Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Prosecution roundup

  • If you like civil forfeiture, you’ll love AG nominee Loretta Lynch [Rare Liberty]
  • NYT “Room for Debate” tackles deferred prosecution agreements with contributions by James Copland, Lawrence Cunningham, others;
  • Book by Ross Cheit seeks to rehabilitate mass-child-abuse prosecutions of 1990s, Cathy Young not convinced [Reason] “When miscarriages of justice occur, prosecutors must answer for actions” [Boston Globe on Bernard Baran case, earlier here and here]
  • As Sierra Pacific case implodes, federal judge raises prospect that U.S. DoJ may have defrauded judges [Paul Mirengoff, earlier]
  • Video of panel on shaken baby syndrome doubts, relating to new film “The Syndrome” [Univ. of Missouri, K.C. School of Law, related earlier]
  • Ambiguous statutes in a regulated environment: time for a limit on the criminalization of business? [Matt Kaiser, Above the Law]
  • Las Vegas: federal judge calls “super seal” clandestine-forfeiture effort by U.S. prosecutors “constitutionally abhorrent” [Balko]

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4 Comments

  • […] Hattip: Overlawyered. […]

  • At first it was puzzling that Oxford University Press would foul what had been a respected brand (eg their History of the United States series) by printing Ross Cheit’s book, one that most American publishers by now have the sense to avoid.

    It makes sense, however, in the context of current British politics: activists are trying to leverage a (fact-based, at least initially) sex scandal involving deceased entertainer Jimmy Savile into a blizzard of accusations against mostly Tory politicians. If Oxford U. has the same kind of zealots that many US universities do, the Cheit Book can be used to confuse the ill-informed.

  • The Boston Globe deserves praise for their most timely coverage of the premature death of Bernard Baran, falsely imprisoned for 21 years in a daycare witch hunt. (His health weakened by years of prison abuse and shoddy health care, he only enjoyed 6 years of freedom as an adult.) Coverage of Baran’s death just a couple of weeks before the November Massachusetts gubernatorial election probably made the difference in the razon-thin 0.2% defeat of win-at-any-cost prosecutor Martha Coakley. Among other abuses, she was implicated in stonewalling reparations for Baran.

    Outgoing MA Gov. Patrick tended leftwards of most commenters on this blog, but I will always remember him favorably for his judicial appointments. Previous governors had shown a knee-jerk preference for former prosecutors. Patrick, however, was more conscious of justice issues, eg. promoting two of the judges who had helped free Baran. He also sacked two fanatical administrators of the MA sex offender registry, though family experience may have spurred his interest.

  • I would not conclude from this that ” the US justice system is broken.”

    But this does seem to me yet more evidence that should be added to the existing stack, that the Holder DOJ is corrupt; broken, if you will.