The argument, spurious as it may be, is that the Sex Offender Registry is justified as a means of alerting people to the child molester or rapist next door. Not “fair enough,” but still, that’s the rationalization. So Florida has taken the “sex” part, ignored the rest of the reasoning, and run with it.

Florida lawmakers just voted to create a public registry of people caught paying or attempting to pay for sex.

After an initial defeat in the Florida House of Representatives, the registry—arguably the worst part of a new Florida crime bill capitalizing on human-trafficking propaganda—was revived and reinserted before the measure’s passage in the Florida Senate. The final version, approved last week, creates a database of convicted prostitution customers, targets strip clubs, and mandates that a slew of state workers and businesses jump through new hoops to accommodate a few politicians’ latest attempt to get their names in the press.

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Yesterday, the New York Times published an op-ed by former Obama chief of staff, now Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, laying claim to having begun the successful reform of the Chicago police department. The Chicago Tribune replied with an editorial calling bullshit. The reason is clear: Emanuel, in the midst of his farewell tour, having announced that he would not be running for another term, has fabricated his success out of whole cloth. It’s a lie. It’s revisionist history. It is bullshit.

Today, the New York Times has published another lie, this time by Anita Hill. I have no clue what happened between her and Clarence Thomas. I remember well watching Thomas’ confirmation hearing. I recall being grossed out by Hill’s testimony about a pubic hair on her can of Coke. I was no fan of Thomas, and believed he was singularly inadequately distinguished to serve on the Supreme Court.

But Hill’s testimony, disturbing though it was, failed to doom the nomination for an obvious reason. She could have taken action against Thomas, proved her claim and prevailed. Instead, she did nothing, save made excuses for her failure to act. That was 1991, decades before people forgot that mouthing untested accusations was absurdly inadequate to prove they were wronged. Continue reading →

Tom Nichols, who has curmudgeon potential should he seek to work a little harder on it, revisits the (thus far) ineffective calls to fire Camille Paglia from Philly’s University of the Arts and Sarah Lawrence’s “Diaspora Coalition’s” condemnation of its professor, Samuel Abrams. And, of course, the students at Vermont’s Middlebury College, threatening governmental suicide if their demands aren’t met.

In Vermont, students at Middlebury College have threatened to disband their own student government if the school does not respond to a hodgepodge of demands ranging from greater student presence in the administration to the creation of a black-studies department. Many years ago, I taught at Dartmouth College and lived in Vermont just up the road from Middlebury; just 1.1 percent of the population of Vermont, the whitest state in the nation, and 1.9 percent of Middlebury’s is black. That might make recruiting faculty for a black-studies department a challenge for any institution in the region, but students also want a two-year plan to create an LGBTQ center, hire more counselors who are “femme, of color, and/or queer,” and “provide a more robust health service for transitioning people,” proposals that are likely to be especially expensive for a small institution in rural New England.

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Andrew Miltenberg won another big decision against Syracuse University. His client was John Doe. They’re always John Doe, and the accuser is Jane Doe, no relation. There are two things about this win that stand out. The first is that Judge David Hurd of the Northern District of New York recognized the inherent bias in “trauma-informed” interrogation.

John also contends defendants were influenced by biased sexual assault trauma training they received, specifically “trauma-informed investigation and adjudication processes,” which is required by federal and New York State law. The goal of which, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (“Office of Civil Rights”), is to ensure “the protection of girls and women.” Recipients of this type of training are taught that “inconsistencies in a complainant’s story are a direct result of the trauma,” that is, that they are “a natural byproduct of sexual assault as opposed to an indicator that the complainant’s story may lack credibility.” Plaintiff contends that this “bias in favor of the female accuser” is the only explanation for the Conduct Board’s findings in light of Jane’s inconsistent allegations.This bias, according to John, is further evidenced by the Conduct Board’s finding that Jane’s “actions throughout the process are consistent with a traumatic event such as she described in her statement.”

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It’s hard to argue against “Marsy’s Law,” both because victims are inherently sympathetic (and in the age of empathy, don’t we all feel just horrible about the poor victims?), and because it’s more an overarching concept than a specific thing, as each jurisdiction that considers or enacts a Victim’s Bill of Rights does so a little differently, each expecting to tweak it to make it workable.

From the perspective of the public, this not only seems just and fair, but obvious. Shouldn’t we be concerned about victims? Shouldn’t victims be treated with respect? Shouldn’t victims deserve to be protected from the retraumatization of their abusers? There’s certainly a strong pull in favor of answering each of these questions with a resounding “yes.”

No. The answer is “no.” There are no victims in criminal court. There are two tables, one for the prosecution and one for the defense. There is no third table for the victim, and there shouldn’t be. Continue reading →

The argument made to the jury about the person whose crimes are forgiven, who is taken into the DEA fold, is that when angels are involved in drugs, witnesses will be angels. Until then, the government is constrained to use the services of scoundrels to win the War on Drugs. And it works. All the time.

So what if the “confidential informant,” the euphemism for the mutt who yesterday was the worst lying scum alive but today, in the service of the DEA, is somehow rehabilitated into a reformed sinner repenting for his misdeeds. And, usually, working them off any way he can.

But just how bad must a snitch be to fall below the threshold of DEA love? Edward Quintana tested the depths to which the government would go, and the DEA failed the test. Or, according to the Tenth Circuit, the DEA won, because qualified immunity precluded culpability for their allowing Quintana to be out and free to sexually molest Jason Estrada’s minor son, and then murder Estrada. Continue reading →

My pal, Brian Cuban, has been a strong voice for lawyers who suffer, whether from mental illness or addiction, to seek help, pushing to remove the stigma that prevents lawyers from doing so for fear of ridicule and rejection. He’s taught me to appreciate the problem and value of dealing with it.

To be fair, it hasn’t been easy. While I can certainly appreciate Brian’s, not to mention other lawyers with whom I’m good friends and for whom I hold great respect, perspective, the flip side of the equation is clients. What about clients? Should they be represented by lawyers who, at any moment, might slip into mental illness, disappear in a fog of addiction?

Is there a way to reconcile the needs of lawyers to help themselves and the needs of clients to be helped by mentally healthy, non-drug addled lawyers whose foremost concern is them? Isn’t that why lawyers exist, to serve clients rather than have a place to go to every morning where they can feel comforted and secure? Continue reading →

In his April 13th letter to Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, demanding Trump’s tax returns, Chair of the Ways and Means Committee Richard Neal relies on a foundational principle that is critical to making government function, the presumption of regularity.

Third, concerns about what the Committee may do with the tax returns and return information are baseless.  As my April 3rd letter noted, this request falls squarely within the Committee’s oversight authority.  It is well-established law in the D.C. Circuit that “[t]he presumption of regularity supports the official acts of public officers and, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties.” Sussman v. U.S. Marshals Serv., 494 F.3d 1106, 1117 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (citation omitted); Exxon Corp. v. FTC, 589 F.2d 582, 589 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (“committees of Congress will exercise their powers responsibly and with due regard for the rights of affected parties.”).  In other words, the IRS, Treasury, and Justice must assume that the Committee Members, like all government officials, will act properly in the conduct of their official duties.

Does anyone still believe it? There is certainly a significant contingent of the citizenry who doubts Trump’s good faith and honesty, mostly because he can’t tell the truth about much of anything and keeps getting caught in ridiculous lies. Is Congress any more credible? Is the attorney general or the treasury secretary? Continue reading →

They were on sale, and I needed a new pair of pajamas, so Dr. SJ bought me a pair. After all, they were from Brooks Brothers, so they had to be good, amirite? Like me, she’s a sucker for legacy, the memory of when a haberdasher like Brooks Brothers sold clothing of exceptional quality, fit and finish, design; the sort of clothing one would have and wear for many years to come.

The pajamas arrived. They were not good. So I went to the website and left a comment, giving them two stars out of five and explaining that the flannel was thin, the details of manufacture were inadequate, lacking pockets or elastic in the draw-string waistband, which was minimally expected of a decent pair of pajamas.

These might be fine in the bargain bin of a big box store, but not what one should expect of a store like Brooks Brothers. I said that I would not recommend that anyone purchase these pajamas. It wasn’t a long review, but sufficient to register my view. Continue reading →

Building on his work over more than a decade, Radley Balko asked 20 Questions of the candidates seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. Put aside whatever quibbles you have about the framing of the questions, as he’s tried to be as neutral as possible in how they’re framed in order to ask a question that would get a meaningful response. And he’s done a fine job of it.

But his 19th question raises an issue that was a hot topic here a decade ago, as I took the position that Sonia Sotomayor was an excellent choice for the Supreme Court. While she checked the boxes for female and Hispanic, which was a big issue at the time, neither of those factors commended her nomination. There was no doubt an Hispanic woman could be a justice, but being an Hispanic woman wasn’t enough. Not by a mile. My support was based on her legal experience. Continue reading →