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May 2 · Issue #15 · View online
Legal news everyone should know
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If you or someone you know needs a website, or web marketing, I hear the Advertising Brothers are handsome and effective…
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Prosecuted by her legal counterpart: 'It destroyed my life in so many ways'
This DA should resign, now: At least six defense attorneys and investigators say they faced threats of criminal charges by the Orleans parish district attorney for doing their jobs, the Guardian has found. Since DA Leon Cannizzaro took office in 2009, the attorneys have been accused of kidnapping, impersonation and witness tampering in the course of defending their clients. Each case has failed to stand up to scrutiny: all charges that have been brought were eventually dropped or overturned. Disgusting. Anderson Cooper did a great segment on 60 Minutes about how an underfunded, understaffed and overworked New Orleans Public Defender’s Office has started refusing felony cases. Chief PD Derwyn Bunton says he and his 52 attorneys cannot possibly represent the 20,000 clients they get annually in a way that comports with the ethical standards to which all attorneys are held, and to which criminal defendants are Constitutionally entitled.
It’s a divisive choice, but I think it’s the right one. Public Defenders Offices are notoriously underfunded all over the country, seen as low-hanging fruit when a politician or bureaucrat needs to cut budgets. But they should be among the last budgets cut. Many criminal defendants are guilty, and many are not. Because of that, all are entitled to the same Constitutionally mandated set of rights, chief among them being the right to representation. No, public defenders don’t need and shouldn’t get multi-million dollar budgets. But they should not have to divide 20,000 cases between 52 lawyers, either. That’s 384 cases per lawyer per year. Would you want to share your public defender with 383 other people? Would you feel confident that you will get your Constitutional rights to competent representation and a fair trial? Didn’t think so.
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A disturbing sex trend called 'stealthing' is on the rise
‘Stealthing’ is the non-consensual removal a condom during sex. Alexandra Brodsky’s article in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law [ PDF] is powerful, nuanced and well-presented. And I, too, can be powerful, nuanced, and well-presented when necessary. But this won’t be one of those times, so I want to make a language warning here for family and friends sensitive to vulgarities… Men who ‘stealth’ are pieces of shit. Victims are left trying to equate it with rape when the perpetrators should be required to show why it is not. Here’s a choice quote from the USA Today article linked above: The study also pointed to online forums where men often brag about removing a condom during sex or offer advice on how to get away with it. Some of the men in the forum have even suggested it’s their right to, “spread one’s seed”. Such men should be sterilized. It is the State’s right to protect women from these cowards whose masculinity is tenuous and insecure that they are too scared to attempt a real relationship in which consent for unprotected sex is freely given at some point.
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Police video shows officer press gun to unarmed man's head, threaten to kill him
The unarmed man never threatened the officers, never pretended he was armed, never came at them. He ran away because the other guy in the car had a gun and this guy had a prior so wasn’t allowed near guns. Threaten to beat him up, threaten to punch him out. But when someone puts a gun to the head of an unarmed person and says “I’ll kill you,” there needs to be jail time, badge or no badge.
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Fitbit Data Pokes Holes in Alibi of Suspected Murderer
Maybe the guy is guilty, maybe he’s innocent, but this is a pretty novel source of evidence and one that will only become more common in the coming decades.
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N.S.A. Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets
This is a good thing. It was a serious and from all accounts universally fruitless due process violation.
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Inside the 'Stalkerware' Surveillance Market, Where Ordinary People Tap Each Other's Phones
Maybe, though, you should be less worried about the N.S.A. and more worried about the person who sleeps next to you…
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