Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

Real estate watch.

Wednesday, July 11th, 2018

Do you have a spare $1.7 million lying around? Or can you get a mortgage for that amount? Zillow says the payments would be around $6,900 a month (20% down, 30 year fixed).

What are you getting for that amount?

Welcome to the Terrazzo dell’Infinito!

Or, in other words, the Infinity Terrace.

Take a step into this Tuscan sanctuary and be whisked off to the Old World.

It’s not just an infinite terrace, it’s a sanctuary. From what, I’m not clear. Certainly not the cares of the world, if you have to come up with $7,000 a month for 30 years to pay for it.

Enjoy the stylish Italian warmth with hints of royalty.

“hints of royalty”. I think you can get that in spray bottles; a spritz here, a spritz there, and pretty soon your home smells like Henry VIII.

The attention to detail was paramount during this design.

But apparently not in the writing of this blurb.

Relish in the tranquility of the grounds that provide multiple seating areas and a pool flanked by statues and lush foliage.

I don’t much like relish myself, but I guess if that’s your thing, “multiple seating areas” (as opposed to just dragging a lawn chair over), a pool, and lush foliage might make the relish taste better. Nothing like throwing some dogs on the grill next to your $1.7 million home.

This property is truly captivating, unmatched by its beauty.

Meh.

This isn’t simply a home-it’s a lifestyle.

Specifically, a criminal lifestyle. You see, this isn’t just any old Tuscan-style home: this is former Democratic state Senator and now convicted felon Carlos Uresti’s house.

He appealed the convictions, but told the court yesterday he does not have the money to continue paying for his attorney. Uresti asked a judge to appoint Michael McCrum, who represented him at trial, as his appellate lawyer at state expense.

Kermit.

Tuesday, July 10th, 2018

I was 12 years old in 1977. I wasn’t an NBA fan at the time (and I’m still not one) but I remember the punch. It was all over the news.

I thought then that Kermit Washington should have been banned from the NBA for life and faced criminal charges.

Some years later, I read John Feinstein’s The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever. There’s some chilling stuff in there. (Rudy Tomjanovich tells a story about lying on a stretcher and asking the doctor why he had a bitter taste in his mouth. The doctor told him, “That’s your spinal fluid. It’s leaking out of your skull.”)

Feinstein’s book also, oddly enough, made me feel a little more compassion for Washington. When I was 12, I was convinced that the punch was a deliberate and malicious act, and that Washington planted his feet and braced himself before he struck Tomjanovich. After reading the book, I was at least willing to accept the possibility that I was wrong, and that Washington, while he intended to strike Tomjanovich, didn’t intend to do the level of damage that he ended up doing. It seemed as if Washington had been struggling for most of his life not to be defined by that one moment: and who among us wants to be defined by the worst moment of our lives?

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that Rudy Tomjanovich never completely got over being punched in the face and nearly killed. The whole story is like a giant pile of sad. Especially now.

Former NBA player Kermit Washington has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in charity donations on vacations, shopping sprees and plastic surgery for his girlfriend.

Somehow, I missed the fact that he was facing criminal charges, but he pled guilty last year to “making a false statement in a tax return” and “aggravated identity theft”. He’s also expected to pay $970,000 in restitution.

Obit watch: July 6, 2018.

Friday, July 6th, 2018

Claude Lanzmann, noted film director (“Shoah”).

Saman Gunan, former Thai Navy SEAL. He volunteered as part of the rescue mission for the trapped soccer team, and apparently ran out of air while delivering fresh air tanks to the cave.

Shoko Asahara is burning in Hell, along with six of his followers.

I’m not very well read in Haruki Murakami, but Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche impressed me, and I commend it to your attention.

Quick update from the police beat.

Friday, June 29th, 2018

Remember the fentanyl laced flyers from earlier this week?

Turns out it wasn’t fentanyl after all:

More than a dozen flyers placed on Harris County Sheriff’s Office vehicles have tested negative for fentanyl after a sergeant was hospitalized earlier this week from touching a paper originally believed to be laced with the sometimes-deadly opioid.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences tested 13 flyers, as well as clothing items and blood and urine samples from the sergeant who had symptoms related to drug-exposure. Those tests were all negative.

Apparently the initial positive was from a field test. This raises some questions that I just don’t have time to discuss right now, but which I sort of alluded to in the first post, and which I’d like to come back to later.

Edited to add: Well well well. Since I posted this update, the HouChron article has itself been updated with quotes from the sheriff’s office about the field test kits.

The Houston Chronicle reported in July 2016 that 298 people had been convicted of drug possession, even though complete lab tests later found no controlled substances in the samples tested at the scene.
All 298 people pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanors before the field samples had been tested in the county’s forensic laboratory. Many of those people pleaded guilty based on the initial testing kits indicated the substance recovered at the scene was positive for drugs. Those test kits cannot be used in trial as evidence under Texas law.

Memo from the police beat.

Tuesday, June 26th, 2018

Oddly, this one is mostly Houston based this time, though there is an APD connection that I’ll mention at the end.

Somebody put flyers on some Harris County Sheriff’s cars parked outside of one of their buildings.

The flyers promoted the organization Targeted Individuals, an organization which believes that the “Deep State” targets certain individuals.
The group believes the FBI and CIA purposefully inflict mental, physical and emotional stress on enemies of the “Deep State,” in part, by shooting microwave technology at their heads in order to cause brain damage, according to the group’s website.

I think this is their website. At least this is the one linked in the HouChron article. There’s another site called “Targeted Individuals” which seems to cover similar ground. I haven’t had time to dig deeply into either of these sites yet, though I’m generally familiar with the whole beaming microwaves/gangstalking/etc. theory.

But that’s not what makes this story weird. A deputy with HCSO went out, found one of the flyers on her car window, and removed it.

Apparently, the flyer was laced with fentanyl.

She initially did not think anything of it but soon started to feel light-headed and showed other fentanyl-related symptoms.
She was rushed to the hospital and is expected to survive as authorities investigate the flyers’ origination. She was released around 4:30 p.m., authorities said.

My first thought was: “How do they know?” Could it just have been heat-related stress or some other condition, and everyone jumped to the conclusion it was fentanyl? According to the HouChron, at least one flyer (I assume it was the one the deputy handled) “tested positive” for fentanyl, and the remaining flyers are being analyzed by the county forensic lab. No idea if the positive test was a field test, or something more sophisticated.

If someone is actually putting drug-laced flyers on cars in an effort to hurt or kill police officers, that’s a pretty serious escalation. I’m hoping it isn’t true, but in the meantime: paranoia and gloves are your friends.

A while back, I wrote about the cases of Terry Thompson and his wife. Briefly: Terry Thompson confronted a man for public urination at a Denny’s and pinned him to the ground. His wife, a HCSO officer at the time, helped him hold the man down. (The wife has since been fired.) The man passed out and died three days later. Mr. Thompson and his wife were charged with murder.

Terry Thompson’s trial was last week. It ended in a mistrial. The Harris County DA announced yesterday that they plan to retry the case. But:

Although all the jurors agreed deadly force was justified under the circumstances, [Scot] Courtney [Thompson’s attorney – DB] said, one refused to find him not guilty of the murder charge.
“One of the jurors said that he could not, he would not vote not guilty – and he hung up the jury for a day,” Courtney said. “It’s disappointing that a juror was seated and swore an oath to follow the law and then ultimately didn’t.”
On the lesser charge of manslaughter, 10 jurors voted not guilty and on the count of criminally negligent homicide eight voted not guilty, Courtney said.

And finally, noted for the record and without much comment, because I just don’t know what to make of it:

A lawsuit has named Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, the City of Austin and Travis County as defendants in a class action complaint accusing them of failing women who were sexually assaulted.

Others named in the lawsuit include Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, former Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley, and Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.

Hyenas on fire.

Tuesday, June 26th, 2018

Quick update on (now former) state Senator Carlos Uresti:

12 years in prison.

(Previously. Previously. Previously.)

(Note how far down you have to scroll in the article before former Senator Uresti’s party affiliation is mentioned.)

Headline of the day.

Tuesday, June 26th, 2018

Rare alligator named Snowball stolen from TV stars during intentionally set fire, deputies say

Flaming hyenas update.

Monday, June 18th, 2018

Democratic state senator Carlos Uresti is resigning his seat.

(Previously.)

Obit watch: June 18, 2018.

Monday, June 18th, 2018

A large handful of interesting obits showed up over the weekend. I decided I’d save them and do a round-up today.

Officer Norberto Ramon of the Houston Police Department passed away on Friday. He had been undergoing treatment for colon cancer, but was told it had spread and was incurable. He intended to seek medical treatment in Oklahoma, but, as it turned out, this was right before Harvey hit Houston…

Prior to the storm, Ramon had been assigned desk duty. Flooding prevented him from getting to the office, so he went to the nearest station, the Lake Patrol, to help while the storm raged.
At Lake Patrol, he filled in for an officer of the seven-man squad. He worked nonstop for three days, seeing adults, seniors and mostly children to safety.

The HPD estimates he rescued 1,500 people during the storm. Officer Ramon was 55 years old, and had been with HPD for 25 years.

Reinhard Hardegen, German submarine commander who sank two ships off Long Island in 1942.

Yvette Horner, noted French accordion player.

…her considerable legend was rooted in the years she spent as a distinctive part of the grand caravan that accompanies the Tour de France, the sprawling French bicycle race. For more than a decade in the 1950s and ’60s she played for the crowds from atop one vehicle or another as the caravan made its way along the tour route ahead of the cyclists.

William Reese, rare book dealer. I was previously unaware of Mr. Reese or his shop, but after reading his obit, I want a copy of Six Score: The 120 Best Books on the Range Cattle Industry. Stuff like that is already up my alley anyway.

Stephen Reid, bank robber and author.

Along with Patrick Mitchell, who was known as Paddy, and Lionel Wright, Mr. Reid was a member of a group of well-dressed bandits who came to be known as the The Stop Watch Gang. The name appeared to have come from F.B.I. investigators who noticed that at least one gang member, usually Mr. Reid, wore a stopwatch around his neck to keep holdups within the group’s self-imposed two-minute time limit.
While there is no precise accounting of their crimes, the police have estimated that the gang participated in at least 100 holdups during the 1970s and ′80s, getting away with about $15 million.

Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Blues Brother and noted sideman.

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has published an obit for Gardner Dozois, as best as I can tell.

Short memo from the police beat.

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

After 18 months, countless hours of debate, and several public meetings (one of which interfered with the Austin Citizen’s Police Academy graduation, not that I’m BITTER or anything), the Austin Police Department finally has a non-interim chief…

Punch Rockgroin! Brian Manley.

As I’ve said before, he seems to me to be a good guy with a truly macho name and a good leader with local ties. We’ll have to see how his tenure plays out, but I am cautiously optimistic.

In other news, the felony perjury and misdemeanor official misconduct charges against Joel Abelove, the district attorney of Rensselaer County (in upstate New York) have been dropped.

I would have sworn I wrote about this at the time, but apparently I didn’t. It’s rare to see a sitting DA charged with a crime, and the backstory is interesting.

In April of 2016, a man named Edson Thevenin was stopped by police in Troy on “suspicion of drunk driving”. The stop escalated, there was a “brief chase”, and somewhere in there a police officer became pinned between his cruiser and Mr. Thevenin’s car: Mr. Thevenin was shot eight times and killed.

After the shooting, Mr. Abelove, a Republican, quickly convened a grand jury, something that the attorney general’s office believed was intentionally meant to ensure that the officer, Sgt. Randall French, did not get charged in the killing. Mr. Abelove had also conferred immunity on Sergeant French before the grand jury voted, Mr. Schneiderman’s office said, and was alleged to have lied to a separate grand jury about another immunity case.

I can see two ways of spinning this: former AG and known abuser Schneiderman was peeved that the state couldn’t go after a cop who was involved in a shooting, and tried to take it out on the DA instead. Or: Abelove was trying to manipulate the grand jury system and cover for a cop in a bad shooting.

Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat who resigned in disgrace last month after allegations that he had physically abused romantic partners, was empowered to investigate Mr. Abelove under a 2015 executive order from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The order allowed the state attorney general to serve as a special prosecutor for investigations into the deaths of “unarmed civilians caused by law enforcement officers.”
In the case of Mr. Thevenin, Mr. Cuomo issued a second executive order that allowed Mr. Schneiderman to specifically examine Mr. Abelove’s handling of the investigation, including “its grand jury presentation.”

What led to the decision to drop the charges?

Justice Jonathan D. Nichols questioned the scope of the authority included in the Thevenin executive order and ruled that the attorney general’s office “was without jurisdiction and hence unauthorized to appear in front of the grand jury,” in relation to the perjury charge.
“The court finds the integrity of the grand jury was impaired in this case,” Justice Nichols wrote. “And impaired to the extent that prejudice to the defendant is clearly possible.”

Short note from the legal beat.

Tuesday, June 12th, 2018

Rose McGowan has been indicted in Virginia on one count of felony possession of cocaine.

Apparently, she left her wallet on an airline flight in January of 2017: when it was found, there were two “baggies” of coke inside.

Ms. McGowan’s defense: there weren’t any drugs in her wallet when she saw it last, and she thinks the drugs were planted by…

…wait for it…

…Harvey Weinstein.

I usually don’t buy the “b—h set me up” (or “b—–d set me up”) defense. And I’m unlikely to be called to sit on a jury in Virginia. And if I were called, I would listen to both sides of the case, and try to render a fair judgement based on the facts.

But: given that this is Harvey Weinstein we’re talking about, I’m more than a little inclined to throw some reasonable doubt Ms. McGowan’s way.

Obit watch: June 7, 2018.

Thursday, June 7th, 2018

Jerry Maren, one of the Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz” and the last surviving little person from that group. (According to the NYT, some young girls were also hired to fill out the Munchkin ranks, and some of them are still alive.)

With a friend and fellow actor, Billy Barty, Mr. Maren in 1957 founded Little People of America, a nonprofit advocacy organization that says it has roughly 6,000 members.
“He took it as his responsibility to show, through a strong sense of self and speaking out and personal example, that little people are just people,” Mr. Cox said. “All of the other Munchkins had a great deal of respect for Jerry.”

Mel Weinberg, of ABSCAM fame.

A convicted swindler with a Runyonesque persona, Mr. Weinberg, facing prison for fraud, traded his criminal savvy for probation and became a principal orchestrator and actor in the two-year operation code-named Abscam. The operation videotaped politicians and others taking bribes from federal agents posing as oil-rich Arabs seeking favors on immigration problems and investment projects.

With chartered jets, limousines and parties to lend verisimilitude, the government-run scam led to convictions and prison terms for Senator Harrison A. Williams, a New Jersey Democrat, as well as the mayor of Camden, N.J., and 17 others. It inspired a revision of guidelines in federal undercover cases and legal and ethical debates over whether the defendants had been unlawfully entrapped.

Travel day.

Wednesday, June 6th, 2018

Blogging will be catch-as-catch-can, especially since the latest update to the WordPress app on IOS appears to have broken either the app or the connection between the app and my blog.

Talk among yourselves. I’ll start: the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire. Discuss.

Okay, slightly more seriously: I’m about halfway through Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence and expect to finish it on the plane tomorrow. I’m liking it a lot, though not quite as much as Public Enemies or The Big Rich.

The most striking thing to me: just how many bathrooms the Weathermen blew up. There are parts of the book that are just a litany of “blew up a men’s room”, “blew up a ladies room”, “destroyed a bathroom”, “blew up a bathroom in the Pentagon”. It’s like these people didn’t do anything except blow up bathrooms (and, of course, themselves).

The whole book is a veritable catalog of certified bat guano insanity. And I haven’t even gotten to the part about the guy with one eye and one thumb (he lost the other eye and nine fingers when his homemade bomb detonated prematurely) who escaped from jail by cutting the metal grate out of his window (ever tried using wire cutters with no fingers and one thumb?) and dropping 40 feet…

If you like your revolver, you can keep your revolver.

Friday, June 1st, 2018

The New York Police Department is getting rid of their revolvers.

“What’s that?” you say. “I thought the NYPD all carried Glocks or SIG with the NY-2 trigger.”

Mostly right you are, Bob, and you’re also a perceptive reader of my blog. But NYPD grandfathered in officers who chose to continue carrying revolvers after the department transitioned to semi-auto pistols in 1993. Yes, there are NYPD officers still on the job, still carrying revolvers, after 25 years.

More than 2,000 city police officers still held on to the revolvers over a decade after Sig Sauer and Glock pistols became standard. Their numbers dwindled with each wave of retirements, to 160 by the time the Police Department announced in November that it was phasing out revolvers completely and permanently.

The paper of record estimates that “about 50 officers” are still carrying revolvers. The department decided in November that everyone would transition to semi-auto pistols by the end of August.

“After this class, the days of seeing a police officer out there carrying a swivel holster or a .38 holster with a .38 in there are basically nonexistent,” Inspector Richard G. DiBlasio, the commanding officer of the Firearms and Tactics Section, said. “It’s tradition and some people don’t want to let go of it, but tactics is always number one.”

But the change has been met with resistance from officers reluctant to set aside the revolvers that they regard as old friends for unfamiliar pistols that have twice the capacity but are susceptible to jamming. Officer Mary Lawrence, a crime prevention officer in the 103rd precinct in Queens, said that was never a concern with the Smith & Wesson revolver that she has used over her 26 years with the department.
“I’m proud of this uniform that I’m wearing and I’m proud of my gun that I carry because it’s been reliable to me,” she said. “I didn’t think that I needed extra firepower at all.”

The Firearm Blog actually covered this when the announcement was made in November, but I’m blogging the NYT story here because I think it’s an interesting piece of “human interest” journalism (hysteria about “increasing gun violence” aside). Especially that photo at the top of the article.

I wish someone could ask Jim Cirillo if he would feel undergunned with his Model 10 today, and if he thinks “gun violence” has increased since the early 1970s. (Also, I hope someone picks up the reprint rights to Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights now that Paladin is out of business.)

Obit watch: May 23, 2018.

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018

Philip Roth, noted American novelist.

I wish I had more to say about this, but: I just found out about his death, I’ve never read a Roth novel, and I don’t much like liver.

Clint Walker, actor. He was the star of “Cheyenne”, and appeared in “The Dirty Dozen” (among other credits).

As shooting of the show’s first season began, Mr. Walker confessed to the crew that he did not have a great deal of experience on horseback. He later recalled the response: “You’ll either be a good rider, or a dead one.”

Robert Indiana, visual artist, passed away on Saturday. He was most famous for his rendering of “L-O-V-E”:

I’m not sure I ordinarily would have noted this, but:

Mr. Indiana believed the piracy of the image harmed his reputation in the New York art world, and he retreated to Maine in 1978.

More:

Mr. Indiana, whose career was made, and nearly consumed, by his creation of the sculpture “LOVE,” had sought refuge here four decades ago, an exile from a New York art world he had come to resent, and settled into a rambling Victorian lodge hall overlooking Penobscot Bay, where he was, more or less, left alone to create his art.

He had become increasingly reclusive over the years, and his friends and associates wondered why. Turns out that, on Friday, the day before Mr. Indiana died:

…a company that says it has long held the rights to several of Mr. Indiana’s best-known works proposed an answer, arguing in court papers that the caretaker and a New York art publisher had tucked the artist away while they churned out unauthorized or adulterated versions of his work.

“They have isolated Indiana from his friends and supporters, forged some of Indiana’s most recognizable works, exhibited the fraudulent works in museums, and sold the fraudulent works to unsuspecting collectors,” said the lawsuit filed last week by Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

They filed the lawsuit on Friday. Mr. Indiana’s death was announced on Saturday. Very interesting.