A friend of mine told me about his going to couples therapy.  Both he and his wife assumed the therapist would listen to their respective stories, decide which one was right, and name a winner in the marriage game. The winner would do a happy dance while the loser would acknowledge defeat.  It didn’t turn out that way.

Instead, the therapist explained how both he and his wife were entitled to their feelings, offered some ideas for how to disagree more productively and awarded no points to either side. After a few sessions, they begged off. They finally had one point of complete agreement, that couples therapy was a waste of money.

Psychology is about feelings, and can accommodate contradictory feelings.  Law cannot. My friend wanted a verdict, and instead got a tummy rub. It resolved nothing, when their purpose in going was resolution. The New York Times offers an editorial on campus rape that does the same.

Both campus activists who believe there’s an epidemic of sexual assault and skeptics who doubt there’s a widespread problem can at least agree that a clearer picture would be useful.

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There was, at minimum, fairly good reason to be concerned that Tom Kendall posed a threat to Vancouver, Washington police.  After all, Kendall had just fired his rifle at another car during a dispute, hitting a woman in the face. Bad stuff.

The confusing series of events first began at about 8:30 a.m., when 58-year-old Kendall, behind the wheel of a silver Buick, pulled his car up to the intersection of Northeast 63rd Street and Andresen Road in Vancouver alongside his neighbors, Erich and Abigail Mounce. Kendall and the Mounces were due in court at 9 a.m. in an ongoing dispute. From his car, Kendall pulled out a high-powered rifle, fired it at the couple’s vehicle and fled the scene.

Abigail Mounce was shot in the face, and her husband, who was driving, sped away to the hospital. Abigail Mounce survived the shooting.

Clearly, Kendall was a guy to approach with extreme caution.  Which offers no explanation for the shooting of 55-year-old Brent Graham, who was kind enough to call in a report of an abandoned car. Continue reading →

For those who’ve never had a blog, I see SJ via a “dashboard,” which offers me all the options and information necessary to actually drive this beast.  While you see it from the public face, I’m constantly seated in the back room, and rarely see how things look up front.  This means I sometimes miss something obvious to you, but then, I also get to see a whole bunch of stuff that you don’t.

That’s right. It’s cool to have your hands on the wheel of this truck.

One of the things I see is incoming hits and links, other websites, blogs, newspapers, chatrooms, that have linked to something here.  It’s always interesting to see who is linking so I often take a peek.  Sometimes, it’s painful, as the link will come from a website promoting an idea I find repugnant.  Other times, it’s just kinda curious, as happened the other day when I spotted some incoming reads from a fountain pen forum. Continue reading →

It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.

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For the sake of preserving the integrity of what will follow, I’m going to publish, unmolested by my “patriarchal” thoughts, this post by Bridget Crawford from Feminist Law Professors:

Over at libertarianism.org, author Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes about “Carceral Feminism and the Libertarian Alternative.” Here is an excerpt:

[A]s ideologies and movements, libertarianism and feminism have a lot to offer one another. Not every libertarian matter is necessarily a feminist one, of course (and vice versa). Libertarianism can, however, provide a lens through which to view gender issues, and in doing so help counter the monopoly that a more coercive, carceral feminism has come to enjoy.

“Carceral feminism” is a term that’s gaining popularity, and it’s in many ways synonymous with progressive feminism these days. Progressive feminists will identify gender-based concerns, then immediately look to the state for solutions—via strict regulation, at least, or criminalization and jail in many instances. Carceral feminism is the relatively small but incredibly vocal voice within millennial feminism that says due process can be sacrificed if it means catching a few more rapists, hate speech should come with a jail sentence, and images promoting “unrealistic” female body standards should be banned by the government, among other things. * * *

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Oral argument on a motion to release the grand jury transcript in the Eric Garner killing was held in Staten Island.

Christopher Pisciotta, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society, argued to Justice William Garnett that the “public questioned the fairness” of the way evidence was presented to the grand jury by the office of Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan. In early December, the grand jury declined to indict New York City Police Department Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner’s death — a decision that sparked protests across the city and the country.

New York City’s Public Advocate, Letitia James, joined in the motion.

Matthew Brinckerhoff, the lawyer representing James, argued that the records were essential for lawmakers across the state seeking broader reforms to the grand jury system, which has come under scrutiny since the decision not to indict Pantaleo. “This case has been the catalyst for widespread discussions of reform,” Brinckerhoff said.

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In an extraordinary article in Law and Order, a police management magazine, a point that has been made here innumerable times has finally been made in black and white: There is no “officer safety” exception to the Constitution.

Via ExCop-LawStudent:

The article, No “Officer Safety” Exception to the Constitution, Charles Huth, Jack Colwell, and Randy Means, Law and Order, Jan. 2015, is very clear that officer safety has gone too far.  They state:

A number of law enforcement agencies are currently under fire for their patterns and practices of “stop and frisk.” This is only the present manifestation of what has been for decades a national epidemic of illegal police practices rationalized by the mantra “officer safety.” Frisks are not supposed to be the rule in Terry-type stops; the rule would be no frisk. The same is true for handcuffing subjects and placing them in the back of police cars. (emphasis added)

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Mayor Bill de Blasio’s criminal justice coordinator, Elizabeth Glazer, has handed down her “punishment” to the Bronx Defenders for the participation of two of their attorneys in the “hands up” video that the City and PBA used to deflect attention from truly serious matters, ranging from the needless killing of unarmed citizens like Eric Garner and Akai Gurley to the police insubordination and work stoppage because the mayor didn’t support cops killing unarmed citizens.

From the NYLJ, the two lawyers who were shown in the video, Ryan Napoli and Kumar Rao, have resigned and the Board of Bronx Defenders has suspended Robin Steinberg without pay for 60 days.

Though Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week that every option was on the table as a consequence for the “Hands Up” video, including defunding The Bronx Defenders, Elizabeth Glazer, director of the mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice told the group Wednesday that she accepted the plan.

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Cathy Young did the journalistically unthinkable. She looked at the other side of the story, this involving Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz, who has been carrying around her mattress as performance art to protest the fact that university has twice found the guy she alleged raped her not responsible.  While all eyes were on Sulkowicz, Young asked the young man, Paul Nungesser, what happened.

Because Sulkowicz didn’t get the outcome she wanted, she has chosen to become the poster person for rape “survivors.”

Nungesser’s accuser, Emma Sulkowicz—famous for carrying her mattress on campus as a symbol of her burden as a victim and a protest against Columbia’s failure to expel the man she calls her rapist—has become the face of the college rape survivors’ movement. Sulkowicz’s protest has garnered her awards from the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority Foundation; last month, she attended the State of the Union address as a guest of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

An impressive array of supporters. Nungesser, on the other hand, doesn’t get invited out much these days, and certainly not to the State of the Union address by a senator.  But he was “acquitted” of responsibility, which only proves Columbia is wrong, according to Sulkowicz’s supporters.  Except Nungesser has something Sulowicz doesn’t. Evidence. Continue reading →

At Hercules and the Umpire, the Honorable Forest Gump offered a modest proposal:

So, here’s an idea from a dolt. Prosecutors shouldn’t hide shit.

More specifically, why don’t federal prosecutors adopt an informal “open file” discovery practice for most matters, particularly run of the mill drug cases and the like. Screw Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 and the Jencks Act.

Rule 16 is so limited as to be nearly worthless in terms of discovery, and Jencks Act (a/k/a 3500 material) comes too late to be of any use.  A kindly prosecutor (autocorrect keeps wanting to change “kindly” to “kinky.” I don’t know why.) will turn it over just in advance of trial. A less kindly one will provide it after the government’s witness has testified, right before cross, because that’s when defense counsel has plenty of time to wade through 11,000 pages of disclosure.  Surely the defense can conduct an adequate investigation over lunch. Continue reading →