The foremost gripe about cops getting qualified immunity for their violations of a person’s civil rights is that the individuals who commit the wrong skate from liability.  Cop does wrong. Cop shrugs. Cop walks away unscathed. It’s not exactly a utilitarian message to police to stop harming people, lying, concealing evidence, planting evidence, framing innocent people or killing kids for no reason.

But then, in those rare instances where qualified immunity doesn’t insulate the cop from liability, and you get a judgment against them, what’s next?  One of the most glaring disconnects in the law is that payment of the judgment doesn’t always happen, and this is particularly true when the judgment is for millions and the judgment debtor is a cop.

Have you met bankruptcy? Have you ever tried to get blood from a rock? Did it happen in Cleveland?

David Ayers says he feared for his life during the nearly 12 years he spent in a prison for a murder that evidence showed he did not commit.

The City of Cleveland says that it owes him nothing and that the judgment was against the two homicide detectives who helped convict him, not the city. It further argues that the judgment was erased in a bankruptcy filed by one of the detectives. Continue reading →

The New York Times reports that the government has quietly imposed a new requirement, the disclosure of cash buyers of expensive real estate.

Concerned about illicit money flowing into luxury real estate, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that it would begin identifying and tracking secret buyers of high-end properties.

It is the first time the federal government has required real estate companies to disclose names behind cash transactions, and it is likely to send shudders through the real estate industry, which has benefited enormously in recent years from a building boom increasingly dependent on wealthy, secretive buyers.

People who can afford to buy real estate in a all-cash transaction, and that means “without bank financing,” not just having Mr. Green at the closing table, are the government’s new targets.  It could be an indication of illicit money, or it could mean that some people are so fabulously wealth that they can afford what they buy out of savings. Or it could mean they just sold a place and have the proceeds available to purchase the next place. Continue reading →

Many, myself included, wonder whether the required skillset of a university dean is the ability to rationalize the most ridiculous things with a straight face. Or is Northwestern University’s president, Morton Schapiro, a moron? Exhibit A, Schapiro’s attempt to rationalize “safe spaces.”

Some writers ask why our campus is so focused on how “black lives matter.” Others express a mixture of curiosity and rage about microaggressions and trigger warnings. And finally, what about those oft-criticized “safe spaces”? On this last topic, here are two stories. The first was told to me privately by another institution’s president, and the second takes place at my institution, Northwestern University.

Oh good, a feelzsplainer. Trigger warning: this essay would muster a pity C at best from a college sophomore, and will kill brain cells. Proceed with caution.

A group of black students were having lunch together in a campus dining hall. There were a couple of empty seats, and two white students asked if they could join them. One of the black students asked why, in light of empty tables nearby. The reply was that these students wanted to stretch themselves by engaging in the kind of uncomfortable learning the college encourages. The black students politely said no. Is this really so scandalous?

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Cynics. Can’t live with them but can’t deny they’re right. Of course, they may not be cynics, but rather people who refuse to be blinded by emotion and instead remain grounded in reason and fact.  But then, calling them cynics, as well as a host of other derogatory names, makes it easier to dismiss them without a second thought. Or even a first thought, because thinking is hard.

Few people have dedicated as much thought to the Catch-22 of the scenario constructed on college campuses as K.C. Johnson and Ashe Schow.

K.C. points out Georgia Tech’s zeal in destroying the lives of the accused without any semblance of due process.

With campus rape grabbing national headlines, Tech has expelled or suspended nearly every student it has investigated for sexual misconduct in the past five years, records show. And at Tech, officials finding a student responsible for “non-consensual sexual intercourse” must either expel the student or explain why they did not.

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It came as no surprise that the Puddle posted about whether lawyers should pay to give presentations.  After all, what legitimate conference or CLE would have a Puddle reader speak?  There is little draw for a lawyer without any accomplishments whatsoever telling other lawyers, well, anything.

But even so, Andrew Cabasso didn’t come out completely in favor of lawyers trying desperately to manufacture credibility out of nothing to whip out their credit card for the chance to take the podium in front of others.

The idea of paying for a speaking gig is, well, a bit offensive. Especially when the host is already profiting from attendees, which is essentially double-dipping because the speaker [he means “host,” but editing is hard work] gets paid by the audience and the speaker. The audience gets information and CLE credits. The speaker just gets a bill.

When it comes down to it, you are doing your host a favor by helping them fill their programming and educating their audience. Preparing a speech and supplemental handouts takes considerable time and effort to put together. And the actual speaking gig itself is time that could otherwise be spent billing paying clients.

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The trial may be exactly what rape activists contend is the reason the police cannot be trusted to investigate or charge men accused of rape.

The trial came to an abrupt halt after a Las Vegas police detective took the witness stand and offered his unsolicited opinion that no crime had occurred. Detective Michael Fortunato gave that opinion as his explanation for not sending the victim for a sexual assault examination and for not seeking a warrant to search Goins’ home.

No crime?  The police in Henderson, Nevada disagreed. They charged 54-year-old massage therapist James Brian Goins with sexually motivated coercion. The story behind the charges is, well, creepy.

The woman claims Goins sexually assaulted her on July 29, 2013, after she went to his home studio in Las Vegas for a massage. Another woman claims Goins groped her during a massage on Aug. 6, 2013, at a Massage Heights franchise in Henderson. Continue reading →

If Harvard alumni want something to cry about, they would do well to consider that if they build that grand new engineering school, it would be the second best in Cambridge. That Harvard isn’t free, or discriminates against Asians, is a red herring.  They give extremely liberal financial aid to students, which Harvard can well afford, and if they didn’t discriminate against Asians, they would make up 90% [based on my personal, highly scientific, empirical study] of the students.

Diversity, you see, isn’t always as it seems. The unspoken ugly belly is that Asian students work hard, very hard, much harder than a lot of other groups, to succeed. Tiger Mom is part of it. A culture of hard work, sacrifice, effort, can’t be overcome by protests and rosy platitudes. But when we speak of diversity, it’s based on a Utopian disconnect with reality.

Asians are just as much a marginalized group as blacks or LatinX, as the latest craze calls them, since the gendered Spanish language fails to meet the bar of gender neutrality. But the concerns are different, and they don’t get the concern shown by the deeply passionate social justice feelers. Why do they hate Asians so much?

But then, there’s no place in the NBA for a 5’9″, middle-aged, Jewish white power forward. If disparate impact answered all questions, this would be a problem. It’s not. Those players are there because they are the best at the game. And they are, notably, black. Nobody wants to watch a basketball game on TV played by short, mediocre players, none of whom could dunk without an extension ladder. Continue reading →

A few days ago, Judge Richard Kopf brought up his unfortunate ruling against a prisoner who complained of being served the vile and dreaded nutraloaf.

Prison Loaf, sometimes called Nutraloaf, disciplinary loaf, food loaf, confinement loaf, seg loaf, or a special management meal, is a food served in prisons to inmates who have misbehaved in various ways. It looks like meatloaf but it is all the ingredients of a meal ground up together. Prison loaf is usually bland, and often tastes awful, but prison wardens argue that nutraloaf provides enough nutrition to keep prisoners healthy without requiring utensils to be issued.

In my head, I juxtaposed the prisoner’s dilemma with the bitching of Oberlin College students, who had to suffer the indignity of an inauthentic bành mí.

Instead of a crispy baguette with grilled pork, pate, pickled vegetables and fresh herbs, the sandwich used ciabatta bread, pulled pork and coleslaw. “It was ridiculous,” Nguyen said. “How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”

Forget that baguettes are French. Instead, ponder how Nguyen would feel if he was forced to eat nutraloaf instead. At least it’s authentic. Authentic nutraloaf. Continue reading →

I’ve long been a huge fan of the libertarian Reason Hit & Run, which has never shied away from getting down in the weeds on calling bullshit on legal issues at risk.  They’ve done some spectacular original reporting, most recently outing the David Lisak scam upon which the serial rapists on campus myth was based.

Among the writers that make Reason matter is Robby Soave, a young guy who has demonstrated a surprising skill at seeing through the rhetoric that conceals the evisceration of due process rights on campus.  And then the other day, Robby made me sad.

He wrote a post about Democratic presidential contender, Bernie Sanders, asserting that campus rape is still rape, and should be handles by law enforcement rather than the dilettantes at colleges, where the crime is presumed, and the accused guilty.  Given Sanders progressive base, this was heresy.

Curiously, the title to Tyler Kingkade’s Slate Huffington Post post (awkward) changed from its original, “Bernie Sanders doesn’t understand campus sexual assault or Title IX,” to “Bernie Sanders Comments On Campus Rape, And Totally Drops The Ball,” after I twitted:

So Bernie is incapable of grasping Title IX but he’s capable of being president? Are you sticking with that story?

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Perhaps the least persuasive argument offered in defense of allegations of rape against Bill Cosby is that he’s never been convicted.  Sure, no one gets convicted until they’re convicted. Yet, this is the explanation offered by Avvo General Counsel and Chief Marketeer Josh King in explanation of why Avvo’s latest scheme, imaginatively called Avvo Legal Services, is perfectly ethical.

Avvo has designed Legal Services with the ethical obligations of lawyers in mind. Avvo Legal Services has a similar structure to Avvo Advisor, which has been operating in many states since October 2014 without complaints. And, like Avvo Advisor, we believe Avvo Legal Services does not violate any ethics rules.

My bet is that Avvo designed Legal Services to make money, because Avvo is a business and if it doesn’t make money, my buddies in Seattle will have to get real jobs.  As for Avvo Advisor, the situation is a bit different, given that the putative client and lawyer both know going in that there is only $39 at stake for some cheap talk, no matter what. Continue reading →