Law & Justice: March 2007 Archives
Also via GeekPress (just go there and quit reading my blog) is a really cool bit about how police interrogations work. The main thing to remember is that you shouldn't say anything without a lawyer. Anything. You probably won't get more lenient treatment by talking, despite what police officers may imply, and saying anything without legal advice will only end up hurting you.
It seems pretty unfair to make wrongly-convicted prisoners pay for their own jail time.
Three men who spent years in jail after being wrongly convicted of murder will have to pay for their prison board and lodgings, Law Lords have ruled.Brothers Vincent and Michael Hickey of Birmingham, spent 18 years in jail for paperboy Carl Bridgewater's murder.
Michael O'Brien from Cardiff spent 11 years in jail for a separate murder.
The three were deducted money from their compensation for what lawyers called "living expenses" but what the court agreed was for life necessities.
Judges ruled by a four to one majority that they must pay back 25% of their compensation.
Talk about adding insult to injury.... What's more, the "compensation" awarded was less than a million pounds for the two guys who spent 18 years in jail each, and barely half a million for the guy who spent 11 years in prison.
California politicians who oppose the Three Strikes law have apparently be undermining the state's prison system for years.
Los Angeles, CA. In an eight minute Full Disclosure Networkâ„¢ video news blog, President Steve Ipsen of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys accuses California politicians of deliberately sabotaging the California Prison system thus setting the stage for a massive prison release program now underway. Ipsen tells FDN host Leslie Dutton how criminals who are sentenced to prison are now being released after serving only half, or less, of their sentences due to California politics. He says elected officials, who oppose the Three Strikes law, have for the past ten years, blocked building new prisons, causing massive overcrowding and early releases. ...According to Steve Ipsen, the political strategy to undermine the Three Strikes Law started ten years ago, when elected officials decided â€We’re not going to build more prisons because we don’t like the three strikes law, we’re going to let overcrowding occur and then some poor governor down the line—who happens to be Governor Schwarzenegger—has Federal judges staring down his…saying ‘you better do something or we’re going to release ’em’ and we’ve got a governor here who’s been sabotaged by a plan orchestrated ten years go—where were the plans to build more prisons?â€
Sounds like a good strategy to me.
Scooter Libby probably did lie to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during the course of the Valerie Plame investigation, but his convictions for perjury and obstruction of justice are not particularly just. Fiztgerald knew from the beginning of the investigation that no crime had been committed when Plame's name was leaked, and he should have closed his investigation right then rather than continuing for almost four years. Libby shouldn't have lied, but the investigators he lied to were pursuing what they knew to be a non-crime.
Update:
Ann Coulter -- whatever you may think of her biting sense of humor -- has posted an enraging catalogue of legal persecutions of Republicans alongside Democrats who get away with far worse.
Since Teddy Kennedy walked away from a dead girl with only a wrist slap (which was knocked down to a mild talking-to, plus time served: zero), Democrats have apparently become a protected class in America, immune from criminal prosecution no matter what they do.As a result, Democrats have run wild, accepting bribes, destroying classified information, lying under oath, molesting interns, driving under the influence, obstructing justice and engaging in sex with underage girls, among other things.
Meanwhile, conservatives of any importance constantly have to spend millions of dollars defending themselves from utterly frivolous criminal prosecutions. Everything is illegal, but only Republicans get prosecuted.
Read the list. Be convinced.
