Eddie Wise got along by cadging a dollar here and a dollar there from strangers in the Bronx. Not in a thousand years would he have dreamed of waking up with $100,000 in his pocket, had he not had the good fortune to be wrongfully arrested. Thanks, NYC taxpayers! (Jennifer Gonnerman, New York magazine, May 14).
Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’
“A moral pork barrel to express theatrical empathy”
Update: Phony class action nabs murderer
Back in 2003, we noted the tale of police nabbing a suspected murderer by getting a DNA sample by tricking him into licking an envelope for a phony class-action solicitation. State of Washington v. John Nicholas Athan, Howard Bashman documents (via Kerr @ Volokh), has upheld the resulting conviction for murder.
“Shocking number” of innocents convicted
What DNA testing is telling us about the reliability of our court system — even the criminal side of it, where “beyond a reasonable doubt” and other procedural protections are supposed to guard against false positives (Virginia Postrel, Apr. 29).
Tierney, blogosphere on Dr. William Hurwitz verdict
John Tierney does some good reporting on the compromise federal jury verdict that criminally convicted William Hurwitz on sixteen counts of drug-dealing: “Lapses in medical judgment – or even just differences in medical judgment – have been criminalized. A doctor can be suddenly redefined as a non-doctor. All it takes is a second opinion from a jury.” Also: Kirkendall, Sullum, Kevin MD, Szalavitz, Balko, Satel (2004), Cato (2004), Hurwitz web site. Related on Overlawyered: Jan. 19, 2006, Jun. 15-17, 2001.
Canada: “Crook wins damages for injury during theft”
“A Canadian man who admitted shoplifting C$106 in razor blades has been awarded C$12,000 ($10,645) for injuries he suffered when he was tackled by store security guards. … [Daniel] Baines, who represented himself, said employees of the supermarket in a Vancouver suburb used unreasonable force when he struggled during his capture.” (Reuters, Apr. 20). Which suggests once again that Canada has still not “Americanized” its litigation system in any thoroughgoing way: how unlikely is it that a suit in a large American city by an injured-while-struggling thief, if successful, would result in an award as modest as $10,645? More: compare Jun. 13, 2006 (Rochester, N.Y. case).
First Palfrey scalp
A Deputy Secretary of State resigned after ABC News tracked down his cell-phone number from the alleged D.C. madam’s records in anticipation of a 20/20 story they’ll be running on Deborah Jeane Palfrey (Mar. 20). (The Blotter via Franke-Ruta) The Washington Post story does more to play the blackmail angle that ABC ignores.
Update: and still more on the front page of the Sunday WaPo.
People v. Phil Spector
The LA Superior Court has posted the 18-page jury questionnaire, which is relatively restrained as these things go. Less restrained appears to be the blame-the-victim tactics that defense attorneys apparently plan to use. Slate’s Timothy Noah has a good overview and is blogging the trial from his tv set; the LA Times and CourtTV also have blogs and a web page of resources. Amazingly, in the midst of a murder investigation, Spector decided to sue his first criminal defense attorney, former OJ-Dream-Teamer Robert Shapiro, who successfully bailed him out; the resulting civil deposition of Spector has to be seen to be believed, and probably has something to do with Spector’s decision to drop the suit in 2005. Spector is on his third set of defense attorneys.
Update: the LA Superior Court’s website appears to use dynamic addressing that prevents the deep-linking I’m doing for the jury questionnaire and briefing. They are available directly from the LA Superior Court page.
“Rabid”, “animal” — in the good sense?
Curious passage in a Law.com profile of federal prosecutor Michael Wang:
“Mike is just different,” said an assistant U.S. Attorney who has known him for years. “If anything, he tends toward the rabid. I like him.”
An admiring defense lawyer concurred: “He’s an animal.”
(Justin Scheck, “Corporate Crime Prosecutor Plays Hard”, The Recorder, Apr. 13).
Underlawyered: Iran
Notwithstanding some characterizations by more disingenuous opponents, reformers don’t oppose litigation and criminalization for the sake of opposing litigation and criminalization. Litigation and the tort system can play an important role in resolving disputes. Our objection is that the litigation system in the United States cuts too wide a swath, with too many issues under the litigation umbrella that courts are poorly placed to resolve, with inefficient and counterproductive results.
It is certainly possible for the system to tilt too far the other way. Witness Iran, where it is a defense against a charge of murder if “the victim was morally corrupt”—even if the killer is mistaken about the victim’s behavior. This being Iran, “morally corrupt” includes walking in public with one’s fiance, and permissible killings include stonings and sitting on a victim’s chest in a pond until she drowns. (Nazila Fathi, “Iran Exonerates Six Who Killed in Islam’s Name”, New York Times, Apr. 19] In the United States, at least, the only penalty a vigilante can legally impose with impunity on someone he or she mistakenly thinks is “morally corrupt” is millions of dollars of legal fees.