It seems like everybody’s an author today. Everybody but you. And me. Yet, I keep stumbling across baby lawyers writing books about subject they can barely spell, no less write intelligently about. Often published by no less prestigious an entity than the ABA.

And then there are the more mature lawyers, cranking out books that are adored by all three of their fans. And the guy at the vanity publishers who is more than happy to take their money to print up a few hundred copies of a book destined to sit in the dust bin at Amazon.

Why do this?  To crunch some numbers, consider that a person who puts in serious effort to writing a book will expend 1000 hours writing, thinking, rewriting, thinking some more, to create something that will be illuminating. Well, at least not embarrassing. Continue reading →

The question posed by the title to Leon Neyfakh’s Slate post seems rather outlandish.  Is Bail Unconstitutional?  Of course not. It’s ridiculous, as bail is obviously constitutional.  Except when it isn’t.

Neyfakh’s error is, at worst, a minor one that happens constantly on the internets. Non-lawyers fail to recognize that law and procedure vary greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and they focus on one and extrapolate it to others. The others may be vastly different, but lacking knowledge of this, they assume that if bad stuff happens in one place, it happens everywhere. It’s a flawed assumption.

But what Neyfakh is talking about is the arbitrary fixing of bail by police in Dothan, Alabama.

Anthony Cooper was going to jail because he couldn’t afford to buy his way out. After being picked up for public intoxication at a bus station in Dothan, Alabama, at about 1 a.m. on June 13, Cooper was told that unless he paid $300 in bail money, he would have to spend six days behind bars while awaiting a court hearing. If Cooper, who is illiterate and suffers from mental illness, had had the money on hand, he could have gone free on the spot. But the 56-year-old’s only source of income comes from his Social Security benefits, and he didn’t have $300. And so Cooper, like many down-on-their-luck Dothan residents before him, was locked up.

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In a new video segment, the New York Times surveys its overly sensitive readers as to why they can’t talk about an issue that could desperately use some discussion.

Do you feel uncomfortable? Apprehensive? “You know, offend anyone.” Well, that’s pretty weird, since these are all people who don’t see themselves as “racist,” and yet can’t bring themselves to discuss an issue of significance because it make them feel awkward.  But then, that’s the point. These nice, sensitive white folks are deeply concerned about their feelings. Continue reading →

The last man running after his escape from Clinton Correctional Institution in beautiful Dannemora, New York, caught two bullets from State Trooper, Sgt. Jay Cook, as he was about to lose him in the forest.  Governor Andy Cuomo hailed him as a hero for his bravery in shooting an unarmed man while doing the job for which he’s paid.

Nobody thought too hard about shooting David Sweat, as he was a convicted cop killer and prison escapee, not the sort of guy you want to arrive unannounced for dinner. These are the sorts of twisted scenarios where minds shut down and nobody thinks too hard about the uninteresting question of whether this was a legally justified shooting.  Except Cristian Farias, who did exactly that.

To the layperson or the evening news watcher, the use of deadly force on a convicted murderer on the lam in rural New York for nearly three weeks may seem entirely reasonable. And judging from the praise Cook received, the act is even commendable. But police officers must be legally justified to effect a “seizure” on a person — and yes, an official shooting is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. But nowhere in the account of this shooting is there any indication that Sweat, whose identity was then unknown, gave Cook any reason to stop him, let alone shoot him.

There are a few significant issues wrapped up in that quote, some of which were raised, others ignored, in an interesting discussion at Judge Richard Kopf’s blog, Hercules and the Umpire, so let’s pause to note them. Continue reading →

Try as he might, Nevada State Trooper Greg Monroe could not come up with a sufficient reason to search Straughn Gorman’s RV.  It seems almost impossible to believe, but it’s true.  And yet, his tenacity was a thing to marvel, as his own personal lack of imagination manifested in his sloughing the chance to search off on Elko County Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Fisher, who did the dirty and hit the jackpot.

At Techdirt, Tim Cushing explains the decision in United States v. $167,070 in United States Currency:

It begins with the flimsiest of “reasonable suspicion” and heads downhill after that. Straughn Gorman was driving across Nevada in his RV when he was pulled over for a “left-lane violation” — driving too slow in the passing lane. (This itself isn’t actually a moving violation, but the Supreme Court’s Heien decision has ensured that law enforcement needn’t be slowed by actual knowledge of the laws they’re supposed to be enforcing.)

So that it’s clear, RVs are search magnets. They’re often chock full of fun stuff to seize, whether illegal or something shiny for the kids on their birthdays. Either way, it’s always sound practice to stop an RV and see what bounty it holds. Continue reading →

Among the many quick and easy answers people come up with when faced with an information gap is the knee-jerk, FOIL it!  Because there’s a law that says information wants to be free, and if there’s a law, then it must work. Problem solved!

Gawker sought to obtain information after the infamous pool party fiasco in McKinney, Texas about Sgt. Eric Casebolt, and filed a request for information.

Days after McKinney, Texas, police officer Eric Casebolt was filmed pointing his service weapon at a group of unarmed black teenagers at a pool party this month, Gawker submitted a Public Information Act request to the city of McKinney asking to see Casebolt’s records and any emails about his conduct sent or received by McKinney Police Department employees. 

While it is sound journalistic practice to obtain background information on Casebolt in order to ascertain whether he has a history of using excessive force or engaging in racist conduct, this is Gawker we’re talking about. Salacious stuff, sure. Sound journalistic practice, well, that’s not a phrase often used mentioned in the same sentence as Gawker. Continue reading →

Like the ends of a vise squeezing, squeezing the delicate ears of the middle of our great nation, the highest courts in Washington State and New York have confirmed what should never have been a question: cursing at a cop is not a crime.

Upholding a minor’s First Amendment rights, the Supreme Court of Washington overturned “E.J.J.’s” conviction for obstruction when he yelled curses at police as they arrested his sister for intoxication:

“While E.J.J.’s words may have been disrespectful, discourteous and annoying, they are nonetheless constitutionally protected,” Associate Chief Justice Charles Johnson wrote for the six-justice majority. When citizens exercise their right to criticize “how the police are handling a situation, they cannot be concerned about risking a criminal conviction for obstruction.”

Packed within these words are some significant concepts, not the least of which is the persistent complaint by police that people no longer behave respectfully toward them.  Continue reading →

When Dara Lind wrote at Vox that there was finally a consensus, it was a huge and critical point of dispute lifted off the discussion.  After all, among the various problems confronting the discussion of whether there is an “epidemic” of rape and sexual assault, most notably on college campuses, but in broader society as well, one of the backlash fears is that the evisceration of due process and shifting of burdens onto the accused is a terrible thing.

But how terrible?  The response of proponents of extreme change to grossly favor rape accusers was that false rape accusations very rarely happen. Almost never.  And so, we should default to believing that every accusation is true, because who would anyone falsely accuse someone of a rape?

Of course, the reaction was that it happens, and has happened in notorious cases, like Duke Lacrosse and more recently Jackie/UVA, Mattress Girl and others. But were these outliers? What was the frequency of false accusations? Dara Lind set out to narrow this down, if not exactly answer the question.

For one thing, research has finally nailed down a consistent range for how many reports of rape are false: somewhere between 2 and 8 percent, which is a lot narrower than the 1.5 percent to 90 percent range of the past.

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Not only do car chases look really cool in movies, but they rarely end with innocent children being killed by a police cruiser.  Not so in real life. Not so in Detroit.

“[The police] were right on their rear, the police car bumped their tail a little bit, and the car flew up in the air,” the friend said. “There was no need for the police to be that close. I yelled ‘WATCH OUT’ but it was too late. When the car hit them, both of them just looked at me. They screamed. It just keeps re-playing in my head.”

Two children were dead.

Makiah Jackson (L’il Mama), 3, and her brother Michaelangelo Jackson, 6, were killed June 24, in front of their home on Nottingham.

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Eighty-eight-year-old Phyllis Stankiewicz came to the door with a knife.  Maybe she was in the kitchen cutting up rutabagas.  Maybe she wasn’t expecting company, and at 88, wasn’t inclined to take chances.  Who knows? But she was in her own home, minding her own business, and didn’t anticipate anyone knocking on the door.

Officers were dispatched to 57 Wilson St. about 3:50 p.m. for a report of a disturbance involving someone with a baseball bat. Police knocked several times and announced their presence at Stankiewicz’s home and said they were there for a report of a crime, according to court files.

It’s possible that her hearing wasn’t what it used to be. It’s possible that at 88, it takes her a while to make her way from the kitchen to the front door. But assuming the police “knocked several times and announced their presence,” it doesn’t tell us much about  Stankiewicz.  Except that she was still in her own home, minding her own business and didn’t anticipate anyone knocking on her door. Continue reading →