The Pagan Science Monitor

Judex Canis Mesomelas, guest blogger

The Hon. Judex Canis Mesomelas writes:
"Grrrrr. Ipso facto. Woof. De fideli! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, dingo entrails? Amicus curiae, sub judice! Sua sponte! Rrrrrrrr, rrrrooof! Qui facet per alium, facit per se. Veritas et scientia. DINGO ENTRAILS! DINGO ENTRAILS! I SMELL DINGO ENTRAILS! AND I'LL PERSONALLY SEE TO IT THAT YOU SERVE EVERY ONE OF THOSE SIXTY MONTHS, YOU THREE-TIME FELONY SHOPLIFTER, YOU!!"
Stein replies: Ranks a rot, judge, but: (1) Accessorius sequitur; (2) Actis non facit reum nisi mens sit rea; (3) Nemo potest facere per alium, quod per se no potes; (4) Culus tibi purior salillo est; nec toto decies cacas in anno. See ya next time folk ask for judicial evaluations. And (5) listen to Atmosphere."

Objection, judge! Have you been drinking?

But first, the Quotation du jour:
"When an attorney arrives intoxicated at the prison for a legal visit, the policy shall be that he shall be escorted out of the facility. If correctional officers assess the attorney as too impaired to drive, the Madison County Sheriff shall be called."
-- Policy memo taped to the wall in the public lobby of Limestone Correctional Facility, Harvest, Alabama, where the state warehouses HIV-positive prisoners. The carceral certainty in the directive's first word [emphasis added, of course] continued to make the investigators giggle a year after the first time we read it on the wall.
Now, the story: The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reports that the former chief judge of St. Clair County (Illinois) Circuit Court, and a colleague, face judicial misconduct complaints for a December 2006 car wreck attributed to drunk driving.
According to the Complaint [PDF warning!] by the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, Judge Patrick M. Young started drinking before a St. Louis Rams game, kept drinking till about 5, and wound up with eight beers and two bloody marys in his honor's blood.

I love my bike but fear my government

...which is what Denis (duh-KNEE) likes to say. That's the QDJ.
This is the last Friday of the month, and you know what that means.
A month ago, when Chicago police arrested 7 Critical Mass riders, the Sun-Times wrote wistfully about a "partnership" between cyclists and the police -- a partnership that "fizzled."
At least 2 of the 7 arrestees have already been to court and gotten good outcomes.
(The municipal codes they were accused of violating are here and here.)
Tonight's ride will celebrate CM's 10th anniversary in Chicago, and National Lawyer's Guild Legal Observers will ride along.
Provided nothing "fizzles" tonight, check back for an update.

Monday update: Nothing fizzled. YouTube video here.

Tags: Chicago word, Critical Mass, legal+observers, Legal Observers.

Quotation du jour, Wed. 7-4-07

"The most dangerous informer of all is the jailhouse snitch who claims another prisoner has confessed to him....The precautionary rule of thumb with a jailhouse confession presented by another inmate is that it is false until the contrary is proved beyond a reasonable doubt."
-- Judge Stephen S. Trott. Words of warning for prosecutors using criminals as witnesses. 47 Hastings Law Journal (1996), 1394 [not available online].

The pic is of Troy Anthony Davis, whose execution date in Georgia is set for July 17, less than two weeks from now. The state of Georgia set the death date four days after the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Troy's habeas petition [PDF warning].
Troy was convicted in 1991 of the fatal shooting of a Savannah, GA, police officer. Judge Trott's QDJ matters because of the absence of physical evidence, including the murder weapon; the post-trial recanting of trial testimony by alleged eyewitnesses; and especially the trial testimony of two jailhouse snitches, who claimed Troy confessed to them.
(*) The death warrant is here [PDF warning].
(*) The Amnesty International page is here.
(*) Among the sources of international law that the Amnesty report on Troy's case cites is United Nations safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty (1984).
The passage of the safeguards directly bearing on Troy's case is Paragraph 4: "Capital punishment may only be imposed when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts."
The "alternative explanation of the facts" in Troy's case is that one of the alleged eyewitnesses against him at trial is the real killer. Really, do follow some of the links and read about this case.

Tags: politics, law, policy, Quotation du jour, QDJ, Judge Stephen S. Trott, Ninth Circuit, U.S. Supreme Court, habeas corpus, indigent defense, appellate practice, Hastings Law Journal, informers, snitches, death penalty, capital punishment, Troy Anthony Davis, execution, Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia.

Communting Scooter's prison sentence is a dare

(Yes, that is a pic of a zombie. What graphic would you have used?)
Bush to Dems: "I dare you to impeach me."
There was no reason to do this except one, and it wasn't pandering to the arch-conservative base. It was nothing more or less than a display of power as an act of high political theater. It was a dare. The Democrats in Congress will do nothing.
Consider what initial hearings (preparatory to impeachment) would show about this scandal alone (leaving aside the other crimes: the lies, the war, the torture, the eavesdropping, Katrina, the abuse of the separation of powers):
(*) Libby was the one indicted, but others did the leaking.

Quotation du jour, Mon. 7-2-07

"The first method for estimating the brain-power of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him....There are, in fact, three types of brain. One understands things for himself. The second discerns what others understand. The third neither understands for itself nor appreciates others."
-- Machiavelli, The Prince (1513/1532), ch. 22

Don't read this, read that

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild writes as a special guest on Jurist about the FBI spying on the NLG. Jurist is the e-zine of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Policy to be skeptical of today

Chicago Municipal Code 4-4-335: "It shall be unlawful for any person holding a retail business license to sell paint in spray cans or etching materials to any person...."
If you hate graffiti (ask around: it's a big IF even among property owners) you know this ordinance has accomplished bupkis.
It does, however, impose some difficulty upon a law-abiding legal worker who just wants to paint his new bike.

Tags: Chicago Municipal Code, graffiti, Chicago, Chicago word, Chicago bicycling, Mayor Daley.

Full disclosure

Yesterday, it was the "family jewels," the day before, it was FBI spying on the National Lawyers Guild, today it's a subpoena about the illegal eavesdropping. The ruling class is having an orgy of contrition over its bad behavior. Or...maybe it's just like what trial lawyers have to do sometimes: Squarely face up to the "bad facts" that are going to come out in front of the jury anyway.
Sometimes, where the government's bad faith is concerned, you have to go looking for the facts yourself. A very smart lawyer did the hard work to track down the number of custody deaths of immigration detainees (the government doesn't keep track!) and wrote a report for the UN.

NO WAY! FBI documents show decades of spying on NLG

The only surprise here is that the New York Times is covering it. The NLG Chicago member who called this morning to make sure I would buy the paper agreed with my theory: The Times wants to atone for Judith Miller and swallowing the Bush regime's lies before the war.
Anyway, the story:
In 1977, the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild sued the FBI, seeking relief from the persistent surveillance, infiltration, and disruption.
The case moved speedily along, as these sorts of suits always do, and twelve years later the government settled with the Guild. As part of the settlement, the FBI turned over 400,000 pages (you read that right) of surveillance logs, typed reports and handwritten notes by infiltrators, and dossiers on provocateurs.