The law office’s staff and employees of Peritus Public Relations were even kind enough to pump the gas. Cars began arriving at the gas station at midnight on the day in which the state increased its gas tax to 21.1 cents.

Interesting little marketing tactic here, to say the least. I can just hear those Becker employees now, while filling up a motorist’s vehicle:

Becker employee: Good morning, how are you today?

Motorist: I’m great, 99-cent gas … can’t beat that.

Becker Employee: Well, the Becker Law Office has always believed in helping the members of this community. In fact, we’ve been “helping injured people for over 20 years. Auto accidents, wrongful death, dangerous drugs, defective products, dog bites, hormone therapy, slip and fall, nursing home neglect, birth injuries, social security disability, medical malpractice, ADA compliance and sexual harassment … if you’ve been injured, we’d like to help. You can talk to us for free, with no obligation. We’re paid only when you’re paid. Here, take my card.”

Motorist: Okay … thanks.

According to Professor Splash, “the pain lasts for a minute, but the glory lasts for a lifetime.” Check it out:

Got a request from Simple Justice to run another Criminal Law Blog survey similar to the one I did last year. The results came in two parts and were published in June of ’07. Although originally conceived as a method to rate the “Top 10” blogs, I ended up listing 23 blogs over the two part results posts.

I’m going to do it a little differently this time around. To heck with a rating system, or a Top 10, or Top 100. Just send me the name and URL of every good criminal defense type blog you read regularly or subscribe. And of course, don’t forget to tell me who you are. Everyone will get listed.

You could tell me just to count everyone in your blogroll, if you must, but let’s face it – blogrolls get a little stale. Do me a favor and cull through the best of them, by which I mostly mean those that still publish somewhat regularly.

You can leave a comment on this post, or better still just email me at jamie@austindefense.com. Bonus points – which to be perfectly fair are worth nothing except they’ll help me compile this list – are given to folks who mention that I am running this survey on their own blogs. (Don’t forget to email me and let me know you’ve done that.)

I’ll post the results in 2 weeks, and depending on how fast and furious the responses come in, possibly sooner, and possibly after that as well. How’s that for a really strict set of rules and guidelines.

The LA Times had a story last week about two teens who, on several occasions, broke into an Orange County high school, stole tests and answer keys, and hacked the school’s computer system to change their grades.

The 2,800-student school in Las Flores, east of Mission Viejo, is academically well regarded and regularly earns a spot on Newsweek's list of best American high schools.

Omar Khan, of Coto de Caza, has been charged with 69 felonies and faces more than 38 years in prison if convicted. Tanvir Singh, of Ladera Ranch, has been charged with five felony counts and could face three years in prison. Singh will be arraigned today, and Khan will be arraigned Thursday at Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.

High school administrators wanted to handle the matter in-house:

We're really sad and disappointed that the charges have been filed against these students," said Beverly De Nicola, spokeswoman for the Capistrano Unified School District. "We have been cooperating with law enforcement and we have taken our own serious disciplinary actions based on our own investigation. . . . I haven't seen a situation like this in our school district ever."

I’m not well versed in computer hacking law, and have no idea of the kinds of sentences imposed for those crimes. I’d imagine the breaking and entering charges carry hefty sentences, but 38 years? Of course, I don’t believe Khan will be convicted of all these charges, and he'll probably serve little, if any, time in prison. But just to be facing that many years seems completely ridiculous. A person with thousands of child pornography images will face less time than that. You can beat your wife and/or children, kill someone while driving drunk, or commit a plethora of other heinous crimes and face much less time. Has the practice of hacking into school computers and stealing grades become so prevalent that law enforcement needs to come down hard on these two young men? I think not. We have kids up here in the Hinterlands who bring guns and other dangerous weapons to school--clearly a bigger issue than changing grades--and none of them face a sentence of anywhere near 38 years. Just another example of how out-of-whack our system really is.

This case reminded me of a post I read a couple of months back about Seattle attorney Eric Bryant filing a complaint against a police officer for illegally parking his patrol vehicle while waiting for his food. Here’s a portion of the post by Scott at Simple Justice:

Eric Bryant said he was sitting at the restaurant March 7 when Officer Chad Stensgaard parked his patrol car next to a no-parking sign and walked inside to wait for his food, the Portland Mercury reported Thursday.

Bryant told the weekly paper that when he asked Stensgaard about his car, the officer asked Bryant, "If someone broke into your house, would you rather have the police be able to park in front of your house or have to park three blocks away and walk there?"

Bryant filed a complaint as a private citizen alleging several violations, including illegal parking and illegal operation of an emergency vehicle.

In fairness, there are some good reasons why police engage in what appears to be unlawful conduct. If Stensgaard has gotten an emergency call while waiting for his food, requiring his immediate response, it makes sense that his car was right in front of the restaurant.

Similarly, police often respond to lower grade calls at a high rate of speed, and going through traffic lights, under circumstances that don't require full lights and sirens since they aren't in pursuit. The problem is that these aren't always the case, and almost every driver is aware of cops who do it just because they can.

Scott is right on.  Living outside of NYC, I often see cops pull up to a red light, pause for a few seconds, take a look around, and then go before the light turns green. I know cops who say they do this most of the time, even when they’re not responding to a call.  Why?  The usual answer is "why not?"  But if there is no call to respond to, and an officer is simply on patrol, why shouldn’t he or she follow the traffic laws like the rest of us? Tutrani suggests they should (at least in some instances). 

Defendant Lee Weidl, a Suffolk County police officer, was driving his marked police vehicle on the service road of the Long Island Expressway during morning rush-hour traffic.

According to the testimony, while traveling in the middle lane of the three-lane highway, he abruptly decelerated from approximately 40 miles per hour to 1 or 2 miles per hour while changing lanes. Plaintiff, traveling immediately behind the officer, slammed on her brakes and was able to stop within 'a half a car length' of Officer Weidl’s vehicle without striking it. Seconds later, plaintiff’s vehicle was rear-ended by a vehicle driven by defendant Darlene Maldonado.

A jury found that Officer Weidl’s reckless conduct and Maldonado’s negligence were each a substantial factor in causing plaintiff’s injuries and apportioned fault at 50% each. The Appellate Division reversed the judgment entered upon the jury’s verdict, holding, as a matter of law, that Officer Weidl’s conduct was not a proximate cause of the accident because 'plaintiff was able to come to a complete stop without hitting Officer Weidl's vehicle'.

The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division’s ruling:

[I]n light of the fact that the accident occurred within seconds of Officer Weidl's abrupt deceleration, [Weidl’s] actions were not so ‘remote in time’ from plaintiff's injury as to preclude recovery as a matter of law. Under these circumstances, it is irrelevant that plaintiff was able to stop her vehicle without striking Officer Weidl’s vehicle.

Clearly, Officer Weidl’s actions created a foreseeable danger that vehicles would have to brake aggressively in an effort to avoid the lane obstruction created by his vehicle, thereby increasing the risk of rear-end collisions. That a negligent driver may be unable to stop his or her vehicle in time to avoid a collision with a stopped vehicle is 'a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by' Officer Weidl’s actions.

The capital murder conviction of Charles Dean Hood, who is set to be executed Tuesday, should be overturned because the judge at his 1990 trial was secretly dating the district attorney, an appeal filed Thursday alleged.

Judge Verla Sue Holland, now retired, could not have provided Hood with a fair and impartial trial while involved in a long-term intimate relationship with then-Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell, the appeal said. O'Connell played an active role in prosecuting Hood for the double murder that put him on death row.

Appellate lawyers tried to verify that a relationship existed [in 2004 and 2005] without success …. This summer, with a new execution date approaching, Hood's lawyers caught a break when a former assistant district attorney signed a sworn statement June 3 calling the Holland-O'Connell relationship "common knowledge" in the prosecutor's office. Matthew Goeller, now a Plano lawyer in private practice, said the relationship was in existence in 1987, when Goeller joined the district attorney's office. Goeller also said it "existed during the trial of Charles Dean Hood" and ended in 1993.

Holland and O'Connell, now in private practice in Plano, did not return calls Thursday seeking comment. According to the Texas Constitution, judges cannot sit on cases where they have a personal interest or "where either of the parties may be connected with the judge."

The bill is the Rendell administration's latest effort to rid Pennsylvania of its reputation among animal-welfare advocates as a haven for so-called "puppy mills" - large-scale breeding operations that house neglected and abused dogs in cramped, unsanitary cages. It would impose specific penalties for criminal convictions and make a host of other changes intended to provide better living conditions and adequate health care in larger kennels.

It’s about damn time. This industry has been allowed to operate with almost no oversight for far too long. Regulations are pathetic at best, and the sanctions imposed on those found in violation are laughable. One would think the professional dog breeder organizations would actually have an interest in the health and safety of these animals, but instead they’re more concerned with the money involved.

Under the legislation introduced in May, commercial kennels would be defined as ones that either sell any dogs to dealers or pet shops, or sell or transfer more than 60 dogs a year. Those facilities would be required to house dogs in larger cages with solid flooring instead of wire flooring, give the animals opportunities to exercise outdoors, and provide regular veterinary examinations, among other things.

[High-paid lobbyists] testified before the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee [and stated the] proposed changes would force all commercial kennels to close and also prove burdensome for smaller facilities.

Are these people serious? Kennel owners are challenging this bill because they’ll actually have to walk these dogs, provide clean cages, and regular veterinary care? These owners are mad because they may no longer be allowed to stack dogs in cages for 24 hours a day, let them urinate and defecate all over themselves, and then give them a quick clean up and send them to pet stores with a host of underlying health problems.

I don’t feel sorry for any of these owners claiming they’ll go out of business. That’s bullshit. Those who provide adequate care will not be affected. Those who buy a few dogs, breed them until they can no longer reproduce, and skimp on cost to maximize profits may indeed see less profits, but that’s just too bad. If they cannot meet the minimum standards and are forced out of business, they don’t belong in the business to begin with. Screw them. Scumbags.

On this day in 1966, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation.

The roots of the Miranda decision go back to March 2, 1963, when an 18-year-old Phoenix woman told police that she had been abducted, driven to the desert and raped. Detectives questioning her story gave her a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. However, tracking the license plate number of a car that resembled that of her attacker's brought police to Ernesto Miranda, who had a prior record as a peeping tom. Although the victim did not identify Miranda in a line-up, he was brought into police custody and interrogated. What happened next is disputed, but officers left the interrogation with a confession that Miranda later recanted, unaware that he didn't have to say anything at all.

The confession was extremely brief and differed in certain respects from the victim's account of the crime. However, Miranda's appointed defense attorney (who was paid a grand total of $100) didn't call any witnesses at the ensuing trial, and Miranda was convicted. While Miranda was in Arizona state prison, the American Civil Liberties Union took up his appeal, claiming that the confession was false and coerced.

The Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but Miranda was retried and convicted in October 1966 anyway, despite the relative lack of evidence against him. Remaining in prison until 1972, Ernesto Miranda was later stabbed to death in the men's room of a bar after a poker game in January 1976.

Leave it home, grandma.

A relative of a 4-year-old South Carolina girl who accidentally shot herself with her grandmother's handgun in a Sam's Club store said Tuesday the family expects the child to be out of the hospital by week's end.

The child was riding in a shopping cart and playing with a cell phone, then grabbed the gun from her grandmother's purse and shot herself in the chest.

Authorities said the [grandma], a South Carolina magistrate, has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The Sam's Club store does not have a sign prohibiting guns inside.

Chief Magistrate Rodger Emerson Edmonds said it's common for magistrates to carry guns for protection.

"Sometimes some of the judges have to make deposits at the banks," he said. "The other reason is for self preservation to protect yourself because there are some crazies out there."

There are "some crazies" out there, and this grandma who carried a loaded handgun into Sam's Club is one of them.  I don’t buy the Chief Magistrate’s reasoning here. First off, we all make bank deposits, and I hope to never see the day where every person who goes to the bank is armed. Regarding protection, many judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys receive threats from clients, prisoners, and friends and family members of those convicted. But how often do you hear about judges and/or attorneys actually being harmed? Almost never.  And what about doctors who perform abortions, the stock guy who picked the wrong symbol and lost his client a ton of money, and local politicians?  I'd bet they receive threats too--should they be armed as well?  At the end of the day, 99.9% of the population doesn't need to carry a gun.  If you're afraid someone might harm you, go get some pepper spray and/or a taser.