Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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And another bulletin from Bizarro world.

Sunday, February 23rd, 2014

Missed this until the NYT picked it up today: Steven Mandell was convicted on Friday of one set of charges relating to a kidnapping plot.

Specifically, Mandell was convicted of plotting to

…kidnap a Riverside, Ill., businessman, and then torture and extort money from him. He planned to kill and dismember him in an office that Mr. Mandell and an accomplice had equipped with saws and a sink in which to drain their victim’s blood, the authorities said.

Apparently, Mandell and his accomplice wanted the businessman to turn over ownership of 25 buildings to them.

What’s so odd about this? Well…

1. Mandell was actually acquitted on a second set of charges; the claim was that he intended to kill another businessman, along with that guy’s wife, so he could get control of their strip club. The strip club was reportedly “mob connected”.
2. Keeping with our theme for the day, Mandell’s supposed accomplice killed himself in jail before the trial.
3. Mandell was a former officer with the Chicago Police Department. No, really, I am not making this up. He served for 10 years and left the force in 1983.
4. So why am I not making “only ones” jokes or suggesting the CPD needs adult supervision? (It does, but not because of Mandell.) Because Mandell’s history since 1983 has been “colorful”.

Formerly known as Steven Manning, he was convicted in 1992 for his role in the 1984 kidnapping of two reputed Kansas City drug traffickers and was sentenced to two life terms plus 100 years. He was cleared of those charges on appeal, and in 2005, he was awarded more than $6.5 million in damages by a federal jury that determined that two F.B.I. agents had framed him. A federal judge threw out the award in 2006.

Framed by the F.B.I. But wait, the story gets even better!

In 1993, Mandell was convicted of murdering Jimmy Pellegrino in 1990. Pellegrino owned a trucking company, and was allegedly murdered by Mandell as part of a drug deal, according to an informant with Mafia ties.

Mandell spent eight years on death row. And I bet you know what happened next: that’s right, the conviction was overturned on appeal, and Mandell walked in that case as well. (That KansasCity.com link has some more background on why both of these convictions were thrown out. And Mandell’s supposed accomplice in the current case? The one who killed himself in jail? He was also convicted in the KC kidnapping, and also had his conviction overturned on appeal, based in large part on the evidence Mandell collected in his civil case.)

So I’m avoiding cop snark in general here, and CPD snark in particular, because I don’t know what to make of this. It seems like there’s two possibilities: Mandell is a really bad guy who got lucky twice in having his convictions thrown out. Or somebody in law enforcement has a real problem with Mandell, has gone after him three times, lost twice (“Jurors also found that the investigators encouraged perjury, fabricated evidence, and concealed those facts from Clay County prosecutors.“), and now they have at least a temporary victory. It’ll be interesting to see if this holds up.

(I suppose there is a third possibility: why not both? But if Mandell really is such a bad guy, why did law enforcement need to fabricate evidence against him?)

It will also be interesting to read the true-crime book that I’m sure someone is writing about this case.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Here’s an ending for you.

Sunday, February 23rd, 2014

The case of Alfredo Enrique Tello is over. And the ending is almost as strange as the rest of the case.

Tello was murdered (according to Murderpedia, he was “beaten with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun”: there’s a “gun” death for you, Weer’d) and dismembered in 1997 by two scumbags, Samuel Sheinbein and Aaron Needle. Sheinbein was 17, and I believe (but can’t confirm) Needle was as well; Tello was 19.

Shienbein fled the US for Israel before he was arrested. As soon as he reached Israel, he claimed citizenship and argued that he couldn’t be extradited because he was an Israeli citizen.

This, of course, turned into an enormous “who struck John” that went on for a while. Ultimately the Israeli courts ruled that Sheinbein couldn’t be extradited because he was a citizen: but he could be tried for the murder in Israel and imprisoned there. He pled guilty in 1999. (Needle killed himself just before going on trial.)

Anyway, Shienbein was sentenced to 24 years in an Israeli prison, with the possibility of parole in 16 years. He was also eligible to get furloughs after four years.

So now we’re at 2014. He’s got a shot at parole in two more years. What happens next?

…Sheinbein made a bathroom stop while being transferred from one cell to another in the Rimonim prison in central Israel, a maximum security jail. He reportedly pulled out a handgun and shot three prison guards escorting him, seriously wounding one of them.

Yes. Somehow he obtained a gun in a maximum security jail in Israel. (Authorities are saying he didn’t grab it from one of the guards.) The Israelis called in a SWAT team and attempted to negotiate, he fired shots at the SWAT team, they shot back, and Sheinbein “was mortally wounded when they fired back and died despite medical attention.”

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as Jay G. likes to say.

Oh, those furloughs? According to the LAT Sheinbein was considered “so dangerous” they were denied to him until last year. And a few weeks ago, while he was on one of his furloughs from prison, he attempted to steal a handgun from somebody who had one for sale. That crime sounds about as inept as the shootout; Sheinbein jumped out of a moving car with the gun, the driver stopped, ran after him, grabbed him, and turned him over to the cops, who were quite surprised to find out they were dealing with a notorious murderer on furlough…

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: February 21, 2014.

Friday, February 21st, 2014

You may recall that last year, members of the city council of the notoriously corrupt city of Bell stood trial. One member was completely acquitted of the charges against him; the other five were found guilty on some charges, and had mistrials declared on others. The prosecution had indicated it planned to retry the cases that ended in mistrials.

However, the LAT is reporting that the prosecution is playing “Let’s Make a Deal” instead:

Five former Bell council members accused of looting the small city are scheduled to be in court Friday to consider an offer of a maximum four-year prison term in exchange for their guilty pleas.
The former leaders already face possible eight-year prison terms after being convicted on related corruption charges last year, making the four-year offer attractive.

It isn’t clear from the article, but my assumption is that the four-year terms would run concurrently with the eight-year ones, so the council members wouldn’t actually serve any additional time. But first they have to agree to the plea deal, and that doesn’t sound like a sure thing.

Edited to add: Indeed. The LAT is now reporting that only one out of five former council members expressed any desire to take the deal; the prosecution says either all five take the deal, or

Anyway, the lawyers have asked for more time, and it looks like the next hearing will be April 3rd. Watch this space for updates.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Cahiers du cinéma: American Hustle

Monday, February 17th, 2014

This is why I love the Alamo Drafthouse so much. I was sitting in my seat watching the closing credits. The usher/waiter came over and asked me, “Was everything okay? Did you have any issues?” And I told him, kind of jokingly, “The only issue I had is that I can’t get these darn pens to write.” (There’s pens at each seat that you use to write down your order.)

And the guy smiles at me, says “Here. Go see a movie on me.” and hands me a free pass. When was the last time this happened to you?

===

I liked “American Hustle” a little better than “The Wolf of Wall Street” for two reasons. Namely, these two:

Sometimes, what is hidden is sexier than what is revealed.

Ms. Adams is wonderful. As are her costumes. I could stare at her all day long (or at least until she said “Stop staring at my cleavage”) and would happily take her out for the usual cheeseburger and house red.

Christian Bale completely disappears into the role of an overweight balding scam artist, and Bradley Cooper is fine as his FBI handler. “Hustle” is a perfectly fine way to spend a little over two hours. (At least it is fairly efficient in its storytelling, with no digressions about Quaaludes.) It even has a redemptive arc. So why don’t I have warmer feelings about the movie? Idiosyncratic personal reasons, which you can agree or disagree with.

There is a school of criticism that says you should judge the movie based on what’s on the screen, not the background or the subtext or even how closely it sticks to real events, even if it claims to be “based on a true story”. I mostly agree with this school of thought, but as I get older and Hollywood turns out more “based on a true story” movies, I start to think that it is fair to judge a movie that makes that claim, at least in part, on how closely it sticks to the facts. I don’t think that should be the only factor, but I do believe it is fair to say, “Look, the people behind this movie changed X, Y, and Z, their reasons for doing so aren’t convincing, and I think these changes make the movie weaker.”

“American Hustle”, to be fair, does not claim to be “based on a true story”. David O. Russell states up front that “Some of this actually happened”. And it is arguably fair for him and for the writers to deviate some from the real story behind Abscam.

My problem is that I read Robert Greene’s The Sting Man: Inside Abscam last week (in addition to having lived through Abscam) so the real story is fresh in my mind. And I had problems with the choices Russell made.

Specifically, I didn’t buy into the whole love triangle between Richie DiMaso (the FBI agent), Irving Rosenfeld (the Bale character) Sydney Prosser (the Amy Adams character, who starts out as Rosenfeld’s mistress). Other than Sydney wearing dresses slit down to waist level, what is the reason for the engaged DiMaso to fall so hard for her, hard enough to endanger his career? (In the real world, the Rosenfeld character’s mistress was nowhere near as heavily involved in Abscam as “Prosser” was; the Rosenfeld character got her off the hook as a condition for participating in the operation.)

What happens between the three of them sets up a nice twist ending that gives us catharsis; but the catharsis wouldn’t have been needed without that peculiar choice, which seems to have been motivated primarily by the desire to show off Amy Adams’ cleavage. (I won’t give away the twist in case you haven’t seen the movie, but in reality? Nothing even remotely close to it happened.)

Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe I’m being unfair to the movie. But I think Russell could have made just as good a movie by sticking closer to the true story, while still working in Ms. Adams and her spectacular cleavage.

Posted in Books, Endorsements, Law, Movies | Comments Closed

My humps, my humps…

Friday, February 14th, 2014

A camel that escaped from a Palmdale property and began charging people and cars is now in the custody of animal control officials.

Thoughts:

1. I admit I’ve written some bad Perl code. But I don’t recall writing any that ran away. SQL queries, yes, but not Perl code.
2. “Runaway Camel” sort of sounds like a stunt organized by those truth jackasses.
3. I have a “primates” tag; do I need a “mammals” tag?

Edited to add: I think I do need a “mammals” tag, and an associated “camels” tag. But even though primates are mammals, I don’t feel right moving the “primates” tag under the “mammals” tag, so I’m keeping them separate for now.

Posted in California Über Alles, Camels, Clippings, Cops, Geek, Law, Mammals, Perl, Programming Languages | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! watch (#9 in a series)

Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

And I was worried that I wouldn’t find anything worth writing about today.

Ray Nagin, the former two-term mayor of New Orleans indicted after he left office, was convicted Wednesday of 20 federal corruption charges, stemming from illegal dealings with city vendors dating back to 2004. A jury delivered the verdict just before 1 p.m. after roughly six hours of deliberations that followed a nine-day trial.

Nola.com states that “Under federal sentencing rules, he could be facing a 20-year prison term, possibly more…” I would take that with a large grain of salt, given that they don’t show their work.

Here’s a helpful complete breakdown of all the charges. Note, for the record, that Mayor Chocolate City was acquitted on one bribery count. I hope he enjoys those granite countertops.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Flames. Tax-fattened. Hyena. Etc. (#8 in a series)

Saturday, February 8th, 2014

The mayor of New Jersey’s struggling capital city was convicted of bribery, fraud and extortion on Friday, joining a long list of the state’s mayors to have been found guilty of corruption in recent years.

Tony Mack and his brother “had participated in a scheme to take money in exchange for helping get approvals to develop a downtown parking garage. The deal was fictitious and part of a government investigation.”

Mayor Mack was convicted of both wire and mail fraud (a two-fer!) plus accepting bribes, “attempted extortion”, and “official extortion conspiracy”. His brother was convicted on extortion and bribery counts.

Since 2000, mayors of the New Jersey communities of Asbury Park, Camden, Hamilton, Hoboken, Newark, Orange, Passaic, Paterson and Perth Amboy, among others, have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in corruption cases.

Two additional points:

1. Mayor Mack’s party affiliation is mentioned in the third paragraph of the article.
2. Mayor Mack was a member of “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”. I won’t link to it, but a quick Google search will turn up a press release on the MAIG site quoting Mayor Mack and stating he is a member.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

The LAPD eight.

Thursday, February 6th, 2014

A brief followup:

Eight Los Angeles police officers who violated department policy when they mistakenly opened fire on two women during the hunt for Christopher Dorner will be retrained and returned to the field, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a department-wide message Wednesday.

More:

“While I understand supervisors and officers were required to make split-second decisions regarding the perceived threat presented before them I found it to be very concerning that officers fired before adequately identifying a threat; fired without adequately identifying a target and not adequately evaluating cross fire situations,” Beck said.

And:

If Beck does discipline the officers, the penalties are expected to be warnings, written admonishments or similarly light punishments, the sources said.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

From the files of Captain Obvious.

Tuesday, February 4th, 2014

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has found that eight officers who opened fire on two women in a pickup truck during a search for Christopher Dorner violated the department’s policy on using deadly force, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.

You do remember the pickup truck story, don’t you?

As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the truck. When the shooting stopped, they realized their mistake. The truck was a different make and model. The color wasn’t gray, as Dorner’s was, but blue. And it wasn’t Dorner inside the truck, but a woman and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times.

And, of course, the unarmed women never fired on the cops or displayed a weapon…

This is priceless:

A panel of high-ranking police officials that reviewed the shooting urged Beck to clear the officers of wrongdoing, said the sources, who spoke on the condition that their names not be used because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

They shot up a pickup truck with two unarmed women in it, and “high-ranking police officials” wanted them cleared?

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Tax-fattened hyena watch.

Tuesday, February 4th, 2014

Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) said Tuesday that he plans to resign from Congress this month to take a job with a Philadelphia-based law firm, a move he said is best for his family.

“a move he said is best for his family”. Is your Spidey-sense tingling yet?

A report released in 2012 detailed how in May 2011 Andrews initially used personal funds to pay roughly $16,500 for four business-class airplane tickets for himself, his wife and two daughters to attend a wedding in Scotland. Andrews later had the money refunded and paid for the tickets with funds from his leadership PAC and has generally denied any wrongdoing. The Office of Congressional Ethics report, which was released by the House Ethics Committee, said that Andrews “refused to provide requested documents” to investigators related to his travels and provided credit card statements only “after making significant redactions.”

Andrews also allegedly used “a graduation party for his daughter to raise campaign cash.” Both of these things are violations of Federal law, in addition to House ethics rules.

By way of Grits for Breakfast, here’s a mildly interesting story: Aaron Rosenberg is suing his former employer and claims to be cooperating in “an ongoing federal investigation” of same.

So? Mr. Rosenberg’s former employer is Redflex Traffic Systems, one of the companies behind red light cameras.

Aaron Rosenberg, who was the company’s top national salesman, said in a civil defamation claim against Redflex that he was made a “scapegoat” to cover up a long-standing practice of “providing government officials with lavish gifts and bribes” after the Tribune began asking questions about the Chicago contract.
Redflex fired Rosenberg and sued him for damages in Arizona court in February, largely blaming him for the company’s wrongdoing in Chicago. In a counterclaim filed in October, Rosenberg disclosed that he provided information to local and federal investigators as well as to the outside attorney who conducted a damaging private investigation of the company.

And more:

Rosenberg said that during his tenure Redflex “bestowed gifts and bribes on company officials in dozens of municipalities within, but not limited to the following states: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia.”

Texas, eh? Would you like to guess some of the cities in Texas that have Redflex contracts? You don’t have to: Grits lists a few of them at his site. And yes, Austin is one of them.

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Law, Politics, Texas | Comments Closed

Too bad I have no musical talent.

Friday, January 31st, 2014

The Government Series II Les Paul guitar. (Hattip: Sharp as a Marble.)

What I really want is for Oleg Volk (or an equally talented photographer) to do a shoot with this and a Colt Government Model. Why? No reason, really; it just tickles my sense of whimsey.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: January 28, 2014 (part 2).

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

Where were we? Oh, yes: cheerleaders.

(more…)

Posted in Clothing, Food, Law, NFL, Pants, Sports | 4 Comments »

TMQ Watch: January 28, 2014 (part 1).

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

We were wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! This is appropriate, as part of TMQ’s column this week is the “bad predictions review”.

Why were we wrong? We predicted last week that TMQ would use this week’s column for lots of gratuitous TV bashing. Instead, there’s pretty much…none.

So how does TMQ fill column space in this, the most boring week in football? After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law, Neuroscience, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 28, 2014.

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

Yeah, yeah, Pete Seeger’s dead. A couple of reactions I liked: Tam. Travis McGee Reader.

One additional thing you have to like Pete for: giving a name to one of the great combat aircraft of our time.

How unethical do you have to be in order to be denied a law license in California? This unethical.

Or do you? I’ve seen a fair number of people posing this as Glass being unfairly denied a shot at redemption. After all, his crimes were nearly twenty years ago, they argue, and for the past ten years he’s not only kept his nose clean but done “exemplary” work as a clerk for a law firm.

And I’m not unsympathetic to the “shot at redemption” argument. I don’t hold any brief for Glass, or his behavior, and it bothers me a little that I’m more willing to give him that shot than I was Michael Vick. I need to search my soul a little more over this.

But the hand wringing is a little more offputting. Those arguing in favor of Glass seem to be missing some key findings:

The record also discloses instances of dishonesty and disingenuousness occurring after Glass’s exposure, up to and including the State Bar evidentiary hearing in 2010. In the New York bar proceedings that ended in 2004, as even the State Bar Court majority acknowledged, he made misrepresentations concerning his cooperation with The New Republic and other publications and efforts to aid them identify all of his fabrications. He also submitted an incomplete list of articles that injured others. We have previously said about omissions on bar applications: “Whether it is caused by intentional concealment, reckless disregard for the truth, or an unreasonable refusal to perceive the need for disclosure, such an omission is itself strong evidence that the applicant lacks the ‘integrity’ and/or ‘intellectual discernment’ required to be an attorney.” (Gossage, supra, at p. 1102, italics added.)

And:

Our review of the record indicates hypocrisy and evasiveness in Glass’s testimony at the California State Bar hearing, as well. We find it particularly disturbing that at the hearing Glass persisted in claiming that he had made a good faith effort to work with the magazines that published his works. He went through many verbal twists and turns at the hearing to avoid acknowledging the obvious fact that in his New York bar application he exaggerated his level of assistance to the magazines that had published his fabrications, and that he omitted from his New York bar list of fabrications some that actually could have injured real persons. He also testified that he told his lawyer to work with Harper’s Magazine to identify his fabrications, yet evaded questions concerning whether his lawyer had done so, while insisting that he took responsibility for an inferred failure to follow what obviously were significant instructions. He asserted that he had been too distraught to recognize that the list of fabrications The New Republic gave his lawyer was incomplete — or that in his response he had denied that articles including the egregious Taxis and the Meaning of Work were in fact fabricated — while acknowledging that within a few days of his firing he made arrangements to reschedule a final examination for the end of the exam period and did well on the exam he took within a week of his exposure. Indeed, despite his many statements concerning taking personal responsibility, and contrary to what he suggested in his New York bar application, it was not until the California Bar proceedings that he shouldered the responsibility of reviewing the editorials his employers published disclosing his fabrications, thus failing to ensure that all his very public lies had been corrected publically and in a timely manner. He has “not acted with the high degree of frankness and truthfulness” and the “high standard of integrity” required by this process.” (Gossage, supra, 23 Cal.4th at p. 1102, italics added.)

This strikes me as being less “a bunch of snobs who don’t want to let a reformed man in” and more “we found ongoing evidence of dishonesty and deceit by this person who is supposedly reformed and asking us for special consideration”.

I totally missed this one until today:

A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday convicted state Sen. Roderick D. Wright on all eight counts in his perjury and voter fraud trial…
In a trial that began Jan. 8, prosecutors accused Wright of faking a move to a rental property he owned in Inglewood so he could run in what was then the 25th Senate District.
They accused him of lying on voter registration and candidacy documents and of casting ballots in five elections he was not entitled to vote in from the Inglewood address.

(Sen. Wright’s party affiliation is actually mentioned in the second paragraph, which I trimmed for space reasons.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Media, Music, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Quickie followup.

Saturday, January 25th, 2014

A while back, I wrote about the strange case of Brian Mulligan, who may (or may not) have been high on “bath salts” and may (or may not) have been assaulted by the LAPD, but was definitely suing the department.

Well, the case went to trial, and…

…the jury found for the LAPD.

Not sure I have any feelings about this one way or the other; I was pretty skeptical about both sides and their respective stories. But I did want to make note of the verdict if, for no other reason, than the historical record.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

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