Source: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2012/10/un-committee-too-many-states-still-use-torture-practices.php
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Source: http://jurist.org/paperchase/2012/10/un-committee-too-many-states-still-use-torture-practices.php
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So you say you did this for lunch money? Who knew the cost of living in Goose Creek, South Carolina was so high? As reported by The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina):
Goose Creek police responded to an alarm at Stratford High School about 9:30 p.m. They chased down a man with a yellow crowbar, a prying instrument and $125 in dollar bills that had been taken from vending machines, according to the incident report.
The man told police he was breaking in because he was starting a new job the next day and needed lunch money, according to the report.And the next day, and the day after that, and ...
Matthew Thomas Moses, 33, of Ladson was charged with second-degree burglary, making implements capable of being used in a crime and resisting arrest. He’s being held at the Berkeley County jail.Here's the source.
Source: http://rss.justia.com/~r/LegalJuiceCom/~3/jIIJJuQv54k/post_515.html
Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/lawyer-2-lawyer/2012/07/the-controversial-war-on-drugs/
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Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/kennedy-mighell-report/2012/10/living-in-a-public-beta/
In a recent display of enthusiasm, pizza shop owner, Scott Van Duzer, gave President Obama a bear hug when the President visited his shop on a Florida campaign tour. The visit and the ensuing bear hug provided quite a spectacle. After all, how could the secret service have permitted this? But, both the owner and the President seemed to enjoy the moment.
What impressed me more was the interview of the shop owner. He said, in response to a question about whether he feels that Obama has let the country down, “The bottom line is this: I own a small business. I take accountability for my business. I’m not looking to blame the government. And if people had the same mentality of taking care of their own businesses instead of looking to blame somebody when things are a little bad—just tightening things up and doing the best they can—I think we’d be better off that way, too. The whole world is not in a good place right now, and I’m not looking to blame someone. I think that’s the problem. We’re looking more so to blame him for our misfortunes.”
In other words, we’re not “entitled” to a particular way of life; we have to work to achieve our success; and we are accountable to ourselves ... neither the government nor anyone else has “done it to us.” Blaming someone else merely allows us to feel like a victim. We do have power and control over our own lives to a far greater degree than we admit.
By analogy, in a show the other day, Katie Courac talked to two teenagers who were bullied. Their common characteristic was that they refused to feel like a victim. They remained upright and confronted their attackers. Their stories provided an interesting perspective
Can we use help? Absolutely. Do we need rules of the road to assure that we have a level playing field? I believe so, but that's my bias. Should the government provide us with help? Before you answer this question, read the Time Magazine article by Jeremy Styron to understand how the government actually is in our daily lives, more than we know, more than we care to admit, providing us with material assistance just to get through our normal day's routine.
But, without the accountability to ourselves, without rules that apply to all, equally, we go nowhere. Thank you, Mr. Pizza Shop Owner, for putting entrepreneurship and small business in the proper perspective.
Source: http://feeds.lexblog.com/~r/LawBizBlog/~3/KSSx-I6opgI/
You just can't go around arresting people for cussing, or you may be ponying up, as this Georgia city discovered. As reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Community activist Mary Kirkendoll grew so frustrated with Smyrna’s town hall question-and-answer session, she stood up and began to leave. Before she got to the door, she turned toward the audience and uttered a profanity. “This is [expletive],” she said during the April 21, 2009, meeting. “They are never going to tell the truth.”Really, AJC? You can't say "bullshit" when it's a direct quote that's at the heart of the story? Anyway ...
Kirkendoll was immediately put under arrest and then jailed for more than two hours. Later, she filed a federal lawsuit, alleging her free speech rights had been violated and that she had been falsely arrested and imprisoned.What did this lulu cost the city? (Fine. What did it cost the city's insurance carrier...)
This week, the city’s insurance carrier agreed to pay $85,000 to Kirkendoll to settle the litigation, city spokeswoman Jennifer Bennett said. The city was not involved in the carrier’s decision to settle, she said.
“I hope that the city and mayor got the message and that no one else will ever be arrested for simply speaking out during a public meeting,” Kirkendoll said Thursday. “I am certainly thankful the lawsuit is over and that I have finally been vindicated.”You can read more (a fair amount) here.
Source: http://rss.justia.com/~r/LegalJuiceCom/~3/zv1XHpXaJKI/the_atlanta_journalconstitutio.html
After the beating of bartender Karolina Obrycka by then-Chicago cop Anthony Abbate, about which there is little dispute despite the controversial sentence of two years probation imposed by Circuit Judge John Fleming on former cop Anthony Abbate, there were allegations of bribes, threats and cover-ups. Six years later, the case is coming to trial.
Via the Chicago Tribune:
When Abbate left, Obrycka immediately called 911, touching off what her lawyers contend was a cover-up by police concerned over one of their own.
Two veteran Grand Central District patrol officers responded and learned from Obrycka that her attacker was a Chicago police officer and that the entire incident was captured by surveillance cameras. However, the officers didn't mention either detail in their report, according to the court records.
That same evening, Gary Ortiz, another Abbate friend and city employee, went to the bar to ask Obrycka not to press charges, according to the lawsuit. Ortiz relayed that Abbate had offered to pay for Obrycka's medical bills and time off work if she did not complain to the department or file a lawsuit, her lawyers contend. Obrycka declined the offer. According to court records, the city has conceded that Ortiz's action was an attempted bribe.
When that didn't work, Abbate turned to threats.
He goes, 'Believe me what I tell you.' He said, 'Your life, everybody in the (expletive) bar — this is, this is — I'm backed against the wall,'" a transcript quoted Chiriboga as saying. "'I don't give a (expletive). I did, I did that to Karolina,' he said, 'but I want the tape. I want the (expletive) tape.'
"He calls me — he tells me, 'Do you love your brother?'"
In the same conversation, Chiriboga told Kolodziej that Abbate threatened to falsify charges or plant evidence if necessary.
"You tell Martin to get rid of that tape or there's gonna be people getting DUIs," she quoted Abbate as telling her, according to the transcript. "You might be driving with a pound of (expletive) cocaine on you."
This was brought to the Office of Professional Standards, which is alleged to have whitewashed the investigation.
According to the lawsuit, OPS investigators did not follow up on the allegations of bribery and intimidation, didn't conduct a meaningful interview of Abbate or recommend his suspension, and submitted incomplete evidence to the Cook County state's attorney's office.
"The OPS investigators set about a concerted and deliberate effort to minimize and conceal from public scrutiny the details and facts of the case," the lawsuit said.
According to the Tribune, the City has a policy of refusing to settle cases involving misconduct by off-duty officers. Karolina Obrycka's lawyers say the cop have a de facto policy of covering up each other's conduct, and they are going to put the Code of Silence on trial to hold Chicago responsible.
To prove their case, the Plaintiff's intended to call an expert, Dr. Steven Whitman, a statistician and epidemiologist, to provide both quantitative and qualitative testimony to show that the police department treats cops differently than non-cops. Chicago challenged his expertise, and District Judge Amy St. Eve held that Whitman was qualified to provide quantitative, but not qualitative, opinion.
Dr. Whitman has no education, training, or professional experience in criminology, or in matters involving policing, the CPD, the ways in which citizens file complaints against Chicago police officers, the process by which the CPD investigates allegations of police officer misconduct, or the CPD's disciplinary process. Indeed, at his deposition, Dr. Whitman admitted that he had never reviewed a Complaint Register ("CR") file, and that he does not know — and has not attempted to ascertain — what constitutes a "proper" or "improper" method of conducting a CR investigation. (Citations to record omitted.)
The problem is that combining the education, experience and background to find an expert not only suitably educated and capable, but one who possesses the specific experience of dealing with the issues in a police department, and even more particularly the Chicago police department, isn't easy.
Here, Dr. Whitman lacks foundation for his qualitative conclusions. Despite Dr. Whitman's impressive credentials and experience as a biostatistician and epidemiologist, by his own admission, he knows nothing about police departments, police misconduct, investigations into police misconduct, or the process by which the CPD disciplines its police officers — the subjects that lie at the heart of this case. In response to the City's questions on these points at his February 5, 2010 deposition, Dr. Whitman consistently admitted that his expertise lies in data analysis, and that what he was "trying to do in this [case] is display all the data [he] had, explain what it meant as well as [he] could, and not go beyond [his] professional expertise."
Accordingly, Judge St. Eve allowed the plaintiff to offer Dr, Whitman's expert testimony as to the quantitative piece, but would not allow him to draw inferences from the data to show that the Chicago Police Department engages in a de facto policy of covering up police misconduct.
Many will wonder why it's not enough to show that Abbate's beating was covered up. Unfortunately, the state of the law is that to hold Chicago liable, plaintiff's must show it to be an accepted governmental practice under Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Since there's obviously no written policy, the proof must come from the practice, and the practice isn't so easily proved.
The court's ruling raises a sticky question: Will the jury be able to draw the necessary inferences from the quantitative date provided by the plaintiff's expert? Data is dry, boring, often obtuse in its detail. What data means isn't always clear and obvious, and often requires a depth of understanding that jurors lack. Dr. Whitman may well have the goods to provide the jury with everything it needs to conclude that the Code of Silence is alive and well in Chicago, but it remains up to the jury to draw the necessary inferences.
Given the video in this case, and the rather disgraceful conduct after the beating by Chicago police, the case won't lack for a dramatic basis for the jury to appreciate the wrong done Karolina Obrycka. Whether that will translate to a verdict that the City of Chicago had a policy of covering police misconduct has yet to be seen.
But the trial appears likely to put the Blue Wall of Silence on trial, and will certainly prove interesting either way.
H/T FritzMuffKnuckle
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HOT SPRINGS – Trial judges need to do their share to prevent rude and unprofessional conduct among lawyers, according to a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Justice Donald W. Lemons said trial judges actually contribute to incivility when they offer only mild admonishment in the face of bad lawyer behavior.
Speaking at a forum on professionalism and civility at The Homestead, Lemons said trial judges confronted with unprofessional practices should clearly articulate what is expected and what is not allowed, make themselves accessible for complaints about sharp practice and impose sanctions proportionate to the offense and directed to where the offense occurred.
Some attorneys at the Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys seminar expressed concern about judges who chastise both sides when only one advocate is misbehaving. Lemons said he has urged trial judges to become more assertive.
“The bench needs to come up to the plate and start playing ball,” Lemons said.
Petersburg Circuit Judge Pamela S. Baskervill said she has pondered whether to call a senior partner to report misbehavior by a junior partner.
Retired Fairfax County Circuit Judge Stanley P. Klein said he prefers to take the lawyers to his chambers to let them know their misconduct has not gone unnoticed. “It’s tough to do when the client’s in the courtroom,” he said.
Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. of the Court of Appeals of Virginia said some lawyers never seem to get the message.
“Certain things resonate with some people, some things will never resonate with some people,” Alston said.
The forum on civility is a joint project of the VADA and the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association.
Source: http://valawyersweekly.com/vlwblog/2012/10/11/judges-urged-to-crack-down-on-rude-lawyers/
Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/law-technology-now/2012/05/video-conferencing-for-lawyers/
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Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/kennedy-mighell-report/2012/03/new-ipad-new-decisions/
Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/gone-clio/2012/01/gone-clio-with-beate-weiss-krull/
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Source: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202575827638&rss=rss_nlj
Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/un-billable-hour/2012/06/the-linkedin-lawyer/
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Early on the morning of July 25, residents of a neighborhood in northeast Portland, Ore., were awakened by the sound of a battering ram plowing through the front door of a small house. Inside, the sleepy young occupants stumbled out of bed as FBI agents rushed in with assault rifles.Plante was nabbed. Not because she was one of the bashing anarchists, but because the government suspected she knew who the real culprits were. Naturally, the next step was to make Plante give them up. She was not so inclined.Leah-Lynn Plante, a thin, tattooed woman who volunteers at a bookstore that specializes in anarchist literature, shivered in her underwear in the backyard as a SWAT team hauled out computers, clothing, books and artwork — looking, the agents said, for evidence of who participated in this year's May Day demonstrations in Seattle that saw smashed windows at banks and clashes with the police.
Last week, Portland resident Leah-Lynn Plante spent the first of what could be more than 500 nights in prison for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury about people she might know who might have been involved with the political vandalism in Seattle on May Day.And indeed, this is the law. We have a constitutional rights against self-incrimination. We have no right not to incriminate others. To the extent there may be any overlap, the granting of immunity to Plante for any crime for which her testimony may implicate her ends any right to invoke the Constitution.
Plante has not been charged with a crime. In fact, the court granted her immunity, meaning she could not invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Lawyers for two other grand-jury resisters—Matt Duran and Katherine Olejnik—have argued that the jury's questions about their acquaintances and housemates violate the First and Fourth Amendments. The court has decided that their silence is not protected by the First, Fourth, or Fifth Amendments.
As federal marshals prepared to take her away, Judge Jones reminded Plante that "you hold the keys to your freedom" and that she could be released at any time if she chose to "exercise your right to provide testimony."An odd turn of a phrase indeed. The judge's admonition, as Plante was taken away for contempt of court for her refusal to do as she was ordered (a perpetual problem for anarchists, perhaps), was directed at her ability to purge her contempt by complying with the order. She could walk free by "exercising her right" to do as she was told. A curious way to describe what a person does with a right. Plante instead chose to have herself measured for a khaki jumpsuit. Slim women can wear anything.It was an odd turn of phrase—the same judge who, that morning, legally blocked her from exercising her right to remain silent was sending her to federal detention for not exercising a "right."
Minutes before Plante's hearing, her attorney, Peter Mair sat, brow furrowed, in the courthouse lobby. Mair worked for years as a federal prosecutor—he's indicted the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has prosecuted mobsters, and is familiar with how grand juries work.
But given the way government attorneys are using grand juries now, he said, "you could indict a ham sandwich. Defense attorneys are not allowed in, other witnesses are not allowed in... They're going to send this poor girl off to prison for a year and a half. And the great irony is that the one guy who pleaded guilty to the crime served—what? Forty days?"
One of the anarchists protesters was identified and prosecuted at the outset, and received a sentence of about a month. Like it or not, this was pretty light weight as federal crimes go. Not that a month or so in jail is fun, or that it's of no consequence to be saddled with a federal record when you're young and full of vigor, but it's the price one pays for anarchy.
Plante, on the other hand, can be held for up to 18 months for her contumacious conduct. Bashing a door is one thing; refusing to be a forced snitch is far more serious. If courts don't enforce their orders with brutal abandon, then people won't do as they command. That would never do.
It's not that the judge is wrong on the law here. It's pretty basic stuff. But regardless of whether you approve of her politics, you've got to admire the fortitude of a young woman sitting in a federal detention facility rather than be forced to snitch on her friends. Especially when so many macho men are tripping all over each other to rat out their brothers at the first opportunity, desperately trying to exercise their "right to provide testimony."
Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2012/10/20/forced-to-snitch.aspx?ref=rss
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Source: http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/lawyer-2-lawyer/2012/07/a-radical-or-rational-scotus-session/
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