Judgment Day

This guy is nuts. Colorado native Darren Taylor, aka “Professor Splash,” broke his own Guinness World Record yesterday for highest shallow water dive. Taylor dove 35 feet, 5 inches into a kiddie pool filled with 12 inches of ice water.

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

Jamie Spencer, author of the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer blog, is Calling All Criminal Defense Blogs. Here's what you need to know:

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.

I wanted to comment on this last week, but a lengthy appeal and a looming deadline have taken up nearly all of my time lately.

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.