DNA has been both miracle and curse to criminal law. It can prove innocence, and may be useful in proving guilt. But it comes with a great many issues as well, such as the fact that DNA likes to travel and won’t stay where we want it to stay, whether in the lab or the street. Without recognition of the problems, the miracle can prove dangerous and deceptive. Even gold standards tarnish.

What many may not realize is that DNA testing takes time, both to handle it well and avoid contamination and to just perform the analysis. It’s one of the reasons that testing isn’t as quick and easy as people imagine. But what if it could be done quickly, when the trail was still hot? It could mean an innocent didn’t spend needlessly long time in jail, or under threat of prosecution, and the perpetrator of a heinous crime could be arrested before he harmed someone else. Wouldn’t this be great? Continue reading →

The downfall of Alex Kozinski was stunning. From adored Ninth Circuit judge to pariah, even at the hands of the same people who were all too happy to bask in his reflected glory until they turned on him in outrage, Koz deserves no sympathy, as he brought it on himself, even if he might have thought his brilliance as a jurist would excuse his awfulness as a person.

When he resigned from the federal bench, the complaints about his conduct as a federal judge came to their natural end. Its outcome, at worst, would have been the end of his position as a judge, and since he was no longer a judge, there was no purpose to be served in pursuing an investigation. Or was there?

Last year, the first step in the rehabbing his reputation began when he appeared as a co-author on an appellate brief on behalf of the heirs of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Zindel, in their case claiming the Oscar Award-winning movie “The Shape of Water” stole copyrighted parts of Zindel’s “Let Me Hear You Whisper.” Now it’s reported that he’ll be returning to the Ninth Circuit in an oral argument in that case. Continue reading →

Much to the chagrin of the unduly passionate, black women just aren’t always on the right side of history. After all, how is it even possible that the terminally deluded have to do the dirty work of seizing the microphone lest they be complicit?

https://twitter.com/MaxLewisTV/status/1202364112237453313

As Robby Soave explains at Reason, even black women elected to office are subject to being silenced when they just don’t get it. Continue reading →

The New York Times thought it editorial worthy to call for Mayor Pete Buttigieg to disclose his work for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The problem is that while Buttigieg raises it to show that his start was in the private sector, and he’s got some real world chops, he won’t say which companies he consulted with or what he did for them.

In various interviews, he has said working at McKinsey taught him about the power of big data, that it taught him “street smarts,” and that it convinced him to enter public service.

The reason is that Buttigieg is subject to a nondisclosure agreement. The Times doesn’t seem to care. Continue reading →

There will be more information coming, possibly between these words are written and the time it’s published. But there are two things that won’t change. A UPS driver, 27-year-old Frank Ordonez, and the as yet unidentified driver of a car stuck in traffic on Miramar Highway, won’t be coming home for dinner tonight.

(Taimy Alvarez / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Two armed men attempted to rob a Coral Gable jewelry store. Who they were is unknown. Why they decided that robbing a jewelry store was a good idea is similarly unknown. Contrary to the fantasy rationalizations of the unduly passionate, sometimes the reason is that there are bad dudes who do bad things for bad reasons. People are funny that way, and regardless of whom these two robbers turn out to be, what they did was tragically bad, for themselves and two other human beings who won’t make it home for dinner. Continue reading →

In an op-ed, competitive cyclist and philosophy prof Rachel McKinnon stands her ground.

Soon after my win, Donald Trump Jr. threw a Twitter tantrum about me. I’ve seen a huge uptick in the volume of hate mail I’ve received in the weeks since. I have four people who monitor my Instagram to delete hateful messages; they’ve been overwhelmed by the volume. Twitter is far worse. I’ve received death threats, but I try not to dwell on them.

McKinnon is transgender and, having won a gold medal in a race, has been the target of hatred for “cheating” by being born a man and competing as a woman. But she didn’t cheat. Not at all.

Many want me to race against men. I have news for them: I’m not allowed. I’m legally female. My birth certificate, passport, driver’s license, U.S. permanent resident card, medical records and my racing license all have an “F” on them. The Union Cycliste Internationale, USACycling, Cycling Canada, the Canadian and United States governments and the state of South Carolina all agree that I’m female. Continue reading →

It may well be that Attorney General Bill Barr always had impulse control issues, but they failed to make headlines. This time they did.

While speaking to a room full of law enforcement officers Tuesday night during a Justice Department award ceremony to honor distinguished service in policing, Barr made the remarks regarding those who don’t show “respect” to authority, according to The Washington Post.

“Today, the American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” Barr reportedly said.

Continue reading →

Four academics appeared as witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee conducting its impeachment hearing, three called by Democrats and one by Republicans. The three prawfs, beyond offering their normative “man on the street” factual conclusion that Trump abused his office, agreed that his misconduct was exactly the sort for which impeachment was intended.

Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard, argued that Mr. Trump’s decision to withhold a White House meeting and military assistance from Ukraine while he demanded political favors from its president was a classic impeachable abuse of power.

“The essential definition of high crimes and misdemeanors is the abuse of office,” he said. “The framers considered the office of the presidency to be a public trust.”

Unlike a certain other Harvard prawf, Feldman wasn’t part of the choir singing impeachment from the day after the election, but came to it after revelation of the MEMCOM of the July 25 telephone call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The other two, Standord’s Pam Karlan and UNC’s Michael Gerhardt agreed. Continue reading →

When Barack Obama was elected president, some said it was the end of racism. That was false, but it did put an end to one thing, the belief that a black man could not be elected president. The point wasn’t that he was elected because he was black, but that he wasn’t not elected because he was black. No longer was race a preclusive factor.

But what about gender? When Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, unquestionably the most unfit, unqualified, candidate for the presidency since Andrew Jackson (and likely ever), many feminists argued that it was because she was a woman. In fairness, Clinton played the gender card, from pantsuit nation to announcing during the debates that she was the candidate for women. Unfortunately, the job was for the presidency of the United States, not the presidency of the women of the United States. Continue reading →

Former “top cop” Kamala Harris is out. For her brief and shining moment as a Democratic candidate for the presidency, she was Senator Harris, snarky, hip and a champion of all things progressive, because she spent her life fighting for reform. Or so she claimed.

“Kamala Harris has spent her career fighting for reforms in the criminal justice system and pushing the envelope to keep everyone safer by bringing fairness and accountability,” Lily Adams, a spokesperson for Harris, told me.

Others, like Lara Bazelon, disagreed.

Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Continue reading →