Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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Obit watch: November 13, 2020.

Friday, November 13th, 2020

Paul Hornung.

Hornung, who won the 1956 Heisman Trophy with Notre Dame, could run, throw passes and catch them, block, place-kick and punt, and he returned kicks and played defense too. In nine professional seasons he helped propel the Packers to four National Football League championships and led the N.F.L. in scoring from 1959 to 1961.

…

Hornung scored a record 176 points in the 12-game 1960 season on 15 touchdowns, 41 extra points and 15 field goals. He also passed for two touchdowns that year.Hornung was the league’s most valuable player in 1961, when he scored a championship-game record 19 points (on a rushing touchdown, four extra points and three field goals) in the Packers’ 37-0 victory over the Giants.
All the while he pursued a robust night life of women and drink that seemed to have little effect on his on-field performance. His movie-star looks certainly had something to do with the attention: He was blond and handsome, 6 feet 2 inches and 215 pounds. He wore No. 5 in honor of his boyhood idol, Joe DiMaggio.
But Hornung’s career was marred when the N.F.L. commissioner, Pete Rozelle, suspended him indefinitely in the spring of 1963 for gambling on pro football, including Packer games, over several seasons. Hornung said he had bet on Green Bay only to win, and the league found no evidence to the contrary, but he remained suspended for the entire season. The ban was an outgrowth of an N.F.L. drive against gambling by players that also brought a one-year suspension for Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions’ star defensive tackle.

…

Hornung expressed few regrets about his nightlife.
“I’m sure that during my playing days I wasn’t considered a good role model for the nation’s youth,” he wrote in his memoir. “But the way times have changed, I’d look like an altar boy if I played today. I never beat up a woman, carried a gun or a knife, shot somebody, or got arrested for disturbing the peace. I never even experimented with drugs during the season.
“All I did, really,” he went on, “was seek out fun wherever I could find it. Everything was all tied in together — the drinking, the womanizing, the partying, the traveling, the gambling. And, of course, football made it all possible.”

In other totally unrelated news, Hell is having a busy day today:

Tom Metzger, white supremacist.

Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”.

He was convicted in 1981 in the murders of 13 women over the course of five years in northern England and given a life sentence for each, the maximum permitted. The murders, which occurred between 1975 and 1980, gripped the public and the authorities, and the lengthy investigation was “a source of considerable embarrassment to the police,” The New York Times wrote at the time.

…

A 1981 report into the police investigation’s failings was released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2006. Known as the Byford report, for the official who wrote it, it cited a “curious and unexplained lull” in Mr. Sutcliffe’s criminal activities between 1969 and 1975. The report concluded that it was “highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him.”

…

Sutcliffe’s 13 known murder victims were Wilma McCann (1975), Emily Jackson (1976), Irene Richardson (1977), Patricia “Tina” Atkinson (1977), Jayne MacDonald (1977), Jean Jordan (1977), Yvonne Pearson (1978), Helen Rytka (1978), Vera Millward (1978), Josephine Whitaker (1979), Barbara Leach (1979), Marguerite Walls (1980) and Jacqueline Hill (1980).
He is also known to have attacked at least 9 other women: an unnamed woman (1969), Anna Rogulskyj (1975), Olive Smelt (1975), Tracy Browne (1975), Marcella Claxton (1976), Marilyn Moore (1977), Upadhya Bandara (1980), Maureen Lea (1980) and Theresa Sykes (1980). Claxton was four months pregnant when she was attacked, and lost the baby she was carrying.

Posted in History, Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Thursday, November 5th, 2020

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

–Judge Learned Hand, Speech to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, October 24, 1952.

Oddly enough, that quote popped up on this morning’s “Perry Mason” episode.

I’m thinking, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick a favorite judge, it would be Learned Hand. I feel like I should apologize to Judge Willett for that, but I also have a feeling that if he heard me say that, he’d agree Learned Hand is a good choice.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 218

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020

Thought I’d post some gun stuff today, for reasons.

Miami Police Department’s patrol rifle class:

Bonus #1, also a bookmark for me: Ryan Cleckner explains milliradians.

Bonus #2: this is kind of gun adjacent, but I’m posting this explicitly as Lawrence bait: “Greatest Tank Battles”, on “The Battle of 73 Easting”.

Bonus #3: “Japanese Guns of World War 2”, from LionHeart FilmWorks.

(See also. Affiliate link, but it delights me down to the bottom of my shriveled little coal black heart that a lot of this stuff is coming back in Kindle editions.)

Posted in Bookmarks, Books, Cops, Guns, Kindleing, Law | 1 Comment »

Ask not for whom the (Blue) Bell tolls…

Thursday, October 22nd, 2020

Shot:

Blue Bell releases two holiday flavors: Christmas Cookies and Peppermint

Chaser:

Ex-Blue Bell Creameries CEO charged in deadly listeria case

The former president of Blue Bell Creameries has been charged with wire fraud for allegedly trying to cover up a 2015 listeria outbreak linked to the company’s ice cream that killed three people in Kansas and sickened several others, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.
A federal grand jury in Austin returned a seven-count indictment Tuesday charging Paul Kruse with six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to a Justice Department statement.

(I like my Blue Bell. But they sure burned through a lot of goodwill with the whole listeria thing.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Food, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 201

Saturday, October 17th, 2020

The plan for today’s videos went out the window because NFL Films is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

So how aboot (see what I did there?) some true crime stories from Canada? Specifically, from “The Fifth Estate” channel on YouTube. My impression is that “The Fifth Estate” is kind of like a Canadian “60 Minutes”.

I actually watched this one many years ago on the hotel television when I was visiting Vancouver. (I didn’t go up there to watch TV: I got back to the hotel late, turned on the TV, ran through the channels, and found this). I had not heard of the “Squamish Five” before, and I think it is a rather interesting story.

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, I would encourage you to at least fast forward to about 20 minutes in: a man who was standing right next to the Litton Industries bomb details his injuries. “I had a half a brick embedded in my back. And that half a brick that was embedded in my back was embedded solidly because four pounds of muscle had been blown out of my back…”

Bonus #1: “Bad Day at Barhead”. This is another interesting, and more recent story, that I was appalled I had not heard of. On March 3, 2005, the RCMP was executing a search warrant on a farm near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The owner of the farm (who had fled earlier in the day) returned to the farm and killed four RCMP officers: Anthony Gordon, Leo Johnston, Brock Myrol, and Peter Schiemann. This was the second worst loss of life in one day for the RCMP. (Five officers drowned in a 1958 incident.)

Bonus #2: Just one more, because I’m also fascinated by the Quebec biker war. “Walk the Line” about Benoit Roberge. He was a prominent investigator of biker gangs for the RCMP. Turns out he was also on the Hells Angels payroll.

According to Wikipedia, Roberge pled guilty in 2014 to “breach of trust” and “engaging in gangsterism”, and admitted accepting $125,000 from the Hells Angels. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was paroled in 2017.

Posted in History, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 194

Saturday, October 10th, 2020

I thought today I’d dabble a little in true crime. Also, I wanted to do some more CanCon.

This is a fairly short documentary from The Globe and Mail: “Manhunt, Manitoba” about two vicious Canadian murderers…and the tracker who ran them to ground.

Bonus: this one from the land down under. “Manhunt”, from 60 Minutes Australia. This was posted fairly recently, but dates back to 2011, and covers the hunt for Malcolm Naden. Naden was a child molester and murderer, who evaded capture by the authorities for seven years.

Naden was finally captured in 2012. He pled guilty on 18 counts (including two murders) in 2013.

I’m trying to think of US fugitives who were on the run for that long or even close to it. Eric Rudolph evaded capture for five years. Whitey Bulger evaded capture for 16 years, but I’d argue his circumstances were different than Rudolph’s or Naden’s.

Posted in Law | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: October 7, 2020.

Wednesday, October 7th, 2020

A lot of folks told me about Eddie Van Halen: I decided to hold the obit until today because, when I looked, the NYT only had their preliminary obit up.

I know a lot of folks who I respect liked Van Halen, but I really don’t have anything to add to what’s out there already.

Thomas Jefferson Byrd. He was in several Spike Lee films, and also did some theater:

Mr. Byrd was a regular on Off Broadway and regional stages, appearing frequently in August Wilson plays, among them “The Piano Lesson” at San Jose Repertory Theater in California in 2001, “Seven Guitars” with the St. Louis Black Repertory Company in 2002 and “Gem of the Ocean” at the Actors Theater of Louisville in Kentucky in 2006.
He was a late addition to the Broadway cast of Mr. Wilson’s “Ma Rainey,” taking over the role of Toledo, the reflective, philosophizing piano player in the title character’s band. The cast was headed by Whoopi Goldberg in the title role and Charles S. Dutton as the trumpeter Levee. Though the production, which ran for 68 performances, drew mixed reviews, Mr. Byrd and the actors playing two other musicians, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Carl Gordon, drew widespread praise. Mr. Byrd was nominated for the Tony for best featured actor in a play.

Murray Newman posted a very nice obit a few days ago for Harris County legal figure Mike Hinton, which I encourage folks to go read. Mr. Hinton sounds like an amazing gentleman who I would have enjoyed knowing.

Seasonally appropriate note: Mr. Hinton prosecuted Ronald Clark O’Bryan.

Posted in HCDA, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Memo from the legal beat.

Monday, October 5th, 2020

Two Austin legal stories from the past couple of days that I wanted to cover:

1) A former employee of the Austin Public Library has been charged with stealing $1.3 million from the library.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “How do you steal that much money from a library?” Answer: according to the indictment, he was purchasing printer toner with a city issued credit card and reselling it online.

“The library’s poor practices and procedures provided an opportunity for Whited to steal from the city during his tenure, leading to waste and overspending by the department,” according to the report. “Whited took advantage of poor purchasing reviews by his supervisors, former Financial Manager Victoria Rieger and Contract Management Specialist Monica McClure. Whited also took advantage of several other purchasing and budget-related shortcomings, such as having a role in the approval of his own purchases and insufficient oversight of the Library’s budget by Rieger and Assistant Director Dana McBee.”
As an accounting associate, Whited was responsible for making and approving purchases, cash receipts, billing, and other accounting transactions, the report states.

Bonus: this wasn’t his first go-around at the rodeo, but somehow the library put him in charge of all that stuff.

2) Strippers. Always with the strippers. A group of them are suing some of our finer local “gentleman’s clubs” (specifically, The Yellow Rose, Perfect 10 and Palazio, if you know Austin strip clubs).

The basis for the lawsuit is kind of unsurprising: the strippers claim that they were improperly categorized as “independent contractors” rather than employees.

The women signed documents agreeing to be independent contractors rather than employees, records show. However, Ellzey said the clubs treated them like employees — requiring them to work a certain shift, setting prices for dances and charging the women late fees if they did not arrive on time.
Under labor laws, that makes them employees, Ellzey said.
“The law looks to the conduct of the club … not the documents cooked up by the clubs,” Ellzey said. “The documents have no real legal significance.”

The responses from the clubs are about what you’d expect: the strippers wanted it that way.

Yellow Rose’s management also said that it’s in the dancers’ best interest to work as independent contractors.
“All Yellow Rose employees make at least minimum wage and generally far more than that,” the club said in a statement. “This case involves three — we have no clue who the fourth person in this lawsuit is — entertainers who knowingly and willingly worked as independent contractors, all of whom made a great deal more money than what they would have made had they been minimum wage employees. They now claim they were/are ‘actually’ employees and are due compensation directly from the Yellow Rose. We disagree.”

…

Bishop said the independent contractor agreements gave performers the opportunity to avoid turning over their tips to the club. However, Ellzey said that, despite this, the club often required the performers to divide their tips among other employees, such as the DJ, the security guard and management.
“The performers are typically younger,” Ellzey said. “They go to work in these clubs, and the money they’re making on stage is sometimes really surprising. I think when an older club owner or a manager with apparent authority says, ‘This is what you have to do. This is what everyone does. You need to split your tips, you need to pay house fees,’ then a younger, more vulnerable dancer is just going to believe them.”

This is also another “not the first go-around at the rodeo” affair: there was a previous settlement in another lawsuit filed against four clubs in Houston.

I’m no employment lawyer, but: if they control your schedule, set prices, and charge “late fees”, that kind of sounds to me like the strippers may have a case.

Posted in Austin, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#67 in a series)

Monday, October 5th, 2020

Missed this over the weekend, but Mike the Musicologist gave me the heads-up: the mayor of Rochester, New York, has been indicted on campaign finance charges.

Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said Ms. Warren participated in “a scheme to defraud” related to her official campaign fund and a political action committee working to help her get re-elected.
The indictment accused Ms. Warren, as well as her campaign treasurer and Rochester’s finance director, of “knowingly and willfully” working to evade contribution limits as well as engaging in “a systemic and ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud more than one person.”

…

The investigation into her campaign finances had dogged her since two candidates who unsuccessfully ran against her in 2017 complained to the state Board of Elections. A subsequent investigation by the board led to a March report that Ms. Doorley said found “considerable evidence” of possible crimes.
At issue are transfers made from Ms. Warren’s political action committee to her campaign committee that far exceeded the $8,557 limit that a campaign could receive from an individual donor, the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester reported. That limit also applied to the political action committee.

More from the local paper. Local TV coverage.

Warren, along with Albert Jones Jr. and Rosiland Brooks Harris, were each charged with first-degree scheme to defraud and violation of Election Law 14-126(6). Both counts are Class E felonies. If convicted, each person could face 1 1/3 to 4 years in state prison, or a range of sentencing options from probation to restitution.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Railroaded.

Monday, October 5th, 2020

In a just society, this would be considered “justifiable homicide”.

A 35-year-old Arkansas man was sentenced to more than 100 years for fatally shooting a woman and wounding his brother over a fast-food order last year, KTHV reported.

…

According to FOX13, a neighbor heard Crocket say, “B—-, you know I don’t like mayonnaise on my hamburger,” when he received his meal order. According to the local news outlet, Crockett struck Aldrige once and Thomas three. Crockett turned himself in to police custody days after the shooting, according to the report.
FOX13 reported that a jury found Crockett guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree battery. Circuit Judge Ralph Wilson sentenced Crocket to up to 130 years in prison, due to his multiple counts including 75 years for first-degree murder, 40 years for first-degree battery, and an additional 15 years for possession of a firearm as a felon, the report said.

(Hattip: my mother.)

Posted in Food, Law, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

I missed the other big news yesterday.

Tuesday, September 29th, 2020

There was another set of indictments that came down which I totally missed. And these are a surprise, though they don’t get the “tax-fattened hyena” tag.

Eight former NFL players and a Houston athletic trainer were indicted in a scheme to attempt to defraud an NFL player trust by submitting false claims for medical benefits, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Monday.
The players, which include former Texans receiver Corey Bradford and linebacker Shantee Orr, are accused of submitting false reimbursement claims for physical therapy by Houston trainer Louis Ray, who owns Rehab Express in the Galleria area.

Apparently, this was the old “create fake invoices” scheme. The players would turn the invoices over to the “Gene Upshaw NFL Player Plan, a health-reimbursement account set up for former players”, get payments, pocket the money, and kick some back to Rehab Express for creating the invoices in the first place.

Medical records show that 92 claims were submitted claiming reimbursements totaling $723,826 with Ray allegedly receiving payments totaling $112,972, according to Ogg.

If I run the numbers on this after taking out Ray’s share, it works out to an average of about $76,000 per player. Which isn’t exactly small change, but it’s not in the sevenn or eight figure range where I would consider doing a crime and escaping to a country without an extradition treaty. Also, the payouts seem to have varied quite a bit:

Ray, 59, was indicted on a first-degree felony of Securing the Execution of a Document by Deception, for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $300,000.
Bradford, who was an original member of the Houston Texans in 2002 and played four seasons for the team, was indicted on a second-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $150,000 and less than $300,000.
Orr, who played linebacker for the Texans from 2003 to 2007, was indicted for a third-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $30,000 and less than $150,000. Fabian Washington, James Adkisson, Rex Hadnot, Clint Ingram and Chad Slaughter were indicted for the same.
Derrick Pope, who graduated from Galveston Ball High School and played linebacker for the Dolphins for four seasons, was indicted for a state-jail felony for allegedly taking checks worth more than $2,500 and less than $30,000.

Posted in Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#66 in a series)

Monday, September 28th, 2020

Whoa.

A Williamson County grand jury has indicted Sheriff Robert Chody on an evidence tampering charge in the destruction of reality TV show footage that showed deputies chasing and using force on a Black man who died last year.

(Previous background on the case in question from WCD.)

Former Williamson County general counsel Jason Nassour, who was also at the scene of the deadly March 2019 incident, also was indicted on a evidence tampering charge. The charge, a third-degree felony, is punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

…

Prosecutors have said they could not disclose what they learned about Chody’s role in the video destruction because of the ongoing case.

But here’s something interesting.

The contract between Williamson County and “Live PD” producers in place at the time of Ambler’s death allowed the show to destroy unaired footage within 30 days unless a court order or other state or federal law required it to be retained.
“Live PD” host Dan Abrams said in television interviews and in a post on his web site that sheriff’s officials initially asked producers to preserve the video. Two months after Ambler’s death, Chody told them the investigation was completed. At that point, Abrams said, producers destroyed the video.

If I understand the story correctly, though, both the WillCo and Travis County DAs offices were still investigating this as a death in custody.

Yadda yadda presumption of innocence yadda yadda “growing scrutiny” of the sheriff’s office.

The charge against Chody comes 39 days before the Nov. 3 election. The first-term sheriff is being challenged by Democrat Mike Gleason, who is retired after serving 24 years in the Williamson County sheriff’s office.

Posted in Law, Politics, WillCo | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 19, 2020.

Saturday, September 19th, 2020

For the historical record: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. NYT. The Washington Post has made their website basically unlinkable.

I don’t have much I can say: I am not a lawyer or a Supreme Court watcher, and the politics are best left to others better equipped to cover that.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

When a drawbridge comes along, you must whippit…

Thursday, September 17th, 2020

Seemingly taking his Dodge Stratus’s “cloud car” nickname literally, the unnamed 26-year-old went airborne and cleared the gap, but managed to burst all four tires and smash his windshield upon landing and crashing on the other side of the bridge.
“Over he went, blew out all four of his tires, and then he crashed into the other gate,” said Locke, who likened the jump to a similar flight by a Dodge Monaco in 1980’s The Blues Brothers. “That’s a first for me.”
Police immediately received a call reporting a car had “Dukes of Hazzard-ed across” the bridge, and on response, found the driver with a canister of nitrous oxide in his car. Known as “whippits” due to its common use as propellant in canned whipped cream, NO2 is a dissociative sometimes inhaled to experience a “floating” sensation, per Australia’s Alcohol and Drug Foundation.

Based on the story, I think the police did try to detect it, but they didn’t have to try very hard.

There is no word so far on the status of the cream.

Posted in Cars, Law, Stupid | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 170

Wednesday, September 16th, 2020

Today, I wanted to put up something that pushes a few of RoadRich’s hot buttons (and my own).

The California Highway Patrol has a YouTube channel. I thought it might be interesting to look at some aspects of operations that are common to both the Austin Police Department and the CHP. These are things that APD devotes presentations to in their Citizen’s Police Academy (which is on-hold at the moment), so why not take a look at how a department outside of the United States handles these things?

First up: “Air Operations”. This is a two-parter: Part 1.

(Can I note here that I hate “vlog”? I would say I hate the word, but it isn’t even a word.)

Part 2: this covers CHP’s fixed-wing (that is, not helicopter) operations.

You know what else CHP has? The mounted police.

You know I had to do that.

Anyway, the CHP mounted patrol.

Posted in 1970s, California Über Alles, Cops, Horses, Law, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

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