We previously discussed the finding of a Minnesota judge that the leading firm of Covington & Burling committed a serious conflict of interest in representation in a large environmental case against 3M corporation. Now, a state appellate court has upheld the disqualification — an embarrassing blow for the law firm, which continues to generate bad publicity in the litigation for its current and future clients.
Category: Society
Noor Basra, 16, and Noor Sheza, 15, and their mother were delighted to have rain in their area of Northern Pakistan recently. Two teenage sisters began to dance in the rain and a video was shown of them dancing in traditional dress with younger children. Local men saw the video and proceeded to kill the girls and their mother in an “honor killing.” Police have detained their step brother as part of the murder plot.
We previously discussed the case of Jeff Olson, Chalk Menace. Olson, 40, was charged with an excessive 13 counts for writing a protest on the sidewalk in front of a Bank of America location. A former aide to the U.S. Senator from Washington, Olson used water-soluble statements like “Stop big banks,” and “Stop Bank Blight.com” outside Bank of America branches last year to protest the company’s practices. The bank’s security contractor (a former police officer) demanded charges from the police and prosecutor who hit the protester with charges that would have allowed 13 years in prison. After Olson was dragged into court, the judge barred him from even mentioned terms like “free speech” or “the first amendment.” I am happy to report that a California jury made quick work of this excessive prosecution and acquitted Olson. It appears that, even with the gag of the court, the jurors could recognize free speech when they saw it.
Continue reading “California Man Chalks Up A Victory For Free Speech In Bank Of America Case”
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has rejected a request from the state bar association to disbar Robert Bradley Miller, former assistant district attorney for Oklahoma County, and given him just a suspension from practicing law for 180 days and court costs for egregious misconduct in two capital cases twenty years ago. We have often discussed the lack of deterrence for prosecutors who are rarely disciplined for conduct leading to reversals or false convictions. In this case, the bar wanted Miller out of its ranks for hiding a key deal with a witness and using falsified subpoenas to coerce cooperation from other witnesses. The novel defense — accepted by the state Supreme Court — was that lots of prosecutors acted abusively back then. The shocking opinion was written by Oklahoma Justice Yvonne Kauger (left).
In Florida, Thomas Elliot Huggins, 25, has been charged with strangling a family puppy, chopping it into pieces and cooking its ribs on the stove. In this case, however, he could face significant jail time unlike many other cases where such cruelty is treated as a misdemeanor. However, there is a statutory interpretative issue that could present a novel defense challenge.
Continue reading “Florida Man Charged With Strangling And Cooking Family Puppy”
The video below is an unnerving video that shows a man, Sammie Wallace, walking through a store clearly looking for a child and then snatching a two-year-old girl. The clearly deranged man then held a knife to the little girl and told the terrified mother to call police. In the end, the officer walked up and shot Wallace point blank in the head when he moved the knife to the girl’s throat and started a countdown.
Continue reading “Deranged Man Shot After Kidnapping 2-Year-Old Girl At Oklahoma Walmart”
The most amazing thing about this video is that no one died. A report of nineteen injured but no deaths. This video however does raise a question of negligence by the organizers and not just the driver of a Koenigsegg CCX supercar at a car rally in Poland. [Warning: graphic images]
Continue reading “Fourteen Onlookers Mowed Down By “Supercar” In Poland’s Gran Turismo”
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
Those who advocated for longer prison sentences failed to take the Law of Unintended Consequences into consideration. We all know that prisons have become warehouses. There are several areas where the US leads the world. We lead all industrialized nations in infant deaths the first day of life. We lead the world in illegal drug use. In addition, we lead the world in number of people incarcerated.
The US prison population is about 2.3 million, more than any other nation. Those numbers come from a global study of prisons by the International Centre for Prison Studies, London.
China is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison, despite a population of 1.35 billion. (NOTE: That figure does not include political prisoners in administrative detention for “reeducation.”)
The unintended consequences are an aging prison population. Perhaps the for-profit prisons did not count on that glitch in their bottom line. However, prisons at both the state and Federal level are finding themselves running geriatric nursing homes. In 2010, the last year for which we have accurate data, prisoners age 65 or over increased 94 times the rate of the total prison population in the three-year period 2007-2010. During that same three-year period, the total US prison population grew 0.7%.
At the rate we are going, by the year 2030, estimates are that almost a half-million prisoners will be elderly. Most prisons spend an absolute minimum on staffing and patient health. Private prisons find the elderly cutting into their profit margin. Problems not anticipated for younger prisoners are cropping up. What good does it do for a correctional officer to give orders to a prisoner with Alzheimer’s disease? Prisons are not designed for accommodating walkers, wheelchairs and those who may have serious age-related illnesses.
Continue reading “Greying of Prison Inmates: An Economic and Social Disaster in the Making”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
President Obama has admitted that while in school he was a frequent marijuana smoker. George W. Bush also alluded to smoking marijuana and possibly to using cocaine. Bill Clinton claimed to have smoked it but not inhaled it, which is the type of ridiculous statement Clinton is capable of asserting for political gain. Thus the last three Presidents of the United States have admitted that one time or another they have broken the law and used a banned substance. While each of those Presidents presided over the continued witch hunt and prosecution of the “War On Drugs” I believe that Barack Obama has been the most hypocritical.
Had either G.W. Bush, or Bill Clinton been arrested for smoking marijuana there is no doubt in my mind that they would have neither served jail time, nor would they have had their careers stained by a criminal record. Bush, as the scion of a great political family would have had his record expunged, or possibly have had the police back off when they discovered who he was. Bill Clinton was a student at a prestigious University and while not rich, came from a politically connected family in Arkansas. What they also had in common was that they were White men. Barack Obama on the other hand would have likely been arrested, despite his status as a Harvard student and while he probably would have escaped jail time he would have been forced to take a plea which would remain on his record. If such a thing had occurred it is highly probable that Barack Obama would never have been elected Senator, much less President. There is a likelihood that he might never even have been allowed to enter the Bar as an attorney, since that entrance requires extensive background checks. Whatever you might think of him Barack Obama is a very intelligent man. Surely he must realize how fortunate he was to not get caught smoking grass and yet as President he has stepped up the War On Drugs and has allowed egregious prosecutions in States that have passed medical marijuana laws. To my mind this is blatant hypocrisy, but beyond that political position lies a destructiveness that can only rationally be seen as the continuance of the oppression of Americans of color, particularly Blacks, by our Federal Government. I will deal with our President’s hypocrisy and use it as the basis of my condemnation of the War On Drugs. Continue reading “Obama and the War on Drugs: Hypocrisy in Action”
It appears there is a thin chalk line between us and anarchy. Police in various states are cracking down on a criminal epidemic sweeping the nation: sidewalk chalk protesters. We just discussed the case of a California man who was not only arrested but hit with 13 charges for writing protests in chalk in front of a Bank of America. Now in Pennsylvania, a blog is reporting that AJ Martin, a health care protester, has been arrested for disorderly conduct for writing the above statement on the public sidewalk in front of the home of Governor Tom Corbett.
After the historic victory in the Windsor case, gay state Rep. Brian Sims (left), D-Philadelphia, rose to speak about the decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act on the floor of the Pennsylvania House. He did so during a time when members are allowed to discuss any subject of importance. However, he was blocked by Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe who objected on the basis that any such comments would constitute a “rebellion against . . . God.”
Randy and Karen Sowers are not your typical terrorists or mob financiers. They run the popular South Mountain Creamery and sell their produces at farmer’s markets and local events. The Somers however were confronted recently by FBI agents who informed them that the Justice Department was moving to seize their accounts under a law designed to thwart mob and terrorist financiers. They had made repeated deposits under $10,000. The Justice Department has seized their account of $62,936 under the law as illegal “structuring.” The criminal provision is written in a way to avoid the need for actual intent or knowledge of the illegality.
Continue reading “Federal Prosecutors Seize Creamery’s Accounts Under Terror Financing Law”
While the rulings in Fisher and Windsor justifiably garnered the most attention this week, it is important to note an important but little discussed decision to accept a case. 
I have previously testified and written about President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments, which I viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional. Recently, the D.C. Circuit agreed with that view and found that the Obama Administration had violated the recess appointment powers. Then a second appellate court has joined that view, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. I have two law review articles coming out on these appointments and more broadly the abuse of recess appointment powers in modern presidencies. See Jonathan Turley, Recess Appointments in the Age of Regulation, 93 Boston University Law Review ___ (2013) and Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Adverse Possession: Recess Appointments and the Role of Historical Practice in Constitutional Interpretation, 2103 Wisconsin Law Review ___ (2013). The case accepted for review is Noel Canning v. NLRB, No. 12-1115 (D.C. Cir. 2013).
Continue reading “Supreme Court Set To Review Obama Recess Appointments”
U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee has issued a sweeping victory for the Obama Administration and its contractors in seeking to bar any recourse for people injured or killed in U.S. camps or prisons like Abu Ghraib. Lee dismissed a lawsuit detailing well-supported accounts of abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison — holding that the injured parties could not use U.S. courts to seek judicial review and relief for the abuse. He closed the door to the U.S. judicial system to four Iraqi plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as well as one plaintiff who was deemed as barred under Iraqi law.
We previously discussed the alarming ruling in Nelson v. James H. Knight, DDS, where the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in December that a dentist did not commit gender discrimination in firing an attractive female employee, Melissa Nelson, at the request of a jealous wife. The “irresistible attraction” rule led many of us to question the standards applied by the Court. Now, the Court has taken the exceptionally rare step of withdrawing the December 2012 decision and announcing that it will reconsider the case.