It’s not as if Kurt Vonnegut didn’t warn us, but do the favored buzzwords of “inclusion” and “diversity” necessarily require us to reject excellence? Sure, the only way to create equal outcomes for all is to suppress excellence, since we can’t all play ball like Michael Jordan or sing like Andrea Bocelli,* but that doesn’t mean that only black guys can play basketball or white guys can sing opera.

The problem, among many others, is that the critical nuance is lost in the quest for diversity and inclusion. Under the simplistic grasp of the mantra, the feelings of the disaffected have been indulged to the point of constant rage at everything and nothing.

So why all the rage?

The answer lies in the title of Anthony Kronman’s necessary, humane and brave new book: “The Assault on American Excellence.” Kronman’s academic credentials are impeccable — he has taught at Yale for 40 years and spent a decade as dean of its law school — and his politics, so far as I can tell, are to the left of mine.

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One would think there would be no need for the New York Times to publish an op-ed arguing for the virtue of recording police interrogations. After all, the problems of false confessions as proven by subsequent DNA exonerations, exposing the manipulative questioning using the highly effective Reid Technique, have left us without any doubt of the need.

With the ubiquitous presence of cellphones, that record every burp of humanity, how can there be any doubt that recording interrogations, and the confessions that follow, is critical to sound evidentiary practice and the legitimacy of the confession? Indeed, there isn’t. And there wasn’t a decade ago.

Except, of course, the one aspect that troubled law enforcement, that the public might not appreciate the means necessary to compel a defendant to admit his guilt. To cops, it was what needed to be done. To the unwary lay juror, it might look a bit too unsavory for their untrained tastes. Almost a decade ago, when Prawf Brandon Garrett explained the necessity of recording interrogations in the New York Times, this was laid bare. Continue reading →

Star University of Wisconsin wide receiver Quintez Cephus is on trial. No wait, that’s former wide receiver, as he was thrown off the team upon the accusation, ending his college football career and any hope he had of going pro. It’s not as if he spent most of his life working toward such a future that an accusation should be enough to kill it dead in his tracks.

But hey, he’s a guy, a football player no less, and even though he’s black (as are a disproportionate number of accused), isn’t it far more important to feel badly for the accuser, any accuser as long as it’s a “she,” then consider destroying the guy’s future? Something has to give, right?

Thus far, his accuser has testified that she was too drunk to consent to sex. The video shows otherwise. Then there were the texts. Continue reading →

It’s as if the cool kids have found the magic gap where they can show their disdain without being held accountable. Why? No one was physically harmed. What’s the problem?

It started with milkshakes in Britain, and has now found its way onto the street of New York. Two Republican legislators have decided something must be done.* Continue reading →

The County of St. Louis settled the trial for $750,000, which seems like an awful lot of money for a dead dog. But the underlying reason, coupled with the violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of the dog’s owners, was more than sufficient to compel a settlement.

“Why is this cop able to call in a SWAT team because I didn’t have gas service at my house?” said Zorich.

She recalls SWAT members kicking in her front door, before firing at her pit bull.

“They put me and my son on our knees to watch her die. The officer squatted over her while she was dying with the search warrant, and he said, ‘You know why we’re here?’ and I said, ‘No I don’t know.’ When he said, ‘We’re here because your gas is off.’ I lost it,” Zorich said.

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While the forces of good, evil and fantasy fight over the promise of debt cancellation and free college tuition, a curious subtext emerged at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Noting initially that it was activists pushing Sen. Bernie Sanders and Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal to introduce the College for All Act of 2019, neither academics nor college administrators came out in force to support the cause.

Why? Such laws would seem to inure enormously to their benefit, since it would disengage the cost of college from the pockets of students and their parents, thus enabling universities to charge ever-greater tuition with the taxpayer footing the bill. It somehow manages to float under the radar that the high cost of a college education has less to do with the ability of the poor to afford it, or assume enough debt to pay for it, and more to do with increases dwarfing the cost of living and rise in income.

Ann Larson argues that this is because we no longer “understand” the purpose of education. Continue reading →

The problem isn’t hard to explain or fathom. Local prosecutors work hand in hand with the cops. They need each other, even if they don’t necessarily like or respect each other, and both know it. So when a cop does wrong, there is invariably an inherent conflict in expecting the local prosecutor to treat her as he would any other defendant. And it’s not just the one dirty cop, as cops come in packs, and the brethren get rather protective of each other, so the prosecutor faces a police force that might not appreciate that she’s just doing her job.

There are alternatives, of course. There are other prosecutorial offices who can step in when a conflict arises. There are cities and states with special prosecutors to address conflicts in general and cops in particular. And, in fairness, there are local prosecutors who have the integrity to do what the law requires, even if it means making enemies on the force.

Joshua Michtom, an assistant public defender at the Connecticut Office of the Chief Public Defender, offers an interesting alternative. Continue reading →

The defendant, Michael Duhon, wouldn’t stop. He was being sentenced in Judge Marilyn Castle’s courtroom for the theft of more than $25,000 and money laundering, and he wouldn’t stop.

Duhon repeatedly interrupted the hearing, and Castle ordered a bailiff to tape Duhon’s mouth shut, according to court minutes.

Clearly, Duhon’s lawyer, Aaron Adams, had no control over his client. Whether the best course of action was to tape his mouth shut or employ other options is subject to debate. In some courts, shock belts are used to inflict pain on a misbehaving defendant. Continue reading →

Had it been a “garden variety” murder trial, the decision of Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket would likely be celebrated. Activists would be arguing whether the statue they demand built of him outside the courthouse should be bronze or marble. But there will be no statue of Judge Bicket built, and the question now is whether he will survive his decision or be the next judge to be Persky’d by the mob.

An Allegheny County judge last week overturned a jury’s guilty verdict in a sexual assault case and acquitted the defendant, a controversial move so rare that it stunned the state’s victim advocate and led two of the jurors to question their service.

The decision feels “like it’s almost an abuse of power,” Jennifer Storm, Pennsylvania’s Victim Advocate, said.

“I’m absolutely appalled,” said juror Leslie Mason, 33.

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There are two assumptions by people who have never had to suffer the oddities and ironies of real people in real criminal court. The first is that if there is a dead body, somebody has to pay. The second is that nobody, but nobody, would do something so awful or inexplicable without some malevolent intent. As becomes quickly clear to those of us who serve as janitors of the law, neither life nor people work so neatly. Sometimes, inexplicable tragedies just happen.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that wasn’t the case for Juan Rodriguez.

By all accounts, he was a doting dad to his year-old, twin son and daughter, setting up a bouncy castle in the yard for their recent first birthday party and dressing them in their latest cute outfits while his wife made breakfast in their Rockland County split-level.

Then, on Saturday, Juan Rodriguez, 39, was hauled handcuffed before a judge, charged with the babies’ hot-car deaths.

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