By way of explanation for the experiences that mold a judge’s perspective, Judge Richard Kopf* offered this insight as to why he may not be as empathetic toward the defendant standing before him to be sentenced for drug dealing as a criminal defense lawyer might hope:

Sentence an aging crack whore, have her hang herself in the cell adjacent to your courtroom right after you have done so, and then ask yourself how much empathy you feel for the rat bastard who knowingly feed her addiction. Do I have empathy for the self-proclaimed ”gentle” drug dealer I sentenced to life in prison, who directed his crew to sodomize a teenage girl with motor oil ’cause she didn’t pay her drug debt, and who beat others with baseball bats or pipe wrenches when the unfortunates threatened to snitch or failed to pay their bills? No, I don’t.

I won’t dwell on Judge Kopf, Continue reading →

The line between excoriating a person or group and explaining what’s wrong with a line of reasoning and bad attitude so that, just maybe, a bell will go off in their heads, can be very thin.  It varies from person to person. Some get it. Others don’t.

Shortly after I posted about Ladar Levison’s really bad call, the post was picked up by a hacker blog, which noted how smart people often indulge in the grievously mistaken assumption that brilliance in one discipline translates to brilliance in others, including the law.  This brought people here to “inform” us that we were wrong, that no good lawyer would talk to a person unless he plunked $50,000 down for a retainer; Continue reading →

The outrage is palpable, perhaps making a new world record in public resort to Godwin’s Law.  All because of three bullets. From the Buffalo News:

A Town of Lockport man who was a passenger during a traffic stop was charged when he turned over a loaded semiautomatic handgun in a holster from the glove compartment to an officer on Saturday. The gun was legal, but police say the 10 rounds of 9 mm ammunition found in the magazine were not, because they violated the state law that states it is unlawful for any person to knowingly possess a magazine with more than seven rounds.

Lawfully possessed handgun. Not used in an unlawful manner. Continue reading →

1. Indict
2. Seize assets
3. Compel impoverished defendants to defend
4. ?????
5. PROFIT!!!

Or, to tailor a meme more appropriately to the subject, convict.  Having spent some energy trying to explain how asset forfeiture was ignored by pretty much everybody when it was just the drug dealers who suffered, oral argument before the United States Supreme Court in Kaley v. United States revealed the irony when the tactics that were so beloved in Monsanto were applied to white collar defendants.

Soon after the issues raised in Kaley were discussed here, Continue reading →

If you get it, it’s a very funny joke:

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don’t.

The government’s use of contempt to compel Lavabit’s owner, Ladar Levison, to provide a digital copy of the private encryption code generated huge concern and ideas from the tech community; after all, it was seen as a direct attack at one of their primary goals, the maintenance of privacy from prying government eyes. This generated two levels of discussion in the “what to do about it” category, one from the perspective of lawyers and another from the perspective of hackers (well, maybe not hackers, but it’s a more fun word than technology enthusiasts). Continue reading →

Before getting to the beef of this post, I ask that hotter heads cool.  There have been a few posts lately about issues raised by Nebraska federal judge Richard Kopf, and some readers disagree strongly with Judge Kopf’s views and show no reluctance saying so.

There’s nothing wrong with disagreement, and I’m sure Judge Kopf has heard strong language that wasn’t necessarily flattering before. But, and this is a big but, the judge is under no obligation to express himself in a blog or engage in any repartee, witty or otherwise, with me or you.  As much as there may be some fundamental disagreements, the opportunity to learn and engage is something of enormous value. Maybe something said here will change Judge Kopf’s mind. Maybe it will change some other judge’s mind. Continue reading →

When Marilou Auer sent me the link to a story about Dr. Danielle N. Lee being called a whore by someone named Ofek at Biology-Online, I shrugged it off. It struck me as a mundane tiff between a website I cared nothing about and a writer who properly refused to provide it with free content.  Unpleasant interactions happen every day on the internet.

What distinguished the story was Ofek’s response to Dr. Lee’s refusal to provide her work for free:

Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?

Whore! Oh my god! Did he just say that! Continue reading →

It appears that the members of the school board overseeing North Andover High have a problem on their hands.  Their students are drinking booze.  It’s fairly well agreed that high school students shouldn’t get drunk, despite a long-standing tradition of teenagers testing the limits and feeling their way through their budding adulthood in potentially destructive ways.

But as MADD, and SADD, and any other organization with double “D’s” at their end would have it, these destructive behaviors result in harm, and there is no doubt truth to this argument.  So there are two answers: the first is to create a general policy to prevent destructive conduct. The second is to craft a Zero Tolerance approach to show kids how serious this is and how adults would rather scorch their earth than use their heads. The school board in charge of North Andover high picked the latter. Continue reading →

The idea that the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, could possibly tell his story and reap a fortune from its publication was more than anyone could stand, and so the Son of Sam law(s) was born.  The original version, New York Executive Law §632-a, was enacted to make sure that no person convicted of a crime could receive the profits that might otherwise by enjoyed as a result of it.

That it only applied to those “convicted” made perfect sense at the time it was drafted, as it seemed to cover the situation.  But people, being who we are, always manage to find a way to screw up the best laid plans.  This time, it’s not just people, but a crazy person. The irony is that Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, was as loony as could be, provided you don’t think taking instructions to kill from a dog is normal. And if you do, please explain that to the nearest police officer. Continue reading →