Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

Random notes: May 24, 2013.

Friday, May 24th, 2013

Obit watch: Steve Forrest. NYT. A/V Club.

Forrest knocked around movies and TV for a long time, but he is perhaps most famous for this:

I am not ashamed to admit: I loved that show when I was a kid. And I still think it has one of the greatest themes ever, right up there with the original Hawaii 5-0 and Mission: Impossible.

NYPD blues, part 1:

A veteran New York City police detective once assigned to the mayor’s security team was convicted of attempted murder and reckless endangerment on Thursday for shooting a man while off duty, the Queens district attorney said.

Part 2:

“Opening 50 cases is a herculean task,” said Pierre Sussman, a defense lawyer who represents two of the men whose cases will be reviewed. “The first challenge will be culling information from files that are two or three decades old and trying to find witnesses who were hard to find even then. These are not people with bank accounts, library cards and Facebook pages.”

(Previously.)

And for Robert Hill to win release from his cell at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, prosecutors would have to reconcile why he told a parole board that he was remorseful for a murder he now swears he did not commit.

That part seems easy to me. In the wrongful convictions I’ve read about, a recurring theme involves the wrongfully convicted being offered a chance at parole, and being turned down or refusing because they are expected to admit their crime and show remorse. If you didn’t do the crime in the first place, but you’re offered a shot at getting out of prison, do you maintain your innocence even if it costs you that chance? Or do you tell the parole board what they want to hear?

Yo, Dog, we heard you like funerals…

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Much of this comes from a story on the A/V Club; I recap here because I don’t think any of my readers read the A/V Club, and it hasn’t shown up on FARK yet as far as I know.

Once upon a time, there was a rapper named “Tim Dog” (real name Timothy Blair). Tim Dog was a little better than aspiring; he apparently had a minor hit with something called “F–k Compton” back in the NWA days.

Sadly, Mr. Dog fell on some hard times. He was supposedly working on a comeback album, but, in February, his death was announced and reported on by such news outlets as the A/V Club and The Source.

Earlier this week, a judge in Mississippi issued an arrest warrant for Tim Dog.

“What?” you say. “How do you arrest a dead guy?”

You don’t. Evidence is accumulating that Tim Dog actually faked his own death.

And why would he do that? Spending a year dead for tax purposes? Close: a woman he met online is owed $19,000 as a result of Tim Dog being convicted of grand larceny. This woman, as well as other women, claim that Tim Dog scammed them out of money, claiming it was to produce the comeback album mentioned above.

Apparently, there is no death certificate for Tim Dog. There is some question as to whether there was a funeral; one report says that there was, and that Tim Dog’s best friend refused to speak at it (the whole “no death certificate” thing). Another report says there was but that Tim Dog’s family didn’t even show up, and they don’t believe he’s dead either. If you’re going to fake your own death, I figure you pretty much have to show up at the funeral (heavily disguised, of course) so you can hear all the good things people say about you. I wouldn’t call that rule #1 of faking your own death, but it would be in my top ten list.

If your own family refuse to show up, however, maybe there’s no point.

Banana republicans watch: May 22, 2013.

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Lawrence linked to an amusing list from USA Today of ten California cities most likely to file for bankruptcy.

The list includes such banana republican favorites as the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon, Compton, and Mammoth Lakes (which, as previously noted, already filed for bankruptcy, but USA Today reports they withdrew that petition).

Not on the list, but should be: Bell. You may recall that one of Bell’s many issues was the collection of illegal taxes from residents. The city has to refund the illegally collected tax dollars to residents…

Bell currently has a negative cash balance, caused in part by the city’s move to stop collecting the illegal taxes, the state controller’s office found. Bell promised to refund more than $3 million in overpaid taxes to residents and busineses, but auditors found that the city has not done so.

And by the way:

Auditors also faulted the city for not following more than 20 recommendations the controller’s office made after the corruption scandal.

Random notes: May 22, 2013.

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Back in October, I wrote about the defunct art gallery Knoedler & Company and their troubled relationship with a dealer named Glafira Rosales. Many of the works Ms. Rosales supplied to Knoedler are now considered fakes.

Yesterday, Ms. Rosales was charged with tax fraud.

Prosecutors charged that the dealer, Glafira Rosales, 56, of Sands Point, N.Y., failed to disclose $12.5 million that she had earned from the sale of the works and had never reported, as required, that she had Spanish bank accounts where she had hidden much of the proceeds.

And:

But according to the government’s case, an apparently talented forger — or forgers — confounded the art world for years by turning out realistic-looking works said to be by masters including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Authorities declined to comment on whether they have identified a forger, but a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said the investigation is continuing and that any leads on the forgeries will be pursued.

In other news: the LA County DA plans to retry the Bell city council members. As you may recall, the jury in the first trial completely acquitted one council member (Luis Artiga), convicted the other five members on some charges, acquitted them on other charges, and ultimately hung on the remaining charges.

Texas gun legislation update: things are getting interesting. The concealed carry on campus bill, and the ban on enforcing any new Federal gun laws, are tied up in the Senate. However, the Senate has approved…

…a bill Tuesday night to allow applicants to qualify for a concealed-handgun license to use either a revolver or a semi-automatic pistol.
Under current law, Texans who qualified to carry a revolver could carry only a revolver.

This same bill also prevents local governments from outlawing BB guns and Airsoft guns.

“There was a problem where some city outlawed the possession of a BB gun,” [State Senator Craig] Estes said. “A kid ought to be able to own a Red Ryder BB gun.”

My understanding is that the bill to cut back the number of hours of class time required for a concealed carry permit has also passed both houses, and is awaiting the governor’s signature.

More here. I was previously unaware of the TSRA PAC site; the front page summary of legislative events is very useful.

Random notes: May 18, 2013.

Saturday, May 18th, 2013

Not news: New York State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez (D-Brooklyn) has been accused of sexually harassing several women.

News: Assemblyman Lopez is resigning rather than fighting the charges.

FARK: Soon to be former Assemblyman Lopez plans to run for a seat on the NYC City Council.

The Assembly has not expelled anyone since it ejected five socialists in the early 1920s.

About a month ago, I noted the money laundering and gambling charges against Hillel Nahmad, a prominent member of the NYC art scene. Over the past two days, the NYT has run two longish articles going into more detail about the Nahmad accusations:

  1. Shocked, shocked I am to find out that high-stakes gambling goes on in NYC.
  2. “Information about how the family’s art business actually works has been difficult to pin down. In several settings, the Nahmads have described a company called the International Art Center as their base of art transactions. But in a federal suit last year the Nahmads sought to deny any legal connection between themselves and the center. Lawyers for the other side in that case said they were not even able to determine where the International Art Center was incorporated. A Christie’s invoice in the case showed the center’s location as Switzerland, but the auction house redacted the city and precise address before entering the document into court records. In a deposition in another lawsuit, Helly Nahmad said the International Art Center was based not in Switzerland but in Panama.”

Meanwhile in Utah, the West Valley City Police Department has problems.

Prosecutors have tossed out 125 criminal cases. Dozens of convictions may have to be re-examined. The F.B.I. is investigating the Police Department and several officers.

It all started when two undercover officers shot and killed a 21-year-old woman.

As police investigators combed through the crime scene, they popped opened the trunk of the car belonging to Detective Shaun Cowley — one of two narcotics officers who had been on the scene of the shooting. Inside, they found drug paraphernalia and items linked to previous drug cases.

More:

They found that officers had mishandled evidence and had placed tracking devices on suspects’ cars without getting necessary warrants. Confidential informers had been misused. In some cases, officers had removed trinkets like necklaces or candles from the scene of drug arrests as “trophies.” In a few instances, drugs and money were missing.

And:

The pattern was repeated in case after case, defense lawyers said: When they decided to challenge drug charges rather than accept a quick guilty plea, West Valley City folded up the cases. Then the district attorney, after reviewing hundreds of cases, began dismissing them by the dozen, saying he could not successfully prosecute them.

Quote of the day #2.

Friday, May 17th, 2013

As Say Uncle once said, it is my damn blog and I can have more than one quote of the day if I want.

First, nobody ever governed themselves accordingly based on a threat from a hotmail account. Second, are you using some sort of comma-based operating system? Third, what the fuck are you talking about?

-Ken @ Popehat

If I ever take a class where I have write my own operating system, it will be comma-based and called “Ken”.

Random notes: May 15, 2013.

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

Obit watch: “flamboyant swindler” Billie Sol Estes. NYT.

Mr. Estes’s daughter Pamela Padget said that he died in his sleep and was found in his recliner.

The AP adds the telling detail that he died with chocolate chip cookie crumbs on his lips.

Billie Sol was a little before my time, much less the time of some of my younger readers, but the NYT gives a good one-paragraph summary:

Nonexistent fertilizer tanks. Faked mortgages. Bogus cotton-acreage allotments. Farmers in four states bamboozled. Strange “suicides,” including a bludgeoned investigator shot five times with a bolt-action rifle. Assassination plots. Jimmy Hoffa and Fidel Castro. Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Paging Mayor Bloomberg! Mayor Bloomberg, white courtesy phone, please!

…the new expert committee, commissioned by the Institute of Medicine at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there was no rationale for anyone to aim for sodium levels below 2,300 milligrams a day. The group examined new evidence that had emerged since the last such report was issued, in 2005.

I remember when the blood alcohol limit was 0.10%. I remember the arguments at the time for and against lowering the limit to 0.08%. The one question I had was: how many accidents were caused by drivers who were at 0.08% or above, but below 0.10%? I never got an answer to that question, and it didn’t matter anyway, since the government issued a decree:

Initially, Congress choose the carrot over the stick, creating a $500-million incentive fund to coax states into enacting the 0.08% standard. But after only a few states did, lawmakers voted in 2000 to require states to set a 0.08% blood-alcohol level or lose millions of dollars in federal highway funds. Currently, all states use the 0.08% standard to define drunk driving for non-commercial drivers ages 21 and older.

And now the government is talking about dropping it down to 0.05%. Again, I ask: how many accidents are caused by people at or above 0.05% but below 0.08%? There was a report on Reason‘s website (I can’t find it right now) that estimated “500-800″ lives saved per year by lowering the limit to 0.05%. But does this take into account the number of lives that might be lost by diverting police resources to pursue drivers at the 0.05% level, instead of pursuing other crimes?

…the board’s recommendation came on the 25th anniversary of the nation’s worst drunk-driving crash when an intoxicated driver, going the wrong way on Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Ky., killed 24 teenagers and three adults on a school bus and injured 34 others.

Larry Wayne Mahoney, the intoxicated driver, had a 0.24% BAC at the time of the crash, so he was already DWI even by 1988 standards, let alone the 2000 standard or the proposed 0.05% standard. Most of the serious DWI accidents I hear about involve people who are above – in many cases, way above – the 0.10% mark. Would we save more lives going after the highly intoxicated drunk; the guy who blows a 0.20% or the gal who blows a 0.25%?

Random notes: May 14, 2013.

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

Dr. Joyce Brothers. NYT. LAT. I think my older readers are aware of this bit of trivia, but I insert it here for the benefit of the younger set:

Milton Brothers’s residency paid $50 a month. Joyce Brothers, who had a steel-trap memory, decided to supplement their income by appearing on a quiz show. She settled on “The $64,000 Question,” produced in New York and broadcast on CBS. On the show, contestants answered a string of increasingly difficult questions in fields of their choosing.

Dr. Brothers quickly saw that the show prized incongruous matches of contestant and subject: the straight-backed Marine officer who was an expert on gastronomy; the cobbler who knew all about opera. What she decided, would be more improbable than a petite psychologist who was a pundit of pugilism?

She embarked on weeks of intensive study, a process little different, she later said, from preparing to write a doctoral dissertation. She made her first appearance on the show in late 1955, returning week after week until she had won the top prize, $64,000 — only the second person, and the first woman, to do so. She later won the same amount, also for boxing knowledge, on a spinoff show, “The $64,000 Challenge.”

I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find the specific question Dr. Brothers answered for “The $64,000 Question”. The NYT has the answer, I think (the writing in that last paragraph is a bit fuzzy).

In other news, the HouChron reports that the Dallas Police Department is giving the “police commendation award” to retired detective Jim Leavelle. Why does this matter? Well, you probably know who Jim Leavelle is, but not by name:

That’s Leavelle in the hat handcuffed to Oswald.

Random notes: May 12, 2013.

Sunday, May 12th, 2013

Remember Detective Louis Scarcella, aka one of the “likeable scamps” who put David Ranta away for 22 years?

The other shoe has dropped.

The [Brooklyn district attorney's] office’s Conviction Integrity Unit will reopen every murder case that resulted in a guilty verdict after being investigated by Detective Louis Scarcella, a flashy officer who handled some of Brooklyn’s most notorious crimes during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.

More:

The development comes after The New York Times examined a dozen cases involving Mr. Scarcella and found disturbing patterns, including the detective’s reliance on the same eyewitness, a crack-addicted prostitute, for multiple murder prosecutions [Emphasis added - DB] and his delivery of confessions from suspects who later said they had told him nothing. At the same time, defense lawyers, inmates and prisoner advocacy organizations have contacted the district attorney’s office to share their own suspicions about Mr. Scarcella.

And more. I don’t want to quote the entire article, but this is an important paragraph because it illustrates a key point: what you post on the Internet doesn’t disappear.

A prosecutor’s view of Ms. Gomez is available in an Internet posting on a cigar-smokers forum. Neil Ross, a former assistant district attorney who is now a Manhattan criminal court judge, prosecuted the two Hill cases. In a 2000 posting, he reminisced about a cigar he received from the “legendary detective” Louis Scarcella as they celebrated in a bar after the Hill conviction.

In the post, Mr. Ross said that the evidence backed up Ms. Gomez but acknowledged, “It was near folly to even think that anyone would believe Gomez about anything, let alone the fact that she witnessed the same guy kill two different people.”

Ms. Gomez is the crack addicted prostitute mentioned above. She’s dead now.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to manage a motel in the Rundberg/I-35 area? The Statesman has your answer.

(Note to my out-of-town readers: the Rundberg/I-35 corridor is notorious as a haven for drug dealing and prostitution.)

Austin politics note (readers who aren’t into Austin politics can skip this one):

We had an election yesterday. Specifically, we were asked to vote on bonds for the Austin Independent School District.

There were four bond proposals on the ballot, totaling $892 million. That’s right: AISD wanted to issue nearly one billion dollars worth of bonds.

This is one of the few times where I’ve actually seen organized opposition to a bond election in Austin. There were a lot of large “vote no” signs in yards and in front of businesses. Surprisingly, even the Statesman came out and opposed the bonds. (Our local alternative newspaper, the Austin Chronicle, endorsed the bonds. But the AusChron has never met a tax, a bond issue, or a government boondoggle they didn’t like.)

The end result: half the bonds passed, and half the bonds failed. This is kind of a “WTF?” moment: you’d figure the voting would go all one way or the other. Then again…

Proposition 2, which totaled $234 million, would have relieved overcrowded schools, which district officials said were among the most critical needs on campuses. The proposition contained three new schools and campus additions that district officials say are desperately needed. It also would have funded a 500-seat performing arts center at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, something critics called a luxury.

“a 500-seat performing arts center at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders”?!

Proposition 4 would have provided $168.6 million for academic programs, fine arts and athletics. That measure had several controversial proposals in it, most notably $20 million for renovations to the old Anderson High School to create an all-boys school.

Those are the propositions that failed.

Proposition 1, which passed by just a few hundred votes, will provide $140.6 million for health, environment, equipment and technology. The bulk of Proposition 1 will go to technology upgrades, including new computers and networks, and will pump money into energy conservation initiatives.

Proposition 3, the other one that passed, “provides money for renovations across the district”. Proposition 1 and 3 together total out to $489.6 million, and “will add $38.40 to the property tax bill for a $200,000 home.”

Not Since Nixon.

Friday, May 10th, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday acknowledged that it flagged political groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names for special scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, an admission that is fueling long-held suspicions among conservatives that the agency has been singling them out for unfair treatment.

Invisible airwaves crackle with life, bright antenna bristle with the energy…

Friday, May 10th, 2013

On Thursday, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson received a letter from the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanding that he take down the online blueprints for the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun that his group released Monday, along with nine other 3D-printable firearms components hosted on the group’s website Defcad.org. The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

As Linoge says, you can’t stop the signal.

Edited to add: Quote of the day:

The right to download CAD files is the right to be free. ;)

Tam

(Reference explained here for the non SF fans in my audience.)

Random notes: May 10, 2013.

Friday, May 10th, 2013

In the first operation, hackers infiltrated the system of an unnamed Indian credit-card processing company that handles Visa and MasterCard prepaid debit cards. Such companies are attractive to cybercriminals because they are considered less secure than financial institutions, computer security experts say.

The hackers, who are not named in the indictment, then raised the withdrawal limits on prepaid MasterCard debit accounts issued by the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah, also known as RakBank, which is in United Arab Emirates.

So they raised the withdrawal limits, but shouldn’t it have set off alarms if they tried to withdraw more than the amount on the prepaid card? Or did the people involved change that as well?

With five account numbers in hand, the hackers distributed the information to individuals in 20 countries who then encoded the information on magnetic-stripe cards. On Dec. 21, the cashing crews made 4,500 A.T.M. transactions worldwide, stealing $5 million, according to the indictment.

After securing 12 account numbers for cards issued by the Bank of Muscat in Oman and raising the withdrawal limits, the cashing crews were set in motion. Starting at 3 p.m., the crews made 36,000 transactions and withdrew about $40 million from machines in the various countries in about 10 hours. In New York City, a team of eight people made 2,904 withdrawals, stealing $2.4 million.

The Times notes this is bigger than Lufthansa. And no guns were involved (at least in the initial heist: one of the people alleged to be behind it was shot dead later on). As a connoisseur of hacks and heists, my hat is off to these guys.

Remember our old friends the Zeta cartel, and their plan to launder money by purchasing quarter horses? Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, not guilty.

Jesus Huitron, an Austin homebuilder and painter, was found not guilty. But José Treviño Morales, brother of two principal leaders within the organization, and three co-defendants were found to have poured millions of dirty dollars from the Zetas cartel into the U.S. quarter horse industry to hide their illicit origins.