{"id":11084,"date":"2013-10-24T08:37:02","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T13:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=11084"},"modified":"2013-10-24T08:37:02","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T13:37:02","slug":"notes-from-the-legal-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=11084","title":{"rendered":"Notes from the legal beat."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The courts are busy. Here&#8217;s a couple of quick things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.myfoxaustin.com\/story\/23768849\/jurors-still-deliberating-in-yazdi-murder-trial#ixzz2id796vs4\">Fred Yazdi has been convicted of murder<\/a>. I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=6289\">touched on this story briefly back when it was fresh<\/a>, but mostly ignored the trial: a drunk guy crashed his car, walked away from the wreck, and wound up in Yazdi&#8217;s front yard. Yazdi confronted him, and ended up shooting him &#8211; according to Yazdi, in self-defense. I have a feeling this is not over yet. In any case, it gives me an opportunity to repeat the point I made at the time (and which has been made better by other people): &#8220;Use your gun defensively, and even if it is a good shoot, your life is going to change; probably not for the better.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/24\/nyregion\/skakel-gets-new-trial-in-75-killing-of-teenager-in-connecticut.html?ref=todayspaper\">Michael Skakel is getting a new trial in the Martha Moxley murder<\/a>. Oh, I do love me a circus. More seriously, it seemed to me like there were enough questionable aspects to the original trial that a new one is justified, though I&#8217;m not sure I would have ruled that way based on &#8220;ineffective assistance of council&#8221;. If Michael Sherman was good enough for Skakel at the time (and I don&#8217;t recall hearing Skakel, or anyone else, suggest he wasn&#8217;t), how was he not good enough in hindsight? (I also have qualms about this because it puts me in the position of agreeing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: <a href=\"http:\/\/overlawyered.com\/tag\/robert-f-kennedy-jr\/\">if RFKJ said the sun was going to rise in the morning, I&#8217;d start gathering firewood and sweaters<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/la-me-1024-bell-spaccia-20131024,0,6519071,full.story#axzz2ie2lGTG5\">The trial of Angela Spaccia<\/a>, former assistant city manager of Bell, who served under Robert &#8220;Ratso&#8221; Rizzo, and who Rizzo is blaming for much of Bell&#8217;s corruption, started yesterday. So far, we&#8217;re just in the opening arguments stage. But I did want to make note of this:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/la-me-1024-bell-spaccia-20131024,0,6519071,full.story#axzz2ie2lGTG5\">[Harland Braun, Spaccia&#8217;s defense attorney] said Spaccia wrote her email to Adams as a way to encourage him to lower his demands.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That would be Randy Adams, the former police chief of Bell, who was making $470,000 a year. I thought I&#8217;d quoted those emails before, but I can&#8217;t find them now. Here&#8217;s the <strong>LAT<\/strong>&#8216;s quotes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/la-me-1024-bell-spaccia-20131024,0,6519071,full.story#axzz2ie2lGTG5\">In an email to Spaccia, Adams wrote: &#8220;I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell&#8217;s money?! Okay &#8230; just a share of it!!&#8221;<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/la-me-1024-bell-spaccia-20131024,0,6519071,full.story#axzz2ie2lGTG5\">She responded: &#8220;LOL &#8230; well you can take your share of the pie &#8230; just like us!!! We will all get fat together &#8230; [Robert Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occasion. Pigs get Fat &#8230; Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So as long as we&#8217;re not Hogs &#8230; All is well!&#8221;<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, those are out of context, but I find it hard to see <strong>any<\/strong> context in which those quotes are not damming, or indicate that Spaccia was trying to get Adams to lower his demands.<\/li>\n<li>Sigh. Remember &#8220;Baby Hope&#8221;? Guess what the NYPD taped: yes, the confession. Guess what they didn&#8217;t tape? Yes: the twelve-hour long interrogation. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/24\/nyregion\/police-didnt-tape-baby-hope-questioning.html?ref=todayspaper\">Guess who now says their confession was coerced?<\/a><br \/>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/24\/nyregion\/police-didnt-tape-baby-hope-questioning.html?ref=todayspaper\">A year after the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, pledged in a speech at the Carnegie Council that the department would begin videotaping interrogations from start to finish in murder and sex crimes, two-thirds of detective squads in the city have not yet begun recording interrogations of any kind. <\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Guys, taping interrogations from start to finish doesn&#8217;t just protect the suspect: it also protects <strong>you<\/strong>. Or would you rather spend your retirement <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=9555\">answering questions from <strong>NYT<\/strong> reporters<\/a>?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The courts are busy. Here&#8217;s a couple of quick things: Fred Yazdi has been convicted of murder. I touched on this story briefly back when it was fresh, but mostly ignored the trial: a drunk guy crashed his car, walked away from the wreck, and wound up in Yazdi&#8217;s front yard. Yazdi confronted him, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,14,3,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california-uber-alles","category-clippings","category-guns","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11084"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11088,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11084\/revisions\/11088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}