Ars Technica isn’t a website for criminal lawyers, even though there are often posts that will be of interest to criminal lawyers. It’s a tech website. So why then, aside from having shit to throw up on the screen, would they try their best to make their readers stupider?

The basic idea behind the Miranda warning is to provide someone being arrested with information about their constitutional rights against compelled self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment) during a custodial situation and to reassure them of their right to an attorney (Sixth Amendment).

Oh wait. That’s the basic idea? Nice of Cyrus Farivar to explain what he thinks the basic idea is. Because, you know, he knows stuff. No, he’s not a lawyer, but hey, he writes for Ars, so shouldn’t he be explaining law to nerds? What could possibly go wrong? Continue reading →

The word “normalize” has become totes trendy, and so commonly misused, even by the press secretary for Rep. Keith Ellison, who seeks to be the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Isaiah Breen’s twit, which began “honor Carrie Fisher,” included:

-normalize mental illness and its treatment

As press secretary, Breen is someone who should be a wordsmith, and so its misuse is noteworthy. I took note. So too did nearly 200,000 others who “liked” or “retweeted” his misuse of the word.

In response, people “explained” to me what he meant. Their explanations differed, but that’s not the point. If he meant to say “de-stigmatize” mental illness, then that’s what he should have said. One response I received was, “Pretty sure you know what he meant and you’re kinda just being a dick.” Continue reading →

To listen to the horrifying anecdotes of the victims, whether of “harassment,” “bullying,” even revenge porn, one can appreciate that there are bad things happening that are causing people pain. And yet, there are harsh and uncaring people who keep doing their utmost to prevent solutions from happening. Why would anyone, me for instance, be so mean and hateful?

Fortunately, Europe is way ahead of us in its protection of people’s privacy from other people, from hurtful speech and expression. It provides insight into what will happen if we adopt their ways. It’s not that the anecdotes aren’t true, but that they only tell one side of a story. It’s the other side that advocates deny and sycophants ignore that will come to bite us in the butt.

You might think it’s cute to snap a photo of your toddler running around in a playground or having a temper tantrum, and then posting it on social media. But did you ever think it might be a mistake, or even illegal?

The French government earlier this year warned parents to stop posting images of their children on social media networks. Continue reading →

When I first met him before arraignment, there it was, a perfect Glock-shaped contusion of many colors on the left side of his face. I pointed it out to the magistrate, who duly shrugged before adjourning the case for a detention hearing. The AUSA explained that he fell hard and hit the pavement, and it was purely coincidental that the bruise was in the exact shape of a Glock. Go figure?

And right after this unfortunate fall, which had nothing to do with the agents, he confessed. At the suppression hearing, the emergency room physician’s assistant testified that she could not state to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the bruise that bore the exact shape of a Glock was caused by a Glock. The judge shrugged. Denied.

These were the protectors and defenders of our constitutional rights.

In quiet little corners of the country, local sheriffs and police chiefs run their own little fiefdoms, with the cooperation, if not endorsement, of the judiciary. It’s not a big secret. Local defense lawyers and public defenders know all about it, and fight it, and occasionally scream about it into the void. Continue reading →

A joke? That’s how Robby Soave took it.

On the 24th day of December in the year of our Lord, two-thousand and sixteen, a Drexel University professor tweeted, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.”

It sounds like the professor, George Ciccariello-Maher, was probably joking. Indeed, he claims that he was. And Ciccariello-Maher has made similar remarks—with varying levels of seriousness—in the past.

The Drexel prof followed up his twit with more of the same.

In a follow-up tweet, he added, “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a very good thing indeed.”

Continue reading →

It wasn’t that Mike Masnick’s observation at Techdirt was prescient, as much as he followed the dominoes. It was clear that the path on which the sniffling censors traveled led to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as the evils they sought to eradicate crossed state and national lines. Only by going after the core of the internet could they achieve their goal, and Mike saw it coming.

Naturally, the response was to attack Mike. And Mary Anne Franks did what her ilk does, to shriek that Mike was a liar. And when the time came to do exactly as Mike said she would, because it was, of course, absolutely correct, Franks again did what her ilk does. And luckily, there is no shortage of writers willing to repeat and promote the lies in support of the cause.

U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is trying to change that, introducing last summer a bi-partisan bill that aims to cut through the murkiness of nonconsensual pornography legislation in one fell swoop. If passed, the Intimate Privacy Protection Act would criminalize the knowing distribution of sexually explicit images of people without their consent. Perpetrators could face fines and up to five years in prison.

Continue reading →

Demond Wilson played Redd Foxx’s son, Lamont, in Sanford & Son. One line that’s rung in my ears was when Lamont asked, “I read Life Magazine. Do you read Ebony?” It was, of course, a false equivalency, but it made a point, that black people know white culture because it’s the culture of American society.

Whites, however, can happily go through life without ever having to know, or understand, that there is another culture, black culture, that never touches their world. But it surely touches your world if you’re black. Before you start calling me names for saying this, it’s not a political position, but merely descriptive.

It’s one of the first things a criminal defense lawyer comes to realize in order to serve his clients, because cops bust blacks far more than whites, they are our clients, and we need to understand their world to be capable of representing them. Whether we want to or not, we are compelled to see their world in context, as it explains the basics of thought and conduct of our clients. If we don’t know why they do what they do, we can’t help.

Our clients aren’t a race or a culture, but just people. We get to know them as people. Some we like. Some we don’t. Some are smart, funny, the sort of men and women you like to hang out with. Others, not so much. You know, just like real people.*  Continue reading →

Zhe’s making a list. Zhe’s checking it twice. Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Hope you used the preferred pronoun so you don’t get coal in your stocking. Do you wear stockings? As for me, the old traditions work just fine. Happy Holidays.

During brutal wars, the sides would lay down their arms for a day, maybe a few, for a ceasefire. No horrible thing would happen if they weren’t killing each other for a few days. Maybe something horrible wouldn’t happen. Maybe a few people would live.

But there is no ceasefire to be had this year.

The impetus for Sally Kohn’s twit was Trump’s “Happy Hanukkah” twit. Even that he can’t do without “America’s second favorite cable news lesbian” attacking him for it. The view has been asserted that it’s this depth of hatred and extremism that has driven America away from the positions held by advocates like Sally Kohn and put Trump in office. Continue reading →

George Will gives the outgoing Senator, incoming Attorney General, Jeff Sessions a well-deserved poke for the ignorant things he said on the Senate floor about civil forfeiture. They were the sort of words a politician would utter, baseless but designed to appeal to those without a clue. Whether Sessions didn’t know better or was deliberately talking smack is unclear. One would hope a senator wasn’t that clueless, and that at least there was method to his lies.

But then, how can one explain California’s outgoing Attorney General, Kamala Harris, who is on her way to Washington to take her seat in the Senate? After having the bizarrely improper case against Backpage dismissed with extreme prejudice, she decided to take one more shot.

Let’s be crystal clear here: California Attorney General Kamala Harris (who in just a few weeks will become a US Senator) knows that she has no legal basis for arresting the execs behind Backpage. How do we know she knows this? Because three years ago she signed a letter whining about how she had no legal authority to arrest Backpage because it’s (rightly) protected by Section 230 of the CDA, saying that you can’t blame a site for the actions of its users. So it did seem weird, back in October, when Harris — along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — decided to arrest Backpage’s execs anyway, and charge them with “pimping.” Continue reading →