Overlawyered » crime and punishment

Police and prosecution roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:05:22 +0000

Tony Jalali case: “Anaheim, feds try to seize office building under forfeiture laws because owner rented to medical marijuana dispensaries” [@radleybalko, Institute for Justice]
Judge Ciavarella, of cash-for-kids Pa. scandal, sentenced to 28 years [Citizens Voice, background]
Explosion in US prison population isn’t just from War on Drugs [Pfaff via Greenfield] Reform of (and reduction in) incarceration too important to be left to liberals [Eli Lehrer, Weekly Standard]
“Report details lives ruined for children put on sex-offender registries” [Susan Ferriss, Center for Public Integrity via Lenore Skenazy]
Criminal justice reform, per the NAACP’s Ben Jealous, is “one area where GOP can connect with black voters” [Jeremy Kolassa]
“It’s actually a really good book, making me despise Geragos all the more.” [Scott Greenfield reviews Mistrial] And an oldie but goodie: Greenfield reviews “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Criminal Justice System”;
Alleged “duty injury king” of Cook County jail dethroned after one comp claim too many [Chicago Sun-Times]
Tip from Georgia cops: avoid situations where you might have to cling to hood of moving car [Lowering the Bar]
ABA’s evidently already made up its mind to oppose Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws, but is holding public “hearings” on the topic anyway [ABA Journal]
Don’t forget to check out Cato’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, which you can also follow on Twitter and like on Facebook

Tags: Chicago, crime and punishment, forfeiture, illegal drugs, Luzerne County judicial scandal, self-defense, workers' compensation

Police and prosecution roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Police and prosecution roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:07:54 +0000

Tsarnaev case: Orin Kerr on how the public often miscontrues Miranda rights, and on how courts decide when house-to-house police searches are proper.
Two-month-old falls on patio and hurts head; then begins Minneapolis family’s encounter with Child Protective Services [Free-Range Kids]
Dilatory criminal lawyer in Bronx: “Courts in Slow Motion, Aided by the Defense” [NYT via Legal Ethics Forum]
Former Monster exec imprisoned on backdating charge: if you’re making it in the business world, inform yourself about criminal law [Alex Cohen, Atlas; related Fox Business video] “Ira Stoll on the Compliance Boom” [Reason]
The Senator from Doonesbury disappoints again: Liz Warren blasts GOPer as soft on legal pot [Jesse Walker, @radleybalko] “A Heartbreaking Drug Sentence of Staggering Idiocy” [Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic]
Why does Arizona keep trying to put Debra Milke to death on the word of a multiply perjurious cop? [Popehat]
Top cop’s $400K disability deal was part of the sleaze-scape in Bell, Calif. [Tim Cavanaugh, City Journal, earlier]

Tags: Arizona, Child Protective Services, crime and punishment, defense lawyers, Fourth Amendment, illegal drugs, police

Police and prosecution roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Workplace impunity a la francaise?

Walter Olson — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:00:46 +0000

“A law working its way through [the French] parliament would grant amnesty to workers who have ransacked their company’s offices or threatened their bosses during a labor dispute.” [USA Today via Jon Hyman]

Tags: crime and punishment, France, labor unions

Workplace impunity a la francaise? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Feds demand ideologically confessional “corrective ads” from tobacco companies

Walter Olson — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:40:45 +0000

As part of the wrangling over remedies imposed by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, the federal government is demanding that tobacco companies be made to run ads declaring that the government was right and they wrong on various controversial issues, and in particular that they confess to having lied on purpose. A demand for judicially imposed self-denunciation, and in particular a demand that private actors be ordered to assert ideologically charged propositions that do not reflect their actual inward beliefs, should disturb civil libertarians, it seems to me, even if it does not disturb the U.S. Department of Justice. I’m quoted at 4:47 in this report by the BBC’s Ben Wright.

Tags: advertising, crime and punishment, tobacco

Feds demand ideologically confessional “corrective ads” from tobacco companies is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Police and prosecution roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:06:30 +0000

“Once your life is inside a federal investigation, there is no space outside of it.” [Quinn Norton, The Atlantic]
“Cops Detain 6-year-old for Walking Around Neighborhood (And It Gets Worse)” [Free-Range Kids] “Stop Criminalizing Parents who Let Their Kids Wait in the Car” [same]
Time to rethink the continued erosion of statutes of limitations [Joel Cohen, Law.com; our post the other day on Gabelli v. SEC]
“Are big-bank prosecutions following in the troubled footsteps of FCPA enforcement?” [Isaac Gorodetski, PoL]
The “‘professional’ press approach to the criminal justice system serves police and prosecutors very well. They favor reporters who hew to it.” [Ken at Popehat]
Scott Greenfield dissents from some common prescriptions on overcriminalization [Simple Justice]
Anti-catnip educational video might be a parody [YouTube via Radley Balko]
“Too Many Restrictions on Sex Offenders, or Too Few?” [NYT "Room for Debate"]
Kyle Graham on overcharging [Non Curat Lex] “The Policeman’s Legal Digest / A Walk Through the Penal Laws of New York (1934)” [Graham, ConcurOp]
“D.C. Council Proposes Pretty Decent Asset Forfeiture Reform” [John Ross, Reason] And the Institute for Justice reports on forfeiture controversies in Minnesota and Georgia.
Does prison privatization entrench a pro-incarceration lobby? [Sasha Volokh, more]

Tags: banks, child protection, crime and punishment, forfeiture, Georgia, illegal drugs, Minnesota, police, prisoners, statutes of limitations, Washington D.C.

Police and prosecution roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Union violence and legal impunity

Walter Olson — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 04:16:11 +0000

Philadelphia: “Union Workers *Probably* Torched a Quaker Meetinghouse Over Christmas” [John Ross; Steve Volk, Philadelphia Magazine] The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has compiled a report [PDF] on ways in which state laws exempt unions and their members from otherwise applicable criminal laws [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner ("Union organizing exempted from stalking laws in four states"), Nathan Benefield/Commonwealth Foundation] Columnist Fred Wszolek says the sponsors of “Freedom from Workplace Bullies Week” might need to cast their net a bit wider. And see
August 1999 post in this space (unions have secured for themselves immunities from civil liability far more extensive than most businesses dream of); Grover Norquist/Patrick Gleason, Reuters (exemptions from anti-stalking laws).

Tags: crime and punishment, labor unions, Philadelphia

Union violence and legal impunity is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Should the state pay the legal defense costs of acquitted criminal defendants?

Walter Olson — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:14:04 +0000

Scott Greenfield, contra Radley Balko, believes the idea would prove “problematic, if not disastrous,” in real life, especially if enacted in the form of two-way fee-shifting (as distinct from a one-way fee payable only to defendants). It is worth noting that although legal systems around the world predominantly embrace loser-pays principles in civil litigation between private parties, they more or less uniformly decline to carry a similar principle over to criminal prosecution.

Tags: crime and punishment, loser pays

Should the state pay the legal defense costs of acquitted criminal defendants? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Orin Kerr on the Aaron Swartz case

Walter Olson — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:18:34 +0000

A two-part post, with part 1 on the law as applied to the facts, and part II on sentencing, prosecutorial discretion, and the appropriate targets for reformist energy. Earlier here (& Greenfield; Timothy Lee and Mike Masnick on plea bargaining).

Tags: crime and punishment, prosecution, technology

Orin Kerr on the Aaron Swartz case is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Environment roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:05:40 +0000

Bill McKibben et al press Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against energy producers, hint at direct action [Andrew Sullivan]
Billion-dollar compensation program may be unstoppable, though: “Cancer Not Increased by Exposure to World Trade Center 9/11 Attack Debris” [Ronald Bailey, Ted Frank/PoL, earlier here, here, here, here, etc.]
“EPA cries ‘uncle’ in face of lawsuit, withdraws threat against W.Va. chicken farmer” [David Martosko, Daily Caller]
Jim Manzi finds lead-and-crime thesis less “blindingly obvious” than does Kevin Drum [NRO, and Drum's response]
In state’s dispute with EPA, plenty of Virginia moderates think federal agency has overreached [A. Barton Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch]
“Lawsuits seek to generate “awareness” of global warming, costs states a bundle” [@andrewmgrossman on Laurence Hurley/EENews story; Michael Greve/Liberty and Law]
EPA’s departing Jackson has been poster child for “we can’t wait” governance approach [Jim Huffman]

Tags: climate change, crime and punishment, environment, Environmental Protection Agency, lead paint, oil industry, September 11, Virginia, West Virginia

Environment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

An in-faux-graphic on rape statistics

Walter Olson — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:34:59 +0000

In recent days media outlets, including respectable ones like Washington Post “WonkBlog”, have circulated an infographic on rape incidence claiming (among other things) that false accusations of sexual assault are a vanishingly rare phenomenon. The chart claims to be sourced to official statistics, but Mark Bennett digs in a bit and finds a pile of at best strained speculation, at worst made-up nonsense. [Defending People]

P.S. This supposedly corrective piece at Slate is if anything worse than the chart it purports to correct, straining to minimize false accusation as even rarer than portrayed. (It’s worth remembering that its author, Amanda Marcotte, has a bit of a history herself when it comes to credulity on this subject.) Bennett again provides a needed corrective: “Forensic DNA typing laboratories — as numerous commentators have noted — encounter rates of exclusion of suspected attackers in close to 25 percent of cases.” (& Greenfield; and an informative followup from Bennett regarding the incidence of false accusation.) Yet more: Washington Post ombudsman says mistakes were made.

Tags: crime and punishment, lying with statistics

An in-faux-graphic on rape statistics is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system