Aisha Fraser Mason was stabbed to death in her home in Shaker Heights. Who could have seen this coming? Well, anyone who cared to look.

Mason in August 2014 punched his then-wife 20 times and slammed her head against the dashboard of his car five times, breaking her orbital bone.

The couple’s children were in the back of the car when the attack occurred.

At the time, Lance Mason was called “judge.” Before that, he served in the state legislature. After his release from prison, serving nine months of a two year sentence, he was hired by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson as a minority business development director. Not only did he hold positions of trust and power before and after, but he held them despite the harm he inflicted on his wife and children and the indicia of other “issues” that arose following his arrest for the brutal beating. Continue reading →

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he’s giving an additional $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University. This comes on top of $1.5 billion that he’s given over the years. And it’s great. Great that he can do so. Great that he chooses to do so, as this is his money and this is his choice of what to do with it.

But as much as he deserves the kudos he seeks by making a big splash of his generosity, does his rationale bear up to scrutiny?

Here’s a simple idea I bet most Americans agree with: No qualified high school student should ever be barred entrance to a college based on his or her family’s bank account. Yet it happens all the time. Continue reading →

Among the more controversial aspects of the proposed Title IX sex adjudication regulations is that colleges, though not required to provide an appeal process, must make appeals available to both accuser and accused should they decide to offer it at all.

We propose adding section 106.45(b)(5) stating that a recipient (college) may choose to offer an appeal. If a recipient offers an appeal, it must allow both parties to appeal. In cases where there has been a finding of responsibility, although a complainant may appeal on the ground that the remedies are not designed to restore or preserve the complainant’s access to the recipient’s education program or activity, a complainant is not entitled to a particular sanction against the respondent.

This implicates the concept of “double jeopardy,” that a finding in favor of the accused at the hearing doesn’t conclude the matter, but that the accuser gets a second bite at the apple of guilt. Note the word “concept,” as the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy doesn’t apply. It’s a limitation on criminal prosecution and this is an administrative proceeding, even if it’s quasi-criminal in nature and constructed to circumvent constitutional mandates. Continue reading →

From Cristopher “CJ” Precopia’s point of view, his arrest happened on the “good guy curve,” without any clue why cops were there, why they wanted him.

The 21-year-old Williamson County, TX, man told KVUE News he was confusedwhen he was arrested on September 22, 2017 at the lumber yard where he worked. He couldn’t remember when he last spoke to the woman, whom he had dated years earlier in high school.

I had no idea why everything was happening, and I was lost,

The police, of course, knew better, as they always do, even when they’re completely wrong. Obviously, the perp knew why they were there, because they wouldn’t be there if he didn’t know. This was especially true for Precopia, after what he did. Continue reading →

It’s dead. This won’t come as anything new to regular readers here, as I’ve been chronicling this for quite a while now, even noting that it admits it’s no longer the organization it was decades ago, and it no longer wants to be. But it’s dead. The ACLU is dead, and it announced its demise on twitter.

It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused and letting schools ignore their responsibility under Title IX to respond promptly and fairly to complaints of sexual violence.

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 16, 2018

In four words, this twit said it all: “inappropriately favoring the accused.” Even when it confessed that it would no longer concern itself with civil liberties of disfavored people, bringing a tear to former Executive Director Ira Glasser’s face, and much to the chagrin of the old civil rights lawyers who hadn’t yet sold their souls to social justice or the lavish wealth that came from hating the right people, there was still some tiny twinkle of hope that the ACLU would refocus, remember why it was formed, why it existed, and choose to stand up for the Constitution.  Continue reading →

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

–Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge. Dodgson), Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 6, p. 205 (1934). First published in 1872.

Definitions of words have suffered gravely over the past few years. Vague words, like harassment, have come to mean anything the person claiming victimhood decides they mean. Even words with reasonably well-defined legal meaning, such as rape, have become untethered from their definition. When words mean anything, they mean nothing. Continue reading →

When something was terribly wrong, we used to give reasons why that was so. Good times. Now, there’s no need for the real labor of thinking when all that’s needed is an expression of outrage.

Outrage: It’s absolutely everywhere. Today’s world, particularly the version of it blasted into our brains by social media, offers endless fodder, from big, simmering outrages (climate change and many powerful institutions’ refusal to do anything about it) to smaller quotidian ones (every day, someone, somewhere does something offensive that comes to Twitter’s attention, leading to a gleeful pile-on).

As Jesse Singal notes, we’ve become outrage junkies. We look for reasons to enjoy the visceral pleasure of being outraged, the rush of outrage from our brains hearts to our fingertips, as it oozes out of us into the ether and smears the targets of our need to feel fury. But is this a bad thing? Continue reading →

The new proposed Title IX regulations have not as yet been released, but leaked to the Washington Post, and the battle has already been joined. While I refuse to address the regs until they are official, as we’ve already played this game with leaked regs at the New York Times, which didn’t pan out well, one aspect has already caused heads to burst.

A new rule from Betsy DeVos would require universities to allow accused sexual abusers to cross-examine and re-traumatize their victims. This is absolutely sickening.

But what would you expect of NARAL, right? Except that was just the start. Continue reading →

Criminal law reform appears to be about to happen. It may not be all that we wanted, hoped for, but it’s better than nothing, and nothing is what we got from the last administration. But this post isn’t about H.R. 5682, the “First Step Act,” because there’s a squirrel named Trump that got in the way.

Why doesn’t the news media simply ignore Donald Trump? Or, at least, cover him far less? He thrives on the attention. Withhold your coverage and starve him of oxygen.

Liberals, frustrated by Trump and his dominance of the news cycle, often make this case to me.

Why don’t we in the media focus on other things, important policy issues, rather than on the last intemperate thing that Trump said or did?

The “me” is Charles Blow, and he offers a surprising prescription. Continue reading →

For reasons that are both obvious and troubling, Fordham lawprof John Pfaff’s opening description of newly elected Suffolk County District Attorney Rachel Rollins notes the two foremost characterizations of the moment, that she’s Boston’s first black female prosecutor. She’s not the first prosecutor who fits that description, but other “reform” prosecutors, like Darcel Clark in the Bronx, have proven to be huge disappointments.

So we keep trying, noting immutable characteristics as if Larry Krasner wasn’t a white male former criminal defense lawyer doing some serious reform in Philly. But Rollins ran, and was elected, on a distinctly reform platform, that she would decline to prosecute 15 offenses. Continue reading →