Archive for the 'Crime' Category

I *knew* these shoes would get me someday

Published at May 15, 2008 in Clotheshorsery and Crime. 0 Comments

I have a long history of footwear with murderous intentions.

In the ’70s, I had a pair of clogs that I loved. Unfortunately, when you wear your wooden-soled clogs with cable-knit tights and you have unstable ankles, bad things can happen. My mother eventually took the clogs away.

In college, I had two pairs of shoes that tried to kill me. One was a pair of black sneakers that would send me skittering down the stairs, the soles slipping along the edges of the steps, until my foot would catch a horizontal surface. The other was a pair of knockoff LL Bean boots. The boots, like the sneakers, tried to do me in on the stairs. Oh, they were tricky, holding onto snow and ice in their treads, releasing the slush when I was on the stairs in the Student Union or Monteith Hall. I narrowly missed being thrown over the big marble staircase over the info booth at the Student Union, but they got me on the stairs in Monteith, sending me face-first down a flight of stairs.

I managed to catch myself by putting my hands out in front of me, but I still have damage to my right shoulder from that little episode.

I managed to avoid angry shoes for many years, until I started working as a lawyer.  Fortunately, the shoes that tried to get me shortly after I moved to New York were somewhat inept, doing nothing more than causing me some embarrassment and a scraped knee after they made me wipe out in the middle of Rockefeller Center one spring day.

Today, though — another attempt, by a different pair of shoes.  I was crossing Houston to change trains, navigating through road resurfacing and trying to beat the light, when my left shoe took a half step ahead of me.  I landed half out of the shoe and my ankle rolled, causing me to scrape my foot against the asphalt and nearly sending me into oncoming traffic.

Wonder which pair will come for me next?

Larry Craig

Published at August 28, 2007 in Crime. 0 Comments

Okay, it’s really, REALLY bugging me, as a lawyer, to see people (particularly people who, as much as I adore them, should know better (including myself!)) discussing the Larry Craig case based on secondary sources rather than primary documents.

The Smoking Gun, of course, delivers.

Here, for instance, is the police report, which describes just what Craig is alleged to have done.

The charge is here.

The plea agreement is here.  He pleaded to a DisCon charge, conduct which he knew or should have known would cause “alarm or resentment” (that’s a new one on me) in others, which conduct was physical rather than verbal in nature.

Mug shot here, with American flag pin on his lapel.

Primary documents are your friends, kids, and the Smoking Gun nearly always has them.

Can it really be true?

Published at August 27, 2007 in Lousy hypocrites, Political theater, Crime and Schadenfreudelicious. 5 Comments

Is Alberto Gonzalez really going to resign today?

I’ll believe it when I see it.

And in the meantime, I’ll start fretting about which GOP hack they’re going to pick to replace him, and how much of a tongue bath the Dems in the Senate will give the guy.

Honor killing, apparently a scream

Published at July 24, 2007 in Religious nuts, Crime, Anxious masculinity and Woman-Hating. 0 Comments

So details have started coming out about the “honor” killing in London of a Kurdish woman, Banaz Mahmod, by her father and uncle and three other men. Her crime? Daring to reject the man she was forced to marry, who raped and beat her, in favor of one she chose.

But apparently, murder is a real gas:

Hama, who prosecutors said had been a ringleader in the murder, was caught by listening devices talking to a friend in prison about the murder.

In the recordings, transcripts of which were relayed to the court, Hama and his friend are hearing laughing as he described how she was killed with Banaz’s uncle “supervising”.

“I was kicking and stamping on her neck to get the soul out. I saw her stark naked, only wearing pants or underwear,” Hama is recorded as saying.

Yeah. Real funny, the neck-stomping.

A queasy hat tip to Julia.

Sometimes dipshittery has consequences

Published at July 16, 2007 in The coverup is worse than the crime, Crime, Schadenfreudelicious and Dipshittery. 8 Comments

Remember how a student was raped and murdered in her dorm room at Eastern Michigan University last fall, and how the university administration didn’t bother to tell her parents or the other students for several months?

Heads have begun to roll.

YPSILANTI, Michigan (AP) — Three Eastern Michigan University administrators, including the president, have been forced out, months after top school officials were accused of covering up the rape and slaying of a student by publicly ruling out foul play.

President John Fallon was fired, and Vice President of Student Affairs Jim Vick and Public Safety Director Cindy Hall lost their jobs at the 23,500-student public university, the chairman of the school’s governing board said Monday.

Board of Regents Chairman Thomas Sidlik also said the board would put a letter of discipline in the file of university attorney Kenneth McKanders.

The body of the slain student, Laura Dickinson, 22, was discovered December 15 in her dorm room. At the time, university officials told her parents and the media that she died of asphyxiation but that there was no sign of foul play, despite evidence to the contrary.

It was not until another Eastern student, Orange Taylor III, was arrested in late February and charged with murder that her family and students learned she had been raped and killed. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to murder and criminal sexual conduct charges in Dickinson’s death, and is scheduled for trial Oct. 15.

So not only did they cover up the fact that she was raped and murdered in her dorm room (and I don’t recall if she had a roommate, but just imagine finding your roommate dead, and then finding out more than two months later that she’d been raped and murdered by another student — likely someone you knew and continued to interact with during that time). According to an earlier report, Dickinson was found partially clothed, with a pillow over her head, on the floor of her room.

University officials told her parents and other students that Dickinson had died of asphyxiation — I guess that pillow just up and attacked her one day.

The coverup was pretty damn bad, and in violation of federal law, according to an independent report commissioned by the university’s Board of Regents:

The report is especially critical of Jim Vick, vice president for student affairs, and Cindy Hall, public safety director. It says both knew within hours of the discovery of Dickinson’s body that it may be a homicide. But both chose to continue to call the case a “death investigation” rather than a “homicide investigation” throughout the course of the two-month investigation, the report states.

The report also says that Vick at one point directed the shredding of an initial police report that typically makes its way to campus attorneys for review. The report says attorneys likely would have been alerted to the seriousness of the criminal probe and would have advised that the campus community be warned according to the federal Clery Act, which requires institutions to give timely warnings of incidents that represent a threat to campus.

I know I was critical of the several-hours delay in warning students during the Virginia Tech shooting (a stance that many disagreed with me about), but this really takes the cake. And the reason for the coverup?

Tension between faculty and administrators.  Contract negotiations.  Cost overruns on a new house for the University president.  Reduced recruiting.

Well, congratulations, folks — your coverup just hurt EMU’s reputation far more than a frank acknowledgement would have done.  Heckuva job!

H/T:  Thomas and Julia.