Subscribe in a ReaderRIAA Takes a Break From the Joys of Suing Women and Children
December 23rd, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Not exactly a criminal defense matter. These cases were dealt with on the “civil” end of the law. Still, the RIAA made innocent people feel like criminals. ”…it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.” Classy. Way to go RIAA.
In the alternative, the RIAA is going to work with the Internet Service Providers (and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo) to stem the flow of music downloads. This has been the strategy of the movie industry. Letters and emails go out to the alleged offender telling them to cease and desist. RIAA is still reserving the right to sue anyone that ignores the warning letters from the Internet Service Provider. Read the full article here.
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Charges possible in WSP fake diploma case
December 10th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
THURSTON COUNTY, Wash. — Prosecutors will now decide whether to charge nine state troopers with theft for allegedly using fake diplomas to get pay raises.
Prosecutors said word of mouth is how information about obtaining allegedly fake diplomas made the rounds of the Washington State Patrol.
Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jon Tunheim said the nine troopers, who worked all across the state, are connected by the way in which they learned about the alleged fake diplomas.
“One of the reasons that this went out to a number of troopers is because the word kind of got passed out that this had happened with other troopers,” he said.
The State Patrol began investigating after federal agents shut down a diploma mill in Spokane that had already awarded thousands of fake diplomas. However, the agency won’t say if the nine troopers got their diplomas from the Spokane operation.
Following tips that there may be more troopers involved, the Problem Solvers obtained a database from the State Patrol for all 567 troopers getting extra pay. An examination of the database revealed no indication that other troopers had questionable degrees from non-existent schools.
“My first impression is that the investigation here has been very thorough,” Tunheim said.
Troopers can boost their pay significantly with college diplomas — a 2-percent increase for a two-year degree and a 4-percent hike for a four-year degree.
Prosecutors will have to decide if the troopers were intentionally seeking these diplomas to defraud the state.
“What wasn’t passed around is ‘hey, this is a good way to defraud our employer.’ What was passed around was ‘hey, this is a way that we could qualify, perhaps, for this incentive,”‘ said Tunheim.
A tenth trooper has been added to the investigation, but that investigation is on hold because he is currently overseas on military deployment.
Prosecutors expect to make a decision on charges by the end of the month.
Full Article by Tracy Vedder on KOMO here.
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Gitmo Pleas(e)
December 9th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Full Article by Rick Anderson in the Seattle Weekly, here. It was the wise trial work of Seattle attorneys Harry Schneider and Joe McMillan that got Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, released from Guantanamo Bay a few weeks ago. Now, apparently in revolt against their own attorneys, alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others accused of the Sept. 11 plot have chosen a political strategy: confess instead of going to trial, then challenge the U.S. to kill them.
“We don’t want to waste our time with motions,” Mohammed, captured in Pakistan in 2003, told a judge today. “All of you are paid by the U.S. government. I’m not trusting any American.”
The NY Times says the pleas didn’t come as a complete surprise. “There had been indications for months that the detainees were resisting working with the military lawyers assigned to represent them.” But the confessions by the five, who face the death penalty, were also seen as a way they could air their political views without the government having the opportunity to detail their roles in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. Reports the Times:
The American political calendar may also be a factor. Many people inside and outside the government expect President-elect Obama to close down the military commissions that have been used by the Bush administration, and to direct that many detainees now held in Guantánamo Bay be prosecuted instead in the civilian American legal system.
If that happens, today’s proceedings will have been the defendants’ last opportunity to challenge a seriously flawed military justice system – as opposed to the less-flawed federal system - and publicly seek martyrdom.
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When the PD Strikes Back
November 8th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
With our own PD offices facing deep cuts, it is interesting to hear what has been going on in other states.
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Right to an Attorney
October 28th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Supreme Court
So when does the right attach? In Washington, several courts are still holding arraignment without counsel. No bright line rule here.
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Booker and Moore
October 16th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court provided a short decision in light of Booker, regarding sentencing guidelines. See the full opinion here.
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Washington Supreme Court Recognizes Juvenile Rights
October 15th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Article Damon Agnos can be read here.
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Drug Czar’s Report Card
October 14th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News, Marijuana Reform
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Off Topic but Local
September 25th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
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Time Delay, Evidence and Innocence
September 19th, 2008 Filed Under Legal News
Full article from Rick Anderson, in the Seattle Weekly, here.
Katherine Riofta wonders when her brother is getting out of prison. Will it be days, weeks, or years? She’s sure he didn’t shoot anyone. So is a lawyer who wrote the attorney general’s office telling them the state has the wrong guy. “Alex was misidentified and wrongly convicted,” says Katherine, “and they know it.”
Alexander Riofta, 26, was convicted in a 2000 first-degree assault case linked to the 1998 gang-related massacre at a Vietnamese karaoke bar in Tacoma, the Trang Dai, which left five dead and six wounded. Riofta, then a teenager, was friends with some of the accused Trang Dai killers, and was found in 2001 to have shot at, and missed, the brother of a witness who’d agreed to testify. He has so far done seven years based on the eyewitness testimony of the victim. No fingerprints were found in a stolen car used by the gunman or on a spent bullet. A white hat that flew off the head of the gunman was never tested for DNA.
In 2002, Kristi Minchau, a Tacoma attorney who represented Jimmee Chea, a gang member convicted in the Trang Dai killings, contacted the AG’s office during Riofta’s appeal. Chea had told her “who actually committed the shooting for which Alexander Riofta has been convicted and why the victim lied about the shooter’s identity.” Chea didn’t give her permission to reveal the name, she said, but she was allowed to say “it is someone who has a prior conviction in Washington for a violent offense and whose DNA should be on record…” It should match the DNA in the hat.
Said Minchau: “I have absolutely no reason to doubt what Jimmee told me. I also have absolutely no stake in the Riofta case. But if this guy has been wrongly convicted, he deserves a chance at proving it…” Pierce County prosecutors and the AG’s office both oppose DNA testing of the hat, however, which could show it was worn by someone other than Riofta or that, lacking Riofta’s DNA, show he wasn’t at the scene. Citing case law, the prosecutor and AG say Riofta’s trial attorney had the chance to test the DNA early on, but didn’t, and there’s no “probability of innocence” to do it now.
The case landed before the state Supreme Court last year, along with other DNA appeals sought by the University of Washington’s Northwest Innocence Project. In oral arguments last October, Minchau’s letter got short shrift. Michelle Luna-Green, representing the state, suggested Riofta was merely fishing for evidence under a law intended for those “very real” situations when a person could be innocent. It is now 11 months later, with no indication a decision is coming down soon. That’s an unbearably long time to decide the obvious, that the denial of DNA testing is both legally and morally indefensible, says Katherine Riofta.
“Evidence shows the eyewitness could not have seen anyone that night,” she says. “But the DNA test can settle that.” Being sure you’ve locked up the right person doesn’t seem too much to ask.
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