In a recent post, Noblesville police shot a 27-year-old suicidal man. The rationale was that he had a gun and, well, the First Rule of Policing kicked in, trumping whatever purpose the police might have had in preventing a suicide. Ironic and fundamentally contrary to anything remotely resembling sound judgment and practice, but at least there was an excuse.

Not this time.

Why exactly 44-year-old Michael Angel Ruiz decided that a rooftop in Phoenix was a good place to be isn’t clear, but there is nothing about being up there that puts a cop at risk.  And nothing about coming down from there that does so either. Via Police State USA:

After sustaining electric shocks from police, Ruiz complied with requests to come off the roof.  Video taken by witnesses shows him hopping down to a balcony. Continue reading →

At A Public Defender, Gideon goes on a well-deserved tear over the fact that our beloved Supreme Court Justices are busy making earth-shattering decisions about stuff they know nothing about.

The internet is a series of tubes, about….this big.

Isn’t it just so darling that these befuddled old justices get to pretend that it’s still the Bronze Age? It’s so adorable that they decide cases involving video games, but oh no, they’re a loveable bunch of pensioners who’ve never heard of video games, so they “try out a few”.

Funny? Not so funny if you remember that Continue reading →

A while back, a lawyer friend was preparing for a trial that frightened him in the way trials frighten a criminal defense lawyer. No spooky ghosts, but the deeper fear that he wouldn’t be up to the task.

He needed another set of eyes and ears to challenge his tactics, and I was happy to help. One of the things criminal defense lawyers do is work ourselves into something of a confidence frenzy, believing that through sheer force of will if not brilliance, we can put together a persuasive defense that will save a person’s life. Continue reading →

When federal defenders were “stripped bare by sequestration, its bones have been chiseled away as well,” few thought too hard about its long-term consequences. After all, there was no money to pay for the required defense of the indigent, the constitutional mandate of Gideon notwithstanding, and certainly nobody likes defendants anyway. So, basically, screw ’em, because we need the money for Hamid Karzai things that are dearer to our hearts.

One of the points raised was that the defense function still had to be filled, and with the facile emasculation of federal defenders, the job would fall to private lawyers who took assignment under the Criminal Justice Act. Some good, some not so good, Continue reading →

The tragic story of a misguided bullet to the head of Hofstra student Andrea Rebello was bad enough, but Nassau County police can’t let it be.  As it stood, Officer Nikolas Budimlic was the goat, having rushed into a house with hostages and killed a hostage along with the criminal.  When the whole point of the exercise is to save people from crime and dying, shooting a college coed in the head is hard to justify.  Not that the department and union wouldn’t try their darndest.

As is usually the case, it would all be cleared up by the subsequent investigation, which would certainly explain how poor Andrea Rebello failed to survive this exercise in modern policing. And indeed, an investigation followed. Unfortunately, it appears that the point of the investigation wasn’t to figure out the role the Nassau County police played in this tragedy, Continue reading →

It’s not likely breaking news at this point, but Pamela Jones has chosen to take down one of the stalwarts of the blogosphere, Groklaw.  Her reasoning follows the line of reasoning of Ladar Levinson, founder of Lavabit, the confidential email provider who refuses to become a forced government rat.

Not being a groky kind of lawyer, much of what happened at Groklaw went over my head, especially because of their love of geek language, which I don’t speak.  But its value and substance were well known, and more importantly, well appreciated. And now, PJ has pulled the plug. Continue reading →

Proving the old adage about a blind squirrel, Justin Peters at the Slate Crime Blog stumbles onto an interesting article from Florida Coastal Law Review (I know, but apparently they do have one) testing the rubric of the consensual police encounter.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police officers can briefly detain and search a person if they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that he or she is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime. But cops need no such Continue reading →

Among the many reasons why SDNY Judge Shira Scheindlin’s decision in Floyd v. City of New York, holding the stop & frisk program unconstitutional, was inevitable was this key explanation up front:

I emphasize at the outset, as I have throughout the litigation, that this case is not about the effectiveness of stop and frisk in deterring or combating crime. This Court’s mandate is solely to judge the constitutionality of police behavior, not its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool.

Not long. Not particularly prolix. Continue reading →

If Kent Scheidegger didn’t exist, we would never get such artfully turned sentences as this:

All the preening pseudosophisticates congratulating themselves on how “smart” they are on crime can go home to their safe, leafy neighborhoods, while the consequences fall on people like Rachael Russell.

What made the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation spit out such words? Rachael Russell was raped and murdered by her grandson. Continue reading →

Regardless of what one thinks about Edward Snowden, hero whistleblower or traitor, or Glenn Greenwald, UK Guardian reporter who broke the news of our National Security Agency aggregating all of our digital metadata “just in case,” what followed yesterday to 28-year-old Brazilian David Miranda took it to a very different level.

Miranda is Greenwald’s “partner,” meaning whatever that word means these days when we’re not supposed to care. At least the New York Times was kind enough to expressly explain that Miranda wasn’t a journalist, per se, Continue reading →