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Criminal Law Tag

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 08, 2016 43 Comments
Voters in California and Nebraska will be deciding more than who goes to the White House. Ballots in both states include a question on whether or not to repeal the death penalty. The Washington Post reports:
Voters in California and Nebraska will decide whether they want to keep the death penalty When voters head to the polls in California and Nebraska on Election Day, they will get to weigh in on whether their states should abolish the death penalty. These two initiatives, along with another ballot measure in Oklahoma, represent a sort of microcosm of where things stand nationwide on the death penalty. Most states still have the practice on the books, even if a dwindling number of states actually seek to carry out executions...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 16, 2016 37 Comments
Earlier this month we reported on a beating of a female Chicago police officer by a suspect, and how the officer didn't use her service weapon because of fear of how the public would react to a shooting of a black man, Chicago’s Top Cop: Police are ‘Second-Guessing Themselves’: Chicago Superintendent Eddie Johnson said one of his officers didn’t defend herself against the man who beat her unconscious because of the backlash she and the department might receive:
“As I was at the hospital last night, visiting with her, she looked at me and said she thought she was gonna die, and she knew that she should shoot this guy, but she chose not to because she didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news,” Johnson said while attending a public ceremony honoring heroic officers and firefighters.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 15, 2016 19 Comments
The New York State Attorney General's office has been on an over 10 year long jihad against former AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg over alleged accounting fraud. Though he now is age 90, Greenberg continues to fight
Standing on principle may be partly generational. Mr. Greenberg is one of a dwindling number of “the Greatest Generation,” as Tom Brokaw called World War II veterans who grew up during the Depression and fought “because it was the right thing to do.” Mr. Greenberg spent much of his childhood on a small farm in an impoverished area of the Catskills near Liberty, N.Y. His father died when he was 6, and his mother worked as a manicurist. At age 17, he dropped out of high school and lied about his age to enlist in the Army, where he learned “discipline, focus and loyalty,” Mr. Brokaw wrote in his 1998 best seller.
The ongoing trial has the bizzarre aspect that the AG's office is trying to use Greenberg's military service against him by claiming that the military precision with which he ran the company made him culpable for the acts of underlings. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 20, 2016 15 Comments
Earlier this week, we highlighted the case of a sailor in the U.S. Navy who was being prosecuted for using his phone to take pictures in a nuclear submarine. His lawyer cited Hillary Clinton as a defense. At the time, I said:
Cases like these highlight the growing feeling among many Americans that there are two sets of rules in this country and that some people are above the law if they have the right connections.
Unfortunately for the sailor, the Clinton defense didn't work. U.S. News and World Report has the story:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 16, 2016 50 Comments
A sailor in the U.S. Navy is facing prison for using his phone to take pictures inside a nuclear submarine. He claims that he just wanted to share the photos with his family and that he deserves leniency. His lawyer is citing Hillary Clinton as a defense. Politico reports:
Citing Clinton, sailor seeks leniency in submarine photos case A Navy sailor facing the possibility of years in prison for taking a handful of classified photos inside a nuclear submarine is making a bid for leniency by citing the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over classified information authorities say was found in her private email account.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 05, 2016 6 Comments
A series of unsolved shootings in Phoenix, Arizona has led local authorities to believe they're dealing with a serial killer. Few things capture the eerie side of the American imagination like a a person who hunts and kills other humans. Countless books and films have been based on the subject. Still, it's a horrifying thing when it's actually happening. CNN reports:
Phoenix police: Suspected serial killer linked to 9 shootings, 7 deaths This time, the target was a car with a 4-year-old boy and his young father inside. The same man who has killed seven people has struck again, Phoenix police said Wednesday.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 23, 2016 12 Comments
Just when you are ready to give up on California, there is a sign that some sanity still remains in Sacramento! In April, a 2-member California parole board authorized the release of former Manson Family killer Leslie Van Houten. The decision to go forward with this recommendation rested with Governor Jerry Brown, who was sent a petition signed by over 140,000 people to discourage his signature on the release when it arrived on his desk. This time, Brown made the good choice.
Gov. Jerry Brown denied parole Friday to Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted along with other members of Charles Manson's cult in the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 13, 2016 37 Comments
A cafeteria worker at Yale's Calhoun College named Corey Menafee "resigned" from his job last month after using a broom handle to smash a window. The stained glass image in the window depicted slaves working in a cotton field. Menafee, who is black said the image angered him and that "we shouldn't have to see that." The New Haven Independent reported:
An African-American dishwasher lost his job after losing his cool and breaking a stained-glass panel in Yale’s Calhoun residential college dining hall that depicted slaves carrying bales of cotton. The dishwasher, Corey Menafee, said he used a broomstick to knock the panel to the floor. He said he was tired of looking at the “racist, very degrading” image. Yale University Police arrested Menafee, who now faces a felony charge. The university, meanwhile, has cut ties with him....

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 21, 2016 10 Comments
We recently reported that some law professors of the American Law Institute wanted to expand the concept of sexual consent in a way which would make it easier to define people as criminals. The proposals were outrageous and would have put people at risk of being legally guilty of rape even if their partners consented. Proponents of the changes were largely left wing professors who undoubtedly agree with the progressive concept of rape culture. The good news is that the institute rejected the proposal. Bradford Richardson of the Washington Times:
American Law Institute rejects affirmative consent standard in defining sexual assault In a rebuke to a feminist idea that has migrated from college campuses to mainstream culture, an influential legal group overwhelmingly rejected Tuesday a provision that would have endorsed an “affirmative consent” standard for the purpose of defining sexual assault.

Posted by Andrew Branca on May 18, 2016 21 Comments
The defense in the “Freddie Gray” trial of Officer Edward Nero rested today, the trial’s fifth day. Closing arguments are anticipated tomorrow, and trial Judge Barry Williams has announced that he expects to return a verdict on Monday, May 23. There hasn’t been much substantive reporting on the defense’s case the last two days, and of course there aren’t cameras in Maryland courtrooms, but the following is based on live-“tweeting” of the trial by the Baltimore Sun.

Trial Day #4

The defense primarily brought as witnesses police officers who either were somehow involved or a witness to Gray’s arrest and transport, who trained Officer Nero, or who otherwise are experts on police procedure.

Posted by Andrew Branca on May 17, 2016 39 Comments
First, my apologies for not getting this post up last night--I'm in the process of riding the motorcycle to the NRA Annual Meeting in Louisville, and various delays just pushed last night's arrival to too late an hour. Yesterday the State presented the remainder of its case against Officer Edward Nero, and rested. The prosecution's case turns out to be just as weak and ridiculous as every reasonable person has long since perceived.  In essence, the prosecution's theory of criminal liability for Nero rests on the fact that when his superior officer, Lieutenant Brian Rice, radioed for assistance in chasing down a fleeing Freddie Gray, Nero complied with that request without first making an independent evaluation of whether reasonable suspicion existed for the stop or probable cause for the arrest. Of course, such automatic good faith compliance with fellow officers in a pursuit and arrest is precisely what police are trained and expected to do.  If the officer requesting assistance is later unable to articulate reasonable suspicion or probable cause, that's on the initiating officers, not on those who come to that officer's assistance in good faith.  The notion that the assisting officers should face years in prison for such good faith conduct is utter madness.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 15, 2016 27 Comments
Sexual consent laws on college campuses are already reaching absurd levels, but if the American Law Institute has its way and loosens the concepts of consent, it will easier to accuse participants of crimes. Stuart Taylor Jr. writes at Real Clear Politics:
Legal Group Weighs Radical Expansion of Sex Crimes Imagine the following case: Two recent college grads meet in a bar, talk, begin kissing, and go to her apartment. After a little more talking, they resume kissing there. He undresses her and initiates sexual intercourse. She neither objects nor resists. He leaves, and they have no further contact. A month later, she files a criminal complaint with police, complaining that this was rape because she never expressed verbal consent and was physically passive.

Posted by Andrew Branca on May 10, 2016 18 Comments
I know many of you have been wondering where the heck I've run off to from the pages of Legal Insurrection, so I want to immediately dispel the most common rumor:  No, Professor Jacobson and I have not broken up. :-) More seriously, the reason for my absence has been that I've been hard at work finishing the thoroughly updated newest edition of my book, "The Law of Self Defense, 3rd Edition," which I'm proud to announce published last week.  Further, I learned this morning that we've already achieved the number one position in Criminal Law new releases at Amazon.com, at that we're #6 in the Criminal Law category overall. And today we also became #1 in the Hunting & Shooting category at Amazon.

Posted by Andrew Branca on May 08, 2016 57 Comments
The second of the Freddie Gray trials is scheduled to being this Wednesday, May 11, this time of Police Officer Edward Nero, one of the three officers involved in Freddie Gray's initial stop and arrest.  Nero was charged with second-degree assault, two counts of misconduct in office, and reckless endangerment. Nero is being tried on charges of second-degree assault, two counts of misconduct in office and reckless endangerment. All the parties involved remain under a gag order imposed by trial Judge Barry Williams (transparency, much?). Nevertheless, news reports are indicating that the prosecution has essentially conceded that they're simply making up the legal theory under which they are bringing Nero's prosecution. The Baltimore Sun uses the phrase "novel legal theory" to describe the State Attorney Marilyn Mosby's prosecution of Nero, which is simply a more polite way of saying "they're making up the law as they go along."

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 21, 2016 14 Comments
Anders Breivik, the mass murderer who killed 77 people during a rampage in 2011, has successfully sued the government of Norway for violating his civil rights by keeping him in solitary confinement and searching him. CNN reported:
Mass killer Anders Breivik's human rights breached in prison, court rules Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has won part of his lawsuit against the state over his solitary confinement in a high-security prison, a court announced Wednesday. The Oslo district court found the 37-year-old's treatment in prison violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibiting "inhuman or degrading treatment," and ruled that his conditions must be eased.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2016 26 Comments
The Black Lives Matter movement is angry with Hillary Clinton over Hillary's use of the term "Superpredators" in the 1990s to describe young black male criminals. That term was an integral part of selling the public on tougher criminal sentencing that BLM blames for the current high rates of incarceration for blacks. We covered the issue when a BLM protester confronted her at a fundraiser in late February, Hillary apologizes for stigmatizing generations of young black men as “superpredators”:
It was a chilling speech in 1996. Speaking in favor of a new crime bill, Hillary Clinton used the term “superpredator” to describe young, mostly black, men who were residual criminals. While the term was not literally limited to blacks, it came to signify and justify the mass incarceration of young black men under harsh sentencing laws:
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