Category: Blind Justice

What a ‘good mom’ does for her kid

~ susie

http://youtu.be/jgC3pmY8eaI

It’s so appalling to me that we live in a country where the justice system goes after “crimes” like this, and yet banks and grand-scale thieves walk free. It’s just crazy, isn’t it?

Madison, MN- A mother in Minnesota was charged with child endangerment after giving her son medical marijuana oil from Colorado after she had exhausted all other options to combat the boy’s seizures and chronic pain.

Angela Brown said she’s spent three years watching her son Trey suffer from seizures and extreme pain after he had sustained a severe brain injury during a baseball game. At age 11, Trey was hit in the temple by a baseball and suffered from a stroke and a coma following the injury. The pain that Trey experienced was described as severe. “It just hurts in my brain, just everywhere in there,” said Trey, now 15. “I really can’t explain the pain.”

The pain that Trey had been going through greatly affected his learning; he was unable to attend school and had begun hurting himself. “I was afraid to go to the bathroom,” said Angela Brown. “Because I was afraid that he- that I would come back and he would be harming himself.”

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Nothing ‘civil’ about it

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

This is the kind of sleazy crap that happens when you have cities scraping for money — they decide to take advantage of the vulnerable:

Philadelphia law enforcement has transformed a once obscure legal process into a racket that treats Americans as little more than ATMs. Every year, the city collectsalmost $6 million in revenue from forfeiture. According to data collected by the Institute for Justice, between 2002 and 2012, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office seized and forfeited over 3,000 vehicles, nearly 1,200 homes and other real estate properties and $44 million in cash. Altogether, Philadelphia has generated a staggering $64 million in forfeiture proceeds, which equals one-fifth of the DA Office’s entire budget. Forty percent of those funds—$25 million—pay law enforcement salaries, including the salaries for the prosecutors who have used civil forfeiture against families like the Sourovelises.

Civil forfeiture is a nationwide problem. But the scale and scope of Philadelphia’s forfeiture machine is practically unrivaled on the municipal level. Kings County, New York, which includes Brooklyn, generated $1.2 million from forfeiture in 2010, even though its population is 1.5 times larger. Los Angeles County also kept $1.2 million in seized assets that same year, despite having more than six times as many people as Philadelphia.

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Federal law on excessive force ignored for 20 years

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

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So the “Just Us” Department is really, really good at going after medical marijuana users, but not so good at enforcing laws that might upset powerful special interest groups — and not just Wall Street!

One of the reasons we don’t have data on police use of excessive force is because compiling this information relies on law enforcement agencies being forthcoming about these incidents. Generally speaking, it takes FOIA requests and lawsuits to obtain any data gathered by individual police departments. This shouldn’t be the case. In fact, as AllGov reports, this lack of data violates a federal law.

In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Among its provisions was the order that “the Attorney General shall, through appropriate means, acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.” The Justice Department was also required to publish an annual report on the data collected.
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Michael Brown ID’d as suspect in strong-arm robbery

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

http://youtu.be/biv45ZA37z0

UPDATE: Police chief says Michael Brown was NOT a suspect when stopped.

This puts a completely different slant on the police stop, and I don’t think the cops would have ID’d him as the robber without having all the details nailed down. We’ll know for sure when they release the 911 tapes.

Okay, so the cop stops Michael Brown as a suspect because he fits the description in a strong-arm robbery. This moves things into a more serious category than shoplifting, because the suspect has now used violence. This puts the action of the cop into a different light, since he has reason to expect violence if this is the suspect.

And while I believe this was a tragedy, the cop will probably get off — in this case, on legal grounds.

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985)

No. 83-1035

Argued October 30, 1984

Decided March 27, 1985*

A Tennessee statute provides that, if, after a police officer has given notice of an intent to arrest a criminal suspect, the suspect flees or forcibly resists, “the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.” Acting under the authority of this statute, a Memphis police officer shot and killed appellee-respondent Garner’s son as, after being told to halt, the son fled over a fence at night in the backyard of a house he was suspected of burglarizing. The officer used deadly force despite being “reasonably sure” the suspect was unarmed and thinking that he was 17 or 18 years old, and of slight build. The father subsequently brought an action in Federal District Court, seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for asserted violations of his son’s constitutional rights. The District Court held that the statute and the officer’s actions were constitutional. The Court of Appeals reversed.

Held: The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against, as in this case, an apparently unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect; such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Pp. 497 U. S. 7-22.

Page 471 U. S. 2

(a) Apprehension by the use of deadly force is a seizure subject to the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement. To determine whether such a seizure is reasonable, the extent of the intrusion on the suspect’s rights under that Amendment must be balanced against the governmental interests in effective law enforcement. This balancing process demonstrates that, notwithstanding probable cause to seize a suspect, an officer may not always do so by killing him. The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable. Pp. 471 U. S. 7-12.

(b) The Fourth Amendment, for purposes of this case, should not be construed in light of the common law rule allowing the use of whatever force is necessary to effect the arrest of a fleeing felon. Changes in the legal and technological context mean that that rule is distorted almost beyond recognition when literally applied. Whereas felonies were formerly capital crimes, few are now, or can be, and many crimes classified as misdemeanors, or nonexistent, at common law are now felonies. Also, the common law rule developed at a time when weapons were rudimentary. And, in light of the varied rules adopted in the States indicating a long-term movement away from the common law rule, particularly in the police departments themselves, that rule is a dubious indicium of the constitutionality of the Tennessee statute. There is no indication that holding a police practice such as that authorized by the statute unreasonable will severely hamper effective law enforcement. Pp. 471 U. S. 12-20.

(c) While burglary is a serious crime, the officer in this case could not reasonably have believed that the suspect — young, slight, and unarmed — posed any threat. Nor does the fact that an unarmed suspect has broken into a dwelling at night automatically mean he is dangerous. Pp. 471 U. S. 20-22.

710 F.2d 240, affirmed and remanded.

WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. O’CONNOR, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BURGER, C.J., and REHNQUIST, J., joined, post p. 471 U. S. 22.

Morning open thread

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Good news! The NLRB has ruled that McDonald’s employees work for McDonald’s, and not for independent small businesses. This will make it a lot easier to organize a union:

For decades the giant fast-food company McDonald’s has been using a gimmick, pretending that its local outlets are independent “small businesses” and that the larger McDonald’s company and brand has nothing to do with personnel and other policies of these outlets. This has allowed the company to remain above liability when the outlets steal the wages of employees, as well as making it much more difficult to form a union that negotiates with the larger chain.

The NLRB has now stated that McDonald’s has substantial power over the working conditions of the people working in these local outlets, and has a great deal of influence over the business operations of its franchisees. This leaves individual franchise operators without much leeway over working conditions. Therefore, the NLRB considers the larger McDonald’s to jointly be an employer of workers at these franchises for the purposes of NLRB rules.

Seen any other good news out there? Share in the comments.

Justice = just us!

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

So you approach Muslims, talk them into taking part in “terror” plots, then announce you’ve caught a terrorist. Why, it’s just like the drug war:

The U.S.  Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism “sting operations” based on religious and ethnic identity, Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released today. Many of the more than 500 terrorism-related cases prosecuted in US federal courts since September 11, 2001, have alienated the very communities that can help prevent terrorist crimes.

The 214-page report, “Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions,” examines 27 federal terrorism cases from initiation of the investigations to sentencing and post-conviction conditions of confinement. It documents the significant human cost of certain counterterrorism practices, such as overly aggressive sting operations and unnecessarily restrictive conditions of confinement.

Meh

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Citibank Shadow Letters

They get to deduct a lot of it from their taxes. A mere slap on the wrist, as usual:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Citigroup will pay $7 billion to settle an investigation into risky subprime mortgages, the type that helped fuel the financial crisis.

The agreement announced Monday comes weeks after talks between the sides broke down, prompting the government to warn that it would sue the New York investment bank. The bank had offered to pay less than $4 billion, a sum substantially less than what the Justice Department was asking for.

The settlement stems from the sale of securities made up of subprime mortgages, which fueled both the housing boom and bust that triggered the Great Recession at the end of 2007.

Citigroup and other banks downplayed the risks of subprime mortgages when packaging and selling them to mutual funds, investment trusts, pensions, as well as other banks and investors. The securities, which contained so-called residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, plunged in value when the housing market collapsed in 2006 and 2007. Those losses triggered a financial crisis that pushed the economy into the worst recession since the 1930s.

Court-forced arbitration

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

supremecourt
No wonder they hate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau! Via The Nation:

For more than forty years, the Supreme Court’s conservatives have been engaged in a campaign to shut the courthouse door to consumers, working people, small businesses and others seeking redress for corporate wrongdoing.

In recent years, and especially since Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito joined the Court, a major weapon in this campaign has been the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) of 1925. The conservatives have used the act to prevent victims of such abuses from seeking redress in the courts, forcing them into pre-dispute arbitration instead. In doing so, they lose a public trial, a jury and a neutral judge, as well as an appeal to a higher court; in many cases they may also have to give up discovery rights. It is not uncommon for them to wind up before an arbitrator who is dependent upon the defendant’s business community for work and fees, and who may not even be legally trained. Not surprisingly, those forced into arbitration almost always fare much worse than they would in court.

This past term the Court paused in its campaign to keep ordinary people—but no for-profit corporation “persons”—out of the courts, though it did make it harder to bring class actions by victims of securities fraud. Instead, it concentrated on overturning or undercutting long-established rulings protecting women’s reproductive rights, unions, affirmative action and church-state separation.

The Court didn’t need to issue any more arbitration decisions. Two reports issued at the end of last year show how effective the Court’s arbitration rulings have been. Last December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a preliminary report, which found that contract clauses mandating pre-dispute arbitration are a “common feature of consumer financial contracts”; a final report is due by year’s end. The agency found such clauses in over 50 percent of credit card loans, 81 percent of prepaid charge cards and in checking accounts covering 44 percent of all insured deposits.

The CFPB found further that about 90 percent of such contracts, including almost all credit card loans, insured deposits and prepaid cards, also prohibit participation in current or future class or other joint actions in both judicial and arbitration proceedings. This usually forces consumers who have been injured in small amounts to drop the matter entirely, even though the defendant may have harmed many others the same way, for too little is at stake for each individual to justify the time, trouble and expense of individual arbitration.

Thanks to Nicole Naum.

‘Illegal wage-fixing cartel’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

pixar-1
It wasn’t just Apple and Google — it seems to include Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks.

And here’s how that works:

In May, just days after the $324 million Techtopus settlement was reached, a major industry-funded report was published, claiming that more H-1B visas should be issued to foreign tech workers. This, they argued, would lead to higher wages for everyone in the tech industry. The report was funded by the Partnership for a New American Economy a powerful union of CEOs, founded by billionaire media oligarchs Michael Bloomberg (worth $34.4 billion) and Rupert Murdoch (worth $14.3 billion), and co-chaired by tech oligarch Steve Ballmer ($21 billion) and Disney CEO Iger, last year’s second highest-paid CEO ($34.3 million).

And this:

A secret no-poach agreement between Pixar and Dreamworks Animation would be particularly remarkable given the company’s famed fierce rivalry in almost all other areas. Even more significantly, the participation of Dreamworks Animation in an illegal wage-fixing cartel would take the politics of this story to a new level, considering the mega-millions in campaign donations that Dreamworks’ CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has shoveled into the Obama campaign.

Yeah, I can see why they’re eager to settle this and keep it out of court.

‘That right wing asshole’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito li

That’s what Sam Alito’s boss used to call him. And he was right!

In mid-November of 2012, hundreds of tuxedo-clad Republican lawyers gathered at a hotel ballroom in Washington, DC. They were a mix of heads hung in dejection and chests puffed out in compensatory bluster. Less than two weeks earlier, they’d seen President Obama vanquish his opponent at the polls. Their last chance to knock a hated president out of office — and their last real chance to halt that’s president’s even more hated health reforms — ended in failure. They and their allies had made their best case that liberalism was a path to economic ruin, and the American people had lined up at their polling places to pull the lever for liberalism.

And yet, at this annual gathering of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, arguably the most powerful legal organization in the country, Justice Samuel Alito was defiant. Not long after rising to give his keynote address to the room full of conservative senators, judges, and attorneys gathered before him, Alito launched into a story of a particularly uninspiring law professor whose course he took in law school. The professor, Alito recalled, authored a book in 1970 warning of a decaying society trapped in a “moment of utmost sterility, darkest night, most extreme peril.”

At this point in his speech, Alito paused, and looked over the roomful of lawyers still licking their wounds from Mitt Romney’s very recent defeat. “Our current situation,” he told them, “is nothing new.”

Justice Alito’s speech came during a brief moment of respite between two great constitutional battles. Just a few months earlier, the Court had rejected a request that it repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, based on a tenuous reading of the Tenth Amendment that one prominent conservative judge dismissed as having no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” Justice Alito dissented in the Court’s health care decision. He wanted Obamacare gone.

Almost exactly one month after his speech, a gunman named Adam Lanza walked into an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and murdered 26 people, 20 of whom were children. What followed was a nationwide debate over the proper way to solve gun violence and over the scope and the wisdom of the Second Amendment. Many of the lawyers and lawmakers who attended Justice Alito’s speech would fight hard — and, ultimately, successfully — to defeat President Obama’s proposals to prevent future Sandy Hooks.