The bronze statue, “Silent Sam,” stood on the campus of the University of North Carolina since 1913 until it was toppled by students on August 20, 2018. State law requires that the statue be maintained. Despite the fact that students, faculty and, perhaps, the administration would rather be rid of this homage to confederate soldiers, UNC came up with a plan to construct a new building to house the statue.

Any dispute over the maintenance of the statue at UNC is beside the point. That students and faculty today believe it should be removed as a symbol of racism is presumed as a given. That state law prevents this isn’t subject to dispute. So teaching assistants at UNC have decided to engage in an “action.”

Several dozen teaching assistants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill started a strike Friday, saying that they will withhold student grades as long as the university moves ahead with the idea of constructing a building to house the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam. The strike comes after classes have finished for the semester and students are preparing for final exams and normally would be soon receiving final grades. Continue reading →

They claimed it was the will of the majority of the Harvard committee. That turned out to be a lie. Harvard didn’t care and did it anyway, 

The policy, announced two and a half years ago by College dean Rakesh Khurana and adopted by the Corporation in late 2017, prohibits undergraduates who belong to unrecognized single-gender social organizations (USGSOs) from leadership posts in student organizations or athletic teams, and from receiving College endorsement for fellowships like the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.

They are now being sued, on top of their issues about excluding Asians from admission because there are too many smart ones, for, inter alia, violation of Title IX. Continue reading →

At Inside Higher Education, one side of the issue was joined.

When Melinda Wenner Moyer, a science journalist for The New York Times, was attempting to report on an unexpected aspect of a vaccine’s efficacy or safety, she found that scientists often didn’t want to talk with her. And when she did get them on the phone, she says, a worrying theme emerged: “Scientists are so terrified of the public’s vaccine hesitancy that they are censoring themselves, playing down undesirable findings and perhaps even avoiding undertaking studies that could show unwanted effects. Those who break these unwritten rules are criticized.”

The fear described is that virulent anti-vaxxers have forced social scientists who support vaccines underground. They fear being attacked by the nutjobs for doing science. This rejection of the expertise in favor of populist dogma, Linda Stamato notes, has found its way into the courts as well. Continue reading →

The argument is what I call the “low hanging fruit,” that censorship hurts everyone, but since people care more about some groups than others, pander to their feelz.

This week, the social networking site Tumblr banned the very thing that drove many people to its site: adult content. Many cheered that Tumblr had finally caught up with the times, echoing anti-pornography policies adopted by Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others. But there was another set of voices you might not have heard — the voices of women and the L.G.B.T.Q. community — who pointed out that this change will destroy a safe space for self-expression, discovery and connection.

First, a couple confessions. I’m not a consumer of porn. It’s fine with me that your mileage may vary, but it’s just not my thing. If Rule 34 didn’t exist, I would lose no sleep. Don’t judge me. Continue reading →

When it comes to evidence that will nail a conviction, little is better than a confession. Of that “little,” there’s DNA, the “gold standard” of forensic evidence. While people have come to realize that targets can be made to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, as in the Central Park 5 case, Marty Tankleff and now from the pop “Making A Murderer,” Brendan Dassey, forensic evidence has maintained its shine. Maybe the gold standard is beginning to tarnish.

The trial of the man accused of murdering Karina Vetrano, a 30-year-old woman who was killed while jogging in a Queens park in 2016, ended in a mistrial Tuesday night.

After a day and a half of deliberations, 12 jurors returned to the courtroom split on whether to find the man, Chanel Lewis, 22, guilty of the murder and sexual abuse of Ms. Vetrano on an early August afternoon in Spring Creek Park.

It was a horrible crime. The cops focused on Lewis, who had no criminal record, after Lt. John Russo claimed to remember him loitering in the park, wearing heavy clothing in the summer, avoiding police. An unrelated 911 call placed Lewis in the park the day of the crime. Thin gruel, but the pressure to close horrific cases is strong. Continue reading →

The facile retort to calls for honoring the concept of due process under the series of attacks, whether Title IX, #MeToo and in the Kavanaugh hearings, was that “this isn’t a criminal trial.” Grasping this mantra, advocates sought to distinguish their vilification of due process when it served their purpose, while feigning respect for it otherwise. Of course, this isn’t how life works, as the notion of procedural fairness is either a good thing or a bad thing, but it can’t switch from one to the other based on one’s preferred outcome.

Tyler Lampe, a former cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, found that out the hard way.

“In today’s day and age, like it or not, guys are guilty first,” an alternate juror in Lampe’s case reported hearing one member of the panel saying prior to deliberations, according to a motion for dismissal of the charges against Lampe filed last month. Jurors are instructed not to discuss the case in any way before beginning their deliberations.

“Why didn’t they let him take the stand?” another juror was quoted as saying. Criminal defendants are specifically not required to testify, as the burden of proof is on the prosecution.

Continue reading →

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Gamble v. United States this morning, which might have been cause for celebration at any other time in history. But not today.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear Gamble’s complaint in Gamble v. United States: If the Constitution protects against “double jeopardy,” what allows both the state of Alabama and the U.S. government to convict and imprison him for the very same crime?

The Fifth Amendment says that no “person [shall] be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” At first glance, Gamble’s double sentences seem to violate that rule because the “offences” were the same—possessing the very same gun after the very same state felony conviction. The catch is that under the “separate sovereigns” rule, a defendant can be prosecuted by the feds and a state—or by two different states—for precisely the same crime. And, in Gamble’s case, there were two different sovereigns involved. By breaking Alabama’s “felon-possession” statute, Gamble “offended” the state of Alabama; by breaking the federal statute, he also “offended” the United States.

Continue reading →

Much as I admire Lara Bazelon, she hurt my feelz.

There is an uncomfortable truth in the current system. No one wants to talk about it.

No one? Why do you erase my existence? Okay, that was almost certainly written by the headline guy at the Times as clickbait, so it’s really not Bazelon’s fault. Her op-ed relates the dirty underside of Title IX campus sex adjudications, that they have a huge disparate impact on black males accused of rape and sexual assault.

The Office of Civil Rights does not collect data on race in Title IX cases, but the little we know is disturbing: An analysis of assault accusations at Colgate, for example, found that while only 4.2 percent of the college’s students were black in the 2012-13 school year, 50 percent of the sexual-violation accusations reported to the school were against black students, and blacks made up 40 percent of the students who went through the formal disciplinary process. Continue reading →

There are only two things I can remember when my co-counsel and I were talking right before jury selection began: he told me only an idiot can’t come up with a viable excuse to beat a Batson challenge, and a few hour later, he lost a reverse Batson challenge. We talked about the jurors we wanted on the jury for the case, but contrary to what people assume, voir dire isn’t about selecting a favorable jury for our side as much as denying a favorable jury for the prosecution.

Based on anecdotal experience, I’ve long argued that voir dire is voodoo. There’s never been much doubt that prosecutors employ their peremptory challenges to toss minorities off the jury, just as defense lawyers use them to get rid of cops’ wives and white people who live in gated communities with perfect lawns. It’s not that we’re certain of how they think, what they’ll do, but that voir dire isn’t magic. We can make assumptions based on extremely limited information, and they almost invariably compel lawyers into making decisions based on stereotypes. We have little more to go on.

Wake Forest crimlaw professor Ronald Wright has done a study of jury selection, and now offers statistical proof that what everyone has always known to be the case is the case. Continue reading →

Unlike Title IX, employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has a far more affirmative reach than merely post-hoc punishment. It provides:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer –

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;

Proof of discrimination can be shown by actual animus or disparate impact, but with limitations. Continue reading →