Trying to explain how something, viewed in retrospect from another time and place, happened is too often a fool’s errand. Nonetheless, retired federal Judge Shira Scheindlin gives it a go, and she comes with the cred of having been the judge in Floyd v. City of New York, holding unconstitutional the NYPD policy of stop & frisk, not to be confused with the otherwise constitutional authority to conduct a Terry stop which shared the same words,

In 2013, I ruled in Floyd vs. City of New York that the tactics underlying the city’s stop-and-frisk program violated the constitutional rights of people of color. While Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York, black and Latino people were disproportionately stopped, and often frisked, millions of times, peaking at 690,000 in 2011. After my ruling, the number of stops plummeted to 11,000 in 2018. And crime did not rise.

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Having already told the tale of civil asset forfeiture from back in the bad old days, when it was only going to be used against drug kingpins to “take the profit out of crime,” and even if people didn’t adore it (they did), they didn’t oppose it, there’s a certain amusement to the retelling of Randy Sowers’ travails.

Strapped with pistols and carrying government IDs, two Treasury agents walked onto a Maryland farm on a cold winter morning in 2012, and asked for the owner – Randy Sowers. It was a blur of badges and questions, but Sowers’ four-year legal nightmare was only just beginning. “My story could belong to any farmer or business owner,” Sowers says. “People have almost no idea what the feds will do when they want to hurt you. What kind of power-hungry bureaucrats do we have when guilt or innocence plays no role in the system?”

No, there is nothing funny about what happened to Sowers. What is funny, in a gallows humor sort of way, is his belief that “people have almost no idea what the feds will do when they want to hurt you.” On the contrary, “people” know exactly what they’ll do. Maybe Sowers didn’t. Maybe the people Sowers knows didn’t. Maybe the nice folks at AgWeb didn’t. But “people” did. Continue reading →

There are a few people who tell stories of the travesty of the criminal law system for the benefit of the cause, their self-aggrandizement and the validation of “likes” from their useful idiots. The problem is their stories aren’t truthful, not so much in the sense that they’re telling lies, although that happens, but in what they’re leaving out. Deception happens by omission as well as commission.

To make matters worse, the group of liars is growing. Seeing the effectiveness of telling only so much of the tale as serves their cause to pander to the intellectually stunted, or drawing bizarrely macrocosmic lessons from small anecdotes, has been broadening out to people beyond the ranks of the activists who seek to achieve their goals by any means necessary. Once smart, thoughtful and, at least as far as I know, honest people have chosen pandering for likes over maintaining their integrity. Live and learn. Continue reading →

In the aftermath of the L’affaire Kozinski, a group of former law clerks took to the microphone to call for the judiciary to protect Harvard Law School’s finest from sexual harassment. Notably, the testimony was before a committee formed at the behest of the Chief Justice of the United States and comprised of judges. Recommendations followed, announced by no less adored a jurist than the benighted Merrick Garland.

And then came the zombie testimony of Olivia Warren, except she spoke not to the judiciary, but about the judiciary and the inadequacy of its newly created procedures for victims of judicial impropriety to feel entirely safe and comfortable. It was unclear from her complaint that the system didn’t, or wouldn’t, work to protect her from the ravages of Judge Stephen Reinhardt, but that the system wasn’t her safe space. Continue reading →

It seemed like a silly response, from the perspective of actually accomplishing anything, that a thousand, now over two thousand, “alumni of the United States Department of Justice” called for the resignation of  Attorney General Bill Barr, and condemned his sticking his nose into, and overruling, the position taken by the four assigned prosecutors in the Roger Stone prosecution. But even though it wouldn’t force Barr to resign, how else could they register their outrage at this flagrant politicization of their former office, and best brand marketing machine?

Put aside the secondary rationalization that the Guidelines Sentence against Stone was ridiculously harsh, because there’s no serious belief that the AG was motivated by his inner angel of fairness and proportionality, even if that would be nice. This was a crony move, and that made it dirty even if it wasn’t otherwise wrong. Continue reading →

Among the scutwork I did as a baby lawyer trying to pay the rent was defend landlords who were charged with New York City building code violations. They were largely sitting ducks for the building inspectors, as no building could pass muster under NY’s codes. There were three reasons: the codes were byzantine and vague. Landlords were, on the whole, cheap and tried to do as little as possible.

But the third reason was the tricky one. Tenants. As one landlord explained to me back then, it’s not as if they take a dump in the hallway. It’s not as if they punch holes in the wall. It’s not as if they throw their garbage out an apartment window. Some tenants were fine, great even, but some tenants were awful and made life for other tenants awful. Some tenants paid the rent and others, well, didn’t. Some tenants terrorized other tenants and made their life a living hell, and the tenants who suffered looked to the landlord to fix it. Continue reading →

Most current educational discourse centers around fears of college indoctrination. As we struggle with how much ideology those in higher education impress on students, there’s a movement to hook children far earlier than one would expect. In at least one New York preschool, the curriculum includes discussions on gender fluidity and sexuality.

In an e-mail to parents and caregivers on Jan. 16, teacher Rosy Clark lays out lessons based on the Black Lives Matter Week of ­Action for a pre-kindergarten class at PS 58, located in well-regarded District 15 in Carroll Gardens.

The email* from Ms. Clark** outlines the way she plans to introduce the “Thirteen Principles” of the Black Lives Matter movement in her classroom. While police brutality and current events are off the table, transgender and queer affirmation are completely appropriate for developing minds. Continue reading →

Before SJ, I wrote the occasional Letter to the Editor. Sometimes, I wrote on my own behalf, but mostly I wrote for the sake of others, often organizations with which I was involved because the “elected” leader* sucked at writing. It was my words above their name, because they could barely string two sentences together and didn’t want to look dumb.

Sometimes the letters were published. Other times not. That’s how letters worked. When I wrote for others, I put their ideas and thoughts into words for them. They weren’t always ideas with which I agreed, but hey, it was their letter and so it had to reflect their ideas. I was just the guy putting them to words. Some of the “leaders” for whom I did this were men. Some were women. My writing was no different based on the sex of the name below my words, but it wasn’t just the name that differed, but the ideas in the letter. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: In light of a significant ruling out of Michigan, Guy Hamilton-Smith has been kind enough to do a guest post.

Today marks the end–at least of a chapter–of a nearly decade-long legal saga over Michigan’s sex offender registry. Judge Robert Cleland, federal District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, granted that which the Michigan ACLU sought: a permanent injunction prohibiting a number of things, including the enforcement in toto of Michigan’s sex offense registration scheme to anyone who had committed an offense prior to 2011.

A bit of background. Four years ago, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Does v. Snyder (Does I) issued a stinging opinion striking down several aspects of Michigan’s registry as unconstitutional, capping litigation that originally began in 2012. Judge Alice Batchelder, one of the more conservative judges on the Sixth Circuit, offered the following in concluding that the registry was unconstitutional on Due Process and Ex Post Facto grounds: Continue reading →

Knowing that it was going to be a contender for Best Picture at the Oscars, Dr. SJ and I watched The Joker. Sure, we appreciated the acting, but neither of us liked the movie. We didn’t enjoy it. We wouldn’t watch it again. We wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. Had we not watched it, our lives would not have been any less “rich.”

Stories about dysfunctional people, miserable lives, unhappiness, seem to be of great interest. Why? Maybe people see themselves in these dysfunctional people, but I don’t. Asking around about something to watch, many people pointed at a series called “Fleabag.” about a miserable young woman who manages to find, if not create, problems wherever she goes. Is this you? It’s not me. It’s not Dr. SJ. It’s not our children. It’s not someone I would want to know, and it’s certainly not someone I want to watch on the television. Continue reading →