I did not pay much attention to the trial of Mr. Manafort. When the jury came back for the government on eight of eighteen counts, I wasn’t particularly surprised.[i] After all, these were essentially tax and bank fraud cases (with one count of failure to register as a foreign agent). The government does not bring those document-heavy charges unless it thinks the basic case, while larded with weak counts, is a slam dunk.

From the reporting prior to the verdict, commentators hazed Judge Ellis for pushing the government hard to get the trial over and otherwise being a meanie to the prosecutors.[ii] But aside from this sniping, I yawned.

Then, the judge sentenced Manafort to “only” 47 months in prison for the 70-year-old defendant. The heavens rose up and hell vented noxious gas. Life plus cancer was the proper sentence, and don’t tell us otherwise, the Trump-haters yelled. I yawned once again. Continue reading →

The Center for the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University Law School held its 11th Annual conference, with a directed focus on a hot and controversial issue:

Plea Bargaining: Reforming An (Un)Necessary Evil?

They were kind enough to invite me to be on their first panel, at the time knowing that only Third Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas would be the moderator. As it later developed, it became apparent to me that participation would not be a good use of my time and attention, and so I subsequently begged off. Continue reading →

As Walter Olson argues, the scientific evidence that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer, does not cause cancer is strong, if not irrefutable. Not being qualified to render an opinion, I demur, but that hasn’t stopped judges from letting the cases proceed, or juries from finding for plaintiffs. The law has always had a troubling relationship with science.

But Monsanto, maker of the chemical, found a curious mechanism to fight back, inside the courtroom yet outside. Much as anyone who uses the internet is painfully aware the advertisements pushed at them are miserably misdirected (no, Google, I already bought the widget, so it’s less than enticing to include a widget ad on every pop-up ad). But an alternative is available, as Monsanto figured out. And it was not shy about using it.

Plaintiff attorney Steven Brady with the San Francisco-based Brady Law Group, said Monsanto has been sending in-app pop-up ads to people inside the Alameda County Administration Building, where the trial is being held. Continue reading →

Aaron Hernandez’s story weighed heavily on my mind recently thanks to the Boston Globe’s series “Gladiator.” One particular aspect of the former New England Patriot’s woes particularly bothered me. Once arrested on a charge of first degree murder, his former team tried to erase him from history.

It didn’t take long for the NFL and the Patriots to stop selling Aaron Hernandez jerseys online following the tight end getting arrested and charged with murder. The Pats took things a step further by offering a free exchange over the weekend for Patriots fans who wanted to rid themselves of their Hernandez jerseys.

The swap was quite popular with more than 1,200 fans showing up to flip their jerseys. And all told, the Patriots ended up losing about $250,000 during the swap, team owner Robert Kraft said Monday when speaking on Hernandez for the first time publicly since the tight end’s arrest.

Continue reading →

In an apologist post of such stunning obviousness that it ended up at the Bulwark, Chris Truax explains that Joe Biden isn’t Harvey Weinstein. No, he doesn’t mean “presumed innocent,” as in not yet convicted of any crime by any court anywhere. He means convicted by the Court of #MeToo.

None of these women are claiming that Biden engaged in any form of sexual misconduct. Instead, his once famous and now infamous tactile style made them “uncomfortable.”

What these people are saying isn’t that Joe Biden is unfit to be president because he’s a sexual predator. What they are saying is that Joe Biden is unfit to be president because they don’t like his personality. It’s not what Joe Biden has done, it’s what he is and how he relates to other people.

Continue reading →

For all his twits about Fake News and “Enemy of the People,” Trump hasn’t done more than make noise. Offensive as it may be to denigrate the Fourth Estate as evil, even a president gets to complain about things he dislikes, even if he does so in a way they dislike.

And in fairness, the media hasn’t always helped itself, replacing factual reporting with “advocacy journalism,” the mechanism of telling the news in such a way as to include only those parts that lead the public to the conclusion members of the media believe are “right.” Sometimes this means omitting inconvenient facts. Sometimes it means outright lying. In their defense, advocacy journalists argue that they don’t lie as much as Trump, and their cause is “just,” so no harm, no foul. But it’s not news. It’s not journalism. And Trump does it too.

Democratic candidate for president, Andrew Yang, whose big issue is Universal Basic Income of $1000 per month, payable in dollars rather than Cheetos, has come up with a new proposal: the creation of a position of News and Information Ombudsman. Apparently, the days of calling someone the Czar are over, and Ombudsman seems softer, kinder, as they wield the Ax of Truth. Continue reading →

My old pal, Ken Lammers, writes about an idea that remains a darling of the legal academy, and a wistful dream of defense lawyers, but has never gotten any serious traction in criminal law. Restorative Justice.

One of the academic articles that caught my eye the other day was one about restorative justice in cases involving violence against women written by Lorenn Walker and Cheri Tarutani. Admittedly much of it seemed rather shallow – a kind of broad philosophical assertion that restorative justice would be a better system filled with direct and indirect platitudes but not much else. It was also somewhat confused in that it was primarily dealing with inter-generational violence against women and the hopes that something other then a prison sentence can save those damaged by the people who are supposed to be looking after them and protecting them as they grow up, but it also threw in stuff about violence between domestic partners. The latter is what caught my attention.

A few decades ago, domestic violence, meaning the violence that happens between people who lived together, were married or dating, had personal relationships, was treated differently than “stranger violence.” Cops took a mugging on the street seriously, but when they showed up at a house where a married couple were engaged in conduct that threatened harm, they would slough it off. The cops didn’t want to get involved, and more particularly, didn’t view a husband teaching his wife a lesson with the back of his hand as a crime. It was a family matter, as far as the cops were concerned. Continue reading →

As Wild Bill might say, there you go again, and indeed, here I go again. There are two overarching groups of people who read SJ, the first being lawyers and the second not being lawyers. They come here for different reasons, read the posts through different eyes.

One of the recurring reactions I receive from lawyers is the appreciation of my riding comments hard. Many sites have shut down comments altogether, because moderating them takes an enormous amount of time, far more than reading some, even all, of the comments posted. I have to read them all, no matter how crazy or wildly off topic. Some are, ahem, long. Some are incomprehensible. Some flow into and out of languages that appear to include English at time and others that exist only in the writer’s fertile imagination. Continue reading →

When I first wrote about the killing of 21-year-old aspiring rapper, Willie McCoy, there was no video yet to show what happened. Now, there is.

Radley Balko called this a “straight up execution.” Others pointed at this killing as an example of how black people have no Second Amendment rights, and so police are “permitted to murder us with guns simply b/c they imagine we possess one.” Except Willie McCoy had a gun. It was sitting in his lap. He was sitting in his car, in the drive-thru lane, car running, in drive, with him passed out at the wheel.

This was not a normal situation. It becomes no more normal by omitting the surrounding circumstances and relating only the killing. Continue reading →

Why these were the choices is unclear today, but I can recall the discussions I had with friends back in my school days. Which would you rather be, rich or famous? The options aren’t mutually exclusive, but for reasons unknown, it was one or the other, not both. If you’re of a similar age to me, perhaps you had these discussions as well. Perhaps not. But this was one of the recurring discussions among my peers.

My choice was rich. It may have something to do with the fact that I was poor. My mother used to joke, “I never knew I was poor growing up. Nobody told me.” She thought that was hysterically funny, a reflection of how my generation became aware of such things, and therefore concerned about it and motivated to escape it. Her humor masked the fact that it was a core value that she and my father sought to instill in me, to become educated, make something of myself and enjoy financial security.

Mom never went to college, and had never heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, so couldn’t use it to explain her desire for me to achieve financial success, which wasn’t really “rich” at all, but financially secure. My sister and I had to be educated, and educated in something that could be put to practical use. Majoring in art history was not what people like us did. That was for wealthy dilettantes. Continue reading →