When Nassau County police officer Nikolas Budimlic decided that the best idea was to individually charge into a house where a gunman was holding people hostage, there were couple of possible outcomes. The first was that he would be a hero, get a medal and have a statue of him erected.  The second was that a lovely young woman, a Hofstra student, would lie dead before he was done, and the machinery of the state would crank into gear to shift the blame.

The odds were against Budimlic’s getting a statue.

Immediately after the death of Andrea Rebello from a bullet to the head, the gunman was blamed. Then it turned out that the “gunman” was Budimlic.  The police union then rushed to its member’s aid, explaining how it wasn’t the cop’s fault for shooting Rebello in the head, because criminals.

Then came the victim blaming, speculation about drugs in the house and how maybe Rebello was looking for Mr. Goodbar so that Budimlic’s bullet to the head wasn’t really a big deal. Continue reading →

Most people would be inclined to believe that the training regimen for police officers would be the subject of great oversight.  Perhaps a rigorous course of study developed by the best minds so that the public will receive the best service.  At the very least, it would be more than one guy’s idea of how a bunch of other guys with guns should behave.

Not in Albuquerque, which might answer the concern of former cop turned prof at John Jay College of coppery and shoe repair, Peter Moskos, asked after viewing the videos of the execution of James Boyd.

I think this was a bad shooting.

But what really worries me is that perhaps the officers performed exactly as trained. If so, we need to change police training (and not make scapegoats of the officers).

While Moskos holds cops in such low esteem that any bit of murderous stupidity can be sloughed off elsewhere, Continue reading →

Many years ago, I shared offices with a couple of guys, Paul Goldberger and Larry Dubin.  They were kinda big deals, and big deals got big fees. Their firm, Goldberger & Dubin, got big fees. Big enough that when paid in cash, Form 8300 was required by the IRS, and the form required, inter alia, the identity of the payor.

This was a problem, so they refused. The Second Circuit was unsympathetic.

Section 6050-I stops far short of the forfeiture statutes that were at issue in Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. United States, 491 U.S. 617 (1989) and United States v. Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600 (1989), in which the preclusion of the defendants from using seized assets to pay their attorneys was held not to violate the Sixth Amendment. Section 6050-I does not preclude would-be clients from using their own funds to hire whomever they choose. Continue reading →

At Tempe Criminal Defense, Matt Brown offers an amusing anecdote about how a court clerk at the Mesa Municipal Court acts as if he didn’t exist.

The court called us at 2:25 p.m. and left a message about getting our position on the state’s motion to continue trial.  That’s right, the state’s motion.  Not ours.  The motion the state didn’t bother faxing us until 3:45 p.m.

I called the court back sometime shortly before 5:00 p.m. and spoke with a very pleasant lady.  She wanted to know my position on the state’s motion.  I told her we didn’t oppose it and had in fact filed our own motion.  She asked for me to wait a moment and came back a bit later.

“Oh my goodness, so you did!” Continue reading →

On the surface, it probably wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that there are law enforcement groups that are trying to subvert bipartisan support for the Smarter Sentencing Act.  Sure, the hardcore and lazy federal prosecutors have come out against it, as it could make them have to work for the notches on their guns, but that was to be expected.

Yet, as the HuffPo explains, there is a second level of organized law enforcement working in the shadows to try to blunt the edge of reform of the mandatory minimums that allow prosecutors to own the system:

Several organizations representing state and local law enforcement are quietly trying to kill a bipartisan bill that would roll back tough mandatory sentences for people convicted of federal drug offenses under legislation passed during the height of America’s drug war three decades ago. Continue reading →

By 4-1-4 vote, the Supreme Court held that campaign finance limitations were an unconstitutional restraint on the 1st Amendment in McCutcheon v. FEC.  The inevitable ensued.  The TL;dr version of the opinion reads:

The right to participate in democracy through political contributions is protected by the First Amendment, but that right is not absolute.Congress may regulate campaign contributions to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption. See, e.g., Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 26–27. It may not, however, regulate contributions simply to reduce the amount of money in politics, or to restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others. See, e.g., Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U. S. ___, ___.

The New York Times editorial castigating the opinion offered the dissent,

The Supreme Court on Wednesday continued its crusade to knock down all barriers to the distorting power of money on American elections. Continue reading →

Alas, I’m not in Orlando, the city born of fantasy in a bipolar state whose claim to fame is warmth and swamps, and so I won’t be able to share in the glow of finally being among those who share low self-esteem and the need to surround themselves with others who pray they can persuade the fools of the legal profession to loosen their mighty grip on their few remaining dollars.  But I’m with you in spirit and want to offer my best wishes for a fabulous few days.

For three days, you can call yourselves professionals.  Not in the sense of having survived a course of education designed to provide you with knowledge and ability to perform a task, nor in the sense of having a code of ethics, the violation of which will send you to the pokey and prevent your bulk emails offering your services to the unsuspecting, or even in the sense that you’ve been tested and found sufficiently competent to take responsibility for others.  No, not that kind of professional. The kind of professional that allows you to believe, against all odds, reason and the laws of physics, that you are worthy of respect. Continue reading →

For those criminal defense lawyers whose attitude toward pre-trial motions is to make sure they change all the names before submitting their pro forma papers, take the time out of your empty life to read the memorandum in support filed by Josh Dratel on behalf of his client, Ross Ulbricht.

Ulbricht was the man behind Silk Road, alleged to be

an “underground website” allegedly “designed to enable users across the world to buy and sell illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services anonymously and outside the reach of law enforcement.”

It’s terribly evil, because all the reports about it when the crypto-challenged learned of its existence from the media following Ulbricht’s arrest said so.  A kinder description would be the eBay for those with mad computer skilz outside the control of government. Continue reading →

California may have been an early adopter of medical marijuana, but the nice folks who have their hands on the wheel in Fresno don’t see what that has to do with them.  While the state law permits the growth of medical marijuana, it also allowed localities to regulate its cultivation, which is a hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through.  Fresno figured it out.

Via KFSN-TV in Fresno:

Fresno narcotics officers have been called out to more than a dozen properties in the past two days, where marijuana was growing in backyards, shanty’s or garage enclosures. Complaints from neighbors have come from all over town, from McKinley and Cedar to Willow and Nees.

Narcotics Detective Mike Brogdon says the complaints multiplied. Continue reading →

Criminal law tends to draw an odd assortment of interested folks, which is reflected in the comments to posts here which range from brilliant and incisive to utterly idiotic.  As regular readers know, I try to weed out the worst comments, the ones I feel are dangerously wrong or misguided (remember, this is a law blog, and non-lawyers may read something and believe they can rely on its accuracy, to their grave detriment) or sufficiently offensive and annoying that I decide to make it disappear.

Some think this is part of what makes SJ work. Some do not.  Some do except when they are on the receiving end of a spanking, where I go from being their hero to the zero in a blink.  Volenti non fit injuria. except for them. Continue reading →