Change the names from Ellis to Persky, Manafort to Turner, and this opening paragraph sounds remarkably familiar.

The 47-month sentence imposed on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has drawn widespread criticism that Judge T.S. Ellis’s decision to give Manafort a sentence far below the 19.5 to 24.5-year guidelines range was motivated by Manafort’s race and class or by partisan bias. In fact, his flawed decision is a consequence of the vast discretion given to federal judges to issue sentences without real fear of being overturned.

There are three general reactions to the sentence, that it was too harsh, too lenient and about right. Then there was a more detached reaction, that regardless of how it fit Manafort, the best takeaway was that all defendants should be shown less harshness, that sentences have inflated to the point that ridiculously and pointlessly long sentences had become accepted as necessary and appropriate. Any sense of leniency here reflected what sentences should be for every defendant, and mandatory minimums and Draconian guidelines were constraints that undermined the authority of judges to fashion proper, individualized sentences. Continue reading →

Ed Genson, together with Sam Adam, tried R. Kelly’s first case for child porn to an acquittal. You would think that would be the sort of legacy a dying man would want. But not Genson.

Genson is still around at 77, though ill, his usual candor honed by the approach of death.

“I have bile duct cancer,” he said in the paneled study of his Deerfield home. “Terminal cancer.”

Doctors gave him 90 days to live.

“That was a year and a half ago,” said Genson. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Even death wants nothing to do with him. Continue reading →

But for his connection to Trump, nobody would have cared what sentence Senior EDVA Judge T.S. Ellis imposed on Paul Manafort. But he was a proxy for Trump, and consequently there was no way this sentence wouldn’t explode in the news. The only question was how, and that question was dependent on how long.

There’s a temptation to predict such a newsworthy sentence. Ken White resisted, and humorously blamed the scowl he knew would be on my face if he did, but really understood both the futility of such mischief and the likely damage that comes from making such “wild-ass guesses.” Expectations are created and, when unmet, create questions that aren’t real, calling for explanations as to why the sentence varied from some random number plucked out of thin air.

Had I been Judge Ellis, I would have imposed a sentence of 120 months. But I’m not the judge, and neither know what the judge knows about the case and the defendant nor have the Senate’s blessing. What I would do is utterly meaningless as far as what Judge Ellis, or any other judge, would do, and we would all find out soon enough when sentence was imposed. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle, and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was a police officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers.

Back in the days of Fault Lines, in June of 2016, I wrote an article on the shooting death of Corey Jones. In the post, I predicted that former Palm Beach Gardens police officer Nouman Raja would be acquitted in the shooting. I’m happy to report that I was wrong. On March 7, 2019, a Florida jury convicted Raja of both manslaughter and attempted first-degree murder in the death of Jones.

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Having had friends and acquaintances who taught in schools around New York City, stories vary widely about how students and teachers treat each other. Some offer gushing stories of student effort and appreciation. Most, however, offer some variation of this anonymous teacher’s take.

I am a math teacher at a middle school in Flushing, Queens, and two months ago, I was helping one of my students work out an arithmetic problem when he called me a “f–kin’ asshole.” When I asked for an apology, he shoved a chair at me and stormed out.

Five minutes later, an administrator brought the student back to class. She informed me that she had called his parents and that he could return.

And what did I do? I went on teaching.

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It’s accurate to say, as the Brooklyn district attorney’s office noted, that the law didn’t expressly prohibit cops from having sex with cuffed defendants, as it did with corrections officers. But that didn’t make the converse accurate either, that it was acceptable for cops to have sex with Anna Chambers.

The law has since been amended to state what should have been too obvious to require saying as a result of the case, that there can be no consent when a cop has sex with a perp in chains in the back of a van (or anywhere else). When, after some sputtering by Eric Gonzalez’s office, ex-officers Eddie Martins and Richard Hall were indicted for raping Chambers, it appeared that the ship had righted itself. Now, they dropped the rape charge.

In a statement on dropping the charges, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office agreed that such sexual conduct should be a crime, but noted “that was not the law at the time of the incident.” The prosecutors added, “Because of this and because of unforeseen and serious credibility issues that arose over the past year and our ethical obligations under the rules of professional conduct, we are precluded from proceeding with the rape charges.”

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The name Sarah Braasch likely won’t ring a bell for most people, but the name means a lot to Sarah Braasch, who was the Yale Ph.D. student branded a racist by the woke mob for calling campus police when she found someone asleep in her dorm common room. Condemning her action wasn’t nearly enough for the most ignorant and mindlessly vicious in the mob, who desperately sought to destroy every aspect of her life.

This is a recurring theme, that a person flashes onto the screen, is immediately branded something horrible, has her life picked to shreds (maybe accurately, often not) and then the mob moves on to their next target of hatred. But the person, Braasch in this instance, is left with everything they’ve ever done, experienced, worked for, sacrificed for, in tatterers.

Did Sarah Braasch deserve to be branded the racist du jour and have her life destroyed by the mob? Continue reading →

I’ve been sending an occasional post over to Berny Belvedere, Editor-in-Chief of Arc Digital, as my way of contributing to heterodoxy with a little legal twist. Berny’s proven to be an excellent editor, and his efforts have made me sound a lot smarter than I am. One such example went live yesterday evening. Berny wrote the headline.

Criminal Justice Reform Is Not Just About Race

Politicians and activists have been picking the trendiest, not the most just, reason to change the law

This may prove to be not only a very controversial assertion, but one that will engender outrage and screams of racism from the woke. So why do it and test the mob? Because someone from the criminal defense side of the world needs to question the orthodoxy. After all, everyone knows the system is racist. Everybody in your bubble keeps saying so. Academics keep saying so. How could it possibly be otherwise? Continue reading →

The need isn’t new or novel, as it’s been the focus of efforts for more than four decades. That’s not me saying so, but Justice Mark Dwyer in the opening words of the final report of the NYSBA Task Force on Criminal Discovery, dated December 1, 2014.

For forty years, reports and legislative proposals by experts and practitioners have urged New York State to reform its outdated and unfair criminal discovery rules. This Task Force seeks to break the logjams that have stalled these necessary changes.

Discovery is but one of the major reforms needed and on the table, as New York has historically had a Democratic-majority Assembly and Republican-majority Senate. As the Dems now hold both chambers, and Gov. Andy Cuomo appears to be on board, the possibility now exists. Continue reading →

The question isn’t whether Reserve Officer Sean Dolan was telling the truth or not, or even right or not, but whether his certainty that Zachariah Marshall was speeding is good enough. The appellate court held that this violated the Fourth Amendment.

Hebron police officer Sean Dolan was patrolling the area around State Road 8 and 500 West on October 19, 2016. He observed Defendant’s car speeding and stopped the [D]efendant. Officer Dolan was using a radar, but he could not testify at hearing or at deposition 1) what speed the [D]efendant was traveling and 2) what the radar showed as [D]efendant’s speed. He could only state the following:

Q: How certain were you that the defendant was speeding?

A: Very certain, a hundred percent.

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