Cy pres, public-sector style? “A veteran Manitoba Crown attorney has been fired after he dropped charges against a Winnipeg company involved in a workplace accident — only to have the company make a substantial financial donation to a charity he oversees.” The prosecutor has defended his actions on the grounds that he did not direct the donation and that “the company made its own decision to choose the charity he was connected to”; he is not alleged to have benefited from the charity. [Winnipeg Free Press]
Posts Tagged ‘prosecution’
Police and prosecution roundup
- “I’m looking at Sarge, like, ‘What am I writing him for?’ The sergeant said, ‘Blocking pedestrian traffic.'” [Brian Doherty]
- “No one is innocent: I broke the law yesterday and again today and I will probably break the law tomorrow” [Alex Tabarrok, BLT]
- Alabama officials reviewing NTSB-funded weekend roadblocks where motorists were asked for breath, blood and saliva samples [Montgomery Advertiser] “Maybe the NTSB should become a Common Rule agency” [i.e., subject to Human Subjects Research rules; @MichelleNMeyer]
- New Jersey bill would require driver in some traffic mishaps to hand over cellphone to cop [S. 2783 (Holzapfel, Sen.) via @MeckReal]
- “In Dubai airport, three poppy seeds from a bread roll fell in a Swiss man’s clothes and got him four years in prison” [@SanhoTree on BBC 2008 report]
- “Hookup Shocker: The Sex Is Legal, but Talking About It Is a Felony!” [Jacob Sullum] “The Man Who Abused Me is Not on the Sex Offender List (The One who Saved Me Is)” [Free-Range Kids; related on registries, Michele Goodwin, Bill of Health]
- “Senator Ervin, ‘No-Knock’ Warrants, and the Fight to Stop Cops from Smashing into Homes the Way Burglars Do” [Radley Balko guestblogging at ACLU; yesterday’s post on Balko’s new book, and more (“7 Ways The Obama Administration Has Accelerated Police Militarization”)]
Prosecution, depression, and the Aaron Swartz case
From Ken at Popehat, harrowing but vital reading.
DoJ suddenly drops high-profile New Orleans prosecution
Some locals are “stunned” that Justice would drop the River Birch case after four years of vigorous prosecution, and wonder whether there is any link to recent resignations and misconduct charges among high-level figures in the U.S. attorney’s office. [New Orleans Times-Picayune, more, earlier]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Why you should discount many “minor offender faces eleventy-billion-year sentence” stories [Popehat] One day of smurfing made her a “career offender” [Sullivan]
- “In Dog We Trust”: Scott Greenfield and Radley Balko dissent from unanimous SCOTUS verdict on police canines [Simple Justice, Huffington Post]
- Arizona lawmaker would make it felony to impersonate someone on social media [Citizen Media Law]
- “Can juries tame prosecutors gone wild?” [Leon Neyfakh, Boston Globe “Ideas”]
- “Cop exposes D.C. speed camera racket” [Radley Balko] How Rockville, Md. squeezes drivers who stop in front of the white line or do rolling right turns [WTOP]
- After scandal: “Pennsylvania Senate Passes Legislation to Eliminate Philadelphia Traffic Court” [Legal Intelligencer, earlier]
- Bloomberg precursor? When Mayor LaGuardia got NYC to ban pinball [Sullivan]
Banking and finance roundup
- David Henderson reviews Roger Donway book on Greg Reyes backdated-options prosecution [Econlog]
- Francis Menton on Argentina vs. creditors [Manhattan Contrarian via FedSoc Blog]
- New book, with co-author Lawrence Cunningham, gives Hank Greenberg’s side of the story on AIG [Concur Op, NY Post]
- Are Wall Street’s expert networks a violation of insider trading laws? [David Zaring, Conglomerate via Bainbridge]
- “A Brief Explanation Of The Economics Of Securities Lawsuits” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes] Related: Alison Frankel, Reuters [history of attempts at reform]
- What, a new bank? Yes, the proposed Bank of Bird-in-Hand [Kevin Funnell]
- Rules-based, low-discretion enforcement of Dodd-Frank? If only [Louise Bennetts (Cato), Jurist]
Orin Kerr on the Aaron Swartz case
A two-part post, with part 1 on the law as applied to the facts, and part II on sentencing, prosecutorial discretion, and the appropriate targets for reformist energy. Earlier here (& Greenfield; Timothy Lee and Mike Masnick on plea bargaining).
“What the Aaron Swartz case says about our justice system”
Programmer Aaron Swartz, a founder of RSS syndication and Reddit, committed a series of trespasses and hacks at MIT so as to download millions of papers from the JSTOR academic database, possibly with the plan of making them freely available through file sharing. When caught he returned the files and JSTOR did not recommend prosecution. In September Timothy Lee wrote in Ars Technica that while there was no excuse for Swartz’s actions, it was also mystifying that federal prosecutors were going to such lengths to stack up felony counts and legal theories under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) that could send the popular techie to prison for life. Now Swartz, who is known to have been afflicted by depression, is dead, a suicide at age 26. [Jonathan Blanks, Lawrence Lessig, Glenn Greenwald, Patterico interview with Swartz lawyer Elliot Peters, Scott Greenfield, Orin Kerr (disputing premise that prosecutors overcharged), Timothy Lee/WaPo]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Forensics scandal keeps widening, as FBI agents trained state and local examiners in faulty methods [WaPo, Radley Balko] New York Times wades into case of Mississippi pathologist Steven Hayne [Reason] “Massachusetts Lab Scandal Leads to Fears of the Guilty Being Freed, Not So Much About the Innocent Being Jailed” [Shackford]
- “Speed camera reform gains momentum with Maryland lawmakers” [Washington Examiner, editorial, WBAL]
- “Gas masks, helmets for state alcohol-control agents — Everyone is a law-enforcement agent these days” [Steven Greenhut/PSI]
- How the media hatched the “bath salts face-chewer” tale [Sullum]
- “FBI investigating Utah state trooper for arresting sober people, charging them with DUI, lying on witness stand.” [@radleybalko summarizing Salt Lake City Tribune]
- Looking forward to 2013 docket in white-collar crime [Peter Henning, NYT DealBook]
- Bruce Green (Fordham), “Prosecutors and Professional Regulation” [SSRN via White Collar Crime Prof]
Civil liberties roundup
- Drones in domestic policing a liberty danger, warns NYT [editorial, earlier]
- When prosecutors freeze bank accounts, high-level targets can’t hire the best lawyers to defend themselves. Regrettable unintended etc. [Silverglate]
- On criminalizing false statements to federal agents [Scott Greenfield vs. Bill Otis]
- “Congress Has Enough Time to Keep Spying on You, Forever” [Matt Welch; Cato video with Julian Sanchez]
- More on Philadelphia forfeiture [John K. Ross, Reason, earlier]
- Homeland Security program: “Public Buses Across Country Quietly Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations” [Kim Zetter/Wired via Fountain]
- Does Brooklyn indictment signal U.S. claim of universal jurisdiction over acts hostile to its foreign policy, anywhere in world? [Eugene Kontorovich/Volokh]