The geniuses over at Cracked.com rescued their “Mad Magazine” ripoff from the dustbin of history, when they went digital and found a unique voice, focusing more on the oddities of real life than on satire. A typical headline will bear the words “badass” or “retarded,” which sums up their worldview....
Not again. It looks like yet another instance of federal prosecutors exercising terrible judgment. Writing for a unanimous Supreme Court this morning, soon-to-retire Justice Souter clarified what “facilitation” means in criminal law. A buyer calling up a drug dealer to arrange the purchase of some drugs does not count. Apparently,...
The Supreme Court this morning exemplified exactly what’s wrong with the death penalty in this country. In a clear effort to avoid a decision that would impose a death sentence, the Court made a nonsense ruling so it could extend the course of appeals — appeals that have already run...
We try not to report here on matters that everyone else in the world is already talking about. That’s why we’ve said nowt on Bernie Madoff and other headline-grabbing stories. For the same reason, we decided yesterday not to mention the DOJ’s request to dismiss the charges in its prosecution...
During a restraining order hearing yesterday, a judge in Fort Lauderdale failed to show restraint himself. As this courtroom video shows (about 40 seconds in), Judge Ian Richards was informing the defendant that he was going to jail for violating the restraining order, when the defendant John Charles Reasee suddenly...
A panel of three federal judges yesterday essentially ordered the State of California to reduce its prison population by as much as 57,000 people, because crowding is causing violations of prisoner rights. This doesn’t mean that wardens will be releasing thousands of hardened criminals back onto the streets, but it...
Gang crime is on the rise, the FBI reports. The politicians and prosecutors, however, are focusing on white-collar crime these days. Here’s a look at why this is happening. Gang crime seems to have increased, ironically, as a result of improved anti-gang law enforcement in the big cities. According to...
In 1963, the first year of comparable recordkeeping, 91% of murders were solved. In 2007, the number was only 61%. At the same time, the technological ability to solve murders increased dramatically. Scientific crime scene investigation significantly increases the amount of useful evidence that can be found. Digital crime labs...
OJ Simpson was sentenced today in Clark County District Court, after previously being found guilty of multiple crimes arising out of an armed break-in and theft at a Las Vegas hotel. The details can be found in any news outlet you fancy. But what sentence did he get? The headlines...
The respected journal Science will publish tomorrow a research study that suggests that the threat of punishment can keep people from getting in trouble. Stop the presses! You’d think that this might have been studied before. But previous studies (focusing on freeloading vs. pro-social behavior) only focused on short-term outcomes....
The New York Times reports on a trend of public defenders refusing to take on new cases, on the grounds that their workload is so high that they cannot effectively defend their clients. With budget cuts coming at the same time as caseloads are rising, government-appointed lawyers claim to be...
The Supreme Court has denied cert. to a Pennsylvania high court ruling that severely limits what counts as probable cause in that state. The dissent of Chief Justice Roberts succinctly, and creatively, sets forth the relevant facts: North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working...
“Later, he was to decide that Andrew’s life had been fractally weird. That is, you could take any small piece of it and examine it in detail and it, in and of itself, would turn out to be just as complicated and weird as the whole thing in its entirety.”...
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