- Virginia Gov. McAuliffe vetoes bill expanding procedural rights for motorists facing camera tickets [The Newspaper]
- Attracting drug deals to town was money-making scheme for a Florida community’s law enforcers [Radley Balko] “Civil Asset Forfeiture: The Biggest Little Racket in Nevada” [Jason Snead and Andrew Kloster, Heritage; related, Evan Bernick on Georgia and Texas; Balko forfeiture roundup; and update, reform in Minnesota]
- “Yes, it’s time to get rid of regulatory agencies’ paramilitary units” [Jason Pye, United Liberty]
- (Some of) what’s wrong with “victim’s rights” laws [Steve Chapman]
- A case study in overcriminalization: “Reforming the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act” [Vikrant Reddy, Texas Public Policy Foundation] More: Overcriminalization in North Carolina [Jim Copland and Isaac Gorodetski, Manhattan Institute]
- “We emphatically reject the notion that due process of law permits the police to frame suspects.” [Third Circuit in Halsey v. Pfeiffer, allowing Byron Halsey to sue police after being wrongly imprisoned for 19 years in double murder case; Newark Star-Ledger] What to do about ongoing epidemic of police “dropsy” and “testilying”? [Balko]
- Prince George’s County, Maryland police announce in advance they’re going to behave unethically over course of next week [Conor Friedersdorf] Update: police call off plan, claiming announcing it had value in deterring johns.
Posts Tagged ‘Texas’
Texas: deputy sues family of delusional man shot by police
Kemal Yazar’s wife called police out of concern for her husband, who had begun behaving erratically and speaking delusionally. Following a struggle of some sort, police shot the unarmed father of three to death. Now one of the deputies at the scene, “who according to an investigator’s report, suffered ‘superficial wounds’ during the incident” (though he now reports more serious injuries), has sued the family, accusing them of “negligence and recklessness” for not warning emergency operators that Mr. Yazar might be a serious threat. “Oddly, the deputy didn’t sue Kemal’s wife, who placed the call, but her mother, Carmina Figueroa, whose name was on the home insurance policy.” As we noted in an item last year, also from Texas: “Under the ‘firefighter’s rule,’ which has eroded in some jurisdictions in recent years, emergency rescuers generally cannot sue private parties whose negligence is allegedly to blame for the hazards to which they are responding.” [Lisa Falkenburg, Houston Chronicle]
Texas: a ploy fails
“Flush with trial lawyer cash, the PAC’s public face is ‘Texans 4 Justice,’ which portrays itself as a conservative grassroots group.” It didn’t work: Texas GOP primary voters yesterday returned incumbent Supreme Court justices. [Texas Observer, Houston Chronicle, earlier]
Related: Plaintiff’s lawyer Steve Mostyn, “omnipresent” in Austin, and his involvement with “Conservative Voters of Texas” [Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine]
Politics roundup
- John Lott Jr. argues in new book that judicial-nominations system is broken; responses from Michael Teter, Clint Bolick, John McGinnis [Cato Unbound]
- “Weaponized IRS” meets Administration’s political needs at cost of future public trust [Glenn Reynolds, USA Today]
- “For some time, however, cause lawyers have moved in and out of government, thus complicating the traditional picture of lawyer-state opposition.” [Douglas Nejaime, “Cause Lawyers Inside the State,” SSRN via Legal Ethics Forum]
- Gun rights: public opinion has changed over the decades in a big way [Bryan Caplan, Steven Greenhut]
- “Mostyn Law Firm donates $1 million to help Wendy Davis in Texas governor’s race” [Washington Examiner, New Republic] Plaintiff’s bar supporting GOP primary challenges to Texas Supreme Court incumbents Phil Johnson, Jeff Brown, and Chief Justice Nathan Hecht [TLR] More: Legal NewsLine (Mark Lanier Law Firm largely funding challengers)
- Nassau’s Kathleen Rice: “Anti-Corruption Panel Co-Chair Receives Big Donations From Sheldon Silver’s Law Firm” [Ken Lovett, NYDN]
- Rule of thumb: a political party leans libertarian in proportion to the number of years since it last held the White House [Orin Kerr]
- Dept. of Justice indicts a prominent Obama critic on campaign finance charge [Ira Stoll; more above]
“Texas: Architects need to be fingerprinted”
Finally addressing the entrenched social problem of architect-perpetrated crime? Or just the security state running mindlessly forward on its own momentum? David Lancaster of the Texas Society of Architects told a trade newspaper that his group “believed fighting the legislation would be ‘futile.'” [Mike Riggs, Atlantic Cities]
Politics roundup
- “Who’s Afraid of Political Speech?” (spoiler: incumbents) [Roger Pilon, Cato] “None of this was perceived as a major problem so long as the 501(c)(4) category was dominated by the political left” [Brad Smith, WSJ]
- Texas trial lawyers not all of one mind over extent of political involvements [Texas Tribune, Southeast Texas Record]
- Sen. Mark Pryor, a key architect of the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad CPSIA law, faces tough re-election race in Arkansas [Politico]
- RNC asked to take stand for Americans overseas hurt by FATCA tax law [McClatchy]
- Richard Epstein recalls Chris Christie’s unlovely tactics as a prosecutor [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
- That time Texas politico Wendy Davis sued the Fort Worth paper over its coverage of her campaign [Andrew Stiles, NRO]
- “Low political knowledge levels mainly due to lack of demand for info, not lack of supply” [Ilya Somin, Jack Shafer]
- SEC backs off plan to expose companies to harassment over outlays to politically oriented nonprofits, and NYT (thinking only of shareholders’ welfare of course) is sad about that [Marc Hodak, David Silvers/CEI, NYT] Sen. Warren seems to enjoy new capacity to use position, Durbin-like, to punish political foes [David Henderson]
Ethics roundup
- Wilkes-Barre, Pa.: “one of the most egregious cases of attorney theft of clients’ escrow funds that I have seen” [ABA Journal]
- Chamber cheers Wisconsin for enacting strongest sunshine law for state hiring of outside contingency-fee lawyers [U.S. Chamber/Business Wire]
- Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s contributions on professional responsibility and the role of the legal profession [Steven Hobbs, SSRN]
- “Mississippi Supreme Court sanctions judge for refusing to step aside in asbestos suit” [ Walter L. Cofer, Greg Fowler and Simon Castley, Lexology]
- Alameda County ex-judge gets 5 years of probation in theft from elderly neighbor [ABA Journal, earlier here, etc.]
- Study: Wisconsin high court justices tend to side with attorney donors [Fed Soc Blog]
- Suit by Garlock claims misconduct by opposing asbestos lawyers including concealment of exposure and implantation of memories [Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine, related] A Lone Star State asbestos litigation revival? [Eric Lasker and Richard Faulk, WLF]
“It was our lives that were taken away”
The San Antonio Four, women released after more than a decade of imprisonment over child-abuse crimes they say they never committed, talk to NBC News. “Plea deals were offered, but they refused to accept them on the grounds that they were innocent.” One of the two accusers (pre-teens at the time) has recanted, the other sticks by her story.
November 11 roundup
- Incoming Australian attorney general: we’ll repeal race-speech laws that were used to prosecute columnist Andrew Bolt [Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Herald-Sun, earlier]
- Texas sues EEOC on its criminal background check policy [Employee Screen]
- After Eric Turkewitz criticizes $85M announced demand in Red Bull suit, comments section turns lively [NYPIAB]
- If only Gotham’s official tourism agency acted like a tourism agency [Coyote on NYC’s official war against AirBnB; Ilya Shapiro, Cato; earlier here and here, etc.]
- “Lawmaker wants Georgia bicyclists to buy license plates” [WSB]
- Religious liberty implications of European moves to ban infant circumcision [Eugene Kontorovich]
- Video on CPSC’s quest for personal liability against agency-mocking Craig Zucker of Buckyballs fame [Reason TV, earlier]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Stop and bleed: Tennessee rolls out “no refusal” blood-draw DUI driver checkpoints, which already go on in Texas [WTVF, Reddit, Tom Hunter/Liberal America, Charles “Brad” Frye (Texas practice)]
- Issues raised by growing practice of placing government “monitors” inside businesses to police compliance [Veronica Root, Prawfs]
- “Faulty Justice: Italian Earthquake Scientist Speaks Out against His Conviction” [Scientific American]
- California: suit could probe patterns of harassment against Orange County officials who’ve resisted police union demands [Krayewski, earlier]
- Illinois “[makes] it a felony to flick cigarette butts onto streets for the third time” [Gideon’s Trumpet]
- Before making laws intended to benefit sex workers, take time to listen to them [Popehat via Maggie McNeill]
- Report: state of Florida investigating Zimmerman prosecutor Angela Corey over sacking of alleged whistleblower [Washington Times, earlier] “A Visitor’s Guide to Florida’s Most Notorious Law Enforcement Agencies” [Mike Riggs, Atlantic Cities]