Jean Marbella has a good column in the Sun regarding trial of two brothers accused of torching a pit bull in West Baltimore in 2009: Somehow, I feel It’s come to this: The rest of us turn our backs on these neighborhoods, and the blue-light camera is the only one still looking. … No similar…
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My mom just got off of an L.A. jury. It happened to be the same courtroom as the OJ Simpson trial. The accused was pulled over in South L.A. for a traffic violation and had an outstanding warrant (for what, naturally, she doesn’t know). Search incident to arrest found cocaine. Seems open and shut… but…
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One easy way to tell if people have no relation to the criminal justice system is if they believe it actually works… you know, works as in guilty people get convicted after a fair trial, innocent people walk free, and victims feel like justice has been served. If you believe that, you watch too much…
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It’s not easy to separate emotion from constitutional issues. Ronell Wilson killed two NYPD detectives in 2003 and was found guilty and sentence to death by a federal jury. Good. Now, in 2010, an appeals court struck down the sentence (but not the conviction… the bastard did it). It’s easy for cops and conservatives to…
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And then you’re found not-guilty. After being behind bars for five years. Now granted, as the guy’s lawyer says, “Ikoli was carrying an unloaded gun” and “there’s an awful lot to not like about what he did.” But he was not guilty of murder and acquitted by a jury. His friend, who he was with,…
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It’s not unusually for to hear people lie in court. What is unusual is for somebody to be charged for it. Of course in this case it took an innocent man going to prison for a rape that wasn’t.
I don’t talk much about the death penalty. It’s not my passion. On one hand I think it’s wrong to kill. On the other I have very little sympathy for those put to death (except for the innocent ones, ‘course). But get a load of this (found here): Regardless of what you think about the…
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Not to stop drivers. Nor to search pedestrians. David Savage reports in the L.A. Times.
Perhaps nothing speaks better to our broken justice system than the fact that people–guilty and innocent alike–are held in jail for more than year beforetrial. Lise Olsen reports in the Houston Chronicle: Though the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial, at least 500 county inmates [out of 11,500] have been locked up…
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Sometimes the courts actual make the right decision. It seems that if you go to Burning Man and get burned by the actual burning man by walking in fire, you can’t sue. Fair enough. Lowering the Bar brought this important legal decision to my attention. I went to burning man once. There’s some incredibly cool…
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