When you blow into a breathalyzer, the computer spits out a reading that is supposedly your blood alcohol content - or BAC. How do we know those readings are valid? As Lawrence Taylor notes in this post, we don't.
The only sport I follow is mixed martial arts, so I don't know (other than at a very superficial level) who Mike Vick is or why he's important. But a lot of people seem to care about him. One friend told me his season of fantasy football might be ruined. So for those of you who do care, he pled guilty to dog fighting-related charges.
By the way, why was there a federal investigation into dog fighting? While I personally believe that people who harm innocent animals are one step away from molesting children, and while I hope Vick spends a few years in prison, I still think this issue would have been better handled at the state level.
It seems that federal prosecutors were more interested in bagging a big case than justice or anything like that. Using people to further your own career is probably only slightly above organizing dog fights.
It was inevitable, really. Why wouldn't members of the Rutgers women's basketball team sue Don Imus and CBS for defamation? They are not whores, after all. And besides, their hairstyles did differ one from the other.
Kia Vaughn's suit contends that Imus's reference to the team as a bunch of "nappy-headed hos" damaged her reputation. The full extent of the emotional harm he did to her is as yet unknown, her lawyer says.
Give me a break. Until today, I didn't even know the plaintiff's name. Her lawsuit isn't about name-clearing. There is not a person in the United States who really believes that she is an unchaste woman because of Imus's chatter. What she wants is the same thing the knucklehead asking for millions from a D.C. dry cleaner wants -- a windfall.
Ms. Vaughn is one of the nation's premiere female athletes. She and her teammates compete at a level most of us cannot imagine. She is accustomed to enormous psychological stress and strain. Does she really think anyone will believe she was undone by the remark?
College athletes may not be classic public figures, but college athletes competing for national championships on network television aren't excatly retiring schoolmarms nursing auntie Mame's stamp collection in a dark room. Besides, hasn't Imus already retracted the remark in a forum as public as the one in which he made it?
Ms. Vaughn's hair isn't nappy. But she does have stars in her eyes. She's reignited the controversy Imus caused in the name of a quick buck. She's no ho, either; but, like a ho, she's in it for the money.
Yahoo! News has an interesting article about Cop Watch LA - a group of people who videotape police encounters. Check it out.
According to the Bible, both are mortal sinners:
I realize this is terribly off topic, but with all the "religious" leaders making attacks against gays, I must wonder.... Why aren't they also attacking bankers? Will the "religious" candidates refuse to accept campaign contributions from bankers? If not, why not?
Or do "religious" leaders only abide by passages in the Bible that rile pre-existing bigotry?
Do those of you who view gays as sinners (not in the sense that "We are all sinners," but in the sense that they are really bad sinners who will go to Hell unless they stop having sex) have a similar attitude about bankers? If not, why not?
Could you be relying on the Bible to rationalize something that is visceral? People relied on the Bible, many years ago, to justify racism. Before that, slavery.
Yet throughout the times of slavery and Jim Crow, bankers loaned money without reproach. Why?
Roy Pearson has a law degree and a job as a judge. We all know him as the man who sued a dry cleaner for losing his pants. His request: $54 million. Peterson is not the only person who makes outrageous claims. There is an entire class of these people. They are called rabid pro se litigants.
Rabid pro se litigants, like people who make false criminal accusations, are people so far removed from our daily lives that we don't even fear them lurking in the shadows. But God help you if they sue you or one of your clients.
No demand they make is unreasonable. Millions of dollars for a pair of lost pants? You'd better believe that's reasonable.
If a judge rules against them, it's because of a judicial conspiracy - always, always a conspiracy! Adverse rulings make them do even crazier things. It was a pro se litigant, Bart Ross, who murdered a federal judge after she ruled against him. He had an even lengthier hit list of other judges who, by virtue of their ruling against him, were part of an anti-Ross conspiracy.
And what is being done? Nothing. Everyone treats them with kid gloves.
Judges usually cut them an incredible amount of slack. "Deadline" becomes a very relative term, with pro se litigants be allowed to file papers almost whenever they feel like it. Each hearing where deadlines are extended usually involves defense lawyer time. So the person being sued foots the bill for this preferential treatment.
If (almost always, when) they lose, everyone leaves the courtroom as if nothing had happened. The lunatic litigant isn't sanctioned. And he will surely strike again.
Indeed, Judge Roy "I'm kookoo for Cocoa Puffs" Pearson was going to be allowed to keep his job, as a judge, even after the details of his lawsuit were widely known. Only after insulting his boss does he now face removal from the bench.
What's up with that?
I have never understood why rabid pro se litigants are able to escape unpunished. Have we gotten so used to our legal system being used as a plaything for petty grievances that even pure lunacy is tolerable?
People who file lawsuits pro se usually have mental health issues, so I imagine there is an element of pity at play. But where is the pity for the poor schmuck who had to pay tens-of-thousands of dollars to defend himself? Where is the pity for the person who was, you know, actually wronged?
In any event, courts are part of a legal, not mental health, system. I do indeed feel sympathy for people with mental health issues, and I support measures to get them treatment. But allowing them to proceed with lunatic lawsuits is just as bad as letting them randomly vandalize ours homes.
Something needs to be done about people like Roy Pearson. Allowing them to act out in public courtrooms is not the answer.
What is?
I was out of town last week attending the Colorado Rare Book School's week-long seminar. But while I was away, I received an email message from one of the editors of the Hartford Courant, asking if I would write a commentary piece about the challenges of representing the men accused in Cheshire home invasion.
So I did. It appeared in Sunday's paper. The comments posted on-line are worth reading. They suggest why finding a jury not already predisposed to pass judgment and to kill will be a challenge. Anger, Anger Everywhere
O.J. Simpson's tell-all subjunctive confession, If I Did It, will soon be published. But O.J. no longer owns the book. A federal judge has given the book and its rights to the estate of Ron Goldman as part of its $33.5 million wrongful death judgment. Victims At The Trough
The book was printed and set for distribution when public outcry led to its recall. The Goldman family has acquired the book and has apparently made extensive annotations throughout. TMZ wonders whether they will scribble "murderer" across OJ's picture.
I am of two minds about this latest development. On the one hand, I am curious, but the thought of slaking a victim's rage by purchasing the book is troubling. Better to own a copy of the original edition. The controversy over this book makes unusual publishing history.
AP Confirmation:
"LOS ANGELES (AP) - A literary agent for the family of stabbing victim Ronald Goldman has made a deal to repackage and publish O.J. Simpson's canceled ``If I Did It'' book about the slayings of Goldman and Simpson's ex-wife, a spokesman for the agent said Monday.
Details of the agreement, including the name of the New York publishing house, will be released Tuesday, said Michael Wright, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based literary agent Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management.
``The family and publisher have pledged to leave Simpson's manuscript entirely intact, but they will also add key commentary,'' Wright said in a prepared statement. ``The Goldmans, the publisher and Sharlene Martin will all contribute portions of sales proceeds to the Ron Goldman Foundation for Justice.''
Wright declined further comment. Martin primarily represents self-help, nonfiction and memoir writers, including ``You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again'' author Suzanne Hansen, according to her Web site.
The Simpson book, in which he reportedly explains how he might have committed the killings, was not released last year as originally planned because of public outrage.
Last month, a federal bankruptcy judge awarded rights to the book to Goldman's family to help satisfy a $38 million wrongful death judgment against the former football star.
Simpson has maintained his innocence in the 1994 killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Goldman. Simpson, who now lives near Miami, was acquitted of murder in 1995."
Let's face it, the home invasion in Cheshire is national news because the victims were upper-middle class and white. Now a group of urban activists are asking where the outrage is over senseless killing or poor people and people of color in our urban areas. What's A Black Death Matter?
This would be a powerful mitigation theme in any death penalty trial of the defendants in the Petit family murders.
Were I a rapper, I’d have this to say about the Judicial Review Council:
“Wassup with those fools at the JRC? They let judges skate with impunity.
Then came Taco, they say ‘What the hell?’ Start smacking down judgsters who don’t even smell.”
I am referring, of course, to the lawless rebuke of Waterford Superior Court Judge John C. Driscoll. It turns out that Judge Driscoll's got molasses where he should have transmission fuel. The synapses are not firing at full-speed, hence litigants wait, seemingly forever, for decisions. In one case, the parties have been waiting since early 2005 for a decision in an employment case.
Clearly, there is a problem with these delays. It is the sort of thing Chief Justice Chase Rogers and her band of committees on this, that and other thing should address. But a complaint to the JRC?
The council met to consider a complaint filed by one of the lawyers in these aging cases. The panel consulted the Code of Judicial Conduct. They scratched their heads. They conferred. They hemmed. They hawed. And then the Oracle spoke. "There is no violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct," it declared.
Okay. That much seems obvious. But now this: The committee nonetheless voted to admonish Judge Driscoll. Say what? This is lawlessness, plain and simple. Who appointed the JRC to issue opinions that say, in effect, although the conduct is ethical we dislike it nonetheless?
I suspect we are still feeling the aftershocks of Tacogate. After years of somnolence — in one recent year the JRC received 94 complaints about judges and did not even investigate one of them — the council suddenly succumbed to klieg-light fever. All eyes were on the panel as it wrestled with how much ado to make about former Chief Justice William Sullivan's game of pocket pool with an opinion. Taco's omission? He delayed publication of a controversial Supreme Court decision.
I never viewed Taco's conduct in delaying the decision as that big of a deal. Waiting for judicial decisions to drop from the tree of justice has never been an occupation for those in a hurry.
Consider the federal courts, where it is not at all uncommon to wait for years for a decision. Not long ago the town of East Haven waited four years for a judge to overturn an award of punitive damages a jury erroneously assessed against it. The legal question at issue was one we'd expect an aspiring lawyer to answer in 30 minutes on a bar exam: Juries just can't award punitive damages against a municipality. But justice is blind and apparently eternal.
The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals is now suffering the same kind of gridlock. Waits ofa year or more for an opinion in a simple case is not uncommon. Just getting cases docketed seems to be a struggle. Once docketed, the scheduling of arguments is on a cycle akin to Halley's Comet.
I suppose it is better that the JRC investigates delay than the matter be referred to the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee. Another consequence of Tacogate has been the emboldening of committee co-chairmen Michael Lawlor and Andrew McDonald. In the past year, this Mutt and Jeff team seems to have concluded that it should manage the judiciary. I am, frankly, surprised the Driscoll matter did not find its way to legislative hearings.
The JRC's decision to impose discipline in the absence of a code violation, however, is shocking. There is no case law that gives this body common law power to make up the law as it goes along. In the absence of a code violation, there is no basis for discipline of any sort. Oracular admonishments ought not to be tolerated absent misconduct.
Does that mean Driscoll's delays should be excused? Not at all. Perhaps we should simply recall that sometimes the process is the punishment. Driscoll should appeal this lawless tripe, and then sit down and write these long-overdue opinions.
Reprinted with permission of The Connecticut Law Tribune.