How long? At the moment, it’s almost nine years, the journey having begun in 2007.  Carlos Vega still sits on the Rock awaiting his future.

Mr. Vega was arrested in the Bronx on Sept. 30, 2007, accused of killing a man in a bodega. Now 33, he has been in jail for nearly nine years. Three trials have failed to yield a verdict. The first trial, more than four years after the murder, ended in a mistrial after the wife of a key witness became ill. The second ended in a hung jury, and the third also ended in a mistrial after a confrontation with a guard left Mr. Vega hospitalized.

In all, Mr. Vega’s case has come before the court 126 times as it has been shuffled among three defense lawyers, five prosecutors and 12 judges. Another hearing is scheduled for Monday.

That’s the “what,” even if in abbreviated version. But it’s not the “why.” If you don’t read the story carefully, you might think you know why, but you don’t.  Not really. That there were three mistrials along the way, each for a decidedly different reason, doesn’t answer much of anything.

The numbers seem wrong, 126 court appears, all those lawyers and judges. But aside from giving off an unpleasant scent, they explain nothing. Are they the cause of nine years delay or the consequences? Has Carlos Vega been the victim of the system or is he beating the system at its own game? Being in pre-conviction status for nine years sounds terrible, but it beats being convicted and serving a 25-year sentence for murder before being denied parole for the next 27 years. Continue reading →

The first president was a man, John Hanson.  Few people count him, however, and so his name has faded into obscurity.  Hundreds of years later, a woman was the candidate for vice president of a major party, Geraldine Ferraro. She lost, but not because she was a woman. She had the misfortune to run with Walter Mondale, who was crushed by Ronald Reagan.

There were national leaders elsewhere who were women, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher. And there was the first credible candidate for president, Elizabeth Dole, who ran in 2000, and lost to George W. Bush.  He was followed in office by Barack Obama, the first black president.

In 2016, the question is posed whether the United States is ready for a woman president. We’ve been ready for years, decades perhaps. But it’s an immature question, despite many who feel deeply moved by Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the Democratic candidate for president. For some, her nomination “breaks through” the glass ceiling that some believe prevented a woman from being taken seriously as being capable of holding the office.  And indeed, symbolism has a beloved place in American culture. Continue reading →

The words first came out during a rally in support of police following the murders of cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge.  Granted, whipping up the groundlings is a time for simplistic slogans, not thoughtful nuance.

“Target our citizens, target our police, and you’re going home in a body bag,” Mangano said, to thunderous applause at Eisenhower Park, where hundreds of firefighters representing every Nassau fire department and some from Suffolk County rallied in support of police.

Ed Mangano is the Nassau County Executive, having won election as a sacrificial lamb candidate against the incumbent, Tom Suozzi, in 2009. It was one of those shocking upset, not the least to his own party, who would have run someone who wasn’t a blithering idiot had they realized they could win. But Suozzi took his re-election for granted, and boom, Mangano took the election.  And now, in his second term after beating Suozzi in earnest, he’s no longer considered a bad joke.

But his “body bags” comment wasn’t just hyperbole for a crowd inclined to applaud such lines.  Continue reading →

Added to the list of words devoid of meaning at institutions of higher learning is the word “tolerance.” A student at the University of Houston, Rohini Sethi, found that out the hard way.

She was diverse and inclusive, allegedly liberal values. However, judging by the reaction of the social justice warriors on the U of H campus, Sethi’s innocent post is being reacted to as if she burned a cross in front of the student center.

Rohini Sethi, a young woman of color whose conformity to the values of the mob allowed her to hold the position of  student body vice president, expressed an opinion on Facebook following the murder of five Dallas cops.

Shortly after the July 7 shooting in Dallas that killed five officers, Rohini Sethi went on Facebook and opined “Forget #BlackLivesMatter; more like AllLivesMatter.” The statement was later deleted, but only after numerous UH students denounced it as incredibly offensive or even hateful.

More like intolerable, as her fellow student explained. Continue reading →

An anecdote of how a high school teacher engaged in a sexual relationship with his student is the stuff of outrage. There ought to be a law, and indeed, in Ohio there is. Not just for teachers, but for a list of others as well, including clergy, mental health providers, prison guards and cops.

(5) The offender is the other person’s natural or adoptive parent, or a stepparent, or guardian, custodian, or person in loco parentis of the other person.

(6) The other person is in custody of law or a patient in a hospital or other institution, and the offender has supervisory or disciplinary authority over the other person.

(7) The offender is a teacher, administrator, coach, or other person in authority employed by or serving in a school for which the state board of education prescribes minimum standards pursuant to division (D) of section 3301.07 of the Revised Code, the other person is enrolled in or attends that school, and the offender is not enrolled in and does not attend that school.

(8) The other person is a minor, the offender is a teacher, administrator, coach, or other person in authority employed by or serving in an institution of higher education, and the other person is enrolled in or attends that institution. Continue reading →

Catching someone with the smoking gun in her hand is rare. But it occasionally happens, as was the case when University of Southern California Title IX Director Gretchen Dahlinger Means thought she had dropped out of a conference call.  Via KC Johnson:

At University of Alaska, Fairbanks, the curiously titled Director of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, Mae Marsh, put it in an email. Continue reading →

A confession: Reading op-eds by Roxane Gay is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s my version of watching one Kardashian telling another how she really feels. It’s like an emotional roller coaster built atop an intellectual cesspool. It never fails to disappoint, even if it remains inexplicable why she’s given space to opine, demographics aside.

But her gripe this time isn’t about her deepest feelings of despair that the world hasn’t recreated itself around her. This time, she’s going after a target truly deserving of castigation: the Cloud.

The spectacles of life, sex and death are the mainstay of Dennis Cooper’s blog, DC’s Blog. I never know what to expect when I read it, but I always know I will be provoked, challenged and intrigued. Over the years, Mr. Cooper, an artist and writer, has curated any number of collections of ideas and images, revealing an inexhaustible curiosity about art and the human condition. He has unfailingly championed small-press writers, and particularly those who experiment with language, narrative and form.

As required by the rules of social justice, Gay opens with her heart, because nothing that follows would matter if she didn’t gush with adoration.  This is notable because, had what comes next happened to, say, Mike Cernovich’s blog, which likely doesn’t evoke the same love as Cooper’s, you can bet your bottom dollar that Gay would have done a 180 and applauded the Cloud having eradicated hate speech to protect society from evil. Continue reading →

One of the least understood, and most important, reasons why cops kill with seeming impunity is that people can’t seem to wrap their heads around the legal standard established by Graham v. Connor.  It’s not that lawyers keep it an inside-the-guild secret. It’s been discussed at great length, here and elsewhere.  It’s been explained in detail to writers who aren’t lawyers.  We’re trying our best here.

Why then does Joe Goldstein write a long form article, over 1800 words, about cops killing people that fails miserably to clearly explain two things:

1. What is the legal standard applied to police killings.
2. How does it differ from the legal standard applied to everyone else.

It’s not that the article was bad, or particularly wrong, despite Goldstein traveling the well-worn path of opening with an anecdote (in this case, the killing of Ramarly Graham). Sure, he sanitized the anecdote by omitting any mention of the First Rule of Policing, and then-mayor Michael Bloomberg’s complete support of cops shooting first, just in case.  But Goldstein is young, so he can be forgiven his lack of institutional memory, though one would hope his editors would pick up on the omission.

How does he explain to the millions of readers of the New York Times who, between reviews of the best Chardonnay, believe themselves to be deeply empathetic, over-educated, intellectuals? Continue reading →

Drafting a criminal law is hard. Even a crime as uncontroversial as murder presents problems, because people just don’t behave consistently with our expectations. Sure, a straight-forward intentional murder is easy to address, but what about the unduly afraid person who kills because they perceive their life to be threatened, but upon reflection, wasn’t? What about when that person is a police officer?

You may well find these problems easy to answer in a vacuum, but that’s because you have an image in your mind of how the crime happens. If you’re able to imagine infinite permutations of the facts and circumstances, perhaps you can realize why conduct doesn’t always neatly fit within that image.

But then, something else happens, often years later, when words that seemed so clear and obvious are parsed by prosecutors and judges for their meaning, interpreted and reinterpreted, and given perfectly reasonable meanings that were never intended when written. Eugene Volokh raises an example coming out of California. Continue reading →

By any objective measure, the Seventh Circuit’s holdiing in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College is unremarkable.  The court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit discrimination based upon sexual orientation.  It’s been there before, but that was then. This is now.

Once again this court is asked to consider whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from or offers redress for discrimination based on sexual orientation. This time, however, we do so in the shadow of a criticism from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that this court and others have continued to reflexively declare that sexual orientation is not cognizable under Title VII without due analysis or consideration of intervening case law.

The EEOC’s criticism has created a groundswell of questions about the rationale for denying sexual orientation claims while allowing nearly indistinguishable gender non‐conformity claims, which courts have long recognized as a form of sex‐based discrimination under Title VII. After a careful analysis of our precedent, however, this court must conclude that Kimberly Hively has failed to state a claim under Title VII for sex discrimination; her claim is solely for sexual orientation discrimination which is beyond the scope of the statute. Consequently, we affirm the decision of the district court.

The big difference this time was that the EEOC, the agency charged with administering Title VII, has determined that a law prohibiting sex discrimination should now prohibit sexual orientation discrimination.  Continue reading →