The then Mayor of the Village of Freeport was vindicated by the Second Department (a NY Appeals court covering Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, Suffolk, and parts of Upstate NY), for remarks he made in a public election debate during which he called the plaintiff, a commercial real estate developer, “an extortionist” who was “trying […]
Category: Constitutional Law
A long time ago, I wrote an article entitled “The Constitution is Overrated” and friends and colleagues of mine who knew the admiration and passion that I have for this country’s grand document were surprised at the piece which faulted, not the document itself, but how courts have applied it; rarely, do courts give those […]
OK, I know there is no need to tell you who Trayvon Martin is or why his case is getting all this attention, so let me jump right in to the issue as I see it. Yes, Florida has an absurd self-defense law when it states that you can use deadly physical force without having […]
In yet another 5-4 decision today, the US Supreme Court woke up to the realization that the plea negotiation process is a central part of the criminal justice system and that the Sixth Amendment therefore requires effective lawyering during this phase of a case. Perennial swing man Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision in which […]
Give 16 year old Jessica Ahlquist an “A” for “chutzpa” for being the successful lead plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against a Cranston Rhode Island school district that forced the district to cover up an eight foot high prayer in the school auditorium. The prayer had been there for 49 years and […]
Today the Supreme Court in United States v. Jones decided that the District of Columbia’s Police Department’s attachment of GPS device to a suspected drug dealer’s car without a proper warrant violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizures. In overturning the conviction of Antoine Jones, who had received a life sentence for […]
In another blow to New Orleans DA Harry Connick (Father of the singer Harry Connick Jr) the US Supreme Court once again found that his office withheld exculpatory evidence from a defendant in a capital murder trial. There is a long history of problems in Connick’s office. In 1995, Esquire photographed him, for a piece […]