The killing of Daunte Wright is subsumed by the fact that he was an unarmed young black man who shouldn’t have been shot, shouldn’t have died. There can be no dispute about this. But that doesn’t mean that all other facts and circumstances cease to exist, unless the only thing that matters is that it happened. And to some, that’s certainly the case, Wright’s death coming during the Derek Chauvin trial, following almost immediately upon the stop of Lt. Caron Nazario, both within miles of each other.

Twenty-six year police officer Kimberly Potter has been charged with manslaughter 2 upon her claim that she thought she was firing her Taser when she fired her service weapon and killed Wright. There are arguments that cut both ways as to the veracity of her claim, though there is no reason why she would have wanted to kill him rather than prevent him from fleeing after being stopped for expired tags and having an open warrant in an armed robbery case. The man 2 charge tells us that its premised on the reckless mistake of shooting her gun rather than the Taser. And, indeed, if that’s what happened, it would seem quite likely that she was reckless. Continue reading →

If the option is kill or be killed, the choice is clear. But the option is rarely so clear. The probability of surviving an encounter with police is vastly improved by complying with their orders, no matter how wrong, confused, conflicting or distasteful they may be. No, no innocent, law-abiding person wants to be forced to lie in the dirt, and any cop who fails to grasp this is an idiot. But better to have to wash your clothes than have your loved ones lay out clothing for a funeral.

And before anyone else points out the obvious, no, compliance doesn’t guarantee survival or even that you make it through the encounter without physical injury. But it still greatly enhances the likelihood you will, and that’s about the best we can do until we come up with a better way to all survive. Continue reading →

She was fired from the Buffalo police department before she hit her 20 year mark, and finally was vindicated by a decision almost 15 years in the making that her termination was wrongful. So what did former Buffalo cop Cariol Horne do that was so bad that she was thrown off the force? She saved a life.*

On Nov. 1, 2006, a postal worker flagged down a patrol officer to report an argument between a man and a woman at a two-unit house on Walden Avenue. Among the Buffalo police officers responding was Horne. Continue reading →

The killing of Daunte Wright, on the heels of the needlessly aggressive actions of officers who stopped Lt. Caron Nazario, during the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, is a “perfect storm.” For what, however, varies wildly.

Is this the moment to revisit whether police should be involved in traffic stops at all? They are too easily abused as pretext stops. The legal justifications range from trivial nonsense that could be better handled by non-police, indeed, cameras, although they too have significant problems that seem to elude those arguing for alternatives. And drunk drivers, dangerous vehicles, harm others. There’s a long list of concerns which are serious when they’re on the front burner, and insignificant when another problem is front and center. Continue reading →

Is there a “bright side” to the misbegotten stop of Lt. Caron Nazario? Absolutely. He “only” ended up being pepper sprayed and not dead, like Daniel Shaver. Both presented two fairly common themes in police encounters. First, the person is not an “experienced criminal” who knows what to do when he’s confronted by the police, but is an ordinary, law-abiding citizen who has no reason to expect the police to feel antagonistic or threatened by him. Second, the police issued conflicting commands. Or to be more realistic, police simultaneously screamed  directly contradictory orders interspersed with threats and vulgarities.

These two factors aren’t inherently connected, and yet play out together. What’s an ordinary person to do when two police officers, with guns drawn and pointed, engaged you with professionalism, courtesy and respect? Continue reading →

Ed. Note: This isn’t a post about what happened to Lt. Caron Nazario. I make that absolutely clear up front because I will be brutal about it later in the comments. Don’t go there.

For the most part, the twitter account @BadLegalTakes has a fun, if overwhelming, time, retwitting screen caps of legally ignorant things being spewed on twitter, mostly by non-lawyers, but occasionally by lawyers and even the President of the United States. There is no shortage of legal ignorance, with a certainty of correctness that would make Dunning and Kruger blush. Continue reading →

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union tried to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama. The employees voted. The union lost. Obviously, that can’t be possible unless Amazon did something wrong, because why else wouldn’t employees vote for a union to take dues from their paychecks?

“Our system is broken,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president. “Amazon took full advantage of that.”

Continue reading →

It was awful. Disgusting. Repugnant. But was it assault?

A Florida woman who was seen in a widely watched video intentionally coughing on a shopper at a Pier 1 home-goods store last summer, as fears about the pandemic raged, was sentenced on Thursday to 30 days in jail, court records show.

The woman, Debra Hunter, 53, had been charged with misdemeanor assault in June after she walked up and coughed on the shopper, Heather Sprague, who had been recording video of Ms. Hunter’s dispute with employees at the store, in Jacksonville.

Continue reading →

The following is an article from a British tabloid. I want you to soak in the headline. Bask in its glory. Then read the piece and come back here.

Mars Bars up arse champ branded a cheat for using the small multipack ones

1. This was from May of last year and none of you had the decency to send it to me when we really could’ve used the laugh? I’m ashamed of y’all. Continue reading →

For years, UCLA Lawprof Eugene Volokh has provided interesting and thoughtful commentary on First Amendment law, establishing himself as one of the foremost scholars of Free Speech in the country. Perhaps more importantly, Eugene has become something of a free speech guru at his long-standing blawg, Volokh Conspiracy, and some people, lawyers and lay alike, tend to take Eugene’s word as First Amendment gospel. It’s not that they necessarily find his arguments persuasive, but that if Eugene says so, then it must be.

Mark Bennett isn’t necessarily buying.

I’ve been writing for eight years now about how revenge porn statutes are unconstitutional because the Supreme Court has defined “unprotected speech” as “speech within narrow categories of historically unprotected speech,” and nothing about revenge porn puts it into any heretofore recognized category of unprotected speech.1

Continue reading →