There are times when it’s good that this is a law blog, so I need neither Gertrude nor explain the obvious. A jury found a defendant not guilty based upon the evidence presented and the law. Juries don’t send messages. Juries determine whether the prosecution proved the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. What others make of it, from whether they agree with the verdict to what the verdict “means” to anyone else has nothing to do with the duty of jurors. Their job is to reach a verdict (or not), and they did their job.

From politicians to pundits, academics to “civil rights” organizations, the cry is that the verdict sends a message to white supremacist vigilantes to take their AR-15s to hot zones, brandish them openly where they are likely to inflame already outraged people causing a reaction born of fear, and then fire at will and kill, whether black people or white allies. Is it necessary to offer a thousand examples of this message? Not this time. It’s ubiquitous. Continue reading →

Dear SHG:

Greetings from an undisclosed location in Southeast Asia!

I think you got a little confused when I emailed you last about me taking time off from the Friday Funny. I didn’t say anything about “finding inner peace.” That part of the email actually said “striving for synergy.” It’s okay, I misread things sometimes too.

Anyway, I’m overseas right now with an NGO helping repatriate legless Uzbekistani pig farmers. It’s a bigger problem than you’d think! Continue reading →

If it seems remarkably reminiscent of the American Bar Association, that’s because it is. Much as the ABA became captive to progressive lawyers and academics at the expense of the rest of the bar, the American Medical Association has apparently succumbed to the same influence. Capturing institutions has become a primary goal, the purpose of which is to reform their evil ways and train future generations to be woke.

In a document called Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts, the AMA and AAMC urge physicians and other health-care workers to replace many “commonly used” words, such as vulnerable, with “equity-focused” alternatives, such as oppressed. Continue reading →

It’s hard to argue against the notion that prosecutors’ use of peremptory challenges just to get blacks off the jury is racist, wrong and offensive. But the problem with Batson was that its rationale relied on a right that the Constitution doesn’t provide and is in direct conflict with a right that it does. There is no constitutional right to be on a jury. The defendant in a criminal case has a right to trial by jury. In other words, the right belongs to the defendant, not the putative jurors struck because of their race.

Most of the time, these two interests align, so it’s not a problem. A black defendant will want black jurors, presuming a shared experience with police and less inclined to be racially antagonistic to the defendant. Whether that ends up being the case is another matter, but that’s the theory. The problem with Batson, however, is that it couldn’t be grounded in the right of a defendant to a jury that “looks like him,” since that meant if the defendant was white, or Hispanic, or Icelandic, the defense could assert a demand for jurors of whatever identity was a issue. That certainly wasn’t the goal. Continue reading →

If you’re bored with the shenanigans cum idiocy that’s become the hallmark of Yale Law School, rest assured that this may be about YLS on its surface, but reflects the nature of what’s boiling up from below the surface of the legal academy. And in case the significance of this is still unclear, this is not only the lesson being taught to the future lawyers of America, but to the future holders of high office who will be positioned to make decisions that will affect a nation and its citizens.

Heather Gerken is the dean of Yale Law School, and is playing “the buck stops here” as if she’s being bold and responsible for the fiasco of falsely calling a student’s email invitation to a party, the now-infamous “Trap House” email, a “racist” message which her “muscle,” Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove and Diversity Director Yaseen Eldik condemned “in the strongest possible terms.” In their efforts to force the student who sent the email to apologize, they threatened to ruin his future career because they could. Continue reading →

Yesterday, there was outrage because Kyle Rittenhouse picked alternate juror names from the wheel and a US Marshal purportedly overheard two jurors refusing to acquit out of fear they would be doxxed after the trial. The former was the judge’s standard practice, of no moment. The latter was obvious nonsense, as there are no US Marshals in Wisconsin courtrooms. But that didn’t stop those who sought reasons to be outraged from being outraged.

Occasionally, a trial happens that captures the imagination of a nation. The Rittenhouse trial is such a case, and it reveals what lawyers, at least those honest enough with themselves and others not to feed into the crazy in the hope of getting a primetime slot on right or left TV, fear. The idea of making a trial publicly available in real time was supposed to enlighten, illuminate, calm those prone to hysteria, by letting the public see with their own eyes how the sausage is made. Continue reading →

Former EDNY Judge John Gleeson was an enigma. A hard-nosed federal prosecutor who did the undoable, took down the Teflon Don, he was rewarded by a bench and robe. But then, Judge Gleeson became one of the foremost critics of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, a voice of compassion and understanding toward defendants in a system that was as callous as society demanded it be. What happened?

In a letter to the editor, Judge Gleeson explains how the tough federal prosecutor became the voice of reason. Continue reading →

Still embroiled in the Trap House idiocy, chronicled as it got worse and word by David Lat, the last thing Yale Law School needed was the re-emergence of another scandal of “equity.”  After all, this is YLS, the other school where leaders of the future of America are bought and sold. But then, critical race theory is, at its roots, a legal theory that can only be truly appreciated by the very smartest among us, so it makes complete sense that YLS would take the lead in taking a swan dive into the cesspool.

Two unnamed Yale Law School students filed a complaint Monday against three Law School administrators and the University for allegedly “blackball[ing]” them from job opportunities after they refused to endorse a statement in the ongoing investigation against law professor Amy Chua. Continue reading →

More than a decade ago, the phrase “work/life balance” was all the rage, people seeking the time and opportunity to spend with family and friends rather than in the office (or the courtroom, as the case may be). It was a quaint notion, that one could earn that sweet paycheck and just not show up when junior had a baseball game, and the boss would be cool with it because nobody says on their death bed they didn’t spend enough time in the office.

Are we over that now?.

Since the start of the pandemic, Americans have been talking seriously with friends, family, and themselves about the shortcomings of their modern-day work lives. Millions of people have joined the “Great Resignation,” and many, especially the college-educated, have vowed to follow their passion and embark on a different career.

Continue reading →

What happened in the video was shocking. In itself, reason to believe that for all the protests, all the criticism, all the challenges of the public to the manner in which police dealt with people, cop culture really hadn’t changed.

Esqueda told USA TODAY that he’s become a pariah among his coworkers since July 2020, when he shared with a television reporter footage from January of that year showing how officers treated a handcuffed Black man in medical distress. Officers slapped Eric Lurry, restricted his airway and shoved a baton in his mouth hours before his death.

This starts with what was done to Lurry. Continue reading →