Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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Tales to make you cry. (#X in an ongoing series)

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013

On October 5, 1973, a four year old boy named Josh Miele was horribly burned when his next-door neighbor poured acid on him.

Colonel Pruitt ran the Brooke Army Medical Center from 1968 until 1995, and still practices today in Texas. He had thousands of patients in those years but remembers Josh and his family quite vividly. “For such a devastating injury, they were very realistic about what to expect,” he said. Josh was burned over 17 percent of his body, with 11 percent third-degree burns, mostly to his face. Colonel Pruitt said his chief goal was to save the boy’s sight. But he knew right away that this was hopeless.

Wendell Jamieson was 7 at the time, and lived just around the corner from the Miele family in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn. He vividly remembered his mother’s warnings after the incident. Nearly 40 years later, Mr. Jamieson is a writer for the NYT: he decided to track down Josh Miele.

Josh Miele is now Dr. Josh Miele. He’s married and has two kids.

Josh has a degree in physics and a Ph.D. in psychoacoustics from the University of California at Berkeley. He took several breaks, years long, while getting his undergraduate degree, and worked full time for the technology company Berkeley Systems on software to help blind people navigate graphics-based computer programs.
He worked for NASA on software for the Mars Observer. He is the president of the board of directors of the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind. He plays bass in a band. And he works as an associate scientist at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, a nonprofit research center.

He’s also designed maps of the BART system for blind people. His latest project is the “Descriptive Video Exchange”…

…It’s a kind of crowd-sourced service that would allow, for example, a Trekkie to describe a “Star Trek” episode in a way that other devotees would appreciate. The first version, out this month, will work for any video on YouTube.

Nuts:

“It’s not that I don’t want to be written about,” he said. “I’d like to be as famous as the next person would, but I want to be famous for the right reasons, for the work I’ve done, and not for some stupid thing that happened to me 40 years ago.”

And:

“I never doubted that it was all going to work out,” he said. “It was a foregone conclusion that it was going to be O.K.”

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

“Free” booze!

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013

It seems that there is a “bar” called the White House in downtown Austin. I’d never heard of the White House before today; it opened “late last year” according to the paper.

I put “bar” in quotes because they don’t have a liquor license. So how do they sell alcohol?

They don’t. They give it away.

Signs on the walls of the bar, in an old frame house at 95 Rainey St., provide instructions to customers. They are directed to contribute money in exchange for tokens that they drop into a box to vote for one of 108 charities.

How do they make money if they are giving booze away? Volume, volume, volume! Actually, individual “setups” (which I assume consist of ice, cups and mixers) go for $5-$7 each, or as much as your average mixed drink goes for around here, and a “bottomless cup” is $20-$30.

More:

Thomas said she didn’t need a permit because White House sold only the cup, mixer and ice. The bar provided the liquor, wine and beer for free, she said.

TABC, of course, disagrees with this position, and has raided the White House. But they can’t shut it down:

Thomas “does not hold a TABC permit, so we don’t have any specific authority to shut down the location like we might with other TABC-permitted business,” Beck said in an email. “There is a legal way to conduct that business: by giving the drinks away for free without a required donation. For that reason, we can’t assume that because it’s still open means she is still violating the law.”

Mad props to the people behind the White House for figuring out a clever loophole, but I’m not sure I’d want to drink there.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: March 1, 2013.

Friday, March 1st, 2013

I know I haven’t been posting updates on the Bell trial, but there’s a reason for that: the jury has been deliberating for the better part of a week.

Yesterday morning, the jury sent a note to the judge stating they were deadlocked. And another juror sent a note to the judge stating that one of the jurors had been doing “outside research” on the case. This is a Bad Thing.

The same juror made a tearful request Monday to be removed from the panel because she felt others were picking on her. Kennedy told the woman that although discussions can get heated, it was important to continue deliberating.
On Thursday, however, the juror again broke into tears and said she had spoken with her daughter about “the abuse I have suffered.” She said her daughter told her, “Mom, they’re trying to find the weak link.”
The woman said she had turned to the Internet to better understand the rules about jury deliberations and came across the word “coercion.” After her daughter helped her look up the word’s definition, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and brought it with her to court. When the judge asked to see the paper she went into the jury room to retrieve it.

That juror, known as “Juror #3”, has been dismissed and replaced with an alternate juror. The judge has told the jury to restart deliberations, and to pretend that the earlier deliberations never happened.

It kind of sounds like #3 was leaning towards acquittal, but nobody knows for sure.

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

Random notes: March 1, 2013.

Friday, March 1st, 2013

Obit watch: Bruce Reynolds, the man who planned the Great Train Robbery.

In the early morning of Aug. 8, 1963, a gang of 15 men stopped a Glasgow-to-London mail train about 45 miles short of its destination by tampering with a signal. The train, which usually carried large quantities of money in the second car behind the locomotive, was loaded even more heavily than normal because of a just-completed bank holiday in Scotland, and the thieves escaped with about 120 bags of cash, mostly in small bills, totaling about £2.6 million, or about $7 million at the time — the equivalent of about $60.5 million today.

I remember the murder of Jonathan Levin: it was a big deal at the time, mostly because his father was the chairman of Time Warner. Instead of going into business, Levin chose to teach high school:

The killing of Mr. Levin (pronounced luh-VIN) on May 30, 1997, sent his students and colleagues into waves of grief. His body was discovered, bound with duct tape, in his apartment on the Upper West Side. The police said he had been tortured with a knife for his bank card number and shot in the back of his head. At his funeral, some of his students propped a cardboard sign atop his plain wooden coffin with the words: “We are his kids.”

The Department of Education created the…

…Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications in the same South Bronx building where he had taught, declaring it “a living tribute” to the English teacher’s “spirit, values, commitment and impassioned belief” that every child has a right to a quality education.

Sadly, things haven’t worked out:

But in the past few years, a quality education at Levin High School became harder to come by. Money for a college scholarship in Mr. Levin’s name dried up. A ball field that a Mets official helped pay for fell into disrepair. Computers sat untouched, applications to the school fell and the graduation rate sank to 31 percent, the fifth-lowest in the city.
Now, just a decade after it opened, New York has deemed Levin High School a failure, and is preparing to close it down.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 28, 2013.

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Continuing our N.C.A.A. coverage:

In the past month, the N.C.A.A. and its president, Mark Emmert, have been sued, criticized and ridiculed — and more than usual. They were embarrassed by admitted mistakes in a high-profile investigation. Their critics, growing louder and in number, included a governor, state senators, lawyers, academics and university presidents.

Meanwhile, Joel Bauman is a wrestler on scholarship at the University of Minnesota. He’s also a musician, and wants to inspire people through his music.

His most recent song video, “Ones in the Sky,” which has a positive message and urges people to pursue their dreams, has drawn more than 47,000 hits on YouTube. It can also be downloaded for 99 cents on iTunes.

So?

Because Bauman performed under his own name and identified himself as a Minnesota wrestler, the N.C.A.A. ruled him ineligible for the remainder of the season. J. T. Bruett, Minnesota’s compliance director, said Bauman violated an N.C.A.A. bylaw prohibiting student-athletes from using their name, image or status as an athlete to promote the sale of a commercial product.

(I wonder: if he wasn’t selling the video on iTunes, would the N.C.A.A. still have an issue?)

In other news: your dog wants steak. Your dog does not want rodent poison. Your dog does not want people feeding it rodent poison, especially if it is in competition at Westminster.

A necropsy was not performed on Cruz, 3, who died in Lakewood, Colo., where he was competing in another show. The cause of death remains unclear, but he had symptoms that strongly resembled those of dogs that had ingested rodent poison, the veterinarian who treated him said. She said she felt it was unlikely that Cruz had been deliberately poisoned.

(It strikes me as odd that a necropsy wasn’t done. “[Lynette] Blue [one of the owners] declined for Cruz to have a necropsy because she was confident that he swallowed poison, she said.” But wouldn’t it be better to have a necropsy done and to be sure, as well as having evidence for a possible criminal case?)

(Gee, wouldn’t this make a good episode of “Law and Order”, if that show was still on the air.)

Obit watch: Van Cliburn. LAT account of his 1994 appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. A/V Club.

Dale Robertson. No A/V Club obit yet.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Halt! Hammer-Zeit!

Monday, February 25th, 2013

…Jones returned to the apartment about 7 p.m. He attacked the resident with a hammer, hitting him several times in the head.
The resident wrapped Jones in a bear hug and the pair fell onto the floor. Jones hit the man with the hammer again. The man choked Jones.

Spoiler: things did not end well for the guy with the hammer. And no guns were involved.

This also gives me a chance to note the arrest of M.C. Hammer, who “became very argumentative” when the police asked him to get out of the car he was driving (“…that had expired registration and that was not registered to him”).

Every time I hear “U Can’t Touch This” on the radio, I want to call the station’s request line and ask them to play Rick James’ “Super Freak”. Then I want to say, “Oh, wait. You just did”, cackle maniacally, and hang up the phone.

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

We’re the only ones competent enough to have radios.

Monday, February 25th, 2013

Ever since police officers started carrying radios, there have been radio related problems. One problem is “keying the microphone”: basically, pushing the talk button on the microphone and blocking other people from using the channel, or stepping on other people’s transmissions.

Sometimes this is an accident; you shift a little in the seat of your squad car and accidentally hit the button. Sometimes, though, especially in the New York Police Department, it isn’t an accident:

At least six officers have been punished since 2012 for such conduct. The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, described one case in Brooklyn in which two officers “who keyed over their sergeant” in the last year were each docked 30 vacation days and put on disciplinary probation. “That got their attention and others’ too.”

Officers have also been known to “whistle or quack like a duck to show their disdain for whoever preceded them on the airwaves.”

The NYPD’s radios are assigned to individual officers, and transmissions can be associated with a specific radio, but this hasn’t deterred the conduct. To be fair, some of it could, possibly, maybe be user interface issues:

“I showed them my memo book,” Mr. Padilla said. “I was in traffic court. Maybe it happened while I was turning the radio off. Sometimes you press the key while turning it off.”

Mr. Padilla works in the 33rd Precinct, under Inspector Joseph Dowling.

The inspector has a reputation of being a hands-on boss who is a frequent presence on the radio, often directing resources from the streets himself.
“He comes on the radio and people start clicking,” Mr. Padilla said.

But other than open disrespect for commanding officers, does this matter? Yes, it does:

Sometimes it happens during car chases, when officers have been known to try to drown out any supervisor who might call off the pursuit after concluding it is too dangerous. A number of microphones were keyed on an April night in 2008, for instance, as police officers chased a gunman in a stolen Consolidated Edison van near Yankee Stadium, one police officer recalled.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Radio | Comments Closed

The most dangerous job.

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013

Any bets on when “aspiring rapper” is going to pass “commercial fisherman” as the most dangerous job in America?

And, by the way, you shouldn’t assert facts that can easily be checked, unless you know they’re true:

“He didn’t have a [criminal] record or a history. He was just a good kid trying to make it and be a good father.” Cherry had two children, [Vicki Greco, attorney for the aspiring rapper in question] said.

….

The [Oakland Tribune] reported that [Kenneth] Cherry [aka “Kenny Clutch”, the aspiring rapper] had several arrests in Oakland and Berkeley, many for gun charges. He was convicted on a gun charge in 2007, stemming from an arrest in Berkeley, sources told the Tribune, although details on that conviction weren’t immediately available.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: February 22, 2013.

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

It isn’t that I’ve gotten bored with the Bell trial. It’s just that things have been slow and repetitive over the past few days.

The defense has wrapped up closing arguments. I’d go into detail, but you’ve heard it before: it was all “Ratso” Rizzo’s fault.

“We’re here for Mr. Rizzo’s sins, ladies and gentlemen,” [George] Mgdesyan [attorney for councilman Luis Artiga] said. “We’re here because Mr. Rizzo became financially greedy.”

Also, the prosecution failed to prove their case, why wasn’t the city attorney called, and the whole case is political anyway:

[Leo] Moriarty [attorney for councilman Victor Bello] also hinted that the case against the council members was brought because then-Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley was running for attorney general. He said that if the prosecution put a mirror in front of itself, nothing would appear.

(Isn’t Moriarty a great name for a defense lawyer?)

“Almost like being a vampire, almost like being an evil — they can’t see the reflection because there’s nothing there.”
Moriarty likened himself to Don Quixote, “a man who wanted to fight injustice,” and his client to Sancho Panza.

Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think defending the right of city council members to pillage the city treasury is the kind of windmill Don Quixote would charge at.

And Bello does not strike me as being a convincing Sancho Panza. But he might be able to carry off Don Quixote. Terry Gilliam, call your office, please.

At this point, the case is in the hands of the jury, and we’re just waiting on a verdict.

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

Banana republicans on trial: February 21, 2013.

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Closing arguments have begun in the Bell trial. The LAT has your summary. Since we’re talking about the closing arguments, it basically amounts to “same s–t, different day”.

[Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward] Miller lambasted the defendants’ work on four city authorities, and said the dozens of documents shown throughout the trial — including resolutions for pay raises — were “the instruments by which they stole $1.3 million from the citizens of Bell — proof that the pen is mightier than the sword when it comes to white-collar crime.”

The big question: why didn’t anybody call Edward Lee, the former City Attorney for Bell and the guy who supposedly signed off on all of this? He was listed as a witness for the prosecution, but was never called.

Oh, yeah, by the way: it was all the fault of “Ratso” Rizzo, “a vindictive control freak”.

And:

Talking about [indicted council member George] Cole, who testified that he had voted for a 12% annual raise because he feared then-City Administrator Robert Rizzo, Miller said: “Boy, I sure wish my boss would threaten me with a raise.”

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

The things you learn wandering the Internet.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

A comment over here led me to the official website (are there many unofficial ones?) of Ern Malley, who I had never heard of previously.

Malley was an Australian poet who died at the age of 25 of Graves disease. His sister discovered his poetry in his personal effects, and sent it to Max Harris, the editor of a literary magazine called “Angry Penguins” (really, I am not making that up) for evaluation. Harris loved the poetry, and published it in the magazine, and in a book called “The Darkening Ecliptic”.

And none of what I’ve told you about Malley was true. He was actually the creation of two other poets, Harold Stewart and James McAuley:

Stewart and McAuley thought modernist poetry was pretentious nonsense. They likened it to “a free association test”. They agreed with A.D. Hope that it would be a good idea to “get Maxy” and to debunk what they called the “Angry Pungwungs”.

So they created Malley and his poetry (they claimed all the poems were written “in one grand burst on a wet afternoon in their barracks”) and sent it to Harris in an attempt to puncture what they saw as the pretense of modernist poetry. Hilarity ensued…

…until Harris and “Angry Penguins” became the subject of an obscenity trial over the Malley poems. (Harris ended up being fined 5 pounds and had to pick up the garbage.)

Lawrence would probably enjoy this story, as it reminds me a lot of the “Social Text” affair. As for myself, I think “the black swan of trespass on alien waters” is a neat turn of phrase.

Posted in Art, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 20, 2013.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

We must ban the deadly killer backboards!

Former Texas basketball player Gary Johnson was in stable condition Wednesday morning after undergoing surgery to repair a fractured skull he suffered during a game in Israel, his friend and marketing representative said.

I don’t have much to offer as a Bell trial update. I am assuming the court took Monday off, and there doesn’t seem to have been any reported activity on Tuesday. The LAT does have a story datelined today, but it is just a summary of the past week of testimony, focusing on the whole “it was all Rizzo!” defense strategy.

Obit watch: Donald Richie, “prominent American critic and writer on Japan who helped introduce much of the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema in 1959”. Among Richie’s works was The Films of Akira Kurosawa, a book I recommend to anyone interested in Kurosawa’s films.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: February 18, 2013.

Monday, February 18th, 2013

Friday’s Bell update…wasn’t much of one. Testimony has wrapped up, and the case should go to the jury this week.

There was some bickering between the prosecution and indicted council member George Cole. Cole claimed that Bell needed to pay high salaries “to bring more Latinos onto the council of the low-income, largely immigrant city”, and that’s why he voted for a pay increase. The prosecution pointed out that Victor Bello, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, all of whom were also indicted, were already on the council when Cole voted for the increase.

When [Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward] Miller presented a document that ensured no employee hired or elected after June 30, 2005, would be eligible for the city’s supplemental retirement plan, he asked Cole: “Wouldn’t taking away that benefit adversely affect Latino representation on the City Council?”
Cole replied that it would.
“Did you vote for this because your friends on the City Council and yourself would be covered?” Miller asked.
“It looks like I did.”

When Miller pushed the point that the resolutions Cole and the other council members voted for would allow them a salary of $100,000 a year…

Cole then pointed out that Los Angeles City Council members had a driver, car and staff. “I never had any of those,” he said.
“Did you feel you needed a driver and a chauffeur to get around a 2½-square-mile city?” Miller asked.

Other than that, Rizzo got thrown under the bus again.

Former City Manager Robert Rizzo was depicted as a vengeful strongman, beginning with the opening statements from defense attorneys — one of whom called the former administrator “the thief, the fraud, the destructor of the city.”

Sunday’s LAT ran a story on what council meetings in Bell are like these days. Answer: much calmer. Oddly enough, however, it appears that Rebecca “testified against the other council members in return for immunity” Valdez is still the city clerk.

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

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! watch. (Part 1 of what I hope will be a more than infrequent series)

Saturday, February 16th, 2013

Jessie Jackson, Jr. has been charged with…

… one count of conspiracy to commit false statements, mail fraud and wire fraud in the misuse of approximately $750,000 in campaign funds…

Yes, this is just an indictment; he hasn’t been convicted yet, but all the reporting I’ve seen is stating the indictment was the first step towards a plea deal, and Jackson does plan to plead guilty to at least some of the charges.

The allegations include:

According to the WP, while the co-conspirator was not named, “the description makes clear that [Mrs. Jackson] was the co-conspirator”. She hasn’t been charged in this case, but:

Jackson’s wife was charged with filing false income-tax returns from 2006 through 2011, according to a separate criminal information in her case. That charge has a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

The reporting I’ve seen provides some additional context for Jackson Jr.’s spending. This wasn’t “I needed to pay the house payment, so I took money out of campaign funds” spending:

I remember reading the stories that Jackson Jr. was absent from Congress and out of touch, and the eventual announcements he was being treated for depression, but I did not associate those with an on-going criminal investigation:

Jackson eventually fled Washington for psychological treatment, abandoning Capitol Hill for several weeks without telling congressional leaders why he was absent. Later in the summer of 2012, his office announced that he was being treated for depression at the Mayo Clinic, whose doctors issued a more detailed statement in mid-August saying he suffered from bipolar disorder. Despite his months-long absence from the District, Jackson won reelection Nov. 6 with 71 percent of the vote.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Banana republicans on trial: February 15, 2013.

Friday, February 15th, 2013

That evil Robert “Ratso” Rizzo! He tied people up…and made them take money! The horror! The horror!

You think I’m kidding, right?

George Cole, a former steelworker, returned to the witness stand for a second day and testified that he voted for a 12% annual pay raise for a City Council board in 2008 only because he feared retribution from then-City Manager Robert Rizzo.

More:

“He had shown himself to be very vindictive if you crossed him at that time,” Cole said. “I was worried that if I didn’t vote for this, if I voted against it, he would do whatever he could to destroy the work that was important to me and the community. I knew that was his character.”
Cole said it was the most difficult decision he ever made while on the council but was in the best interest of Bell — a city, he said, where he had devoted decades to advocating for new schools and programs for at-risk youths and senior citizens.

…

The 63-year-old also told jurors that when he discovered $15,500 had been deposited into a 401(k)-style account for him, he complained. Cole said Rizzo refused to remove the money.

Cole is quoted, in a separate LANow blog post, as wanting to give up his salary in 2007, after one of Bell’s parks was closed. Ratso was not pleased:

“He got angry and told me if I didn’t take the salary I would have to resign from the City Council,” Cole said. “I told him that I was elected to that position by the people of the community, and if I didn’t want to take the salary and stay on board that was entirely up to me,” Cole said.

My understanding of city manager/council government is that the council tells the manager what to do, not the other way around. The testimony seems to be that Rizzo was driving the train. Left unanswered so far: why did the council allow this? If, indeed, the council did, and people like Cole aren’t engaging in retroactive butt covering?

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

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