During the first court appearance of Pedro Hernandez, who is accused of killing Etan Patz, his lawyer said his client had a psychiatric history that included hallucinations.

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Suspect in Patz Case Is Charged With Second-Degree Murder

The attorney for George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month, said Monday that Martin initiated the confrontation, beating his client so badly he suffered a broken nose and injuries to the back of his head. Read full article > >

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Trayvon Martin started confrontation, Zimmerman lawyer says

The lawyer for a man convicted of murdering a Connecticut mother and her two daughters described his client as “damaged” and suffering from a mood disorder during a last-ditch attempt Friday to spare his client's life.

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Lawyer: Conn. murderer ‘damaged’

An attorney for Maryland Sen. Ulysses Currie said Thursday that the corruption case against the Prince George’s County Democrat had been built on selective and misleading evidence, and he urged jurors to acquit his client. “Ulysses Currie is not some trophy to be used to enhance the reputation of federal prosecutors,” Joseph L. Evans, an assistant federal public defender, said a few hours before the case went to the jury Thursday afternoon. “He did not do what he is accused of doing.” Read full article > >

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In closing arguments, Currie attorney blasts prosecution evidence

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — A judge has ordered a 19-year-old Bowie State University student accused of fatally stabbing a roommate last week held without bond. Alexis Simpson was ordered held without bond Monday. Her attorney, Michael Worthy, said in court that the stabbing was a “tragic accident” and that his client acted in self-defense. Read full article > >

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Bowie State student accused in fatal stabbing of roommate ordered held without bond

Former drug kingpin Cornell Jones filed a $2 million defamation and racial discrimination lawsuit against the District on Thursday for cutting funds to his nonprofit group and for saying that taxpayer money had been steered to a strip club. Jones’s lawsuit in U.S. District Court counters the city’s recent action in Superior Court to recover $329,653 that Jones’s group, Miracle Hands, allegedly diverted from a job-training center for people with HIV/AIDS to what became the Stadium Club. Jimmy A. Bell , Jones’s attorney, said the city had vilified his client, who founded Miracle Hands after serving nine years in prison for drug distribution. Read full article > >

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Former drug dealer sues D.C., claims defamation and racial discrimination

Former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic has been declared fit to be extradited from Serbia to stand trail at The Hague for genocide charges. Mladic’s lawyers called Thursday’s trial short, saying their client was too weak to stand trial, but Friday…

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Mladic Declared Fit for Extradition

Is John Grisham a theater guy? Bestsellers, yes. “ The Pelican Brief ,” “ The Runaway Jury ,” “ The Client ” come to mind. Blockbuster movies, sure. Those same titles translated big-time in Hollywood. Read full article > >

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Making a case for putting a Grisham novel onstage

For a brief moment, December’s WikiLeaks scandal caused us to remember the forgotten Private Bradley Manning who was arrested in June 2010 and to this very day languishes in a perpetually lit white box, forbidden virtually all sentient stimulation or social contact. In February, Manning’s lawyer announced that his client’s condition was “deteriorating” and this past weekend a few small groups gathered to protest the conditions of his confinement. read more

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Confining Manning and Falling Into the Outer Darkness

The lawyer for Joran Van der Sloot, the Dutch national accused of killing a 21-year-old woman in Lima, Peru, last year, said Monday he has asked the court to charge his client with the lesser offense of manslaughter.

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Documents detail Van der Sloot defense

It seems a Navy brig is no place for sarcasm. Bradley Manning’s lawyer says his client is being forced to sleep naked nightly after the WikiLeaks suspect called the suicide-watch restrictions placed on him “absurd” and joked that “if he wanted to harm…

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Lawyer: Manning Punished for ‘Sarcastic Quip’

The Patient and Client Council (PCC) postpones a series of road shows planned to find out what the public wants from their health service over election guidance.

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Patient council move questioned

Digitally sensuous architecture in two of Alex Haw’s residential staircase projects Architect Alex Haw of Atmos may not be the first to use digital tools to craft seductively curving forms, but his recent staircase installations in two London abodes might be the most transformative. Each plays off each owner’s interests to create organic asymmetrical forms that lend sensual drama to the spaces. For a gardener’s house Haw came up with a series of growing sculptural spaces that move seamlessly from exterior to interior, like the serpentine branches of a tree. Delicate branches flow throughout the house in an beautiful arts-and-craft style, albeit using modern technology to realize these complex forms. Describing the ornate process, Haw explains “The stair was entirely digitally fabricated using an intricate set of simply-cut but highly-detailed flat-pack elements, CNC-carving sheets of MDF and oak directly from our drawings.” To make “elements that perfectly slot together like an architectural jigsaw,” he and his team engraved “depths to further split structural strands into ever-finer lineaments.” The architect calls the structure a “sensualscape,” citing the client’s lifestyle and passion for plants as direct inspiration. “Our use of the garden as prime architectural generator tries to capture our clients’ brilliant energy and to formulate this essence into built form and lived space, weaving a seamless landscape around the passage of light and the movement of its inhabitants.” Making a spectacular case for the staircase as an opportunity for playful architectural and sculptural form, the structure at the Woven Nest apartment in North London brings beautifully simple contours to the home. The owners—an actress and musician—clearly embraced the expressive and sinuous Atmos style, at once decorative and minimalist, while always full of movement. Haw, a lover of florid prose as much as spaces, describes the central open stairs as having, “timber strands growing upwards towards the light, and unleashing delicate tendrils to frame each step—a single thin metallic line dancing across their lines to offer the lightest of additional support to the hands that seek it.” Atmos’ work, pulsing with life, pushes this exciting new architecture, drawing as much from structural exploration and the use of technology as from close human relationships and behaviors.

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Atmos

Track products from their origins with a publicly-populated mapping system Whole Foods signage lists veggie origins so why shouldn’t you know where your computer comes from? Like most commonplace products, despite the public’s growing desire to know sources, tracing supply chains isn’t easy to do. Enter the user-driven site Sourcemap , an open-source, interactive database for tracking the origins and impacts of anything from a Macbook to a menu. The upshot of a class taught by founder Leo Bonanni at MIT’s Media Lab , Sourcemap lets users create, edit and browse maps detailing the supply chain and carbon footprint of a variety of products. Anyone can create a map for just about anything imaginable and, as a socially-driven site, other users can edit and add to that map, connecting the dots of where materials come from and their carbon cost. To help get the info out there, Sourcemap lets any user print out a QR code that leads back to its map, so you can easily share the information in both digital and physical worlds. Visualizing the paths of global commerce makes for a surprisingly profound and educational experience. Features like the ability to draw lines on the map between points of material origin connects the cultures, stories and people involved. But with heaps of geopolitical information, doing something like browsing for a standard laptop really illustrates the interconnected nature of modern global culture. In a talk at the Greener Gadgets 2010 conference, Bonanni points out that every laptop contains 23 grams of Lithium, and 98% of the world’s Lithium comes from Bolivia. What does it mean for the computer industry if Bolivia decides to hold back? Sourcemap examples beyond the tech industry and other massive industrial processes also make good case studies to show the idea’s potential. A caterer who sells locally-sourced food created a map tracking the local farms he uses. He posts these food maps online and prints them on the menu at catered events, displaying his business’ commitment to buying locally while giving the client a greater understanding of the food’s literal origin. One Scottish brewery saw their English bottling facility was inefficient and moved that operation closer to home to reduce costs and their carbon footprint. Save actually traveling to the farm , Sourcemap’s solution to supply-chain issues—from legitimizing product origin to enlightening consumers on how their money is spent thorough—might just be the comprehensive educational tool that the complex problem needs.

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Sourcemap

Sometime later this year, probably a month or two from now, court-appointed lawyers for Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner will likely file a motion under Rule 21 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requesting a change of venue for their client’s federal murder trial . If and when they do, they will likely argue, among other things, that Loughner cannot receive a fair trial anywhere in Arizona because of prejudicial pretrial publicity following the January 8th attack that left six dead, including a federal judge, and 13 wounded, including a member of Congress. MORE ON The Loughner Trial: Billy House: Jared Loughner Charged by Prosecutors Andrew Cohen: Beltway Back and Forth: The Loughner Venue Change Saga Alex Eichler: Unabomber Lawyer to Represent Laughner And when they make this argument, they will undoubtedly point to stories like the ones offered Tuesday night by the New York Times and the Washington Post , which both offered in graphic detail an account of the attack from law enforcement sources who characterized video surveillance tapes they’ve reviewed from inside the Safeway supermarket two weeks ago. The surveillance video — more powerful to jurors than any dry signed confession ever could be – almost certainly will be a huge part of the government’s case against Loughner. It might even be Exhibit A if and when the case goes to trial. This is especially so because of the new wrinkle it has added to our knowledge about the event: Chief U.S. District Judge John M. Roll, whose murder forced the recusal of every federal trial judge in Arizona, may have died a hero, trying to save the life of Ronald Barber.  That’s the sort of story, of selflessness and sacrifice, of the last full measure of devotion to public service, that stays with a person the rest of their life, up to and including jury duty. Here is part of what the Times reported: The video, according to Richard Kastigar, the investigative and operational bureau chief of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, also reveals that Judge John M. Roll appears to have died while helping to save the life of Ronald Barber, a Giffords employees. Mr. Barber, who was near Ms. Giffords when he was shot twice, has left the hospital. Mr. Kastigar said Tuesday that the video shows Ms. Giffords standing with her back a few inches from a wall when she was shot by the gunman, who approached in ‘a hurried fashion’ with the gun at his side and then raised it and fired a single bullet above her eye at a range of no more than two or three feet. Good for the reporters at both news organizations for getting the videotape story (I wrote about their stories  for Politics Daily , citing both reports). The stories offer intense, new detail about what is said to have happened. They are timely. And they seem impeccably sourced. After all, who else but law enforcement officials would be in a position to see and then leak this looming evidence? And what cynical motives would such media-friendly officials possibly have for disclosing, with such speed and zeal, relevant, material information about the facts of a pending murder trial? Especially before the presiding judge calls everyone in for a conference to warn about the dangers of inappropriately trying the case through the media.    From the timing (10 days after the crime, just as interest in the story was beginning to wane)  to the tactics (the Times and the Post , for maximum distributive effect), the government’s leaking of information about the tape, and the stories such leaking generated, are textbook examples of the sort of unduly prejudicial pretrial publicity that defense attorneys cite, and judges take seriously, when evaluating legitimate change of venue motions. And I would be very surprised  if Loughner’s sharp defense attorney, Judy Clarke , doesn’t make that precise point in her briefs if she ends up requesting that her client’s trial be held outside of Arizona.   What is so unfair, you might rightly ask here, about accurate stories that describe factual events? Criminal defendants lose control of their lives in a million ways, why shouldn’t vibrant coverage of news surrounding their alleged crimes be just another one of those ways? And especially here, where there doesn’t appear to be a shadow of a doubt, let alone a reasonable doubt, about who pulled the trigger? If Loughner’s on the tape, Loughner’s on the tape. And why should public officials get all the grief? Doesn’t the media (you included, Cohen) deserve a share of responsibility for the effects of prejudicial coverage on fair trial rights? All valid queries. But none of the answers would help us with the practical question here: Can Loughner get a constitutionally fair trial, especially a federal murder trial, anywhere in Arizona in the wake of the Tucson shootings? When they decide to share this information, the police (and sometimes, the prosecutors) don’t suddenly turn into First Amendment devotees so they can help out their reporter buddies. The leaks, and the way the leaks are duly reported, cannot help but inflame passions against the defendant. They cannot avoid further venerating and consecrating the victims. The stories create mental images for potential jurors, forming a cognitive narrative of guilt and culpability (and perhaps anger and retribution) that is then supposed to be dutifully submerged to the dictates of a judge’s bleary and obtuse jury instruction about trial fairness. That’s the point — that is why the leaking occurs. There is a virtual library of earnest study – mainly from the 1960s forward that chronicles the influence of media coverage and its impact upon potential jurors in high-profile cases. Staked out at the intersection of law and journalism, it’s been a part of my professional life now for the past 14 years. The week’s big story (from the brazen Kastigar, who evidently allowed himself to be quoted by name without fear of professional repercussion) is in its own way a sly form of the “perp walk,” the carefully-choreographed collaboration between the police and the press to ensure that the latter get a good (and perpetually used) photograph or television “walk shot” of a trial suspect, typically in prison garb and shackled. In both cases, the media get what they want, which is the money shot; the police get what they want, which is to influence potential jurors about the defendant’s perceived guilt without a judicial filter; the prosecutors can plausibly deny any involvement, even though they often benefit from the leak; and the defense and the judge have to deal with the mess. It’s a game of chicken, really, between the executive branch (the police and prosecutors) and the judicial branch — with the media productively playing the role of the oncoming trains. It’s a game of chicken, really, between the executive branch (the police and prosecutors) and the judicial branch — with the media productively playing the role of the oncoming trains. How far can the leaked information go — how prejudicial does it have to be, for how long, and in what fashion – before a judge sees enough and moves a case? Obviously, the perp walk alone has never been enough. Nor, typically, is what Kastigar just did, as odious as the move may seem to the ends of dispassionate justice. Even where the prejudice to a defendant is manifest and pervasive, federal trials are rarely moved; for Pete’s sake, Jeff Skilling couldn’t get his Enron trial moved from Houston . The government typically goes right up to the line of undue prejudice before backing away and, when it crosses the line, judges typically declare anyway that they can remedy the resulting due process problem by selecting particularly earnest jurors following a particularly thorough voir dire.  FRCP Rule 21 states: Upon the defendant’s motion, the court must transfer the proceeding against that defendant to another district if the court is satisfied that so great a prejudice against the defendant exists in the transferring district that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial there. The rule, its interpretations over the years, and Tuesday’s tape stories, all combine to mark the series of interconnected fault lines that lie beneath this case and the “Judge Roll as Hero” story which is now part of the public record. Here, in one place at one time, we see the tension between Sixth Amendment fair trial rights and First Amendment free press rights. Here we see conflict between legal ethics rules and rules about the zealous representation of a client; between a judge’s ability to control a case and a judge’s lack of power or will to control much beyond it. Since being appointed to the case last week from San Diego, U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns hasn’t made any public pronouncements. Perhaps now would be a good time for him to do so. Given the delicate nature of this federal case — the fact that it involves the shooting of a member of Congress and the murder of a federal judge — it is not too soon for some kind of judicial order that puts the government and defense on explicit notice that only bad things can come from the continued pretrial dissemination of potential evidence. Yes, a gag order. It wouldn’t be perfect — none are — but it is Judge Burns’ job to help protect Loughner’s rights and those rights include protection against the dissemination of devastatingly prejudicial information before trial. An early order here from the judge — an early anti-Ito expression of control, you could  say — might also in turn help prosecutors when they try to defend the coming venue motion; the less that comes out now the stronger their venue defense will be later. With that wrinkle in mind, here’s what I want to know. Since he seems to be in a sharing, caring mood, perhaps Kastigar will answer a few questions for me. And if not for me perhaps then down the road for Judge Burns or Loughner’s defense attorneys. Did federal prosecutors or other federal officials, or state officials or state prosecutors, know that Kastigar was revealing the content of the video to journalists? Did any federal or state official give him permission to do so? Did he ask for such permission or did he simply leak the information on his own? Have there been any conversations between local and state officials, and federal law enforcement officers, regarding their legal obligations not to try the case in public? Is the federal government satisfied or peeved that the stories got such great play? And does this incident presage future conflict between state and federal authorities? I mean, this is Arizona , after all. Ask and ye shall receive. I wrote all of the above Wednesday afternoon. By Wednesday night, again courtesy of the Times , I had some answers. Evidently, state prosecutors, if not so far the feds, appear mindful of these conflicting rules and tensions, too, and their likely application to the Loughner case because of the surveillance-tape stories. From the Times :   Meanwhile, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department issued a statement Wednesday that it would not release to the public any more information on the shooting case due to a dispute with the office of County Attorney Barbara LaWall. Prosecutors have complained about the sheriff department’s release to the media of many details of the investigation of JaredL. Loughner, 22, who has been charged in federal court with murder and attempted murder of five federal officials. ‘Until further notice, due to a controversy between the Sheriff’s Department and the County Attorney’s office, no further information reference the January 8, 2011 shooting will be released,’ Deputy Jason Organ, the department’s public information officer, said in a statement. On second thought, maybe now is not a good time to expect a call back from Kastigar. Look, in the end, the resolution of this case is going to rest on three factors: Loughner’s choice about a plea or directing his own defense. The government’s pending decision to seek the death penalty or not. The defense team’s strategy about Loughner’s mental health. None of these has to do with pretrial prejudicial publicity or Rule 21. Loughner’s fate won’t turn on what jurors know or do not know in advance about the surveillance tape. But there is a right way and a wrong way to prosecute a high-profile trial; there is a fair way and an unfair way for government officials to act. And it’s never too early, especially in a murder trial, for lawyers and lawmen to do the right thing. 

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Why the Loughner Trial Needs a Gag Order