog. I must note that in it she is critical of certain psychotherapy techniques and I am a psychotherapist. Despite my training and profession I believe her critiques are on point and illustrate one of the problems inherent in some psychotherapies. For any readers that are interested in our legal system and who care about its problems, viewing this will represent time well spent. My technical skills are such that I don’t know how to properly make the video appear in WordPress but if you click on the following link you will be able to see it: Mystery of Memory
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
Last August, this blog had the story of Cocke County, Tennessee child support Magistrate Judge Lu Ann Ballew who arbitrarily ordered parents to change the first name of their seven month old child. Jaleesa Martin and Jawaan McCullough had decided on their child’s first name, but were not able to agree on whether his surname should be that of his mother or his father. It was Judge Ballew who ordered the parents of seven month old Messiah McCullough Martin they had to change the child’s first name and change his birth certificate. Judge Ballew opined, “The word Messiah is a title, and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person, and that one person is Jesus Christ.”
In a rambling interview with local television, Judge Ballew tried to explain her reasoning. The reporter asked her what if the child had been named Jesus, a popular name in the Spanish speaking community. The judge stammered, finally declaring that to be irrelevant. The reporter did not press the issue and ask about the use of Mohammed/Muhammed by many Islamic families. Her answer to that would have been…..interesting. Here is the interview of Magistrate Judge Lu Ann Ballew with a reporter from a local TV station. This is almost painful to watch.
Continue reading “Tennessee Judge Who Renamed Child Now Facing Judicial Misconduct Charges”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
We have had a lot of discussions here about the ever growing private prison system in the United States, where our country has become the world leader in imprisoning its citizens. Many blogs have been written discussing our world prison leadership and the fact that it stems from the failed “War on Drugs”, which has tended to focus on people in poverty and/or people of color. The for-profit prison industry has had a growth spurt that can be directly traced to that aspect of the conservative movement that has disparaged government services and at the same time pushed for privatization of government services using the false concept that private industry can do it better and cheaper. It is an ideas that to me seems nonsensical on its face because of the absolute need that private industry turns a profit and in today’s economic scheme that profit has to continually rise as time passes. Business strategy, which by definition, must focus on profit has focused on cutting costs as a means of building profit. Cutting costs then devolves into hiring less skilled workers, cutting down on services provided and in a business like private prisons reducing the quality of care. When ot comes to reduction of services and diminishing of quality of care when it comes to the prison industry, I’m sure that the majority of public opinion would approve of even more draconian measures. After all those convicted of a crime are generally scorned and feared. Muscular fundamentalist philosophy has discarded the Jesus of turn the other cheek into a Jesus of vengeance and so there is even in some circles moral approval of treating prison inmates harshly. There is now a widespread use of solitary confinement as a tool of prison punishment and that confinement has stretched from weeks, too months and too years. We are after all, a society that has a majority of Americans for torture in our post 9/11 era.
In 2008 we saw the opening of a scandal in Pennsylvania where it was discovered that juvenile court judges were sentencing youths to prison for minor offenses because they had received money from sources in the private prison industry. Two judges were convicted in this case and it was seen that many youths were adversely affected and are now suing for unlawful imprisonment. It is this profiting on the imprisonment of youth that I would like to address broadly in this blog. For the most part my reference links will appear at its conclusion. This is a very disturbing problem that I think cuts to the heart of what kind of society we want to live in and I would hope that others find this as disturbing as I do. Continue reading “The Private Prisons Profit on Youth”
Kennedy family member Michael Skakel has long sought a new trial in the killing of Martha Moxley, a neighbor bludgeoned to death by a golf club in 1975. In a surprise ruling, Judge Thomas Bishop found that Skakel was denied a fair trial due to ineffective counsel. Bishop’s opinion slams Skakel’s original legal counsel, Michael Sherman, as failing basic expectations of a lawyer and suggests, as the family has argued, that he was obsessed or blinded by the media attention in the case.
Continue reading “Michael Skakel Granted New Trial Due To Ineffective Counsel”
LawDragon has released the results of its increasingly popular survey of the top lawyers in America. I was fortunate to again make the list this year.
Continue reading “LawDragon Selects Top 500 Lawyers”
We have previously dealt with judges found to be mentally disturbed but kept on the bench despite erratic behavior. The most recent case involves Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes who has long had a bad reputation as a judge for her domineering and sometimes bizarre conduct from the bench. Now a report from the Ohio Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel has concluded that Stokes may be “suffering from a mental illness that substantially impairs her ability to perform her duties as a judicial officer.” The local newspaper is calling for her resignation. As with other judges found to be incompetent, Stokes has been reelected easily. She is the daughter of former Cleveland Congressman Louis Stokes. While she has received consistently poor ratings from bar associations and newspaper editorial boards, she has easily won re-election.
Former Kansas Attorney General and current Liberty University law professor Phill Kline is now indefinitely suspended from the practice of law due to his investigation of abortion clinics run by the late George Tiller and by Planned Parenthood. Tiller was murdered in 2009 while attending church in Wichita with his wife. While opting not to disbar Kline, the Kansas Supreme Court found “clear and convincing evidence” of professional misconduct (including the violation of 11 rules) to warrant indefinite suspension.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Back in July of this year, we discussed a successful request by oil giant Chevron to subpoena 9 years of metadata from countless defendants and non-defendants. This was arguably an attempt to attack a $19 Billion dollar judgment handed down by an Ecuadorian court against Chevron by going after the parties involved in the lawsuit.
Chevron was not deterred when the United States Supreme Court refused to review the judgment. It merely went on the attack and found an allegedly friendly judge in New York to assist in refusing to pay the judgment owed to various indigenous communities that were devastated by Chevron’s predecessor’s actions in the rainforests where it was drilling for oil. We need to revisit this issue now that the RICO action filed by Chevron started this week in New York. Continue reading “Chevron Owes $19 Billion and Doesn’t Want to Pay!”
My opposition to the ever-expanding trademark and copyright laws is well known. (For a prior column, click here). Common phrases and symbols are being snatched up as Congress and the Obama Administration continue to yield to every demand for higher levels of penalties and prosecutions. Now we have a personal injury firm — Geoff McDonald & Associates — that has knuckled under to a threat from GEICO insurance because it used an obvious (and stated) parody in a commercial. This is an office filled with attorneys and yet they pulled the commercial because of an obvious joke. If they cannot stand up to the copyright and trademark hawks, consider the position of average citizens faced with threatening letters. Even other insurance companies have folded under pressure from GEICO in parody commercials. It is not clear if GEICO will now move against zoos and elementary schools who try to feature geckos. Before I am sued by the lawyers at GEICO, the picture to the left is a body part of a common gecko found in the wild. He has no connection to the insurance company and is not meant to mock it in any way.