It was my first case in the hinterlands of Kings County, a foreign land known to the locals as Brooklyn. A deal was cut to plead out for a sentence of time served, which my client happily accepted. After the judge announced sentence, the court officer was told to “take charge,” which in court lingo means to physically seize the defendant and put him back in the pens.

I immediately got between the court officer and my guy, blocking him from grabbing my client’s upper arm and leading him out of the courtroom. “He got time served,” I said loudly. “He’s walking out with me.”

The judge then explained that they did things differently in the hinterlands than they did in the Big City of Manhattan. Here, he informed me, a defendant had to be “processed out” by corrections before he could be released, but the judge assured me he would be out “today.” Continue reading →

The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Timbs v. Indiana is the sort that could either be easily overlooked, dealing with the generally unsexy Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, or misunderstood. The ruling “incorporated” the clause, meaning applied it to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment. That’s a big deal. But Tyson Timbs won a battle, not yet the war.

The case before the Supreme Court, Timbs v. Indiana, involved the seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover SUV from Tyson Timbs, who was arrested in 2015 for selling heroin to undercover police officers. He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to one year of house arrest and five years of probation. On top of that, the state of Indiana seized his 2012 Land Rover—which he had purchased with money received from his late father’s life insurance payout, not with the proceeds of drug sales—on the ground that it had been used to commit a crime.

Timbs challenged that seizure, arguing that taking his vehicle amounted to an additional fine on top of the sentence he had already received. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected that argument, solely because the U.S. Supreme Court had never explicitly stated that the Eighth Amendment applied to the states.

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What difference does hair make? A lot if you’re black. Part of it is nature and genetics, and part of it is style. And it could now mean a very expensive haircut if your employees are black and your business is in New York City.

Today, the New York City Commission on Human Rights releases legal guidance on our protections and enforcement actions against racial discrimination on the basis natural hair and hairstyles: https://t.co/ofDAttCZbQ #YourHairYourRightNYC pic.twitter.com/24MocBzk9Z

— NYC Human Rights (@NYCCHR) February 18, 2019

Hair, like any other aspect of one’s personal attire and grooming, speaks to who you are, and so many people choose their hairstyle to express their individuality. What does an employer care? Well, for some, it speaks to professionalism, much as wearing a suit rather than jeans conveys a message to customers or clients. But hair? Continue reading →

A funny thing happens when your value system is at work. It makes you blind to the issue at hand, as reflected by this letter to “Ask A Manager” about a woman who complains of discrimination in the workplace.

A few of the employees (and managers as well) adhere to a particularly strict brand of religious practice where they (men) do not spend time alone with members of the opposite sex who aren’t their wives or family members.While this doesn’t present itself as much of an issue in the day-to-day operation of the workplace, this has had impacts on performance reviews, work trips, and work-related outings (and, frankly, my morale). 

Some of my peers share these convictions, and while it’s irritating to me to be reduced to gender, I do respect their preferences.However, I feel like it leads to inequitable treatment when managers can have off-site 1:1 performance reviews (per the typical practice of the company) with their male employees and not with female employees, or could potentially be career-limiting if, say, they needed to choose someone to travel with them for a project and choose a male employee due to their beliefs.

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Was it that the cover story appeared during Black History Month? Would it have garnered less outrage a month later? Or is that just an excuse to rationalize outrage that would have happened regardless, because Esquire Magazine did something that is unacceptable in the current climate. It put a profile story of a white male teenager on its cover.

What’s wrong with this? Robyn Kanner explains. Continue reading →

[Ed. Note: Casual Lurker posted the following as a comment to this post, because he reads SJ in spurts, invariably far behind most people, and then leaves long, prolix comments that are occasionally fascinating but, as I’ve told him, tend to be more like private conversations between us since others have long since moved on to more recent posts. Much as he can be a huge pain in the ass and he’s too damn smart for his own good, he really should get his priorities straight and put SJ ahead of his work, his family and his health, so other readers can timely benefit from his comments.

Anyway, his comment was good enough to be a stand alone “guest” post, not to mention was longer than my original post, so I post it here without editing or revision. Just wait until he finds out about this post. Heh.]

Rumors of my demise are… yada, yada yada… Continue reading →

[Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is a former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was an officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers.]

Felony murder[1] is an old concept that if someone dies while a suspect is committing a felony (other than some form of homicide), then the suspect can be charged and convicted with murder. It is routinely used in criminal prosecutions across the nation. On January 28, 2019, Houston Police officers, acting on a no-knock search warrant that had been fraudulently obtained, entered a house and a gunfight ensued.

During that gunfight, the two occupants of the home, Rhogena Nicholas, 58, and Dennis Tuttle, 59, were killed, and four Houston Police officers were wounded by gunfire. The wounded include the officer who falsified the search warrant affidavit, Gerald Goines. Goines is now under investigation for these crimes, a number of which are felonies. Goines has also been in several shootings, being shot in 1992 and 1997. Continue reading →

[Ed. Note: This is a guest post by my brilliant Fault Lines colleague, Sam Bieler,]

After we parted ways at Fault Lines, Scott told me that someday I would read something that would piss me off, and when that day came SJ would be there. Well, here I am, nice and pissed off because of what Andrew Fleischman tweeted. Or rather, what people tweeted in response. You see, Andrew had a notion about sentencing. The reactions to that notion explain why the U.S. will probably have mass incarceration forever.

Andrew asked whether, given the non-violent nature of Paul Manafort’s crimes, the 19-24 year sentence Mueller requested was excessive. Andrew’s tweet offered a chance to think about why and how we choose to punish. Andrew promptly got ratioed by morons. Continue reading →

In an ironic comparison, David Leonhardt compares the jobs Amazon would have brought to New York City with cupcakes for kids.

Imagine that a bunch of children are sitting around a table when a seemingly beneficent adult walks into the room carrying a plate of cupcakes. The kids burst out in excitement — until they notice a problem: There are fewer cupcakes than children.

At this point, the adult announces some ground rules. To receive a cupcake, the children will have to compete with one another. The adult will accept cash or other objects of value. Praise for the adult’s kindness would also be welcome.

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My windy pal, Mark Draughn, parsed the “New Green Disaster” put forth by the AOC Committee in the newly woke House of Representatives. After running through some of the wish-list of irreconciliable, unrelated and impossible aspirations, he comes to an important point.

I don’t actually believe global warming is a myth. But after reading the Green New Deal, I find it easier to be sympathetic with people who believe it is, because it must seem awful convenient to them that the biggest proposal to fight global warming…is a giant wish-list of progressive policies.

And I find myself wondering…does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believe in global warming? She seems quite happy to use it as an excuse for everything in the Green New Deal, but if she really believed global warming was a disaster, wouldn’t she have proposed a better solution?

Continue reading →