It has been stressed, over and over, that video is not the panacea that many believe it will be.  Facile slogans, like “seeing is believing,” are contradicted by science, which has made clear in long and boring studies that what people see on videos is viewed through the lens of cultural bias.  The better slogan is believing is seeing, but that defies the simple understanding of people who see the world “clearly” and “obviously.”

The video of P.O. Daniel Pantaleo killing Eric Garner is, as such things go, quite clear.

As an aside, of only peripheral relevance at this point, I do not accept the “myth” of the case, that Garner was being arrested because he was selling untaxed cigarettes, “loosies,” as that claim arose the day after his killing.  At the time, and as the video provides, the police were called to the scene because of a fight, which Eric Garner broke up. Continue reading →

The New York City Medical Examiner’s conclusion was clear:  Eric Garner, age 43, of Staten Island, was a homicide.  It’s the responsibility of the medical examiner to make the judgment call requiring medical expertise as to cause of death.  Garner’s asthma, obesity and high blood pressure contributed to his death, which is nothing extraordinary or unusual. People come in whatever condition they are; even fat asthmatics get to live.

Under New York Penal Law §125.00, homicide is defined as “conduct which causes the death of a person . . . under circumstances constituting murder, manslaughter in the first degree, manslaughter in the second degree, criminally negligent homicide, abortion in the first degree or self-abortion in the first degree.  This is not a matter of debate or discussion, not that people lacking either the knowledge or expertise won’t do so anyway, but a matter of law.

Staten Island, which in official New York City parlance is called Richmond County, is its smallest county and the home of many police officers. It’s an affordable suburban place, despite being considered little more than the place where New York City garbage was dumped. Driving through Staten Island required holding one’s nose for years, as the odor was noxious.  The courthouse is small and undistinguished, but it has its own District Attorney, Daniel M. Donovan, Jr., who has held the office since 2004. Continue reading →

Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal of the Northern District of California, also known as the District of Microsoft, Apple and Google, didn’t care for being shunted the reject from the District of Columbia when the Department of Justice got all pissy about being doubted.  “No manifest destiny for you,” Mag. Grewal replied.

But the Revolt of the Magistrates appeared to be harshly put down by Article III tyrants bent on making no assistant United States attorney cry.  It appeared that the glorious moment in time when the rubber stamp was thrown away, when the Constitution breathed fire, when the Magistrate Judges would no longer sign anything the DoJ put in front of them, was over.

NO!  No, it’s not dead yet.  In the thoughtfully captioned IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH WARRANT FOR: [REDACTED]@HOTMAIL.COM et al. Mag. Grewal shows that the fight lives on!

A typical federal magistrate judge’s courtroom calendar on criminal duty in 2014 looks much like it did in 1986, when Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Defendants make their initial appearances in the courtroom. Rights are read and detention decisions made. Perhaps an out-of-district case will require an identification and removal hearing. Every week or so, a grand jury foreperson or deputy appears bearing indictments in hand. A handful of agents, family members and others might look on, but no more than that. A 1986 magistrate, as we were simply called back then, would feel right at home. Continue reading →

President Barack Obama, in the wake of Ferguson, announced that he’s discovered police body cams.

The Obama administration wants to set aside $263 million to improve law enforcement training and fund the purchase of 50,000 cameras that police officers can wear on their bodies.

The White House proposed the move in a review of local-law-enforcement funding, released on Monday. It arrives one week after a Grand Jury decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of teenager Michael Brown, a decision that has sparked widespread upheaval across the country.

The announcement suggested myriad initiatives, like the end of providing excessed weapons of mass destruction to local police “just in case,” but as Trevor Timm notes, it was just empty rhetoric to calm the natives, with no actual change intended.  But the body cams, 50,000 of them (maybe), raised the specter of the remarkably successful Rialto, California experiment. Continue reading →

Twitter has lists. Black lists. Lists of people to be blocked en masse so that your eyes need never again see anything these blacklisted twitters write. Whether MRAs or feminists, SJWs or racists, there will be lists.

This isn’t a free speech issue. Twitter is a commercial enterprise, and can provide its service any way it pleases.  Presumably, it is doing so in response to demands by its customers, and that’s what commercial enterprises do.  No one has stepped on your First Amendment rights. You have no right to enjoy Twitter’s services.

The justification was horrible twits threatening rape and harm, abusive twits, stalkers, and indeed, there was some of that. When particularly controversial issues arose, so too did the volume of offensive twits. And make no mistake, some were extremely, inexplicably offensive. Continue reading →

When I first read the story at Rolling Stone, I twitted “This is rape.” I fell prey to confirmation bias, as was made painfully clear in a subsequent post by Richard Bradley, which asked whether Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story of the gang rape of a University of Virginia freshman, identified only as Jackie, might be a lie.

Some years ago, when I was an editor at George magazine, I was unfortunate enough to work with the writer Stephen Glass on a number of articles. They proved to be fake, filled with fabrications, as was pretty much all of his work. The experience was painful but educational; it forced me to examine how easily I had been duped. Why did I believe those insinuations about Vernon Jordan being a lech? About the dubious ethics of uber-fundraiser Terry McAuliffe?

The answer, I had to admit, was because they corroborated my pre-existing biases. I was well on the way to believing that Vernon Jordan was a philanderer, for example—everyone seemed to think so, back in the ’90s.

We all have pre-existing biases.  The problem isn’t ridding ourselves of them, since we can’t, but recognizing that we have them and doing everything possible to overcome them. Continue reading →

My fellow curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann, offered a bit of worthy advice in his column at Above The Law.

If you’ve really got it, then you don’t have to flaunt it.

Shamelessness has become a national pastime.  Not only do people feel no shame whatsoever for flagrant self-promotion, but they similarly feel no shame about puffery, overstating their worth.  Often grossly overstating their worth.  Like the Super Blogger and her team of blogging rockstars, the absurd hyperbole seemed so obvious that it was unworthy of mention. Yet, some commenters took it seriously enough to point that it may not be true. You think?

Herrmann noted that it was unnecessary to go on at length to explain how someone who is truly renown needs to prove it.  Larry Bird was his example.

In other words: “I’m Larry Bird. Yes, that Larry Bird.” ‘nuf said.

Continue reading →

In Latin, the phrase is “murum aries attigit,” which just happens to be my buddy Marco Randazza’s personal mantra.  It’s from Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War:

Caesar described the principle of “murum aries attigit,” which literally means the “The Ram Has Touched the Wall.” It referred to a Roman policy: surrender would be accepted before—but not after the battering ram touched a enemy’s city walls. Wikipedia explains the purpose behind the policy well: “The policy was to act as a deterrent against resistance to those about to be besieged. It was an incentive for anyone who was not absolutely sure that they could withstand the assault to surrender immediately, rather than face the possibility of total destruction.”

As it happens, there is a football club called the Rams, and they happen to be based in St. Louis, Missouri, not far from a place called Ferguson.  Some of the players on that team expressed their thoughts on recent happenings in Ferguson.  Five St. Louis Rams players entered the field in protest, with their “hands up, don’t shoot.” Continue reading →

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument today in Elonis v. United States, testing the scope of the First Amendment when words that certainly sound like true threats are made on Facebook by a man after his wife left him.  It’s an ugly fact pattern, offering such social media gems as:

Exhibit 12 in the government’s case against Anthony Elonis is a screenshot of a Facebook post he wrote in October 2010, five months after his wife, Tara, left him. His name appears in the site’s familiar blue, followed by words that made Tara fear for her life: ‘’If I only knew then what I know now . . . I would have smothered your ass with a pillow. Dumped your body in the back seat. Dropped you off in Toad Creek and made it look like a rape and murder.’’

If this strikes you as too prospective, try this one instead:

‘’There’s one way to love ya but a thousand ways to kill ya. I’m not gonna rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts’’

Continue reading →

“But they can’t do that?!?”

Well, yes and no. Perhaps legally and ethically, they’re not supposed to be able to do that, but there is a reason Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the “least dangerous branch” in Federalist 78.  A straggler offered a comment to my post about the Ferguson Lie:

But again, as one poster pointed out, wasn’t he under extreme pressure by the African-American community to prosecute? And because he knew the evidence would not substantiate the claim that Wilson murdered Brown, he chose to present the case to the Grand Jury to in fact “be fair”? Or more probably, to pass the buck so that he would not receive the lion’s share of the wrath of the locals because he didn’t prosecute?

One poster?  Math challenged is nothing to laugh at, but what else could I do?

Is there a reason why repeating the same thing over and over is necessary? There is no exception that allows him to present to the grand jury do appease public pressure. “But he did it?” Yes, he did. “But, but, but…” Continue reading →