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Firings watch (plus, bonus legal news!)

Thursday, October 23rd, 2025

I know I’ve been quiet the past few days. There just hasn’t been much going on. But today is shaping up to be interesting.

ESPN is reporting the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. Also arrested: Terry Rozier, guard for the Miami Heat.

According to the NYPost:

Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, has been charged with partaking in an alleged illegal poker ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo crime families, sources told The Post.
A total of 31 people across the country are charged with running rigged games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, sources said.
The players involved were being paid by mobsters to play in card games fixed with technology and card shuffling machines to give the house the advantage, sources familiar with the case said.
The athletes were told to take a dive when they had to and win when they were told. It didn’t appear as if they were attempting to pay off any debts, sources said.

Rozier’s arrest is tied to another case.

Sportsbooks in multiple states flagged suspicious betting interest on Rozier’s statistics ahead of a Charlotte Hornets-New Orleans Pelicans game on March 23, 2023. An unexpected surge of bets — including 30 wagers in 46 minutes from a professional bettor totaling $13,759 — came in on the under on Rozier’s points, rebounds and assists, causing sportsbooks to halt betting on the veteran guard. Rozier, then with the Hornets, played just 10 minutes before leaving the game, citing a foot injury.

ESPN is suggesting this might also be tied to the Jontay Porter case.

Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted in court to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season. He is awaiting sentencing in December.
Four men, including Porter, have pleaded guilty in the case. Two other men have been named as conspirators and have been in plea negotiations, according to court filings.

And I did promise a firing, didn’t I? This is a sports firing, but it’s an odd one: Ken Williamson has been “permanently suspended” as a SEC referee.

…following eleven complaints against the seasoned official and his crew during the Auburn-Georgia game on Oct. 11, sources told Yellowhammer News on Wednesday.
“According to sources, nine of those complaints were validated by conference officials,” the outlet wrote.
The game’s biggest controversy came late in the second quarter, when Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold lost the ball near the one-yard line during a QB sneak and was recovered by Georgia cornerback Kyron Jones.
Though multiple angles from ABC’s broadcast appear to show Jackson crossing the goal line before the ball was punched out, officials ruled it a fumble — awarding the Bulldogs possession after the recovery.

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: October 14, 2025.

Tuesday, October 14th, 2025

John Searle, philosopher. He was best known (at least to me) as a critic of artificial intelligence: not what passes for AI today, but the entire idea that computers could become conscious.

Professor Searle sought to solve the long-running debate over the division between the mind and the body by dispensing with the duality altogether. He argued that mental experiences like pain, ecstasy and drunkenness were all neurobiological phenomena, caused by firing neurons. Consciousness is not, he said, a separate substance of its own: It is a state the brain is in, like liquidity is the state of the molecules in a glass of water.
That view underpinned his thought experiment about what he called “the Chinese room,” which he made the centerpiece of provocative articles in the early 1980s that interpreted nascent research into artificial intelligence.
Suppose, Professor Searle wrote, that he, who did not know a word of Chinese, was locked in a room with boxes full of documents in Chinese script as well as a rulebook, in English, explaining how to match the various Chinese symbols together. It does not teach Chinese; it just says, in effect, “squiggle-squiggle” goes with “squoggle-squoggle.”
People outside the room pass more Chinese documents inside, and Professor Searle sends other documents back, following the rulebook’s instructions. The people passing him documents call them “questions.” The symbols he gives back they call “answers.” The rulebook they call “the program.” And Professor Searle they call “the computer.”
That situation is equivalent to the workings of A.I., he said. Both involve manipulating formal symbols to simulate understanding.
“No one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down,” Professor Searle wrote in his first paper on the subject, published in 1980. “Why on earth would anyone suppose that a computer simulation of understanding actually understood anything?”

Personally, I think that Dr. Searle’s argument that computers can’t think, but at best can do a clever simulation of thinking, somewhat interesting. And if I had ever met the good doctor, I would have told him that I would take this argument more seriously if he could convince me he was actually thinking, as opposed to just engaged in a clever simulation of thinking.

Clark Olofsson, Swedish criminal. I would have skipped this for notability, if it wasn’t for the fact that Mr. Olofsson was one of the two robbers in the “Stockholm syndrome” case. The obit is worth reading, as it casts a somewhat skeptical light on the whole idea of “Stockholm syndrome”.

The term was coined by a Swedish police psychologist, Nils Bejerot, after he was asked to assess the hostages’ curious behavior during the robbery. But Stockholm syndrome has never been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook of mental illness in the United States.
Some psychologists have explained the behavior as a coping mechanism, seen in victims of kidnappings and among hostages seized by Middle East terrorists, and in victims of domestic abuse. The captives, psychologists say, find a way to self-preservation by siding with their all-powerful captors.

…

Ms. Enmark, the Stockholm hostage, spent years denying that she had ever empathized with Mr. Olsson and Mr. Olofsson. She accused the police who laid siege to the bank of incompetency. She called Stockholm syndrome a myth, saying she had done what was necessary to stay alive.“It’s a way of blaming the victim,” she told a BBC podcast in 2021. “I did what I could to survive.”

…

Although mental health experts have theorized about Stockholm syndrome for half a century, almost none thought to speak to Ms. Enmark, the bank employee central to the drama and the diagnosis.
One psychologist who did was Allan Wade, a Canadian therapist specializing in interpersonal violence, who, after meeting Ms. Enmark, called Stockholm syndrome a made-up concept meant to shift focus from the stumbles of the Swedish police.
“The whole notion was an accusation,” he told the BBC in 2021. “It was a way to dismiss what an incredibly heroic woman had been doing for six and a half days to resist, preserve her dignity and look after the other hostages.”

Posted in Law, Obits | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#152 in a series)

Thursday, October 9th, 2025

Woo hoo! This is one of those flaming hyenas that makes me want to break out the AK-47 (with the shoulder thing that goes up) and do the happy dance in the backyard.

Letitia James, the corrupt attorney general of the corrupt state of New York, has been indicted.

Text of the indictment from the NYT (archived).

Statement from the Department of Justice.

It looks like there’s two counts: bank fraud, and “making false claims to a financial institution”.

James, 66, bought the three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in August 2020 for roughly $137,000, most of which was financed with a $109,600 loan that prohibited it from being used as a rental investment property, prosecutors alleged.
That allowed her “to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” they noted in the five-page filing, saving her “approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan.”
When a Post reporter visited the Norfolk home in April, neighbors said they had never seen James at the property.
Meanwhile, her income tax forms designated the home as a rental that brought in thousands of dollars in additional income.

You may remember the corrupt Ms. James from her long legal battle with the National Rifle Association, which ended up with…not much of anything, really. Or her legal battle against Donald Trump, which also ended with not much of anything, really.

Posted in Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Update.

Monday, September 29th, 2025

I know I said on Friday I’d try to address the Yogurt Shop Murders after today’s press conference.

I didn’t get a chance to watch the press conference today due to continuous meetings. I’m sure there’s a recording somewhere that I will try to watch.

My other issue is that yesterday was a rough day for me, and I haven’t had time to do much with the murder story because I’m trying to clean up from that.

I drove down to Kyle yesterday since it was a kind of off day for my regular church, and I thought I’d visit a friend at her church.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to connect with her, but that was okay. That also wasn’t the issue.

On my way back from Kyle, one of my car tires catastrophically failed on the Southwest Parkway.

Then I had an appointment at 4 PM at the Apple Store in Barton Creek Mall to get my iPhone battery replaced. I made the appointment and waited around for about 90 minutes while they replaced the battery. Everyone was very nice (the Apple employee who checked me in was especially awesome), and I got my phone, got in my car, started driving out of the parking lot, decided to call home and see if I needed to pick up food…

…and nobody could hear me. I checked with a couple of other people, and it wasn’t just one phone. It seems that, when they replaced the battery, Apple broke the microphone on my phone, so I can’t make calls. (Well, technically, I can make calls: I just can’t talk to anybody.)

So now I need to get in touch with Apple and figure out the next steps to get the microphone fixed. This is complicated by the fact that I have 2FA software on my phone that I need for work, so I can’t be without it for more than a few hours.

I just bought a new Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio with some of my bonus money, and enabled cell service on it. I’ve tested, and in a pinch, I can use that to make voice calls. But it isn’t an ideal solution.

I did manage to get an appointment today with Discount Tire to get my tire replaced. They were efficient and nice…

…and it turns out they don’t have the Michelin tires I want. They thought they had one in stock, and told me I could come back in a day or two for the second one. Then it turned out they couldn’t find the one, either.

So they slapped a loaner tire on my car, and I get to come back in a few days to get the two tires done.

There were, however, two redeeming points. The tire that failed was under warranty, so they’re replacing it for free. They suggested I might want to get a second tire done, since it had more wear on it than the other three. I kind of resisted that at first. But then I asked about doing something to replace the doughnut spare on the car, which I’ve put some wear on and no longer trust.

Discount offered me a spare full-size wheel at a reasonable price, and offered to take the more worn – but still good – tire off, replace it with a new tire, and mount the old tire on the new wheel. Thus giving me a non-doughnut spare, which I think is swell, as I hate driving on those.

But I still have to go back to Discount once they get everything together, which is more time out of my schedule. Good thing this isn’t one of my busy weeks.

I’ll try to have some commentary up about the murders in the next few days. In the meantime, “New DNA technology key to solving 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders” from KXAN. It looks like the new technique is Y-STR DNA testing. As I’ve said before, I wish I knew more about DNA testing than I do, and I can’t really comment on the soundness of the methodology. The article also states that there is ballistic evidence which ties these murders to a case in Kentucky and several other crimes.

The connection of the suspect to Texas remains unclear to me. And I hate to be cynical, because the reports are making this sound like good police work.

However, if this turns out wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. Four other men were convicted in 1999, but were cleared in 2009 after Y-STR profiling excluded them. It could be that they have the right guy this time. It could be that they’re clearing a cold case by playing “pin the tail on the dead guy”. At the moment, I’m leaning more in the direction of this being the right guy, but I can understand the cynicism some people in my circle have expressed.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Apple, Austin, Cops, Law | 3 Comments »

Crime watch.

Friday, September 26th, 2025

I’m going to make this short, because it broke at the end of the day today and there’s more to come.

The Austin Police Department says that they have identified a suspect as the Yogurt Shop Killer.

Police identified the suspect through DNA and ballistics testing.

…

On Dec. 6, 1991, Austin firefighters responded to a fire at the yogurt shop. The structure call would sadly reveal the quadruple homicide case, when the bodies of four teenage girls were found.

APD says they plan to hold a press conference on Monday to provide more information, so I’ll probably wait until Monday night to do a longer write-up. But I wanted to get at least this out now.

The identified suspect killed himself in 1999.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas! (#151 in a series)

Wednesday, September 17th, 2025

This is a bit of a round-up post, and some of these are a little outside of the normal flaming hyenas.

Joel Engardio, Supervisor for the Sunset District of San Francisco, got booted from office in a recall election yesterday.

Former Supervisor Engardio has not been accused of a crime – yet, as far as I know. His fundamental problem was that he supported closing the “Great Highway”.

The election is a culmination of a more than yearlong saga that began in June 2024 when Engardio, alongside four other supervisors, placed a measure on the November ballot to permanently ban vehicles on a two-mile stretch of the city’s westernmost coastal boulevard between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard, also known as the Upper Great Highway.
Residents who said they relied on the highway to drive around their neighborhood moved to recall Engardio, outraged by what they perceived as a “betrayal.” Engardio has argued throughout the recall campaign that his district should judge him based on his entire record and not a single policy disagreement.

More from the NYT:

The city as a whole favored the change, ensuring its passage. In April, it officially became a new park — called Sunset Dunes — and it is dotted with benches, murals, exercise equipment, hammocks and a children’s play structure shaped like an octopus.
There are pianos there, too, and on a recent day, a man played Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” as people strolled and roller skated past him. Wooden signs point people to nearby shops and cafes, many of which say business is up since the park opened.

…

But residents in Mr. Engardio’s district never loved the idea of losing a thoroughfare for the sake of a park. Nearly two-thirds of the Sunset District voted against the measure and resented the fact that residents farther from the beach got a park at the expense of nearby residents’ convenience.
Some Sunset residents relied on the street to travel in and out of the city. Others felt that the Sunset District had to bear the brunt of added cars on their neighborhood streets. The data has been mixed on the traffic impacts, but advocates of the park say such frustrations were overblown.
Many Sunset District residents say that the park is not used much on the weekdays or during the area’s notoriously chilly, foggy spells. John Crabtree, a volunteer for the campaign to recall Mr. Engardio, said he drove the Great Highway one last time on its last day in operation and felt sad to be losing it.
“It was an iconically beautiful drive,” he said. “People had a relationship with it, and it meant something. People were connected to this piece of infrastructure because it was part of living out here. It was part of the Sunset.”

Meanwhile, on the other coast:

A major strip club group bribed a state auditor — including with lap dances — to avoid paying more than $8 million in New York City sales taxes over the last 14 years, prosecutors charged Tuesday.
The State Attorney General’s Office unsealed a 79-count criminal indictment against the company, RCI, and five of its executives, accusing them of engaging in a naked, tax fraud scheme.
The affair was so brazen, a top RCI accountant even allegedly made at least 10 trips from Texas to New York to treat the former auditor at the company’s Manhattan jiggle joints, Rick’s Cabaret, Vivid Cabaret and Hoops Cabaret and Sports Bar, court papers state.

“naked, tax fraud scheme”. New York Post, I see what you did there.

RCI and the top execs allegedly bribed the auditor with a slew of lascivious treats starting in 2010, including at least 13 free multi-day trips to Miami “with complimentary hotel stays, restaurant meals, and up to several thousand dollars’ worth of private dances per day at RCI-owned strip clubs,” the indictment states.
The company bigwigs texted each other about haggling over how much cash they should bribe the crooked auditor with — and how much of a tax discount they should demand in return, the AG’s office alleged.
“We need to talk about New York and dance dollars,” RCI president Eric Langan texted to CFO Ahmed Anakar, the filing claims. “We are going to be hit by 3m in sales taxes soon.”
In exchange for cash, trips and dining, the state worker — who hasn’t been publicly identified — gave RCI favorable treatment during six state audits, the indictment states.

“dance dollars”. I can not tell a lie: I love that phrase.

Robert P. Burke was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday.

Mr. Burke was a former four-star admiral in the Navy, and “was once the Navy’s second-highest-ranking officer”. Oddly enough, this is not fallout from Fat Leonard: this was a separate sleazy deal. He…

…ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump, a New York-based technology and work force training company, prosecutors for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said. He also tried to persuade another senior admiral to do the same, prosecutors said. In exchange, Next Jump offered Admiral Burke a position with a yearly base salary of $500,000 and a grant of 100,000 stock options for when he retired, according to prosecutors.

…

According to prosecutors, from August 2018 through July 2019, Next Jump provided a work force training pilot program to a small part of the Navy that was under Admiral Burke’s command at the time. But the Navy terminated its contract with Next Jump in late 2019 and directed it not to contact Admiral Burke.
In July 2021, Mr. Kim and Ms. Messenger met with Admiral Burke in Washington, D.C., where they offered him the job and stock options in exchange for a government contract. According to prosecutors, the three also agreed that Admiral Burke would push other Navy officials to award another training contract to Next Jump estimated to be in the “triple digit millions.”
Admiral Burke ordered his staff in December 2021 to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under his command in Italy and Spain, prosecutors said, which was completed in January 2022. In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said the training was “widely disparaged,” receiving mostly negative reviews.

…

Admiral Burke retired in July 2022, and that October began working at Next Jump with a yearly starting salary of $500,000 and a grant of 100,000 stock options, prosecutors said.

Finally, and close to home, Lawrence has a good story up. Urban Alchemy is an organization that ran homeless shelters in Austin. They lost their contract with the city…because they were apparently falsifying records. I’m not sure if it was malice or stupidity (I know, why not both?) but I encourage you to wander over to his blog and read the coverage.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Crime news of the weird.

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025

Remember Buford Pusser?

This is not Buford Pusser. This is Joe Don Baker playing Buford Pusser in the original “Walking Tall”.

This is the real Buford Pusser.

There’s a chance that some of my younger readers might have heard of him from the misguided remake of “Walking Tall” with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Mr. Pusser was the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee from 1964 to 1970. He’s famous for trying to clean up the county single-handedly, fighting the Dixie Mafia and the “State Line Mob”. On August 12, 1967, a person or persons unknown allegedly ambushed Mr. Pusser and his wife, Pauline. Mrs. Pusser was killed, and Mr. Pusser was badly injured.

Mr. Pusser died in 1974 as a result of a single-car accident. There were suspicions that it wasn’t an “accident”, but nobody was able to prove anything. The official investigation said he was driving drunk and wasn’t wearing a seat belt when his Corvette hit an embankment and ejected him.

As sheriff, Pusser was credited with surviving seven stabbings and eight shootings.

I’m trying to be careful in my wording here because of what happened last week: McNairy County prosecutors announced “they had amassed enough evidence…to present an indictment to a grand jury in the killing of…Pauline Mullins Pusser”.

58 years later, the prosecutors office is saying Buford killed his wife and allegedly staged the whole thing.

This raises many questions.

Mr. Davidson said that the case file revealed “physical, medical, forensic, ballistic, and re-enactment evidence that contradicts his version of events,” referring to Sheriff Pusser’s statements to law enforcement officials and others about his wife’s death on Aug. 12, 1967.
On that day, Sheriff Pusser got a call in the early morning about a disturbance. In his version of events, his wife volunteered to ride with him as he responded to the call.
Sheriff Pusser said that as they drove along a country road, a car pulled up and a gunman opened fire, killing Ms. Pusser and wounding him.
He needed several surgeries and was hospitalized for nearly three weeks.

There doesn’t seem to be any question, from what I can tell, that he was seriously injured.

Doctors said he was struck on the left side of his jaw by at least two, or possibly three, rounds from a .30-caliber carbine. He spent 18 days in the hospital before returning home, and needed several more surgeries to restore his appearance.

The prosecutors say his wounds were self-inflicted, and “the gunshot wound on Sheriff Pusser’s cheek was a close-contact wound“.

It isn’t clear, but it seems to be implied in the article that prosecutors believe something other than a .30 caliber carbine was used. I have a lot of trouble imaging shooting yourself once, much less “two or three times” in the jaw with a .30 caliber carbine. Not just the whole “shooting yourself” factor, but also just physically getting the gun into position to do it without slipping and putting a bullet in your brain. The thought does occur to me, though: taking the idea that Mr. Pusser was shot with .30 carbine rounds at face (ha!) value, it could have been done with an Enforcer, which is a weird .30 carbine pistol thing. (It could also have been a Ruger Blackhawk in .30 carbine.)

Dr. Michael Revelle, an emergency medicine doctor and medical examiner, determined that Ms. Pusser was more likely than not shot outside the car and then placed inside it.
He found that skull trauma she suffered did not match the crime scene photographs from inside the car. Blood spatter on the hood of the car also contradicted Sheriff Pusser’s statements to the authorities, he said.

I have a lot of respect for crime scene investigators and cold case detectives. But “blood spatter” evidence (I assume from photographs) in a 58-year-old case? Blood splatter evidence already has a lot of problems.

A ballistics expert, Dr. Eric Warren, determined that the physical evidence pointed to a staged crime scene.

What evidence is he looking at? Just ballistics evidence, or more than that? Crime scene experts sometimes get out over their skis and testify to things that aren’t in their field of expertise. Not saying that’s what is going on here, but the question is worth asking.

Ms. Pusser’s family seems to buy into the prosecution’s theory.

Investigators also talked with members of Sheriff Pusser’s family but did not describe those conversations. They also declined to discuss the weapon that was used, and whether it matched up with the autopsy findings.
They said that the case file would have more specifics, and that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation would make public the entire file once redactions are made.

I’ll really enjoy reading that case file. As it is now, I don’t know what to think. It could be that Buford killed his wife and staged the crime scene, but I feel like there are all kinds of holes that can be punched in that theory. But what’s the motivation of the prosecutor’s office to frame him 58 years later? The State Line Mob and the Dixie Mafia were pretty much broken up years ago, so the prosecution probably isn’t under their control.

I wonder if maybe this is one of the problems with cold case investigation. There’s a temptation once you’ve got some evidence together to say, “Oh, yeah, we think so-and-so did it, but he’s dead, so we’re closing the case and blaming him.” I really wonder if the case against Buford Pusser would actually hold up in court. We’ll never know.

Buford Pusser named one man as being the person who contracted the killing, but nobody was ever able to make a case against him for that crime. The guy is a real scumbucket, though: he was convicted of another murder in 1972, sentenced to life in prison without parole, and (while serving that sentence) arranged to have a judge whacked. And that’s another rabbit hole worth going down, but that’s also another story for another day.

Posted in Guns, Law, Ruger | 6 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#150 in a series)

Friday, August 15th, 2025

150 of these, and we have a good one for number 150.

LaToya Cantrell, the mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted on Federal charges.

The indictment accuses Cantrell of a slate of crimes including wire fraud, conspiracy to obstruct justice, false statements, obstruction of justice and lying to a federal grand jury.

Also indicted: Jeffrey Vappie, who was a former New Orleans Police Department officer, the mayor’s bodyguard, and apparently her boyfriend. He had previously been indicted in 2024, but the grand jury issued a “superseding indictment” against him.

Here’s a list of the allegations against them:

Count 1: Conspiracy
Counts 2-13: Wire Fraud
Count 14: Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice
Count 15: False Statements
Count 16: Obstruction of Justice
Count 17 and 18: False Declaration Before Grand Jury

More from WWL TV:

The indictment alleges that Latoya Cantrell, the Mayor of New Orleans, and Jeffrey Paul Vappie, a member of her Executive Protection Unit (EPU), developed a personal relationship in October 2021. To conceal their relationship and maximize their time together, they allegedly created a scheme to defraud the City of New Orleans by engaging in personal activities while Vappie was on duty and being paid for providing protection.
As part of the scheme, it is alleged that Cantrell had Vappie accompany her on at least 14 out-of-state trips, falsely claiming she needed protection for safety concerns. These trips reportedly cost the City of New Orleans over $70,000, not including Cantrell’s own travel expenses. The indictment also claims that Vappie and Cantrell used a city-owned apartment in the Pontalba Building for personal use, with Vappie frequently spending time there while on duty.
The document states that Cantrell and Vappie took several actions to impede inquiries and a federal grand jury investigation into their relationship and scheme. These actions included:

Using an encrypted messaging platform
Deleting electronic evidence
Making false statements to federal law enforcement agents and a federal grand jury
Lying to colleagues and making false public statements

More:

The indictment caps a federal investigation of Cantrell, first reported by WWL Louisiana in 2022. A grand jury started hearing the evidence from federal prosecutors in February 2024 and returned an indictment last September against building inspector Randy Farrell, charging him with conspiring to bribe Cantrell with about $9,000 in gifts in 2019, including NFC Championship Game tickets, a lunch at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and a cell phone, in exchange for causing the firing of a city official who had been investigating Farrell for alleged fraud.

The WWL story also includes the full indictment.

As noted in the press coverage, Ms. Cantrell is actually the first sitting mayor of New Orleans to be indicted. Ray Nagin was indicted, convicted, and did time, but that was after he left office.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 15, 2025.

Friday, August 15th, 2025

Gerry Spence, legendary lawyer and author. He was 96.

Among the people he defended or represented: Karen Silkwood.

She had died in 1974 in a car crash on her way to talk to a reporter about flaws in safety practices in the production of plutonium at a Kerr-McGee plant in Oklahoma, where she had worked and become contaminated. Representing her family in their suit claiming negligence, Mr. Spence won $10.5 million in damages. (The case was later settled for $1.38 million — about $6.6 million today.)

Randy Weaver.

While rejecting Mr. Weaver’s racist beliefs, Mr. Spence argued that his client had acted in self-defense and raised doubts about whose bullet had killed the agent. The jury acquitted Mr. Weaver of all major charges but convicted him of failing to appear at a 1991 weapons trial. He was sentenced to time served; Mr. Spence did not appeal.

Imelda Marcos.

The 1990 New York racketeering trial of Mrs. Marcos made headlines for months. Prosecutors produced thousands of pages of bank records, telexes, receipts, memos, contracts and reports, calling them a trail of thievery. But Mr. Spence broke through with simplicity, calling his client “a lonely widow” and “a small, fragile woman” whose only crime was being “a world-class shopper.” She was found innocent.

…

Mr. Spence often boasted that he had never lost a criminal case with a jury trial, as either a defense lawyer or a prosecutor, and that he had not lost a civil case since 1969. That was not actually true, but it was not far off. He was known to lose now and then, and several of his notable civil verdicts were overturned on appeal.
But in the tradition of Perry Mason, he seemed unbeatable — not only to courtroom foes but also to lawyers who attended his seminars, and to Americans who read his best-selling books and tuned in to his television programs and network commentaries, most notably on the O.J. Simpson murder case.

I remember seeing a “60 Minutes” profile of him some years back. I can’t find that now, but there’s a two-part interview with him on the ‘Tube.

Masaoki Sen. He was 102.

Mr. Sen was best known for serving as the 15th-generation grand master of the Urasenke, one of the three main schools of Japan’s tea ceremony. After inheriting the role from his father in 1964, he used it as a platform to promote peace, often while speaking of his own experiences during the war.
Traveling the world to engage in a sort of tea-ceremony diplomacy, Mr. Sen used the ancient art, whose roots lie in Zen Buddhism, to call for an end to all wars. He was known for the phrase “peacefulness through a bowl of tea.”

He was also a former kamikaze pilot.

After leaving Doshisha University in 1943 he was drafted to the Imperial Navy, where he trained to be a pilot. When his unit was asked to form a “special attack” squadron to carry out suicide missions, Mr. Sen was one of the volunteers.
“I thought I was ready to die,” Mr. Sen said in a 2021 interview with a Japanese newspaper. “But I was just a greenhorn of 20 or 21 years of age. I didn’t know what death meant.”
While many young men in his unit flew off to ram their aircraft into Allied ships, Mr. Sen was never sent. Historians say the Japanese military often spared the oldest sons, especially from historically significant households.
After the war, Mr. Sen asked a former commander why he was never sent. The older man answered: “Just think of it as fate.”
Unlike many war veterans, Mr. Sen spoke openly of his experiences and sorrow for comrades who never returned. He also made no effort to disguise his anger toward his nation’s leaders who sent them on one-way missions.
“We were told to die because others would fill our ranks,” he said in another interview. “But who wants to die?”

Posted in Books, History, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#138)

Saturday, July 19th, 2025

“Justified” is full of timeless wisdom about how one should lead their life.

One of the best examples of this is Raylan’s Rule:

Raylan Givens: Any problem, that’s someone else’s fault. You ever hear of the saying, “You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole”?

Another good example of this:

Art Mullen: I got a call this morning from AUSA David Vasquez. Wants to talk to you about you shooting Boyd Crowder.
Raylan Givens: What’s there to talk about? He pulled first. There was a witness.
Art Mullen: But you see, ten days ago you shot a man in Miami. Put it like this: you were in the first grade; bit a kid every week? They’d start to think of you as a biter.

“They’d start to think of you as a biter.” What brings this to mind?

A summer associate at white-shoe firm Sidley Austin began biting colleagues and roaring at them on her first day — and by the time she was canned, her body count had reached double digits, insiders told the legal news site Above the Law.
The bites were not “in an aggressive, ‘we’re beefing’ way” – but rather, “a faux-quirky manic pixie dream girl crossed with the Donner party vibe,” the outlet reported.
“Though I’ve seen pics of the results post-Biglaw Biter, and ‘nibble’ is probably too tame a word,” the article’s author noted.

…

A jaw-dropping account of the chomping spree posted to X said the girl sank her teeth into 10 colleagues, including other summer interns, associate lawyers and even an HR rep at the firm’s Seventh Avenue offices.

…

The firm declined to comment. But an insider told The Post the intern bit only five employees and that exaggerations were now flooding the internet.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law, TV | 2 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#149 in a series)

Friday, July 18th, 2025

In April of last year, the Detroit Lakes (Minnesota) Police Department responded to a report of a break-in. When they responded, they found a woman in the basement of a home, “dressed in black and carrying a flashlight covered with a sock”.

The woman was State Senator Nicole Mitchell. The home was her stepmother’s.

On Friday, a jury in northern Minnesota convicted Ms. Mitchell of burglary and possession of burglary or theft tools, felonies that can carry prison sentences.

Ms. Mitchell told the police…

…she had entered the house to collect sentimental items, including one of her late father’s flannel shirts. “I have never done anything like this,” she said during the arrest, body camera footage showed.

…

After the arrest, Ms. Mitchell issued a statement denying that she had stolen anything. She said then that she entered the house to check on a family member suffering from “Alzheimer’s and associated paranoia.” During the trial, she and her lawyers insisted she was acting out of concern for her ailing relative.

…

On the witness stand this week, the stepmother described being awakened by someone in her home and calling the police. She acknowledged having Alzheimer’s and at times gave testimony that seemed to contradict body camera footage.
Ms. Mitchell testified in her own defense for several hours on Thursday. She said she had not been at the house to get her father’s belongings, as she initially told police officers, but instead to check on her stepmother’s well-being.

I’m actually slightly sympathetic to Ms. Mitchell and her problems caring for an aging relative with Alzheimer’s. But it sounds like she told one story to the responding officers (who were wearing body cameras) and a different story at trial. That never looks good to the jury. And she could have called the police for a welfare check, too, if she was concerned.

The burglary charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison upon conviction, and the burglary tools charge carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

There’s a lot of discussion in the NYT coverage of what this means for Al Franken the Minnesota senate. The Democratic party (to which Ms. Mitchell belongs, and this is actually noted in the second paragrpah) holds a one-seat majority in the Senate.

Already this year, special elections have been held to replace a Democratic senator who died and a Republican senator who resigned after being accused of arranging to meet with an underage prostitute. Another special election filled a House seat after a judge determined that the Democrat who won the regular election did not meet residency requirements. Then last month, State Representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, was assassinated and State Senator John A. Hoffman, a Democrat, was shot and wounded in what the authorities described as targeted political violence.
If Ms. Mitchell leaves office, the Senate would be evenly divided until Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, calls a special election for voters to choose a replacement, which could happen before lawmakers return to the Capitol in 2026.

More coverage from the Star-Tribune:

[Becker County Attorney Brian] McDonald said she never placed a welfare call. Instead she drove 220 miles in the middle of the night, dressed in all black and packed flashlights, latex gloves and a small pry crowbar device used to break into the basement window.
“Who packs a freaking prybar just in case?” McDonald said to the jury.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Today in fraud.

Friday, July 18th, 2025

Well, technically, Wednesday in fraud, but let us not quibble.

Brett Lemieux killed himself on Wednesday. He was 45.

Mr. Lemieux founded “MisterManCave”, a sports memorabilia site. I believe this is the site.

Before he killed himself, he made a post to Facebook claiming he’d sold “more than four million counterfeit items and surpassed $350 million in sales”. The Facebook account is down now, but the NYPost has an image of the post.

Lemieux was able to pull off the alleged large-scale counterfeit scheme by faking holograms, authentication stickers for sports collectibles, of some of the most prominent companies in sports memorabilia: Panini, Fanatics, Tri-Star, James Spence Authentics, Mill Creek Sports and GT Marketing, among others.
Lemieux would use the fake holograms to sell counterfeit memorabilia at a far lower price than the market, and he profited handsomely from that tactic.
In the Facebook post, Lemieux said he released 80,000 pieces of memorabilia into the market when Kobe Bryant died in 2020.

I care even less about sports memorabilia than I do about sports, but I am a connoisseur of fraud. And this is big fraud. I actually think this story is being underplayed right now: if Mr. Lemieux put four million counterfeit items out there on the memorabilia market with forged holograms, I think this is going to have a massive impact on the market.

“People have known about this guy. They’ve known his work. They know what he’s been up to,” well-known sports memorabilia expert Steve Grad told WRTV Indianapolis
“He has been at it for years and years. And he’s driven down the price of things. You know, you look at a Tom Brady autograph and Tom Brady’s value is affected drastically by this individual.”

But has anybody asked Ja Morant Guy for his opinion?

(“Ja Morant signed basketballs” on MisterManCave.)

Sightly more seriously, FotB RoadRich and I have been discussing the rules for crooks. It looks like Mr. Lemieux followed Rule 1: if you’re going to steal, steal big.

But it doesn’t look like he figured out Rule 2: have an exit plan. Steal enough money so you can live out the rest of your life comfortably in a country with no extradition treaty with the United States.

On a somewhat related to fraud note: Lloyd Howell resigned as executive director of the NFL Players Association on Thursday.

Howell’s tenure had come under scrutiny after several recent reports from ESPN and the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast.
In May, ESPN reported that the FBI was investigating the financial dealings of the NFLPA and the MLB Players Association related to a multibillion-dollar group-licensing firm, OneTeam Partners. According to sources, the report triggered the NFLPA to hire Ronald C. Machen of law firm Wilmer Hale to review Howell’s activities as executive director. The FBI investigation, which is being conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, New York, is continuing, sources said.

Even better, Mr. Howell’s expenses are being examined. In particular…the strippers. Always with the strippers.

…Howell charged the union for two visits to strip clubs, including a $738.82 car service that took him from the airport to one of the clubs.

…

One receipt, obtained by ESPN, shows Howell was picked up in a sedan by a car service at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, at 10:26 p.m. The car’s first stop was at a nearby Miami Gardens address. The receipt shows only one other stop, nearly eight hours later.
At 6 a.m., the car dropped off Howell at his luxury condominium in Sunny Isles Beach, the receipt shows.
Later, a union finance worker noticed the car service’s exorbitant cost. The employee searched online for the Miami Gardens address, discovering it was Tootsie’s Cabaret.
The 76,000-square-foot venue bills itself as the world’s largest strip club — “full nude No. 1 rated.”

…

During this year’s NFLPA summit on Feb. 21, Howell accompanied the employees to the Magic City strip club for an outing that incurred $2,426 in charges including cash withdrawals, ranging from $200 to $525, from a club ATM, sources and documents show. They used two “VIP rooms.”
According to the expense report, the purpose of the strip club outing: “Player Engagement Event to support & grow our Union.”

…

The employee noted on a March 23 expense report: “$736 = This was the final amount I was charged to close the tab for both secluded sections for our Player Members. This included Food, Alcoholic Drinks, fees, taxes, and gratuity.” No players’ names are listed on receipts or the reports.

Posted in Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

What is this I don’t even have any words.

Thursday, July 17th, 2025

A New York City police officer who previously worked for Wells Fargo was charged on Thursday with spending $87,000 in bank customers’ money on personal bills that included BMW payments and a gluteus-building program called Booty by Jacks.

The Booty by Jacks website.

The complaint does not indicate whether the subscription for Booty by Jacks, described on its website as “the world’s best glute-building program,” was for Officer Rodriguez Acosta. The Booty by Jacks Instagram account, which has more than 730,000 followers, says: “We Help Women Lose Fat, Build Muscle & Look Incredible in a Bikini.”
Subscriptions range from $33 a week for workout training alone to $47 a week or $127 a month for programs that combine fitness and nutritional guidance and other services. The website shows what are presented as several sets of before-and-after photos of swimsuit-clad female customers. There are also versions of the programs for men.

Posted in Bagatelle, Cops, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Note from the legal beat.

Tuesday, July 8th, 2025

A story I missed over the weekend:

Nearly Half of America’s Murderers Get Away With It

…the Louisville police do not arrest anyone in roughly half of murder cases. I spoke to family members of a dozen victims. They all conveyed a similar sentiment: that the police had abandoned them and theirs. “The police don’t really care,” said Deondra Kimble, David’s aunt. “They’ve proven it to me.”

…

Louisville is representative of a national issue. In the United States, people often get away with murder. The clearance rate — the share of cases that result in an arrest or are otherwise solved — was 58 percent in 2023, the latest year for which F.B.I. data is available. And that figure is inflated because it includes murders from previous years that police solved in 2023.
In other words, a murderer’s chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down to a coin flip. For other crimes, clearance rates are even lower. Only 8 percent of car thefts result in an arrest.

…

Why does America solve so few crimes? Experts point to five explanations.

Number two on the list, is, of course, “guns”. There’s even a handy little graph of “Gun homicide rates, 2023”, that includes the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Spain, and Australia. Not included: Switzerland.

What this story brings to mind, though, is David Simon’s great book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. My copy is in a box somewhere, so I’m going off memory here: Lawrence can probably fill in the lacunae. (I’d buy the Kindle edition for reference, but they want $14 for that.) There’s a several page section where Simon breaks down the numbers for one year’s worth of homicides. (I believe it was 1988.)

Some of the homicides were things like vehicle accidents (remember, there’s a difference between “homicide” and “murder”). Some were self-defense incidents. Some were cases where the killer died in the act (such as arson or a murder-suicide)…

…and at the end of the day, as best as I recall, your chances of even being charged with a homicide in Baltimore that year were about one out of three. And your chances of getting a sentence of more than ten years were basically zero: you had to do something awful (like molesting and killing a child) to get more than that. And a ten year sentence, with the parole laws in effect at the time, plus time spent in prison before trial, and good time credit, meant that you were likely to get out of prison after three years.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

And for what it’s worth, the Austin Police Department cleared 100% of their homicide cases for 2023. I don’t think 2024 figures are in yet, but APD has been consistently above 90% clearance since 2014.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Diddy squat.

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025

I won’t say that I didn’t care about Diddy. I did care, to the extent that it was a mildly interesting true crime story, and this is hookersnblow.com. Beyond that, meh.

But: the Wikipedia entry on the Mann Act is interesting, especially the section on “Notable prosecutions under the Mann Act“.

I’m sure everyone remembers Jack Johnson (though I didn’t remember Donald Trump pardoned him in 2018). Others: Frank Lloyd Wright (charges dropped), Charlie Chaplin (acquitted), Charles Manson (charges dropped), and Chuck Berry (convicted, sentenced to three years, served one and half).

Posted in Bagatelle, Law | Comments Closed

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