Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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Obit watch: May 31, 2019.

Friday, May 31st, 2019

Leon Redbone has died. He was 127.

Well, that’s what the press release said. Most sources I see say he was 69, though Wikipedia footnotes that as “disputed”.

The “Variety” obit (hattip: Lawrence) is pretty good. If it seems like I’m giving Mr. Redbone short shrift, well, I don’t have a lot to say: I never really caught that particular gene. I’ve been told he was on “Prairie Home Companion” a lot, but since that show basically makes me want to stab myself in the thigh repeatedly with a spork…

Also among the dead: Thad Cochran, congressman for 45 years.

His 45-year tenure was the longest of any currently serving member of Congress. His 39 years in the Senate was the 10th-longest stretch in history, and he was that body’s third longest-serving incumbent, behind only Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.

And finally, Claus von Bülow, who was not a murderer. Really. Two out of three courts said so.

Seriously, this was one of the great true crime circuses of the 1980s. Mr. von Bülow was charged with attempting to murder his wife by giving her an overdose of insulin. She went into hypoglycemic comas twice (in December of 1979 and December of 1980). She recovered the first time, but her second coma was irreversible.

Mr. von Bülow was convicted in his first trial, but that conviction was overturned on appeal. (His legal team included Alan Dershowitz, Eliot “Client #9” Spitzer, and Jim “Mad Money” Cramer.) He was tried a second time and acquitted.

I’m glossing over a lot of stuff here (because I don’t have time), including the testimony in the second trial from Truman Capote and Johnny Carson’s wife. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary, though you have to read both the Sunny and Claus articles. (There’s a great story in one of them about Norman Mailer and his wife attending a dinner party with Claus and Dershowitz. You have to read it: I won’t spoil the punchline.)

Sunny von Bülow never recovered from her second coma, and remained in a vegetative state until she died in 2008.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Historical note, semi-suitable for use in schools…

Thursday, May 23rd, 2019

…at least, if you want to teach kids that crime does not pay.

85 years ago today, Bonnie and Clyde got turned into chunky salsa by Frank Hamer and his posse.

FBI page: “At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries.” Those 13 murders include several police officers: these were not nice people.

I haven’t been able to get a copy of Boessenecker’s book yet, or watch “The Highwaymen”, but both are on my list.

Posted in History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 22, 2019.

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019

Stanton T. Friedman, UFOlogist.

Thomas Silverstein is dead.

Mr. Silverstein was serving three consecutive life terms for the killing of two fellow prisoners and a guard while behind bars. He had been incarcerated continuously since 1975, originally on an armed robbery conviction. He was said to have joined the Aryan Brotherhood, the white nationalist prison gang, while serving time at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.
He was in solitary confinement for 36 years, more than half his life. The American Civil Liberties Union has cited his case in its campaign against long-term solitary confinement.

More:

In 1981, Mr. Silverstein and another inmate, Clayton Fountain, were convicted of murdering Robert Chappelle, a member of the D.C. Blacks prison gang. During the trial, the gang’s national leader, Raymond (Cadillac) Smith, was transferred to Marion, apparently intent on killing Mr. Silverstein in revenge. (Prison officials, Mr. Silverstein said later, were aware of the threats but “didn’t take any action to make me safe.”)
Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Fountain got to Mr. Smith first, stabbing him 67 times with makeshift weapons, then dragging his body along prison catwalks as an object lesson. Mr. Silverstein received two more life sentences, for the murders of Mr. Chappelle and Mr. Smith. He insisted that he was innocent of the Chappelle murder and that he had killed Mr. Smith in self-defense.
By 1983 Mr. Silverstein had taken up art, teaching himself and becoming accomplished at it. One day, on his way back from showering, another prisoner handed him another makeshift knife and a homemade key. Using it, he managed to unlock his handcuffs and then fatally stabbed Merle E. Clutts, an unarmed correction officer, about 40 times.

His running buddy Mr. Fountain killed another guard that same day. These incidents are (at least in part) what prompted the construction of the SuperMax prison in Colorado.

Mildly interesting fact that I ran across last night: Clayton Fountain, who was also confined in solitary, took theology courses, converted to Catholicism, and was accepted as a lay brother by a Trappist order after his death.

Posted in Geek, Law, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch+

Wednesday, May 15th, 2019

Isaac Kappy apparently committed suicide on Monday. He was 42 years old, and had parts in “Beerfest”, “Terminator: Salvation”, and “Thor”.

I don’t want to talk much more about this because I’m not sure I can without sounding like a jerk, or seeming to make light of a tragedy, so I’m going to link to the article Lawrence sent me instead. It sounds to me like he had problems, but treatable ones.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.

In other news, this is an actual headline from NBC News:

Georgia professor found dead near hot tub of man who kills himself, another man is arrested

If you’re having trouble parsing that, here’s the first paragraph:

A car salesman was charged Monday in the strangulation death of a University of Georgia professor who was found dead near a hot tub at the home of a man who killed himself after police arrived at the scene.

Fortunately, the article is short, and reading the entire thing lends some clarity to the situation and the allegations. This leaps out at me, though:

After placing Lillard in a patrol car, officers told Heindel that he would be separated from Lillard and interviewed, Massee said. Then they left him alone.
Heindel then went into his house and shot himself in his master bathroom, Massee said.

I’m not 100% sure I agree with your police work there, Lou. Good on the cops for sensing “the scene looked a little inappropriate”, but leaving a suspect unsupervised and in a position to grab a gun and kill himself?

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Healthy Holly update.

Thursday, May 2nd, 2019

In great haste, because this is breaking and I have seven minutes left on my coffee break:

Baltimore mayor Catherine E. Pugh resigned today.

“Dear citizens of Baltimore I would like to thank you for allowing me to serve as the 50th mayor. It has been an honor and privilege,” Pugh, 69, said in a statement read by Silverman. “I’m sorry for the harm that I have caused to the image of the city of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor. Baltimore deserves a mayor who can move our great city forward.”

The mayor has been on leave since April 1st, dealing with health issues.

Posted in Books, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#55 in a series)

Friday, April 26th, 2019

We have now come to the point where I have done as many of these as I have “Art, damn it, art!” watches. (And more of these than Art Acevedo watches.)

The mayor of Edinburg, Texas, and his wife have been arrested on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.

Edinburg is in the southern part of the state, in the area generally called the “Rio Grande Valley”.

The Rio Grande Valley has been a particular point of focus in Texas conversations about voter fraud. Two-thirds of the 91 Texas election fraud cases prosecuted from state investigations between 2006 and 2016 were in counties south of San Antonio. Only four of them involved in-person voter impersonation.

More:

Nearly 20 people have been arrested since last year in connection with the fraud case. Prosecutors said the scheme — involving Mr. Molina, his wife and paid campaign workers — was largely carried out by having numerous voters who did not live in Edinburg claim they were residents, including many who stated they lived in an apartment complex Mr. Molina owns.
According to court documents, Mr. Molina and his wife were both registered as volunteer voter registrars in the 2017 election and were authorized to help people fill out voter registration applications. Several of those with false addresses were signed by Mr. Molina and included his voter registrar number, according to the criminal complaint.

This does not exactly strike me as being a genius scheme.

“I feel that he didn’t steal the election away from me — he stole the election away from the community,” said Mr. Garcia, a lawyer. “The suspicions arose, when you started seeing, in checking the lists on the last days of the election, you started seeing a lot of names with the same address. There was one little house — it’s a 400- or 500-square-foot little one-room place — and there was maybe 20 people registered to that address.”

The Mr. Garcia mentioned above is Richard Garcia, the former mayor, who Mr. Molina defeated by 1,240 votes in the 2017 election.

NYT. Statesman. HouChron. The Monitor.

Posted in Law, Politics, Texas | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#54 in a series)

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

I want to note here that the flaming hyenas watch is not literal: I don’t intend for crooked politicians to catch fire. “You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!” is a reference to a classic “Bloom County” strip that, sadly, isn’t available on line.

Why does this matter? I’ll get to that.

But first: I was trying to keep up with Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and the whole “Healthy Holly” scandal. Really, I was. But I got busy with Holy Week and taxes and other stuff and…fortunately, Lawrence sent me the latest news.

The FBI raided the mayor’s home this morning.

And City Hall.

And “several other locations” associated with the mayor.

Telling detail:

Thursday was not the first time a Baltimore mayor’s house has been raided by investigators. In 2008, state prosecutors and police searched the home of then-Mayor Sheila Dixon. The Democrat became the first Baltimore mayor to face criminal charges, was convicted and resigned.

In other news: Tyus Byrd was mayor of Parma, Missouri. She lost her re-election bid. Her successor was sworn in a little more than a week ago.

Right after the swearing in, Mayor Byrd’s house caught fire.

Sounds like bad luck, right? You lose the mayor’s race, then your house catches fire?

Then City Hall caught fire, too.

What began as a small-town changing of the guard has quickly become a statewide investigation. The authorities suspect foul play, and the state fire marshal’s office is assisting the local sheriff’s office in an arson inquiry. At the same time, the state auditor’s office announced it had opened an audit into Parma’s finances after finding credible allegations of problems under Ms. Byrd’s watch. Some have tied the two investigations together, suggesting that the fires were meant to destroy evidence, while another theory purported that Ms. Byrd had been targeted because of her race.
Chris Hensley, a chief deputy with the New Madrid County Sheriff’s Department, said that the evidence showed that multiple fires had been set at City Hall and that arson was suspected.

The building is apparently intact, but (quel frommage!) “nearly all records and the computer” (?) were destroyed.

“Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.” But this is a case where I don’t think we need to wait for a third time.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 25, 2019.

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

Wow. Lots going on.

This is breaking news: Lawrence beat me to it (because I had to wait for my lunch hour to post).

Former Williamson County DA Jana Duty was found dead in a South Texas condo yesterday.

I have a WCDA tag for reasons: if you go back and look, or read Lawrence’s post, you’ll see that former DA Duty was controversial and apparently had some issues during her tenure. But this is still a sad and awful thing.

Mark Medoff, playwright. He was best known for “Children of a Lesser God”, which won multiple Tony awards and was the basis for the Oscar winning Marlee Matlin movie.

This one is for Mike the Musicologist: Heather Harper, soprano.

An unanticipated performance in 1962 brought Ms. Harper international attention when, on 10 days’ notice, she substituted for Galina Vishnevskaya in the premiere of Britten’s “War Requiem.” The work was written to dedicate the new Coventry Cathedral in England, the original 14th-century structure having been bombed into ruin during World War II.
As a gesture of reconciliation, Britten, a pacifist, had intended the soloists to be the tenor Peter Pears (an Englishman), the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a German) and Ms. Vishnevskaya (a Russian). But the Soviet government refused to allow Ms. Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the premiere. Ms. Harper, just turned 32, took her place and triumphed.

She did a lot of work with Britten (including Ellen in the 1969 BBC production of “Peter Grimes”) but she had a larger repertoire, including singing “Lohengrin” at Bayreuth.

Fay McKenzie, actress. Her story is interesting:

Ms. McKenzie made her screen debut in 1918, when she was 10 weeks old, cradled in Gloria Swanson’s arms in “Station Content,” a five-reel silent romance. Her last role was a cameo appearance with her son, Tom Waldman Jr., in “Kill a Better Mousetrap,” a comedy, based on a play by Scott K. Ratner, that was filmed last summer and has yet to be released.

She was also in five Blake Edwards movies and five Gene Autry movies. Ms. McKenzie was 101 when she passed.

Ken Kercheval. He did a lot of TV work (no “Mannix”, though) and was probably most famous as Cliff Barnes on “Dallas”. (He was also in “Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell“, which I’d kind of like to watch. Lawrence, however, does not seem to care much for movies involving demonic dogs.)

Finally, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Noted:

As the crown prince, he fled Luxembourg with the grand ducal family after Germany invaded the country in May 1940 and found refuge in France, Portugal, the United States and Canada before moving to Britain to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, as a private in 1942.
He participated in the Allies’ invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Battle for Caen there. Three months later he took part in the liberation of Brussels.
Among other honors, he received a Silver Star from the United States, a War Medal from Britain and the French Croix de Guerre. He was promoted to colonel in the Irish Guards in 1984 and was made an honorary general of the British Army in 1995.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV, Wagner, WCDA | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 20, 2019.

Saturday, April 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Gene Wolfe.

Warren Adler, novelist. He is perhaps most famous as the author of The War of the Roses, which was adapted into the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner film.

James W. McCord Jr., leader of the Watergate burglars.

On June 17, 1972, four expatriate Cubans and Mr. McCord, chief of security for the Nixon re-election campaign and a leader of the White House “plumbers” unit assigned to plug information leaks, broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington to fix problematic listening devices that they had planted weeks earlier.
But a night watchman alerted the police, and they were caught, odd burglars in business suits carrying cameras and walkie-talkies. E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, and G. Gordon Liddy, the re-election committee’s general counsel, who ran the break-in from a nearby hotel room, fled but were soon arrested. Mr. McCord revealed at an arraignment that he had once worked for the C.I.A., and the unraveling began.

Interesting thing about this obit: Mr. McCord apparently passed away in June of 2017, but his death was not widely reported until recently.

Lorraine Warren, “psychic” fraud.

This was noted elsewhere earlier in the week, but for the historical record: Geraldyn M. “Jerri” Cobb, noted pilot and an early recruit for the astronaut program.

Posted in Books, History, Law, Movies, Nixon, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Noted.

Thursday, April 18th, 2019

1. Judith Clark has been granted parole. Officer Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O’Grady of the Nyack Police Department were unavailable for comment, as was Brinks employee Peter Paige.

2. Thread:

I haven’t seen “A Few Good Men” yet. (I feel like I should, but: Sorkin.) But I agree with his points on “Magnum Force”. I swear I’ve written about this before, but I think “Dirty Harry” and “Magnum Force” are both much more complicated movies than the people who call them “fascist” give them credit for. “Dirty Harry” is about a good man who is trying to do his job, while coming to terms with a world that’s changing around him. “Magnum Force” is about that same man, who, when given a chance to reject those changes, makes the moral choice not to.

3. Article about Father Fournier from the NYT. Mike the Musicologist sent over a Reddit thread as well.

It seems somehow inappropriate to refer to a priest as a bad a–, but I can’t think of a better word. Before rushing into a burning building, the Father had:

  • served with French forces in Afghanistan, and survived an ambush that killed 10 men
  • went into Bataclan while the shooting was going on to provide absolution for the victims

Clint Eastwood, call your people, please: Father Fournier would be a good subject for your next movie.

Tactical advice from a priest:

From a military base in Afghanistan to a revered cathedral torn by flames, the rule, he said, is the same: “Always be on the move, or else you die.”
Inside Notre-Dame, he said, he kept the safety of his fellow firefighters foremost in his mind. “Artworks can be reproduced, while a human life can’t,” he said.
“The one who tells you that he’s not afraid in that kind of situation is either very dangerous or foolish,” the chaplain said. “Even for a firefighter, to go inside a building in flames isn’t that natural.”

4. Should Roberto Clemente’s number 21 be retired across all of baseball? My feelings about baseball are well known, so I’m not the person to ask. But I do kind of like Clemente, who died nobly and far too young.

5. The Alliance of American Football has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Posted in Law, Movies, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

A small silly diversion.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2019

Lawrence stated the other night that you can Google DuckDuckGo “Florida Man” and any combination of words and almost be guaranteed you’ll get some results back.

Here is a perfect example of that theory:

Florida man arrested after aggressively eating handfuls of pasta

No, you are not having a stroke. Yes, that is an actual headline, though the gentleman in question was actually arrested for (quel frommage!) being drunk and disorderly in public and resisting arrest. To the best of my knowledge, the eating of pasta – even in an aggressive fashion – is not an actual crime in Florida. Yet.

In other news of the weird:

Man in monkey mask stole mail from Southwest Austin apartments, police say

Moral of this story: don’t mess with the postal inspectors. They got his fingerprints off light bulbs, and…

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service, told police the agency had planted a gift card in the mail designed to force the recipient into giving up their personal information to access the gift card. The day after the burglary, postal inspectors learned that the card was accessed by a Texas woman who — joined by a man later identified by authorities as Ortiz — used the card at a Target retail store on Research Boulevard about two weeks later, the affidavit said.

“The Man in the Monkey Mask” was also one of Dumas’s less successful works.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 10, 2019.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2019

Charles Van Doren has passed away at the age of 93.

I wrote a little about this a while back, but to recap: Mr. Van Doren was from a cultured and educated family, had batchelor’s and master’s degrees, taught at Columbia University, and was “handsome, personable” with “an honest look about him”.

He was recruited by Albert Freedman to appear on the quiz show “Twenty-One” (he didn’t even own a TV at the time), and knocked off Herb Stempel, the reigning champion. (From some accounts I’ve seen, the producers basically felt Mr. Van Doren was “more appealing” to the audience than Mr. Stempel.)

Mr. Van Doren won $129,000 in 1956 money (the paper of record claims that’s equivalent to $1 million today).

In succeeding months, as rumors and skepticism over TV quiz shows grew, some contestants admitted that the programs had been fixed. The networks denied it, and Mr. Van Doren insisted that he had not taken part in any deceptions. Besides misleading the press and public, he continued to deceive his family and friends, and even lied to a Manhattan grand jury about his performances.
But on Nov. 2, 1959, he told congressional investigators that the shows had all been hoaxes, that he had been given questions and answers in advance, and that he had been coached to make the performances more dramatic.

Mr. Van Doren served a suspended sentence for second-degree perjury (for lying to the grand jury), went on to work for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and wrote a couple of books after he retired. (He also collaborated on some books with Mortimer Adler.)

The famous New Yorker article from 2008.

As far as I can tell, Herb Stempel is still alive at the age of 92.

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

Decisions, decisions…

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

If I was a book collector and had $100,000 to spend, what should I spend it on?

Let’s see. For that money, I could maybe get two copies of the UK first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Or maybe just one.

Or I could be like this guy, who paid $100,000 for one book from “Healthy Holly LLC”.

Should I even mention that this guy does business with the city of Baltimore? And that “Healthy Holly LLC” is the mayor’s publishing company?

Grant’s firm has long done business with the city. And in December last year, Pugh voted as a member of the city’s spending board to approve a contract with the company to finance capital projects. The value of the contract will depend on what the city uses it to buy.

It doesn’t sound as interesting as Harry Potter, but it may be equally rare:

Pugh was paid $500,000 by the University of Maryland Medical System during a time when she was a state senator and then mayor — and sat on the hospital network’s board of directors. That money was supposed to buy 100,000 “Healthy Holly” books for the city’s schoolchildren in five installments from 2011 to 2018. The “Herbie” book was the second installment.

But even after days of front-page headlines, no one has stepped forward to account for all the books. UMMS said through a spokesman that “production and distribution of the books was managed by Healthy Holly LLC,” Pugh’s book company.

Bonus: the mayor has an “upscale second hand boutique” that’s been selling Groupons. (Groupons? Those are still a thing?) But when a reporter bought one and went to visit yesterday afternoon…

…the door of the Pigtown boutique was locked, and two women who entered the building Wednesday afternoon declined to answer a reporter’s questions or to allow entrance into the shop.

Getting back to the books, it’s a shame nobody can find them: Lawrence has a birthday coming up, and he’s a connoisseur of books published by political hacks to get money under the table.

Posted in Books, Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

Brief notes from the legal beat.

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

Following up on a few things:

The Waco biker trials turned into a huge nothingburger.

All charges have been dropped against Chauna Thompson. You may remember her as the Harris County Sheriff’s deputy who was fired and indicted after her husband choked a man to death during an altercation outside a Denny’s. Her husband has been sentenced to 25 years. (Previously. Previously. Previously.)

From the Department of Well, That Will Show Them: The Texas Department of Corrections has banned all chaplains, regardless of religion, from the death chamber. (Previously. More from Reason.)

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Bad cop! No doughnut!

Friday, March 29th, 2019

Lawrence emailed me about this yesterday: while I think some other people have picked up on this, it still seems to be worth covering.

Paterson, New Jersey police officer (in uniform) slaps the s–t out of a hospital patient lying in a bed. The same officer also previously punched the same man while he was in a wheelchair.

Ruben McAusland was sentenced Wednesday to more than five years in prison for drug dealing and assaulting a hospital patient. McAusland was on duty and in uniform during the March 18, 2018 incident.

How do we know this happened? One of his fellow officers took cell phone video.

Police officer Roger Then recorded video of the assault with his cell phone. Then has pleaded guilty in the hospital assault.

Earlier this month, the Columbus (Ohio) police department disbanded their vice unit. This is the same vice unit that arrested Stormy Daniels, an arrest that Internal Affairs deemed “improper”.

Three out of ten officers in the unit had been suspended, and one – Andrew Mitchell – is under indictment:

…on federal charges of abusing his role as a law enforcement officer, obstructing justice, witness tampering, and making false statements to investigators. According to the indictment, he had kidnapped multiple women and coerced them into sex in exchange for their release from his custody.

Last August, Mitchell shot and killed a woman during a prostitution arrest. He was already being investigated by the department.

On the side, former officer Mitchell (he retired after the indictment) is a landlord. Arguably, he’s a slumlord:

The former tenants interviewed by The Appeal described their buildings as neglected and pest-ridden (the city has filed 37 violations on his properties since 2015 for problems like housing code violations and environmental issues). Mitchell also was known for frequent evictions—381 since 1996, according to county records.

Mitchell is said to own fifteen properties. Assuming he’s owned all of those since 1996, that’s over one eviction per year per property. That seems rather high to me, but this might explain it:

Mitchell apparently was in the practice of renting to desperate women who didn’t have much money, pressuring them to have sex with him in exchange for free or discounted rent, and evicting the ones who wouldn’t.

Sometimes, I just don’t know what to say.

Unrelated to bad police side note that I don’t have anyplace else for: the Supreme Court granted Patrick Murphy a stay of execution.

The State may not carry out Murphy’s execution pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the State permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

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