August 30, 2011
The jury is back ...
The phone rang in my office, the display showing "Bailiff, Courtroom 47." I glanced at my watch -- 10 o'clock -- as I reached for the handset.
"They've got a verdict," she said. "I'll be right up," I replied, grabbing a legal pad and heading out the door. I called my investigator on my cell phone -- he wanted to be there for the verdict -- as I headed up to the fourth floor.
I ducked into the men's room, snugged-up the knot of my tie, struggled with (and gave up on) an out-of-control cowlick, then strode into the courtroom. I stood next to my chair at counsel table; the bailiff said, "I'm bringing them in," returning moments later with the 12 men and women; they filed into the jury box and found their seats. When the last one was in her chair, I settled into mine, face blank, as I tried to discern their decision.
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" asked the judge.
"Yes, your honor," answered the forewoman, who handed the folded sheet of paper to the bailiff, who handed it to the judge, who glanced at it and handed it to the clerk, who stood up and read it to us.
"We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant ...."
I watched their faces; they studiously avoided eye contact with the defendant -- and me, too, for that matter -- giving away nothing, even as their decision was revealed.
The judge thanked them for their service and released them from jury duty, and I chatted with the jurors who decided to wait for me in the hallway outside the courtoom.
The verdict? Well, that'd be telling. Let me say this: Although I remained stoic throughout, I felt like Roscoe does in this video.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 29, 2011
The jury is out ...
The jury got the case (assault with a deadly weapon) Friday afternoon, deliberated for a couple of hours and then went home for the weekend. They've requested readback of the victim's testimony for this morning, and the nail-biting and second-guessing begins.
Of course, it could be worse.
I could be dealing with this.
A North Texas juror who was booted from a trial has been cited for contempt after trying to "friend" the defendant on Facebook.
Court records show 22-year-old Jonathan Hudson on July 19 was removed from the jury in a Tarrant County civil case. The trial, over a 2008 car wreck, proceeded with 11 jurors.
Hudson last week pleaded guilty to four counts of contempt and has been ordered to serve two days of community service.
Texas recently added specific language to jury instructions that bans jurors from discussing the case on social networking sites. Hudson had received those instructions.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Sunday that Hudson attorney Steve Gordon says his client "made a silly mistake."
Seriously? Do we really have to remind jurors that they're not supposed to FRIEND DEFENDANTS ON FACEBOOK while deciding their fate?
Yeah, I know, it was a civil case, but still, unbelievable.
(shakes head)
I need another cup of coffee.
And some more aspirin.
(drums fingers on desk)
Was that my phone?
(sigh)
I'm sure they'll be coming back any minute now ....
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 22, 2011
Why the death penalty?
Death penalty opponents like to say that it has no deterrent effect; that it's a savage, brutal punishment, one that serves no legitimate societal purpose, doing nothing more than exacting revenge and satisfying our blood lust.
Stories like this, however, prove the stupidity, the besides-the-point nature of their critique.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Moments before she was slain last week on Chicago's Southwest Side, 17-year-old Charinez Jefferson begged the gunman not to shoot because she was pregnant, prosecutors said today.
Despite her plea, Timothy Jones, 18, opened fire on Jefferson anyway, yelling an expletive at her as he shot her in the head, prosecutors said. He then stood over her as she lay on the ground and fired several more times, striking her in the chest and back.
Jefferson was pronounced dead a short time later, but doctors were able to successfully deliver her baby boy, who remained in critical condition today, Assistant State's Attorney John Dillon said.
"Tests are expected to be performed to determine whether the child has any brain activity, as there are concerns over the child possibly suffering from oxygen deprivation after the victim had been shot," Dillon told Judge Laura Sullivan.
Sullivan denied bond for Jones, 18, who was charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 16 slaying.
[...]
Jones had seen Jefferson walking with a rival gang member in the 3000 block of West 64th Street and approached them in a car, Dillon said. He got out of the vehicle and fired at least one shot at the rival, who ran off, leaving Jefferson to fend for herself. After begging Jones for mercy, Jefferson was shot at "point-blank range," Dillon said.
Jones, of the 6300 block of South Rockwell Street, was arrested at his home Saturday after numerous witnesses identified him as the killer, according to information from prosecutors and court documents.
A police source said that Jones was a "stick-up man" well known to area police.
At the time of the shooting, Jones was serving 2 years of probation for a 2010 burglary conviction, Dillon said. He also has a "lengthy" juvenile record, including convictions for unlawful use of a weapon, possession of a stolen motor vehicle, and burglary, Dillon said.
Stop and think a second about this soulless thug, already on probation for crimes committed while a juvenile.
I'll concede that the death penalty would likely do nothing to deter a piece of filth like this from committing a terrible crime. After all, what could possibly be a greater deterrent than a terrified, pregnant teenager begging for her life, the life of her baby?
To listen to the fear in her voice, see the horror and hope in her eyes as she tried to convince him not to pull the trigger, searching for a human connection, a glimmer of compassion.
Think of the kind of demon -- for there is no other way to describe such a being -- who could remain unmoved, even enraged by her pleas. Picture him as he considered for an all-too-brief moment walking away, his eyes flat, empty -- did they show any emotion at all before he shot her in the head, then stood over her body, swollen and large with the child she carried, and fired more shots into her chest and back?
There is no redemption.
There is no rehabilitation.
There is no possibility of a safe return to society.
The death penalty serves a useful purpose especially in cases like this, where we can collectively kill this mad dog, protect other, future victims from his murderous attentions, erase this stain from our world, forget his name.
But remember his crime. And remember his victims.
Charinez Jefferson, 17, and her now-motherless and possibly brain-damaged son.
Why the death penalty?
Because this crime demands it.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Are you sure that's still okay to eat?
When I was growing up, my Father -- born of the Great Depression -- was infamous for sniffing suspicious-looking leftovers in the refrigerator and pronouncing them eminently edible, much to the consternation of me and my sister.
Sometimes it seemed he took particular delight in a fearsomely foul, mold-flecked specimen, recounting tales of privation from the days before FDR and Adolf Hitler jump-started the economy with something known as WWII. He'd look at us, a gleam in his eyes, open a carton of milk that was rapidly transforming from liquid to curd-clotted sludge, breath deep, then tell us that the expiration date was merely a suggestion, before pouring a disgustingly-thick glass.
I suspect Dad would disagree with every conclusion in this article about how long food can be kept before it should be tossed.
Cheese
Life span: One week to two months
Cheese is essentially curdled milk, a pretty shelf-stable dairy product. Still, it can -- and will -- succumb to mold. Soft and stinky cheeses -- cottage cheese, cream cheese, blue cheese, Camembert, and feta -- should be eaten within a week. Hard cheeses like cheddar and
Parmesan will stay fresh for up to two months. So go ahead and invest in that two-pound block of Parmesan.Death rattle: When you see mold on a soft cheese, throw it out. By the time mold becomes visible, it’s already infected the whole lot. Of course, some cheese is intentionally moldy, like blue cheese. Keep tabs on it and look for any red or white mold. If a hard cheese starts growing mold, cut it off and eat the rest; the mold won’t affect the flavor.
Oh, how I remember Dad cutting away hairy, green patches from some cheese that stank the day it left the store. Even as a child I suspected that "[b]y the time mold becomes visible, it’s already infected the whole lot."
Blecch.
Read the whole stinky thing.
Especially you, Dad.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 11, 2011
Straight talk from an angry Brit
Brit Pat Condell offer his pungent analysis of the riots -- and the rioters -- who've demonstrated for all to see that this is not the England, these are not the Englishmen of yore, and mores the pity.
It's a shame Condell pulled his punches, 'tho.
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 10, 2011
Feral beasts
Historian Max Hastings unleashes an
epic broadside
Posted by Mike Lief at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 09, 2011
Let's resist the urge to "contextualize" looters
Self described lefty Brendan O'Neill delivers a sharp rebuke to those who seek to "contextualize" -- Orwellian new speak for excuse and justify -- the amoral and thuggish lowlifes rampaging throughout London and other cities, looting, burning and pillaging whilst the hapless police stand by and wring their hands.
O'Neill is willing to put the lawlessness into a broader political context, but he reaches some conclusions that are most assuredly anathema to the Left: the riots are clear evidence of the corrosive influence of the welfare state on the very fabric of society itself.
The political context is not the cuts agenda or racist policing – it is the welfare state, which, it is now clear, has nurtured a new generation that has absolutely no sense of community spirit or social solidarity.
What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are ‘rising up’ – actually they are simply shattering their own communities – represent a generation that has been more suckled by the state than any generation before it. They live in those urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state over the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of less well-off urban people’s existences, from their financial wellbeing to their childrearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain ‘mentally fit’, has helped to undermine such things as individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The anti-social youthful rioters look to me like the end product of such an anti-social system of state intervention.
But it’s more than childish destructiveness motivating the rioters. At a more fundamental level, these are youngsters who are uniquely alienated from the communities they grew up in ... We have a saying in Britain for people who undermine their own living quarters – we call it ‘shitting on your own doorstep’. And this rioting suggests that the welfare state has given rise to a generation perfectly happy to do that.
This is not a political rebellion; it is a mollycoddled mob, a riotous expression of carelessness for one’s own community. And as a left-winger, I refuse to celebrate nihilistic behaviour that has a profoundly negative impact on working people’s lives.
O'Neill also addresses an aspect of the riots that highlights for me the importance of the Second Amendment, the right to defend yourself -- or others -- from attack, including the right to protect your home or business, a right most assuredly denied to our English cousins.
There is one more important part to this story: the reaction of the cops. Their inability to handle the riots effectively reveals the extent to which the British police are far better adapted to consensual policing than conflictual policing. It also demonstrates how far they have been paralysed in our era of the politics of victimhood, where virtually no police activity fails to get followed up by a complaint or a legal case. Their kid-glove approach to the rioters of course only fuels the riots, because as one observer put it, when the rioters ‘see that the police cannot control the situation, [that] leads to a sort of adrenalin-fuelled euphoria’.
The rioters set fire to a family owned department store, a business they'd run for 150 years; today it's gone, destroyed by the mobs, abandoned by the same police who abandoned the British social contract: give up your weapons and we'll protect you.
During the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict, Korean business owners grabbed pistols, rifles and shotguns; to no one's surprise (other than gun ban proponents), their businesses and property survived almost completely unscathed, passed over by the rioters and looters for easier targets.
But you don't have to be a businessman to see the value of being able to defend yourself from the mob, especially when the police have run away, the rule of law replaced by the rule of the jungle.
It's interesting that these riots -- and the flash mobs in the previous post -- seem to be on the increase in areas where the citizenry is unarmed and dependent on the state for protection.
Posted by Mike Lief at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Plain talk in the City of Brotherly Love
How bad are things in tourism-dependent Philadelphia? Bad enough that Mayor Michael Nutter made sense, and ended up in substantial agreement with your humble correspondent -- at least when it comes to the appearance and behavior of our nation's misbegotten and entitled youth.
The Washington Times reports:
Mayor Michael A. Nutter, telling marauding black youths “you have damaged your own race,” imposed a tougher curfew Monday in response to the latest “flash mob” — spontaneous groups of teens who attack people at random on the streets of the city’s tourist and fashionable shopping districts.
“Take those God-darn hoodies down, especially in the summer,” Mr. Nutter, the city’s second black mayor, said in an angry lecture aimed at black teens. “Pull your pants up and buy a belt ‘cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”
“If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy,” the mayor said. “You have damaged your own race.”
Mr. Nutter announced that he was beefing up police patrols in certain neighborhoods, enlisting volunteers to monitor the streets and moving up the weekend curfew for minors to 9 p.m.
Parents will face increased fines for each time their child is caught violating the curfew.
As if that's not shocking enough, the NAACP and the ACLU chime in, supporting the mayor's tough talk and backing the curfews.
I applaud the unexpected common-sense response from the mayor. Beyond the crime -- which is appalling enough -- the sartorial advice is terrific. The self-obsession that leads some people today to dress like derelicts and mutilate, mark and scar themselves for the rest of us to see, and then demand acceptance for the pathologies on view is beyond astonishing.
"They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy" is about the truest thing I've heard a politician say in ages.
Bravo, Nutter!
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2011
New and improved "Coexist" bumper sticker
I loathe the "Coexist" bumper stickers -- you know the ones I'm talking about -- with the word spelled with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and assorted pagan symbols, as well as a patchouli-reeking-hippie peace sign.
This one's *much* better, a snarky, "God made man, Samuel Colt made him equal" response to the granola, "Michael rowed the boat ashore" 'tude of the original, inasmuch as hoping, wishing, and praying for peace love and understanding is an aspiration for many, but it's a far more realistic one with a .45 at the ready, if needed. I prefer it because it reflects a better understanding of human nature -- and the world -- than does the all-too-naive and sappy original bumper sticker.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
For all you wannabe sleuths: Everything you ever wanted to know about blood spatter analysis
Created by: Forensic Nursing
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 02, 2011
Coming soon: Red Tails
As a long-standing aviation buff and voracious reader since I cracked the covers of my first book long ago, no topic has captured my interest like World War II -- especially the aviators who battled in the skies over Europe, and no aircraft captured my interest quite like the B-17 Flying Fortress.
So this trailer gave me chills. It's the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the black fighter pilots who provided cover for the B-17s and B-24s and their crews over Nazi-occupied Europe, brave men who lost fewer bombers under their protection to enemy aircraft than any other unit in the Army Air Corps.
This looks great!
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack