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His career is destroyed but he won't spend his life in jail.

If a woman is capable of consenting or denying consent and she does not resist or even object the Air Force will not charge the man with rape.

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Will try to post later today - but not until I finish the petition that needs to go out before close of business.

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I'm Famous!!!

(1) I walk into a prosecutor's office yesterday and the first words out of his mouth are "It's Ken 'The Hammer' Lammers!" I've always suspected that prosecutors could read. ; -) Now I've got to go back and delete all the nasty stuff I said about Bob and Dicky.

(2) I've been linked by the Law Society of Fitzwilliam College of the University of Cambridge. All of the sudden I feel all important and full of myself. Cambridge, for those of us on this side of the Atlantic, is one of those very old, very prestigious universities¹ (or at least it is going to be when I brag to my buddies).



1 As I remember it, Cambridge is old enough to give Harvard an inferiority complex but not quite as old as Al-Azhar.

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Why Almost No One I Know is a Member of the ABA:

(1) The ABA is has already endorsed homosexual adoption. Now, it will vote on adoption by a homosexual couple. Does anyone doubt what the result will be? This, of course, is a precursor to endorsement of homosexual marriage. Hmmm . . . Faced with a choice between the Church and the ABA I suspect my choice would be pretty obvious.

(2) The ABA is seriously contemplating rules to require lawyers to turn on their clients. Ethics, in general, require you to tell authorities if your client is going to break the law in the future. But part of this appears to be set up so that if "trigger" events occur a lawyer is required to report his client. That sounds suspiciously like saying "if you find out your client falsified a report last year you must report it even if nothing illegal is going on now or is contemplated."

For a while I joined the ABA - free membership - and gained absolutely nothing but a monthly magazine. It is notorious for taking moral positions which freeze out anyone who might be remotely conservative¹ and, as evidenced by (2), isn't exactly sticking up for us. Both are pretty massive failures for an organization which wants to represent all the U.S. lawyers.



¹ Of course, the question you must ask yourself is why an organization which is supposed to represent the interests of all lawyers would enter the realm of pushing any moral position - much less one which is clearly contrary to the beliefs of at least a significant minority of lawyers.

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Death Cases:

(1) Can there be any doubt that someone who opened fire on a Sheriff's department from the parking lot was committing suicide-by-cop?

(2) Accusations and counter-accusations in the Lentz case. Defense attorneys find out that inadmissible evidence, supposedly only in the custody of the prosecutor, made it into the jury room. Prosecutors, in turn, accuse the Defense attorneys of improper conduct for speaking to jury members after the trial. Not exactly a resounding rejoinder.

(3) Prosecutors are forced to drop murder charges by yet another lab screw up.

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You Too Can Be Placed on a Sex Offender Registry!!

What? You say you've never comitted a sex-crime? Why should that make a difference?

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Police and the Law:

(1) Police can flood a courtroom and stand in the hall so that jurors have to walk past them to get into the courtroom. Still, it's not prejudicial because a jury might think that each and every single one of them was going to be called as a witness. And the jury might also think they were mirages or that they were newspaper men who diguised themselves in uniforms so they would have a better chance of getting into court so they could get a story.

This reads an awful lot like an appellate court covering for an obvious mistake on the trial court's part. The shame of it is, the facts of the case almost certainly would have led to the same result if the judge had done the right thing¹.

(2) Here's an officer who can't be shut up. And he's gonna keep getting paid if they keep trying.

(3) What happens in England when you are having a watergun fight and you hit a passing police officer thru an open window in his car? You get maced. Ouch! Just imagine what must happen over there if you throw snowballs at school buses.



¹ I am not saying that the police should not have been allowed to attend. They are citizens just like everybody else and should be allowed to attend an open trial they are interested in. However, the judge should have disallowed a large uniformed presence during the trial.

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More on the dogs being trained by prison inmates.

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Military Related:

(1) Con men are posing as military, coming to the houses of soldiers' families, telling the families that the soldier has been killed, and try to get identification information and/or money from the families.

(2) A Marine cut the lines on a number of parachutes so that they failed when used because he was angry with his Lt. By the Grace of God nobody died. The truly disturbing part is that after such a betrayal the Marine Corps cut a deal with this guy.

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You can no longer wear bedroom slippers to Richmond Juvenile Court. Not even the bunny rabbit ones.

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Somebody in California doesn't like coffee (or at least Starbucks).

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A woman disappears 16 years ago, kidnapping her two daughters. Supposedly, she is living underground with some unnamed group. When finally found during a traffic stop, she is using an alias and has several aliases on her record.

And the judge, in his infinite wisdom, gives her bond. Think she'll show up for her trial?

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If your attorney takes $5,000, has a bogus hearing, lies to you about your ability to appeal and generally just scr#ws you over it tolls the statute of limitation for your habeus in the 2d Circuit.

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Your locality started using cameras to take pictures of cars running red lights. Your local officials swear that they aren't doing it to raise revenues. It's purely a safety issue. Still, your natural paranoia leaves you with nagging doubts - especially when all the lights change from a 5 second yellow to a 3 second yellow at the same time the cameras are installed.

If you decide to fight, San Fran's lawyers have already set out the theories for you.

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Outlining the way people try to scam their way into free legal advice/services.

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Death Cases:

(1) Muhammad's trial is going to cost Prince William County $1.2 million. The feds have promised to kick in a whopping $200,000.

(2) Arguing over alibi evidence in the Muhammad case.

(3) Terry Nichols' attorneys are able to exclude some impact witnesses but lose their attempt to claim double jeopardy.

(4) A private doctor says she isn't competent but a government paid psychiatrist says she is. Who do you believe?

(5) I don't care what your excuse is - whether you are a gang-banger who shot the kid by accident (you meant to kill someone else) or a mother who kills her child in postpartum depression - severe punishment should always follow the murder of a child. Wanna bet who gets punished worse?

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The good news is that Richmond doesn't have nationally affiliated gangs. The bad news is that the reason there aren't any national gangs is because the local gangs are strong enough to kill them off.

Does anyone alse find this definition a little disturbing? "[P]olice stressed that gangs can be anything from organized criminal enterprises that get rich from running drugs or guns to a tiny group of juveniles who conspire to rob other children of their lunch money."

Somehow, I just never put the crips on the same level as a couple of third grade bullies.

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A State can't prosecute a drunk pilot unless someone dies or they blow something up? That makes no sense.

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Milwaukee police have shot 5 drivers in the last 13 months.

There are conflicting stories from witnesses and police but, at the very least, it appears as though the passenger tried to slide a gun to this guy.

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You can commit all sorts of crimes in a school in California and not get expelled.

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Why am I linking to a story about vultures? Because they remind me of law school. Back at good old W&L every year, just before Fall finals, flocks of vultures would appear and begin circling around the school (I kid you not). I always took that as a bad sign.

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The perils of hunting fake Rolexes.

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It's Begun.

Remember all those rumors about the glee in prosecutors' offices about the "anti-terrorism" statutes? Remember the rumors that prosecution conferences were talking about how the new "anti-terrorism" laws were going to fill the gaps in the law which had been keeping those evil criminals from getting the punishment they deserve?

In North Carolina a prosecutor is abusing the law because he doesn't like the punishment which is set for those manufacturing methamphetamines. Instead of charging the appropriate crime, he's charging the Defendants with manufacturing a nuclear or chemical weapon¹ for the sole purpose of increasing the punishment range.

All we can hope is that he runs into a judge who has the sense to stop this silliness.



¹ Because, as we all know, the human body's reaction to meth is just the same as it is to mustard gas, nerve agents, and/or blood agents. Right?

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The FBI has opened a corporate fraud snitch line.

I can see it now; every secretary who's upset with her boss will start calling and telling the FBI that that "business lunch" last Thursday was actually the boss taking his girlfriend to dinner.

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I Despise Regional Jails!!

Sorry posting is light tonight but it's been a long day, capped off with a wonderful trip 1+ hours to a regional jail, a hour delivering bad news to my client (stiff sentencing reccomendation), and another 1+ hours back. Somebody needs to pass a law requiring counties to keep their prisoners in the county.

Hopefully my creative juices will return tomorrow.

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Good ol' Bee: reversing itself because an infringement on the unconvicteds' rights has yielded convictions.

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The Episcopal Church stops moving forward on the gay Bishop issue when charges arise of improper touching.

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Working hard to get rid of welfare fraud in Botetourt.

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Proof that the U.S. Senate isn't the only place that judicial struggles occur.

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Steal a truck. Escape from a work release program. Get rearrested 12 hours later. Get charged with an extra felony and a gaggle of misdemeanors.

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