Oli, the SS director is appointed by the president, but in the Vietnam era, and way before, the SS director was General Lewis B. Hershey, an active duty officer who was as durable in his post as J. Edgar Hoover. Most SS employees were civilians, but DoD ran it.

The victory Ali won: he claimed exemption as a Muslim minister. His draft board and every other body in the "due process" line turned him down. He refused induction and was convicted of draft-dodging. He got the max: 5 years in prison and a $10k fine, seldom levied in those days.

But: Ali was registered in a SS local in an all-black neighborhood in Houston. All the local SS board members were white. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Ali had been deprived of his rights because the composition of the draft board should have reflected the racial/religious makeup of the neighborhood or region it served--the better to enable them to understand religious claims such as Ali's. To my way of thinking, it was a major affirmation that Selective Service had some genuine "civilian" accountability.

So...the massage was ok until she found out he wasn't gay?
What if he never said he was gay in the first place?
And what does his sexuality have to do with her consenting to the massage? Either the act was criminal or it wasn't...

Jersey City Masseur Article

A Jersey City woman who consented to having her breasts and buttocks massaged at a Downtown health club said she thought it was normal and thought the masseur was gay, according to police reports said.

But hours later she filed criminal charges against the man after she learned he was in a relationship with a woman and the manager of Club H Fitness told her the massage was not proper, reports said...

Consent is consent. Shut up and enjoy your recently-lotioned skin.

This is just terrible. These people are dangerous. When he had the muscle Obama should have pushed to get the number of justices on the SC increased. Can you imagine being on death row b/c the prosecutor LIED and hid evidence and then when , no thanks to the prosecutor, you are able to get off death row and save your life, the SC accepts the argument that b/c the prosecutor hasn't done this enough times, you are unworthy of receiving compensation?

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote his first majority opinion of the Term Tuesday and, naturally enough, it was a 5-4 decision against the interests of a criminal defendant whose constitutional rights had been dramatically violated by prosecutors. To mark the occasion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent aloud in court (also a first for the Term) and Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Ginsburg's well-chronicled BFF, took a few shots at her in an otherwise needless concurrence joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

All of this, mind you, occurred before the justices heard oral argument in Walmart v. Dukes, the massive class-action case which garnered sweeping attention at the courthouse Tuesday morning. No wonder the justices seemed so grumpy when the plaintiffs' lawyers started making their discrimination case (or maybe it was just the traffic ticket Justice Scalia's got coming in for work Tuesday morning). And no wonder the Court's striking ruling in Connick v. Thompson was left largely underreported.

Still, it's not every day that the Court so brazenly overrules a jury verdict in the name of protecting state prosecutors (and the political entities which employ them) from the consequences of sustained official misconduct. And it's been quite some time since the Court's conservative majority reached out in such a fashion to snatch form from the jaws of substance. In these circumstances, it's no surprise that Justice Ginsburg blew her stack or that Justices Thomas, Scalia and Alito reacted so defensively to her objections.

Here's the story. Convicted of murder, and on Louisiana's death row for 14 years, John Thompson was just one month away from being executed when defense investigators discovered exculpatory evidence that prosecutors had failed to share with Thompson's lawyers in the two cases (one for armed robbery, one for murder) which led him to death row. The evidence hidden by the state were blood samples -- not from Thompson's blood -- found at the scene of the robbery.

Confronted with the new evidence, an appeals court quickly reversed both of Thompson's convictions. Undaunted, prosecutors tried Thompson again for murder. This time, Thompson was acquitted. He then sued the district attorneys. Thompson alleged that prosecutors had intentionally caused him to be wrongfully imprisoned for a total of 18 years. He argued that the DA's office unconstitutionally handled exculpatory evidence -- or at least that lead prosecutors inadequately trained their office staff to handle such evidence.

Prosecutors conceded before Thompson's civil trial that they had violated the Brady rule, the constitutional standard designed to ensure that government officials don't hide exculpatory evidence in criminal cases. But they argued that it was an isolated incident and thus could not generate a viable damage award. The jury disagreed. It awarded Thompson $14 million -- one million for each year the man had wrongly spent on death row, you could say. The district attorney, Harry F. Connick (yes, the famous singer's father) appealed.
....

Wrongfully convicted man gets squat

http://detnews.com/article/20110503/METRO03/105030345

Shelby Township— The owners of a Shelby Township restaurant are facing up to life in prison on allegations they attempted to kill the owner of a competing restaurant with a baseball bat.

Brothers Giuseppe D'Anna, 58, and Girolamo D'Anna, 46, owners of Tiramisu Restaurant, were arraigned Friday in 41-A District Court on charges of assault with intent to murder, Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith said Monday.

Prosecutors say the pair is expected to be arraigned on additional counts of extortion and witness intimidation on May 16 during a scheduled preliminary examination in Shelby Township.

Authorities say the brothers stormed into Nonna's Restaurant near 23 Mile and Schoenherr at 10 p.m. Thursday and hit owner Pietro Ventimiglia over the head 11 times with an aluminum bat.

Holy crap!! Talk about killing off your competition.

Really how vicious! A baseball bat? That's horrible.



TIS

I heard that Wendy was going to do that to the Burger King!

Tough racket, the restaurant business. What they need is a local calm collected young man to guarantee their profit margins and ensure that everyone stays reasonable...

Local paper today reported on sentencing of a 23-year-old guy who pleaded guilty to "sexual conduct with a minor." He met a 13-year-old girl on the web, lured her to a motel, and had sex with her. Was consensual. But this effing dimwit showed up for sentencing with nonstop smiling and rolling his eyes while his family pleaded for mercy for him. The judge got angry and said his demeanor "shows you do not take responsibiity for your actions." He was supposed to get 13 years. She whacked him for 20.

..she said Lola, L-O-L-A...
Detroit Police Officer

Ha ha ha ha I heard the headline earlier but didn't read the story. No other officer will ever want to ride in a squad car again with this guy again. I'm guessing he's history.

TIS

Two trials that are getting national attention are taking place here in rural Yavapai County, AZ:

Stockbroker Stephen DeMocker is accused of bludgeoning his ex-wife to death with a golf club in order to avoide paying alimony. This case has been dragging on for two years. First the presiding judge had a seizure and later died of a brain tumor. Then his lawyers abruptly resigned when an e-mail that they tried to have introduced as evidence (allegedly pointing to others as the murderers) was written by DeMocker's daughter and posted from an internet cafe. The acting judge declared a mistrial. Before that, the dimwit coroner admitted that he drove the wife's body in the bed of his pickup truck 100 miles to Phoenix to perform the autopsy, and that nonsterile instruments were used in getting fingernail scrapings, which turned up DNA from three men other than the defendant.
Now his new lawyers are trying to get him sprung from solidary, where he's been since last September. But the prosecutor says the judge has no authority over the country jail: "The sheriff can do what he wants."

The second trial is of James Arthur Ray, charged with manslaughter in the deaths of three participants in a sweat lodge that was part of his "motivational spiritual seminar" in Sedona last summer. Ray charged his participants ten grand for three days of starvation and dehydration, proving that a fool and his money are soon parted. His lawyers are claiming that the participants were adults and capable of assessing their own risk. Now they're claiming the deaths weren't due to heat stroke, but to insecticides found nearby.

You know TB, given the huge travesties of justice that are being revealed through the Innocence Project, the standard we impose on the justice system has to be as close to exacting as possible.

Well, it sure isn't exacting in the DeMocker case, I can tell you that. After the mistrial was declared, the local paper interviewed some of the jurors. All said they thought he was guilty, but the prosecution had so botched the investigation and evidence that they'd never vote to convict him. I think the prosecution is retaliating by keeping him in solitary.

This fellow is VERY lucky he wasn't shot or beaten.
I admire his knowledge of the law and willingness to stand up to incorrect police officers. That said, I'm still not sure he couldn't have handled it in a smarter way.

MARK FIORINO'S story has three elements that tend to get people worked up - gun rights, Philly police and YouTube.

On a mild February afternoon, Fiorino, 25, decided to walk to an AutoZone on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philly with the .40-caliber Glock he legally owns holstered in plain view on his left hip. His stroll ended when someone called out from behind: "Yo, Junior, what are you doing?"

Fiorino wheeled and saw Sgt. Michael Dougherty aiming a handgun at him.

What happened next would be hard to believe, except that Fiorino audio-recorded all of it: a tense, profanity-laced, 40-minute encounter with cops who told him that what he was doing - openly carrying a gun on the city's streets - was against the law.

"Do you know you can't openly carry here in Philadelphia?" Dougherty asked, according to the YouTube clip."Yes, you can, if you have a license to carry firearms," Fiorino said. "It's Directive 137. It's your own internal directive."

The cops, department officials later admitted, were wrong. They didn't know that a person who has a license to carry a firearm can openly carry it in the city.

But the story doesn't end there. How could it...

Mark Fiorino Incident-Full Story




EDIT: Perhaps an attorney or other legal expert could answer: is there a legal requirement to comply with an unlawful order by a police officer?

It all depends on state law. Generally, there is no such right. There are too many variables involved. For one, what's unlawful? How is that determined and who determines it?

I was thinking of situations where you have completely rogue officers-ie. that case in NY where the officers allegedly sexually assaulted a woman, or other situations where officers may break into the wrong home without identifying themselves as officers or break into a home looking to steal things or similar such actions.

EDIT: There was that 2007 case in Chicago where a drunk cop beat the **** out of a woman bartender who had refused to serve him. If she had gone for the 12 gauge under the counter, or someone else had would that have been justified?

Well, you've described criminal activity, not orders.

In some instances it might be difficult to tell the difference in the heat of the moment. I'm thinking about situations like the ruling in Indiana, the recent dustup in my home town or this case in Maryland.

As you have stated it looks like many states differ but not all of them have eliminated the right to resist unlawful actions by police. I need to see what the status is in Michigan.

LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson's lawyer won't get a chance to plead for the imprisoned former football star's freedom before the full seven-member Nevada Supreme Court.

The state's highest court issued a terse and unanimous order Tuesday declining to do what three of its members already refused to do -- hear Simpson's appeal of his conviction and nine-to-33-year prison sentence in a 2007 armed confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas casino hotel room.

Simpson lawyer Malcolm LaVergne told The Associated Press he understood the court's reluctance to hear oral arguments after a three-justice panel in October denied Simpson's appeal and declined in February to reconsider. LaVergne said he'll take the case now to the federal courts.

updated 5/24/2011 6:46:55 PM ET 2011-05-24T22:46:55

ORLANDO, Fla. — The attorney for a Florida woman [Case Anthony]charged with killing her 2-year-old daughter outlined a bombshell defense Tuesday, contending the toddler accidentally drowned in a swimming pool and her grandfather covered it up. After nearly three years of sensational details and rumors in tabloids and television shows, Casey Anthony's murder trial got under way in an Orlando courtroom.

That argument doesn't hold water.

Another that doesn't hold water:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn now claims the sex between him and the chambermaid was "consensual." Asshole.

msnbc.com news services updated 2 hours 20 minutes ago 2011-05-25T19:44:23

PHOENIX — A federal judge has ruled that the suspect in the Arizona shooting rampage that wounded U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is mentally incompetent to stand trial, putting the criminal case on hold indefinitely.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns means 21-year-old Jared Lee Loughner will be sent to a federal facility for up to four months in a bid to restore his competency.

Is it just me or does anyone else find Rob Blagojevich amusing? I heard he's on the stand, testifying in his defense (not always advised, but doesn't that just sound like him?); and he's rambling on and on about his upbringing; he told the jury that he wasn't a good lawyer; and he apologized for his language on the phone conversations saying he wasn't serious about the bribe; and just now I'm hearing he "broke down" when he told the jury how he met his wife. I don't know the guy but picture him to be like a used car salesman.

I mean, I don't say the guy is innocent, but I can't get myself to dislike him because he's so darn funny.

TIS

...he has great hair, though....

Oh, and he told the jury he had a "man crush" on Alexander Hamilton. They guy is hilarious.



TIS

Cops Acquitted of Rape Charges

msnbc.com staff and news service reports updated 2 hours 4 minutes ago

YUMA, Ariz. — A 73-year-old gunman apparently upset over his divorce case went on a shooting spree Thursday around Yuma county, Ariz., killing at least five people including himself and the attorney representing his ex-wife, officials said.

A sixth person was injured and flown to a Phoenix-area hospital.
Authorities identified the suspected shooter as Carey Hal Dyess of Yuma. Yuma County Sheriff's deputies found Dyess with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound near Blaisdell and Highway 95 around 11:35 a.m.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43256351/ns/...ings/?GT1=43001