The title to this post is a string of words never uttered in any judicial campaign anywhere ever.  Among the numerous problems with elected judges (sorry, you Jacksonian democrats), one of the most unseemly is the things some will say when they will ask for your vote.

The accusations of the judge’s prejudice range from his 2008 campaign signs describing himself as “a prosecutor to judge the predators” to comments made during a Texas Patriots PAC meeting in March 2013 touting the fact that no one who was tried for civil commitment has been released into the community since he took over the bench in 2008.

Seiler also referred to the predators as “psychopaths.”

As a result of these gems of judicial wisdom, there has been a “flurry of defense motions granted for Judge Michael Seiler’s recusal in the 435th” in Montgomery Count, Texas.  But the prosecutor protests. Continue reading →

About 24 inches of snow last week.  Another four inches Friday night. Then about eight inches last night.  The first snow was light and fluffy. The second wasn’t bad.  The snow last night was wet and heavy. Very heavy.

And so, I offer an homage to John Deere, the makers of my 6×4 Trail Gator with its 12 inch plow.

It’s sleeping now, having been hard at work at 5 a.m. this morning. It deserves a good rest, as it did its job magnificently. Continue reading →

For those of you who, like me, sat through Statistics 101 thinking that it would be great if there was a long needle within reach so I could stick it in my eye rather than have to sit through any more lectures, much of the discussion about the “1 in 5” rape epidemic stat that has driven the hysteria upon which evisceration of basic due process rights is grounded is problematic.

Sure, we understand basic statistical flaws, such as the lack of random sampling and itty-bitty sample sizes. Or there’s the facile interpretation of responses to conform to the outcome desired by the people conducting the study. Or the problems when definitions are fudged to the degree that “some guy stared at me at a party” becomes “stare rape,” which becomes rape.  Or rape is whatever someone decides it is the day after consensual sex.

But these are just the surface flaws.  We’re not qualified to parse the details with a statistician’s eye, so we rely on those who know what they’re really talking about.  One such person, new to the blogosphere, is Francis Walker. Continue reading →

John Geer was having problems with his live-in partner of 24 years, Maura Harrington, and started throwing some of her possessions out of the house and onto the lawn.  So she called the police.

One of the first officers to arrive, Adam Torres, a 30-year-old cop who had been on the force for seven years, pointed his gun at Geer when he announced that he had a holstered gun, which he put on the ground. Even so, Torres kept his gun aimed.  Other cops arrived, including Rodney Barnes, a trained negotiator.  He developed a rapport with Geer, and the situation de-escalated.

John B. Geer stood with his hands on top of the storm door of his Springfield, Va., townhouse and calmly said to four Fairfax County police officers with guns pointed at him: “I don’t want anybody to get shot . . . . And I don’t wanna get shot, ’cause I don’t want to die today.”

Then Torres pulled the trigger and killed Geer. Continue reading →

We were out to dinner at a pedestrian steakhouse last evening with a couple we’ve known for a very long time.  After running the course of the usual conversations, my pal Ralph mentioned that he was concerned for his niece who was a freshman at college because he hears there is a rape epidemic.

Oh crap.

He explained to me that 1 in 5 college women were raped.  I explained to him in return that the number was nonsense, a bit about the statistical failings until his eyes started to glaze over, and then about the Bureau of Justice Statistics number of .61%, not 20%. I had lost him.

For the handful of us who aren’t dedicated to perpetuating a lie that supports a political position, that the 1 in 5 is nonsense is old news.  And yet, the media continues to perpetuate the myth, fact-checkers be damned.  And it’s not yet done. Continue reading →

At WaPo’s The Watch, Radley Balko has a fascinating discussion of the history of no-knock warrants which includes discussion by Reason’s Jacob Sullum.

The no-knock raid is different from other raids in that it dispenses with the knock-and-announce requirement. This requirement, which dates back centuries to English common law, is part and parcel with the Castle Doctrine, the idea that the home should be a place of peace and sanctuary and that even when police have just cause to search a house, residents should be given every opportunity to come to the door, answer peacefully and let the officers in, thus avoiding damage to their property and violence to their person. (It also gives innocent residents the opportunity to point out to the police that they have made a mistake.) Under the Castle Doctrine, suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Continue reading →

Most people who serve on committees are “joiners,” the types of people who desire to be on boards, or committees, or groups so they can say they are and feel as if they must be very important people because they are part of the in-group.  Most committees, because of the nature of group dynamics combined with the nature of joiners, are at best a waste of time and at worst dangerous. As the saying goes, a camel is a horse designed by committee.

But Southern District of New York Judge Jed Rakoff doesn’t need to be on a committee.  He was, because the president appointed him, but only as long as he wasn’t wasting his time or worse.  As it turned out, it was worse.  Judge Rakoff’s letter of resignation from the Justice Department’s Commission on Forensic Science:

Last evening, January 27, 2015, I was telephonically informed that the Deputy Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice has decided that the subject of pre-trial forensic discovery — i.e., the extent to which information regarding forensic science experts and their data, opinions, methodologies, etc., should be disclosed before they testify in court — is beyond the “scope” of the Commission’s business and therefore cannot properly be the subject of Commission reports or discussions in any respect. Because I believe that this unilateral decision is a major mistake that is likely to significantly erode the effectiveness of the Commission — and because I believe it reflects a determination by the Department of Justice to place strategic advantage over a search for the truth — I have decided to resign from the Commission, effective immediately.

Continue reading →

I’m not much of a connoisseur of rap music, but this video struck home with me.

It’s not that I endorse the line about a cop having to die. Obviously, I don’t and have made the point more times than I care to remember that no one should die. All lives matter. I feel no compulsion to prove myself now. I’ve always been clear about being against violence for everyone. Continue reading →

Granted, Hawaii is a long way from the mainland, but it’s hard to imagine that it’s this far from the mainstream.

An Oahu grand jury indicted 35-year-old Kramer Aoki last November on a third-degree sexual assault charge, a class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The indictment says that on Sept. 6, Aoki, as a law enforcement officer, knowingly subjected to sexual contact a person in custody.

Aoki is accused of placing his hand on the breast of a teenage girl he had pulled over for speeding. After the alleged incident, Aoki let the girl go with a warning.

One of the most despicable abuses of police power is the use of fear, or authority, to coerce sexual contact.  There are instances of cops forcing women to perform oral sex to get a pass on an arrest or traffic ticket. Others just rape women.  But amongst good cops, this sort of conduct is intolerable to most; there are lines that cops should never cross.  Then again, others in law enforcement tend to see such conduct as a perk of the job, under some twisted vision of cops being “sexy” and deserving the occasional coerced sex act for being such brave heroes. Continue reading →

Years ago, I got a t-shirt from the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia that read on the back, “I plead guilty to obstruction of injustice.” It was a cute shirt, but it carried a kernel of truth. It’s what we do. We obstruct. Criminal defense lawyers get in the middle of the smooth operation of law enforcement and make everybody’s job more difficult.

San Francisco public defender Jami Tillotson did her job the other day, and it was captured on video. Two guys, one of whom was her client, left court only to be seized by Sgt. Brian Stansbury. For reasons not entirely clear (though speculation is easy enough that the guys were potential suspects in some other case), Stansbury wanted to interrogate and photograph them.  That’s his job, identifying suspects of crimes.

Tillotson came out, told Stansbury that she represented one but not the other, and on his behalf, asserted his right to counsel to preclude further questioning.  She stood there and blocked his easy access to photographing her client, who was standing against the wall.  Presumably, that’s where Stansbury put him, back to the wall. Continue reading →