Associate Justice William O. Douglas was a bastard.  He knew damn well that Brady would be huge, and that he left out the details that would make it work.  I’ve never forgiven him, not that he cares. Of course, he’s dead, but still.

Ask any criminal defense lawyer about the efficacy of Brady and its progeny (we always include the part about its progeny, like Giglio), and she will tell you what a mess it is. Not because the concept isn’t wonderful. After all, who doesn’t agree that the defense should be informed by the prosecution that they have stuff that tends to show a defendant is innocent, or their witnesses are lying scum?

Nobody wants to convict the innocent, right?  Well, maybe Douglas, since he neglected to include anything about when the duty to disclose had to happen, like more than 12 seconds before the jury returned with its verdict. Like I said, a bastard. Continue reading →

If anyone proposed the notion that a man should be entitled to use the ladies’ restroom ten years ago, it would have evoked outrage. Should girls be exposed to such a thing? Shouldn’t women be allowed the sanctity of doing what they do in privacy?  But that was a different time, when we were concerned about things like children and women’s privacy. My, how times change.

Officials in Charlotte, N.C., spent more than a year carefully considering and debating an antidiscrimination ordinance that was passed in February to promote the city’s culture of inclusiveness. State lawmakers quashed it on Wednesday by passing an appalling, unconstitutional bill that bars transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity and prohibits cities from passing antidiscrimination ordinances that protect gay and transgender people.

A culture of inclusiveness is a curious phrase.  One person’s inclusiveness is another’s exclusiveness.  Charlotte decided that the proper thing to do was to make their restrooms amenable to transgender people, which is certainly a fair choice to make if it’s decided that the interests of transgender people take precedence over any other concerns. Continue reading →

Funny, right?

Or not so funny.

“Education is not about the mere reproduction of knowledge,” Hackman said. “Education is the practice of freedom. And as a result, we have to have [teaching] students becomes activists as well as teachers.”

Suspend your desire for reason, for a moment, for your own safety, as there is little that follows that will not make you cringe in pain. Continue reading →

It’s a phrase commonly used by lawyers, but often confusing to others.  It’s that the thing at issue “can be used as a sword as well as a shield.”  What it means is that the thing not only protects someone or some group, but, if deftly handled, can also be used to attack them or another.  But “safe space,” the land of puppies and Play-Doh?

At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf makes the case.

At Ohio State last week, a sit-in and protest inside a university building was cut short when students were warned that they would be forcibly removed by police, arrested, and possibly expelled if they did not vacate the premises within a few hours, by 5 a.m.

Weird, right? As opposed to protests and sit-ins that once brought pepper spray, today they bring Happy Meals delivered by deans with love.  But not this time. After the requisite Gertruding, Conor highlights what makes this unusual. Continue reading →

The Supreme Court, in Imbler v. Pachtman, rationalized its imposition of prosecutorial immunity with a little tummy rub for those who suffered the indignity of impropriety:

Moreover, a prosecutor stands perhaps unique, among officials whose acts could deprive persons of constitutional rights, in his amenability to professional discipline by an association of his peers. These checks undermine the argument that the imposition of civil liability is the only way to insure that prosecutors are mindful of the constitutional rights of persons accused of crime.

Somehow, this message didn’t get across.  That prosecutors are rarely subject to professional discipline is well-documented, and even the mention of their name by a court when impropriety is found results in howls of anger and protest.  Nothing new here. Nothing surprising.

But the fact that courts don’t refer prosecutorial misconduct to lawyer discipline, because it’s unseemly, doesn’t preclude someone else from doing so. In the aftermath of the no true bill on NYPD Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner, many (myself included) called out Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan (who has since moved on to Congress) for deliberately sabotaging his presentment. Continue reading →

So what if Woody Allen prefers young Asian women who were once his adopted daughter?  It doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything.

OUR favorite Woody Allen joke is the one about taking a speed-reading course. “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes,” he says. “It’s about Russia.”

Mark my words, hot fudge sundaes will eventually be conclusively determined to be health food. But I digress.  Years ago, Evelyn Wood offered a program to teach us to speed read.

The promise of speed reading — to absorb text several times faster than normal, without any significant loss of comprehension — can indeed seem too good to be true.

And it’s back, this time in apps. Continue reading →

It was 2011, and the optics were horrible.  UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike was pictured spraying O.C., pepper spray, in the faces of sitting protesters. They refused to obey, so the students were sprayed. This resulted in a settlement of $38,000 to Pike for his suffering.

Chief Annette Spicuzza did her best to explain to those of us who didn’t understand the First Rule of Policing why Pike’s actions were necessary.

Spicuzza said officers were forced to use pepper spray when students surrounded them. They used a sweeping motion on the group, per procedure, to avoid injury, she said.

“There was no way out of that circle,” Spicuzza said Friday. “They were cutting the officers off from their support. It’s a very volatile situation.”

Rather than appreciate how hard it is to be a campus cop, to face students violently sitting, the internet kept pounding the optics, the viral picture of Pike showing the world the fun times ahead for UC Davis students.  This was bad for business. Continue reading →

There were a bunch of stories, a couple decisions, a few commentaries, that I wanted to write about this morning. I’m not.  Instead, I’m writing this.  I’m writing this because I’m angry.

My early morning, the time that I use to write, was consumed with dealing with OPFs, Other People’s Fuck-ups.  It wasn’t one. Not ten. It was a far more substantial number. It wasn’t people who were doing me a favor, but people and businesses who get paid to provide a good or service. And some do, except they do it wrong. And others promise to do it, but then don’t, or at least don’t within the time frame it needs to get done.

They apologize for the inconvenience. They understand my frustration. What they do not do is their job.

Some offer excuses, usually related to how difficult it is to get things right.  Some explain their policy, which is essentially their way of telling you that as happy as they may be to take your money, they feel no compulsion to do anything in exchange.  Some just shrug and tell you they will correct their mistakes. And maybe they will. Eventually. Or maybe they will make a change and then test your fortitude to catch their latest fuck-up or go through the process of trying to fix it again. Continue reading →

There was a question on my law school application, “how many hours a week do you plan to study?”  It was an idiotic question, so I responded with an appropriate answer: “How long must a man’s legs be?” They admitted me anyway.

Senior Southern District of Ohio Judge Sandra Beckwith was confronted with a similar question.  She answered.  Poorly. From K.C. Johnson at Academic Wonderland:

Among the dozens of due process cases filed since the Dear Colleague letter’s appearance, the most significant factor in the outcome is the randomness of judicial assignments…

Last month, Senior U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith, a George H.W. Bush appointee, joined this undistinguished list. She heard a lawsuit filed by two accused students at the University of Cincinnati. Even in the world of university sexual assault investigations, UC’s conduct was particularly bad.

Continue reading →

The starting point is peculiar, as nobody doubts the facts of the case. Aiken, South Carolina, Police Officer Chris Medlin anally raped Elijah Pontoon.  He raped Pontoon on the side of the road. He raped Pontoon without a warrant. He raped Pontoon without lawful justification.  There is no question, no dispute whatsoever, that Medlin anally penetrated Pontoon without consent.

According to Radley Balko’s follow-up, the local government, aside from being unaware that Aiken was being sued for the rape, was otherwise taking action to address the rape. Whether it is sufficient is a matter of some question, but it’s better than merely stonewalling the problem as other municipalities and their police departments have done.  But they’re doing something, and, since the video of the rape went viral and eyes have turned toward Aiken and its cop rape problems, they’ve drawn an F.B.I. investigation into why the cops in Aiken rape on the side of the road.

And yet, there is something about the fact that this occurred, that a cop raped, raped a black man, molested a black woman, raped on the side of the road, raped without a warrant, raped without anything approaching a lawful justification (a problem so huge, in itself, as to warrant a far larger discussion that won’t happen here), that suggests a local paper should consider saying something, well, unfavorable about it.

Does the Aiken Standard approve of rape?  Hardly. But it approves of cops, and when cops rape, it’s entirely different.  Continue reading →