Police Kill Teen with Stun Gun

From the Associated Press:

JERSEYVILLE, Ill. - A teenager carrying a Bible and shouting "I want Jesus" was shot twice with a police stun gun and later died at a St. Louis hospital, authorities said.

In a statement obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, police in Jerseyville, about 40 miles north of St. Louis, said 17-year-old Roger Holyfield would not acknowledge officers who approached him and he continued yelling, "I want Jesus."

Police tried to calm the teen, but Holyfield became combative, according to the statement. Officers fired the stun gun at him after he ignored their warnings, then fired again when he continued struggling, police said.

Holyfield was flown to St. Louis' Cardinal Glennon Hospital after the confrontation Saturday; he died there Sunday, police said.

Florida executes serial killer

Florida seems to have more than its fair share of executions and serial killers.

Yesterday, they executed Danny Harold Rolling, who was convicted of killing, sexually assaulting and mutilating the bodies of five college students in Gainesville in August 1990.

Read the story.

24, That's How Long

Update to yesterday's post:

Jeffrey K. Skilling, former Enron CEO sentenced to 24 years in prison

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving man.

Former Enron CEO to find out how long

Ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling will find out today just how long he will have to spend in prison for his part in the financial collapse of Enron.

Ken Lay showed him a way out:

His co-defendant, Enron founder Kenneth Lay, died from heart disease on July 5. Lay's convictions on 10 counts of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in two separate cases were wiped out with his death.

Hmmmm......

Seven guilty pleas in corpse scheme

Seven funeral home directors secretly entered guilty pleas in a plot to steal tissue and organs from corpses to sell to biomedical companies, according to prosecutors in Brooklyn, NY.

Neither the charges nor their names were released. They are cooperating in the investigation.

Exerpt:

The seven entered their pleas in closed courtrooms and their names were withheld, but defense attorneys said that among those cooperating was the director of a funeral home that took parts from the body of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004.

The four original defendants in the case pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to enterprise corruption, body stealing and other charges in the new indictment. If convicted, they face up to 25 years in prison. All remain free on bail.

Prosecutors allege Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., and three other men secretly removed skin, bone and other parts from up to 1,000 bodies from funeral homes, without the permission of families. They have accused the former oral surgeon of making millions of dollars by selling the stolen tissue to biomedical companies that supply material for common procedures including dental implants and hip replacements.

Bush Grants Pardon ... to Himself

According to Elizabeth Holtzman, former U.S. congresswoman from New York and co-author of the special prosecutor law enacted in the midst of Watergate,President Bush has just signed his own pardon.

The bill countenances abuse of detainees in defiance of the Geneva Conventions and the country's past moral values and it suspends habeas corpus in defiance of the constitution. As bad as these features is the bill's grant of a pardon to President Bush and his top Cabinet officials for any crimes they may have committed under the War Crimes Act of 1996.

When a president violates the country's criminal laws and then gets a secret grant of immunity for those crimes, he makes a mockery of the rule of law. Then all lawlessness is permissible.

Read her entire statement here.

Judge Bucks Bush Administration

U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl bucked the Bush administration by sentencing prominent civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart to "only" 28 months in prison instead of the 30 years administration prosecuters wanted.

Oh, yeah, the judge also let her remain free on bond by appealing her conviction.

McDonald's on hot seat again

A lawsuit has been filed in Los Angeles alleging McDonald's french fries of causing a severe allergic reaction in an autistic boy.

Seems that the fast-food chain had admitted earlier that their earlier claims of their french fries being free of allergens was not entirely true; the oil they are fried in contains gluten and casein.

According to a Court TV report:

The complaint alleges fraud, false advertising and negligent misrepresentation by McDonald's Corp. and McDonald's Restaurants of California and seeks $15,000 for Roman Brown's medical expenses, along with a share of profits made by the company for the alleged misrepresentation and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The plaintiffs also are asking for certification of the lawsuit as a class-action on behalf of other autistic children who they allege may have been similarly harmed.

"In most cases, elimination of gluten and casein from an autistic child's [diet] results in dramatic improvements in the child's condition, often enabling the child to attend mainstream educational programs in a matter of months,'' the suit states.

The complaint was filed in L.A. Superior Court by Richard Brown, who was id entified as the boy's guardian. The court papers do not state the relationship between the guardian and the child, nor specify the child's age.

Court Orders Grace to Pay for Clean Up

From The Los Angeles Times:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand lower court rulings that require W.R. Grace & Co. to pay a $54.5-million federal bill for asbestos cleanup in a Montana mining town described by federal regulators as one of the nation's most contaminated Superfund sites.

The court rejected Grace's appeal of a decision in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency, which sued Grace five years ago to recover the cleanup costs at a vermiculite mine in the town of Libby.

Anyone who hasn't seen this documentary, should.

Appeals Court Allows Admistration to Continue Spying

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is allowing the government's warrantless surveillance program to continue while the Justice Department appeals a federal judge's ruling that the spying is unconstitutional.

Exerpt:

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program was unconstitutional because it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers in the Constitution.

The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to allow it to keep the program in place while it argues its appeal, claiming that the nation faced "potential irreparable harm." The appeal is likely to take months.

"The country will be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack," the government motion said.

Here's an interesting point made in the news account: "A secret court has been set up to grant warrants for such surveillance, but the government says it can't always wait for a court to take action."

As many understand Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 the government has the ability to initiate electronic surveillance without a court order and still have 15 days to go before the secret court to get the proper warrant.

However, this only applies when Congress has formally declared war.

The problem is that the current administration claims they have the authority to conduct warrantless searches without any court oversight at all, with which many legal and constitutional scholars (and at least one federal judge) disagee.

Could they avoid all this legal wrangling by having Congress issue a formal declaration of war on terror? Who is terror? What is terror? How do you declare war on terror?

It makes our brain hurt.

Blogger Beware

One would think common sense would dictate whether one would engage in libel on the blogosphere, but then again ...

Exerpt:

The legal battles over blogging and message board postings are unfolding on several fronts:

•In Washington, D.C., former U.S. Senate aide Jessica Cutler was sued for invasion of privacy by Robert Steinbuch, also a former Senate aide, after Cutler posted a blog in 2004 describing their sexual escapades. The blog, titled Washingtonienne, was viewed widely after it was cited by a Washington gossip website called Wonkette. In July, Steinbuch added Wonkette to the lawsuit.

•Todd Hollis, a criminal defense lawyer in Pittsburgh, has filed a libel suit against a website called DontDateHimGirl.com, which includes message boards in which women gossip about men they supposedly dated. One posting on the site accused Hollis of having herpes. Another said he had infected a woman he once dated with a sexually transmitted disease. Yet another said he was gay. Hollis, 38, who says the accusations are false, is suing the site's operator, Tasha Joseph, and the posters of the messages.

•Anna Draker, a high school assistant principal in San Antonio, filed a defamation and negligence lawsuit against two students and their parents after a hoax page bearing her name, photo and several lewd comments and graphics appeared on MySpace.com, the popular social networking website.

Update on LA Homeless

There's more than one way to solve the homeless problem.

Now that the Los Angeles City Council has voted down an agreement between the city and the ACLU concerning the homeless, the LAPD, with the blessing of the city attorney, has resumed arresting people sleeping on city streets during the day.

The LA Times reports:

Police Chief William J. Bratton said he authorized the arrests after the L.A. city attorney's office issued a legal opinion saying that officers could arrest homeless people who slept on skid row's streets during the day.

But the new tactics were met with concern from some L.A. council members as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, which has aggressively challenged the city's efforts to remove the homeless camps.

Catherine Lhamon, racial justice director of the ACLU of Southern California, questioned whether the arrests made Tuesday are allowed under an April federal appeals court ruling that struck down the city's ban on people sleeping on streets and sidewalks.

Over-zealous Agent Facing Lawsuit

A Golden, Colorado, man has filed a federal lawsuit against a Secret Service agent for "unlawful seizure, unlawful search and retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to free speech."

According to the Denver Post:

Steven Howards, 54, a consultant to non-profit organizations, was vacationing with his family in Beaver Creek when he spotted Cheney in an outdoor mall shaking hands and posing for photos. Howards and his son walked over and told Cheney that his policies in Iraq are "reprehensible."

Howards said he may have touched Cheney on the elbow or shoulder, like others in the crowd.

Howards kept walking to his son's piano lesson. He returned to the spot about ten minutes later with another son, and that's when Secret Service agent Virgil Reichle handcuffed and arrested Howards for assaulting the vice president.

The charge was later reduced to harassment, then dismissed in Eagle County Court a month later.

As is often the case in such matters, this is probably not the full story, but we guess when the vice president crawls out of his "undisclosed location" agents charged with guarding his life must feel tremendous pressure to keep him safe from things he doesn't want to hear.

Remember the physician on the Gulf Coast last year who told Cheney to go f**k himself? He was not arrested, but that's probably because he said something the veep could understand.

Using words of more than one syllable will get you in trouble.

What is two years in jail worth?

OK, the man's a convicted child molester but to have to spend two extra years in prison is a bit much.

Exerpt:

Attorneys for Fulton County are scrambling to keep a convicted child molester's hands off more than $2 million in county money.

That's because an oversight, a piece of paper misplaced by county officials, left Calvin T. McGee II, 44, behind bars for nearly two years too long.

It's far from Fulton County's finest moment, but it's about to play out in a very public forum.

McGee, who molested two young girls, is suing Superior Court Clerk Juanita Hicks and one of her deputy clerks for $2.5 million, claiming he languished in prison for 22 months because the clerk's office didn't notify corrections officials of his scheduled release date. McGee already has surprised county officials by clearing his first major hurdle — persuading a judge not to toss out his case. Now Deputy County Attorney Willie Lovett, through his appeal, is holding out hope he can quash the lawsuit before it heads to trial.

Needed: More Courtroom Interpreters

Interpreters in federal courtrooms are in short supply:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Federal court interpreter Teresa Thorpe spoke Spanish softly into a microphone as one Hispanic defendant after another stepped forward.

The scene was typical of U.S. courts that are struggling to break down the language barrier between an English-speaking legal system and the growing number of Spanish-speaking immigrants. What was unusual was Thorpe's commute to work: She had to be flown to Birmingham from Kentucky because of a shortage of qualified interpreters in the Southeast.

Class Action Status Approved for 'Light' Cigarettes Lawsuit

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

NEW YORK -- A federal judge today granted class action status to tens of millions of "light cigarette" smokers for a potential $200 billion lawsuit against tobacco companies.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn made the ruling on a 2004 lawsuit that alleges Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and other defendants duped smokers, and responded to consumers' mounting health concerns with a campaign of deception designed to preserve revenue.

The class is anyone who purchased cigarettes that were labeled "light" or "lights" after they were put on the market, beginning in the early 1970s.

Lawyers Not Likely to Have AD/HD

A study commissioned by the Attention Deficit Disorder Association indicates that lawyers are among the professions less likely to suffer from AD/HD, or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to an article published by Consumers Affairs.

Politicians, tradespeople and entertainers are the most likely to suffer from the disorder.

There was no indication, however, about what happens to lawyers who become politicians.

L.A. Homeless Update

Afraid that a settlement in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU would cause the homeless problem to spread outside of skidrow, the Los Angeles City Council voted 10-3 to reject the settlement and continue fighting in court.

Exerpt:

"We will not bend to a legal decision that everyone knows is not appropriate in this city," Councilman Bernard C. Parks said.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes much of skid row, led the charge against the deal, along with downtown business and development interests. They argued that rather than helping clean up skid row, the settlement could make conditions worse by drawing more homeless people from the surrounding area.

The council's action not only forestalled a resolution of the dispute with the ACLU, it also was a rare rebuff of the mayor. Since Villaraigosa was elected last year, council members have been more inclined to court his favor than reject his initiatives.

After the vote, Bratton said he remained committed to improving skid row but warned that the collapse of the settlement makes the job more difficult.

"I am disappointed in that if the settlement had been agreed upon, it would have given me tools to immediately move forward. With the lawsuit we have some uncertainty," he said.

The case could take years to be resolved.

This is America?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

A woman held in a halfway house for months beyond her original sentence because she could not pay a $705 fine was released Tuesday after an agreement between the state Department of Corrections and the Southern Center for Human Rights.

Ora Lee Hurley had been caught in a legal Catch-22 that kept her confined to the Gateway Diversion Center in Atlanta for eight months beyond her initial 120-day sentence for a probation violation.

"We're grateful to the Department of Corrections for taking immediate steps to remedy the problem," Southern Center lawyer Sarah Geraghty said after a five-minute hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge John Goger where the settlement was announced.

Geraghty had earlier called Hurley's dilemma "another debtor's prison case."

Read on in the article and you find Hurley was no saint; she has a history of drug violations.

But to keep her incarcerated past her origninal sentence because she couldn't pay the fine? They were taking everything she earned to pay for keeping her in jail. Of course, she couldn't pay the fine.

That's not right.

Kudos to the Southern Center for Human Rights for stepping up and doing something about it.

From The Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles officials and the American Civil Liberties Union have reached a compromise to settle a lawsuit that has prevented police from arresting homeless people who camp on the streets and sidewalks of skid row, Police Chief William J. Bratton said Monday.

However, not everyone is happy with the reported settlement:

"Any settlement that leaves people living on the street in filthy conditions and permits chaos from 9 to 6 every night in one critical area of the city is unacceptable," said Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn.

We did not see anywhere in the Times article where business interests offered any alternative. Are they willing to help fund shelters for the less fortunate in our society? Probably not; there's no profit in it.

Homelessness, is a problem countrywide, and one that is not going to get any better in the foreseeable future.

It will take all of us working together to find the answers, and they will be different for each community.