Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A few election results that amuse me.

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

Edited to add: Left out one significant result:

Louisiana voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a proposed constitutional amendment that gives the state the strongest gun laws in the nation, according to nearly complete state elections office returns.

(Hattip: Sebastian.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Guns, HCDA, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

As David Letterman always says…

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

…”Please, no wagering.”

Nine people, including coaches and the president of the South Florida Youth Football League, have been arrested as part of an elaborate gambling operation involving illegal betting on peewee, college and professional sports teams.

Oddly enough, the HouChron has a longer story, which states that “more than $100,000” was bet on the youth football championship.

Coaches routinely met before games and set point spreads, investigators said, but they do not believe the games were thrown or that coaches encouraged players not to complete a touchdown in order to control the outcome. Authorities said they had no evidence that the players were aware of the bets.

Yeah. Wanna bet the players weren’t aware that Daddy was betting on them to cover the spread?

Wait. That was kind of insensitive of me, wasn’t it?

Still. Eight-year-olds, dude.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Sports | Comments Closed

Millions and millions of dollars.

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Bal Harbour is a village in Florida. They have a population of 2,574 people, and a police force of 27 officers.

In just one month, the village’s police helped reel in $3 million — and by the end of the year, they took more dollars from drug dealers than any police force in Florida.

Now they are the subject of a Department of Justice investigation.

“No one’s told me that we’re not in compliance,” said [Bal Harbour Police Chief Thomas] Hunker, who estimated the feds have frozen nearly $30 million.

Yeah. Thirty. Million. Dollars.

For the first time, agents have demanded explanations for the thousands of dollars doled out to snitches, as well as payroll records for two Bal Harbour cops stationed in Southern California and Charlotte County on Florida’s west coast.

1. Wait, “stationed in Southern California“?
2. “Though the village tapped into forfeiture funds to pay the two salaries, federal law prohibits police from relying on those dollars to cover the payroll of cops who work seizures.”

More:

In all, the team has helped take in $19.3 million from criminals in the past 3 1/2 years in more than a half-dozen states and Puerto Rico, with the village raking in $8.35 million.

Whaaaaaaat? “in more than a half-dozen states and Puerto Rico”?

In 2010 alone, village cops took part in 23 cases leading to $8.2 million in seizures — all outside of Florida — without law enforcement agents making a single arrest, records show.

This bears a lot more exploration. What are Bal Harbour cops doing operating outside of the village, much less in other states? And how and why are they getting a cut of seized assets for these operations in other states?

And what did the cops do with the money? Well, lots. Computers (Apple computers, no less), beach parties, a boat, a truck, a nuclear submarine, tacos…oh, wait, strike those last two. I was confusing Bal Harbour with Deadpool.

The biggest pay — $624,558 — to snitches over the past four years.

And:

In just one month, records show police plunked down $23,704 mostly on trips to Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Tampa — including two first-class flights to California — and rentals of a Cadillac SRX and a Lincoln Town Car.
…
However, the first-class flights and Cadillac rental were not part of an investigation, but a funeral for a fellow officer’s son and a meeting of law enforcement agents, records and interviews show.

(Hattip: Reason‘s “Hit and Run”.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

More EarthQuest updates.

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

Promoted from a comment left by Heather Dobrott:

The judge in Ohio dismissed the remaining third-party defendants including myself. Holbrook’s bid to attack the Texas taxpayers commenting on Earthquest has been ended in Ohio!

Earthquest and its dubious consultant, Don Allen Holbrook, are getting excellent coverage on Click 2 Houston:

http://www.click2houston.com/news/Where-is-Houston-s-replacement-for-Astroworld/-/1735978/17114488/-/4gxd1yz/-/index.html

http://www.click2houston.com/news/New-questions-arise-about-amusement-park-project/-/1735978/17147970/-/5w8vfgz/-/index.html

I’m delighted that the legal troubles of the folks like Heather asking questions about EarthQuest seem to be ending, and that other media outlets are starting to ask questions about EarthQuest as well.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Going to Montana soon…

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

“These inmates can make a weapon out of a chewing gum wrapper,” said Steven Kayser, whose company sells a floss product advertised as prison-safe. “Floss is right up there on the danger list.”

And yet, the cries for gun control continue.

In other news: gee, I really miss Frank Zappa.

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

Yo! Omar’s covering up!

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Remember James Kwon, “Maritime Director” of the Port of Oakland? Mister “Spent $4,500 on strippers at Treasures”?

New developments: Mr. Kwon has a boss, “Executive Director” Omar Benjamin.

Port officials, however, redacted Benjamin’s name from the copies of the party receipts that were turned over to us and others in response to public-records requests. According to a source close to the investigation, Benjamin insisted he didn’t remember being at the club.

Would you like to guess what Mr. Kwon is saying? Yes: not only was his boss at Treasures, but Mr. Benjamin actually authorized him to pick up the tab. Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Kwon are both on paid suspensions from their positions.

Also, the receipt in question “listed a half dozen directors and vice presidents from BNSF Railway as being in attendance”. This is interesting, because the port claims they followed “‘a standard protocol of redacting the names of all persons that appeared on the reports’ – except the person named in a media public-records request” in explaining why Mr. Benjamin’s name was redacted from the receipt. So if they redacted all the names, how were the BNSF directors listed?

Setting that aside, though, BNSF says that they’ve checked travel records and spoken to their people, and there’s “no evidence its executives were at the party, or even in Houston at the time”. (If they were in Houston, it could have been perfectly legit, as there was a conference going on.)

The way the press is treating this story also strikes me as odd. Both the SFChron and the HouChron seem to be treating this as more of a gossip column item (the HouChron even reprinting, word for word, the SF paper’s story) instead of a story about political corruption, while the Oakland paper seems to be totally silent about the entire issue.

Is it the strippers? Do the papers just not take stories that feature strippers seriously? Remember: it was a stripper that brought down Wilbur Mills.

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

Random fun: October 24, 2012.

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Remember our old friend Randy Adams, former police chief of the California city of Bell, who was seeking a $510,000 a year pension based on his contract with the city?

Ask not who the fail whale tolls for: it tolls for Randy Adams.

The chief, the judge wrote, also wanted to keep confidential an agreement that would have eventually granted him a disability retirement, meaning that half his pension would have been tax-free. His decision included an email that Adams sent to Spaccia during contract negotiations. “I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money?!” he wrote. “Okay…just a share of it.”

Adams still has the option to appeal the ruling. In the meantime, instead of collecting $510,000 a year, his pension will be a mere $240,000 a year.

Glen Berger is writing a book. “Who?” Glen Berger, one of the writers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”. Mr. Berger’s book currently bears the title “Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History”.

Mr. Berger is by no means an impartial observer in the troubled gestation of “Spider-Man,” the most expensive show in Broadway history. He was brought onto the project by Tony winning director Julie Taymor, with whom he co-wrote the book, but he and Ms. Taymor had an ugly split when she was fired in 2011, and a new writer and director were brought in to make the musical more family- and tourist-friendly.

And in other news, the NYT would like for you to shed some tears over the death of poor pitiful Dan Fredenberg.

What did Mr. Fredenberg do?

It was Sept. 22, and Mr. Fredenberg, 40, was upset. He strode up the driveway of a quiet subdivision here to confront Brice Harper, a 24-year-old romantically involved with Mr. Fredenberg’s young wife. But as he walked through Mr. Harper’s open garage door, Mr. Fredenberg was doing more than stepping uninvited onto someone else’s property. He was unwittingly walking onto a legal landscape reshaped by laws that have given homeowners new leeway to use force inside their own homes.

Harper shot and killed Fredenberg. The DA declined to prosecute, stating that the shooting was justified under Montana’s “Castle Doctrine”. This greatly upsets the NYT, and many of the morons who read the paper and leave comments.

But there are some inconvenient facts.

  1. Mr. Fredenberg was drunk at the time he was shot.
  2. Mr. Fredenberg entered Harper’s home; he wasn’t standing in the driveway or out on the sidewalk.
  3. Mr. Fredenberg and his spouse had a history of mutual spousal abuse (physical and verbal), according to the local DA.
  4. Mr. Fredenberg’s spouse was having a relationship of some sort with Harper. She denies it was sexual, but states that they were “intimate”.
  5. Mr. Fredenberg and Mr. Harper had “once clashed at Fatt Boys Bar & Grille in Kalispell”.
  6. Ms. Fredenberg and Mr. Harper were driving around the block that evening shortly before the incident; they were pursued by Mr. Fredenberg, which led to the shooting.

“You don’t have to claim that you were afraid for your life,” Mr. Corrigan, the county attorney, said. “You just have to claim that he was in the house illegally. If you think someone’s going to punch you in the nose or engage you in a fistfight, that’s sufficient grounds to engage in lethal force.”
It was immaterial that Mr. Fredenberg was unarmed. What mattered was what Mr. Harper — who declined to comment through his lawyer — later told investigators: that Mr. Fredenberg was charging toward him, angry, “like he was on a mission,” and that Mr. Harper was scared for his life.

Was Mr. Harper supposed to wait until he was attacked by a drunk man who he’d previously had an altercation with, in the privacy of his own home? Apparently, the NYT thinks the answer to this question is “yes”.

Castle Doctrine didn’t kill Mr. Fredenberg: poor judgement killed him.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Guns, Law, Theatre | Comments Closed

The Quick and the dead.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

This was on FARK, but it touches on so many things covered here, and is such a fascinating story, that I wanted to make note of it.

Thomas Quick was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in Scandinavia. During the 1990s, he confessed to over 30 murders, and was convicted of killing eight people.

Except his name wasn’t Thomas Quick. It was Sture Bergwall.

And he was being fed diazepam while he was confessing to the murders.

And he probably never killed anybody. There is a total lack of physical evidence linking him to the crimes. In several cases, he was convicted based only on his confessions, and in spite of the fact that there was physical evidence directly contradicting those confessions. (For example, in one case, recovered DNA didn’t match Quick/Bergwell’s DNA.)

And he was probably being fed information – information he used to build his false confessions – by the cops. (Henry Lee Lucas, call your office, please.)

There’s a book on the case that, as far as I can tell, does not have a US publisher. I’m hoping it finds one, as this is a heck of a story. (There’s also a good story behind the book; the author was a prominent documentary filmmaker/”investigative journalist” who started looking into Quick’s case, discovered the inconsistencies and other issues, and ended up having Quick/Bergwall tell all to him. As I understand it, this was the author’s first book. He died of cancer three days after finishing the manuscript.)

(Is this, like, a thing in Scandinavian countries? Dying before your book is published?)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Banana republicans watch: October 22, 2012.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Gas is expensive in California.

Even as gasoline consumption has declined in California in recent years because of high unemployment and increased vehicle fuel efficiency, refiners have been able to keep prices about 35 cents a gallon higher than the rest of the country.

Gee, I wonder why that is?

…the reason refiners made a killing while retailers such as Arya lost their shirts isn’t conspiracy, it’s economics. Oil companies operate what amounts to a legal oligopoly in California — an arrangement that probably will contribute to more wild gas spikes in the future.

You don’t say? Tell us more, Los Angeles Times.

That’s because the Golden State’s gasoline market is essentially closed. The state’s strict clean-air rules mandate a specially formulated blend used nowhere else in the country. Producers in places such as Louisiana or Texas could make it, but there are no pipelines to get it to the West Coast quickly and cheaply. As a result, virtually all 14.6 billion gallons of gasoline sold in California last year were made by nine companies that own the state’s refineries. Three of them — Chevron, Tesoro and BP — control 54% of the state’s refining capacity.

But why doesn’t someone come into the California market and open new refineries? Or re-open some of the mothballed ones?

Refiners contend that the price of gas reflects the higher cost of doing business in California. It costs as much as 15 cents a gallon more to refine the state’s clean fuel blend, and green regulations chip away at the bottom line. Fuel taxes, too, are higher than in many other regions.
“It’s a very difficult, challenging market,” said Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn., whose members include most of the region’s oil companies and refiners.
In August, the group released a report predicting that state rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions and push alterative fuels could force as many as eight of California’s refineries to close in coming years.

By the way:

At the same time, the number of refineries operating in California has declined to just 14 today from 27 in the early 1980s.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cars, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Art, damn it, art! watch (#32 in a series).

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Once upon a time, there was an art gallery in New York City called Knoedler & Company.

Knoedler & Company made more than a fair amount of money selling art. As a matter of fact, they made a lot of money selling art supplied by one dealer, Glafira Rosales.

Between 1996 and 2008, the suit asserts, Knoedler earned approximately $60 million from works that Ms. Rosales provided on consignment or sold outright to the gallery and cleared $40 million in profits. In one year, 2002, for example, the complaint says the gallery’s entire profit — $5.6 million — was derived from the sale of Ms. Rosales’s works.

But there are some problems. Ms. Rosales’s “collection of works attributed to Modernist masters has no documented provenance and is the subject of an F.B.I. investigation.” One of the works that passed through her hands, a Mark Rothko painting, was sold by Knoedler for $8.3 million dollars, and has now been declared a fake.

At the moment 14 works Ms. Rosales brought to market — 9 of which were handled by Knoedler — have been judged as fake by authenticating bodies.
A company called Orion Analytical also conducted forensic tests on at least five Rosales paintings and reported that materials on the canvasses were not available or were inconsistent with the dates on the works.

Knoedler stopped selling works from Rosales in 2009, and immediately started losing money. They closed in 2011.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Your Austin nightclub legal update: October 19, 2012.

Friday, October 19th, 2012

When last we left the Brothers Yassine, two of them had been convicted of money laundering; the third brother, commonly known as “Steve” had been acquitted on the money laundering charge, but still faced drug charges.

The Statesman is reporting that “Steve” just pled guilty to a single drug charge, with the prosecution recommending a year and day sentence (with credit for time served). All of the remaining drug and weapons charges against him will be dropped under this plea agreement.

The guilty plea came exactly one week after a U.S. District Court jury found Yassine not guilty of money laundering. Much of the evidence presented at that trial would likely have been introduced in the drug and weapons trials, as well, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg Sofer told [U.S. District Judge Sam] Sparks this morning.

Additionally, “Steve” will be deported after he serves his time.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Banana republicans watch: October 18, 2012.

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

We may need a banana republicans police blotter, too.

The mayor of the city of Hawthorne has been charged with two counts of perjury.

[Daniel] Juarez is the second mayor of the South Bay city to be charged by the L.A. County district attorney’s public corruption unit and the third member of the council in recent years.

The charges against Juarez allege that he took a $2,000 cash contribution from the manager of a Gold’s Gym in Hawthorne, and didn’t report it. This was in 2010:

The gym closed in 2012 after filing for bankruptcy protection and defaulting on a $2.5-million loan from the city.

Which makes me say, “Gold’s Gym needed a $2.5 million loan from a municipal government to open? They couldn’t get a private loan? Doesn’t that…I don’t know…tell you something?”

Meanwhile, L.A. County Assessor John Noguez has been charged, along with two other gentlemen, with taking bribes to lower property taxes.

Last year, distric attorney’s investigators began probing secret, improper tax breaks granted to more than 100 wealthy Westside property owners since Noguez’s election. They also started looking into complaints from assessor’s office employees who claimed they were under pressure to lower property taxes for clients of prominent Noguez contributors, like [campaign contributor Ramin] Salari.

Salari, also indicted, allegedly “loaned” Noguez $180,000, and contributed $5,000 to his campaign. The indictment apparently alleges that the contribution and the “loans” were actually bribes; supposedly, bank records show that repayment of the “loans” started after the LAT began asking questions.

(The third person indicted is Mark McNeil, Noguez’s aide.)

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

TMQ watch: October 16, 2012.

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

Another Tuesday has rolled around, and it is time to take a stab at this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Once again, we’re going to slash our way through the thickets of Easterbrook’s prose, hacking away at logical fallacies when we see them and using our sharp wit to puncture pretense.

After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Law, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 1 Comment »

Random notes: October 16, 2012.

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

As expected, the NYT has a longer story on the “Rebecca” arrest.

The stockbroker, Mark C. Hotton, collected $60,000 for his efforts before his arrest early Monday by federal authorities, who described the scheme as a complex fraud that was “stranger than fiction.”

It looks like Hotton was using some of the same phony “investors” to scam other people as well. And:

…Mr. Hotton and several accomplices, including his wife, Sherri, had secured $3.7 million by creating sham invoices for companies they controlled and selling that debt at a discount to unsuspecting companies.

I’d never thought of that kind of scam before. That’s clever.

George Whitmore Jr. died a week ago Monday.

(waits for the cries of “Who?” to die out)

Whitmore was at the center of a famous criminal case in 1964. He was picked up for “questioning” by the police for an attempted rape; by the time the police finished their interrogation, he’d confessed to three murders (including the murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, aka the “Career Girls” murder case).

Whitmore later recanted his confession, and the police developed evidence showing someone else was responsible for the Wylie/Hoffert murder. Ultimately, all the charges against Whitmore were dismissed.

The Supreme Court cited Mr. Whitmore’s case as “the most conspicuous example” of police coercion when it issued its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing a set of protections for suspects, like the right to remain silent. Mr. Whitmore was tried several times in the Edmonds murder, with each trial ending in a hung jury.

The city of Eagle Rock, California, had an election over the weekend. Eagle Rock is engaged in a fight over medical marijuana dispensaries: the neighborhood council passed, and then repealed, a ban. On the pro-dispensary side is the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has “organized workers at more than two dozen dispensaries across the city”.

Here’s interesting thing #1:

City rules allow anyone who does business in a neighborhood to cast a ballot as an “at-large stakeholder.” [Rigo] Valdez [of the UFCW union] urged supporters to “go into Eagle Rock and purchase gas, coffee, or whatever … and keep a receipt as proof” of doing business in the neighborhood.

And here’s interesting thing #2:

Most disturbing to some neighborhood activists were fliers circulated before the vote that promoted pro-dispensary candidates and offered $40 of free medical marijuana to those who could show evidence of casting ballots.

Only two of the pro-dispensary candidates won, but I can’t tell from the LAT article how many seats were open, or what the pro/anti-dispensary breakdown on the council was before the election.

James Kwon is the “Maritime Director” of the port of Oakland. James Kwon was in Houston for a conference in 2008. James Kwon decided to take “about a dozen shipping industry executives” out for a party.

James Kwon decided to take them to Treasures. I probably don’t need to tell you what Treasures is, as I imagine you can guess. Strippers. Always with the strippers. Mr. Kwon spent $4,537 on this “drink and dinner” reception. (If you figure 13 people, including Mr. Kwon, that’s about $349 per person. That seems like a lot for strip club food, but I’ve never been to Treasures. Maybe they have Beef Wellington. And who knows what they paid per drink for strip club drinks.) Now port officials are asking questions, four years after the fact.

Kwon’s strip-club spending spree didn’t come to port officials’ attention until just recently. The timing is especially terrible for the port, which is in the midst of a protracted labor fight with maintenance and other workers over terms of a new contract.

As the HouChron notes, Treasures also has a colorful history of “prostitution, drug dealing, weapons crimes and sexual assaults”.

I’ve written previously about the strange and sad case of Robert Middleton, and the legal wrangling over whether the boy who set him on fire can be tried for murder. New development:

…[Montgomery County attorney David] Walker has dismissed the murder petition he had filed against [Don] Collins seeking to have his case transferred from juvenile to district court and plans to refile it as a felony murder. This charge requires the murder to have occurred in conjunction with the commission of another offense – in this case the alleged sexual assault.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Almost as much fun as the circus.

Monday, October 15th, 2012

I’ve written previously about the election results in the notoriously corrupt California city of Vernon. When last we left Vernon, the city council had decided they were going to hire a hearing officer and conduct their own inquiry into alleged voter fraud, after the LA County registrar refused to throw out some of the ballots.

Well, the results of the hearing are in.

If approved by the City Council, the decision would tilt the race in favor of candidate Luz Martinez, a former secretary to Vernon’s top administrator, who had trailed 34 votes to 30. It would also reverse a previous decision made by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, which dismissed the voter challenges this summer and called the race for Martinez’ opponent, Reno Bellamy.

Mr. Martinez was endorsed by the Vernon Chamber of Commerce, which also supported the vote challenge.

To be fair, however, the hearing officer (who was paid “nearly $1,000 an hour” by the city) “sided against the Chamber in two cases where voters claimed multiple residences”. Good to know.

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

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »