- Senators and their Constitutional duties: Christine O’Donnell 1, Dahlia Lithwick 0 [Bernstein/Volokh, Shapiro/Cato, Garnett/Prawfs] More: Ted at PoL.
- 15-year-old sentenced to 20 years for killing dog, family says that isn’t long enough [USA Today]
- “Fla. man settles McDonald’s suit over hot sandwich” [AP, earlier]
- “Blasphemy laws by the back door” [Stuttaford, Secular Right, on UK Koran prosecution] “A Defense of Free Speech by American and Canadian Muslims” [The American Muslim]
- “15 new legal blogs prove the blawgosphere is alive and kicking” [Ambrogi, Law Technology News; reactions, Greenfield and Balasubramani]
- A video on your right to videotape cops [David Rittgers, Cato; Greenfield, Balko]
- “My Lie: Why I Falsely Accused My Father” [Meredith Maran interview, Salon]
- “Judge-Mandated Racial Quotas For Plaintiffs’ Law Firms” [Krauss, PoL]
Filed under: animals, child abuse, constitutional law, hate speech, legal blogs, police
9 Comments
Meredith Maran’s father deserved what he got. Not for molesting his daughter, but for raising a daughter who made a career out of telling stupendous lies.
Off topic, but on a story covered last week, Caffeine Killer Verdict: Ky. Man Found Guilty in Wife’s Death (Sept. 27, 2010) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20017729-504083.html
The jury deliberated about 2 hours Friday evening, after a week-long trial, before convicting, recommending life in prison without parole, and being discharged in time to make to local H.S. football games.
15-year-old sentenced to 20 years for killing dog
It’s actually “3 to 20 years” for “home invasion”, so he’ll probably be out robbing people in a year or so.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/05/brothers_julio_and_jonathan_ca.html
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/kent_county/boy-pleads-guilty-to-killing-dog-with-hammer
It sounds like Maran still has a way to go:
Maran: — but innocent people are in prison, do I have to make that choice? It is a Sophie’s choice kind of thing. Would I allow an innocent man to sit in prison if it meant keeping children safe?
Interviewer: So would you make that choice?
Maran: I think so.
Someone please explain to me how locking innocent people up makes kids safer? Maybe she’d feel differently if she had to do 20 years for false accusations to keep innocent men safe?
Interviewer: So would you make that choice?
Maran: I think so.
Seems to me like she didn’t learn a thing from her experience.
Re: “My Lie…” I also noticed that Salon had to equate this woman’s destructive personal lie about her father to the common “Obama is a Muslim” canard.
On the 15-year-old’s case, the news accounts indicate that the homeowner was away when the perps entered the house, and then returned shortly afterward. To support charges of home invasion I assume there must have been some further aggravating factor that elevated the incident beyond one of interrupted burglary. In any event, the defendant sounds like a bad actor indeed, and Le Mur is right to point out that the offenses on which the sentence was based go beyond the wanton animal cruelty.
Maran: “Metaphorically, everything we were saying was true. But there was a confusion between a metaphor and a fact. And it was a highly relevant difference.”
Just what the hell does that man. Factually speaking, everything she was saying was false. The woman sounds like a nut job still.
“Would I allow an innocent man to sit in prison if it meant keeping children safe?”
So she advocates imprisoning random innocents as a warning to those who are guilty? Sounds like she should be the first ‘volunteer’ to go to prison to become an example for us all.
RE: the woman who wrote the book “My Lie”:
Makes one wonder if we are seeing the same thing today with male athletes and (especially) Catholic priests–might it take 20-25 or more years to find out how many of those charges were false or otherwise concocted, like we are seeing with these 1980’s-era molestation charges?
And then, where do THOSE men “go to get [their] reputation[s] back?”?