An appellate court upheld the life sentence of Ross Ulbricht, while offering a scathing indictment of the US's policy for harshly punishing drug offenses, Wired reported on Wednesday. Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, founded the dark web drug marketplace Silk Road in 2011. The website was shuttered after a lengthy federal investigation two years later, and Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015. In their opinion, Second Circuit appellate court judges questioned the "social utility" of harsh sentences for trafficking illicit substances, and even the "criminal prohibition" regarding the use and sale of drugs. "It is very possible that, at some future point, we will come to regard these policies as tragic mistakes and adopt less punitive and more effective methods of reducing the incidence and costs of drug use," the judges wrote. "At this point in our history, however, the democratically-elected representatives of the people have opted for a policy of prohibition, backed by severe punishment," the judges continued. Ulbricht's appeal rested on the behavior of the two federal agents who handled this case. Carl Mark Force, a former DEA agent, attempted to extort Ulbricht during the investigation, and Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service agent, was convicted of stealing thousands of dollars of bitcoin from Silk Road, Wired reports. In the opinion, the judges wrote that Ulbricht's lawyers did not prove that the the agents' "corrupt behavior" was "exculpatory." SEE ALSO: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings loves when other companies pick fights with him Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Chinese inventors show off the gladiator robot they want to use to challenge the US' 'Megabot' from http://www.businessinsider.com/judge-writes-scathing-indictment-of-drug-policy-in-silk-road-decision-2017-5
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A man was arrested at Trump's DC hotel after police found an assault rifle and handgun in his car5/31/2017 A Pennsylvania man was arrested at President Donald Trump's Washington hotel early on Wednesday after police found an assault rifle, a handgun and 90 rounds of ammunition in his car, authorities said. Brian Moles, 43, of Edinboro, was taken into custody inside the Trump International Hotel a few blocks from the White House, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a charging document. The Washington Post quoted police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck as saying that police had gotten a tip from an out-of-state law enforcement agency that said Moles "had made threatening remarks." Sternbeck would not characterize the comments, the Post said. The Secret Service issued a statement Wednesday morning saying they had received a tip about Moles from a "concerned citizen" as well as hotel staff. Officers reportedly found a "semi-automatic assault-style rifle and a handgun in the individual's vehicle." Police had been told Moles had a Glock 23 pistol and a Carbon 15 Bushmaster rifle, the incident report said. Officers saw one of the guns in his car and found a second firearm in the glove compartment. Moles also had 30 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition and 60 .223-caliber rounds, the report said. He was charged with carrying a pistol without a license and possessing unregistered ammunition, the document said. Police spokeswoman Karimah Bilal had no information about an attorney for Moles. Trump's hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, housed in a landmark former post office, has become a focal point for protests against the Republican president since he took office in January. Edinboro Police Chief Jeff Craft said by telephone that Moles had no criminal record in the western Pennsylvania town and was not known to police. Join the conversation about this story » from http://www.businessinsider.com/r-man-arrested-at-trumps-washington-hotel-after-guns-found-in-car-2017-5 Twenty-two people were killed and dozens injured after suicide bomber targeted Ariana Grande gig Nearly 300 solicitors and barristers have come forward to offer their legal support to victims of the arena terrorist attack, following a public appeal by Manchester Law Society. Issuing a rallying call to the profession last week, the society — headed up by chief executive Fran Eccles-Bech — wanted to hear from firms and lawyers willing to give free legal advice and representation to bereaved families and injured people. Just over a week later, Manchester Law Society has confirmed it’s received nearly 300 applications from lawyers willing to help out. This includes solicitors from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance, Berwin Leighton Paisner, DWF, Ashurst, Addleshaw Goddard, Trowers & Hamlins, Irwin Mitchell, Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom and Arnold & Porter. The bar has also responded strongly, with barristers from the likes of Nine St John Street, 9 Gough Square, 6KBW College Hill, Deans Court Chambers, 23 Essex Street Chambers, Garden Court North Chambers and St John’s Buildings all offering their services. Commenting on the fantastic response from the profession, Eccles-Bech said:
The appeal comes after a suicide bomber killed 22 people and injured dozens more at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena earlier this month. Lawyers willing to act for the victims of this atrocity on a pro bono basis should email their name, firm, area speciality and full contact details to Manchester Law Society’s chief executive Fran Eccles-Bech. For all the latest commercial awareness info, and advance notification of Legal Cheek’s careers events, sign up to the Legal Cheek Hub here. The post Freshfields, Clifford Chance, BLP, Ashurst and DWF lawyers among 300 to offer support following Manchester bombing pro bono appeal appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/05/freshfields-clifford-chance-blp-ashurst-and-dwf-lawyers-among-300-to-offer-support-following-manchester-bombing-pro-bono-appeal/ Constitutional law debate also includes discussion about Supreme Court justice’s bathing suit… A silk has told a panel of judges and politicians that Lord Chancellor Liz Truss may not be so unpopular if she was an old, white man. Nathalie Lieven QC, a public law and human rights specialist at Landmark Chambers, made her comments at a recent panel event at King’s College London. The panel was made up of former Attorney General Dominic Grieve QC, Supreme Court justice Lord Clarke, former Supreme Court justice Lord Phillips, former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and hosted by Maajid Nawaz of LBC Radio, making Lieven the lone woman. She said:
Tension between the profession and the right-wing media hit fever pitch last year when the tabloids referred to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales as “enemies of the people” for ruling against the government in the Article 50 Miller case. The Justice Secretary got a fair amount of stick for failing to defend High Court judges against these press attacks, with some going as far as to suggest she broke the law. But was this fair? David Blunkett, Lieven recalls, used to routinely attack judges while he was Home Secretary, and there was not quite the same level of outrage. Lieven’s remarks followed those made by Falconer, an unashamed Truss sceptic. Speaking at last week’s Europa Law debate — which raised money for the Stroke Association — he said that even though judicial independence is “very, very engrained” in society, judges will begin to become pressured if the state itself begins to support attacks on judges. He added:
Lieven “completely disagreed” — judges are not going to be intimidated by comments they read in the Daily Mail (the newspaper famous for that ‘ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE’ headline). “They aren’t the judges I know,” she noted. This wasn’t the last mention of the right-wing tabloid. Falconer — after stressing that it’s not the Daily Mail he’s concerned about, but the state for seemingly supporting these press attacks — quipped he reads articles about him that are, in his view, “absolutely libellous”, and will then turn the page to read about someone else and thinks “oh god, they sound awful.” Moving away from the Truss versus judges fiasco, moderator Nawaz went on to ask the panel whether they believe Supreme Court judges are more transparent than their House of Lords predecessors. Perhaps an uncontroversial question, but it prompted this unusual response from current bencher Clarke:
Um, ok. An audio recording of the Europa event can be accessed here. Legal Cheek has been informed a video recording will be available in due course. For all the latest commercial awareness info, and advance notification of Legal Cheek’s careers events, sign up to the Legal Cheek Hub here. The post Liz Truss may not be getting as much stick if she was a man, suggests QC appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/05/liz-truss-may-not-be-getting-as-much-stick-if-she-was-a-man-suggests-qc/ Twiddling thumbs: decreasing demand for legal services endemic in the profession survey finds5/31/2017 A quarter of US firms said their associates don’t have full workloads, and this number shoots up when you look at partners It looks like the image of a stressed out, overworked, long hours-suffering lawyer is no longer a feature of the US legal landscape. An annual survey by US management consultancy Altman Weil has found that “decreasing demand for legal services is endemic” within private practice. The report says: “Fifty-two percent of firms report their equity partners are not sufficiently busy, and 62% of firms said their non-equity partners are not busy enough. Lawyers other than partners and associates are not busy enough in 43% of law firms.” Interestingly, the survey also found that in 25% of firms, even associates don’t have full workloads. Across the pond in the United Kingdom, however, junior lawyers certainly don’t seem to be twiddling their thumbs. Recent research by the Junior Lawyers Division found over 90% of young lawyers are suffering from work-related stress, and 65% of those blamed their “high workload” for this. Back to the US survey, and it is unclear what the law firms believe is driving this low workload. According to 82% of firm leaders, “weak business development skills and efforts” are to blame (i.e. it’s ALL about selling these days). But at least 59% target “flat or declining market demand”. A lot of this appears to be down to law firms losing out to the clients themselves who are choosing to insource their legal work and grow their in-house team rather than pay private practice charge-out rates. But also it is coming from other players entering the legal services market. There are no similar statistics for the UK. However, some of the trends are also over here: the increase in insourcing (from 2000 to 2012 the number of in-house solicitors doubled to around 25,000), and new entrants to the legal services market (since deregulation in 2011). A Legal Services Consumer Panel report predicted that by 2020 there will be “less involvement by lawyers in many of the tasks that until now have made up their staple diet”. Though the panel focuses on the more consumer end of legal services such as house-buying or will-writing, the panel envisages that consumers will seek alternatives to lawyers or use them in different ways:
These trends identified in the US and the UK do not necessarily mean fewer jobs for those with legal training. Though it COULD mean that there will be fewer lawyers in traditional private practice following the traditional trainee-to-equity partner trajectory. There COULD also be more scope for lawyers who want to work in a non-orthodox way, as contract lawyers or, as the survey puts it, as “paraprofesssionals”. In the US, the survey of almost 400 firms found that many are responding to their chronic over-supply problem by engaging with “alternative lawyer staffing, including using contract lawyers, staff lawyers and shifting work to paraprofessionals.” Read Altman Weil’s report in full below:For all the latest commercial awareness info, and advance notification of Legal Cheek’s careers events, sign up to the Legal Cheek Hub here. The post Twiddling thumbs: decreasing demand for legal services ‘endemic’ in the profession, survey finds appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/05/twiddling-thumbs-decreasing-demand-for-legal-services-endemic-in-the-profession-survey-finds/ The paper starts with a Monty Python quote Senior private law lecturer James Lee has written a research paper on the “judicial individuality” of wild-haired Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption. The paper begins with this quote from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, in a seeming hat tip to Sumption’s originality: Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me; you don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals! Before long, the King’s College London academic delved into a comparison between commercial law expert Sumption and law student favourite Lord Denning. He said:
Sumption also seems to share Denning’s desire for dissents: he is in the top three justices most likely to stray from majority lines (behind Lords Toulson and Clarke). Lee added:
But it’s not just Denning that Lee is reminded of. The lecturer — who has worked at the universities of Birmingham and Reading — also thinks Sumption has a whiff of Shakespeare about him. Lee continued:
Lee’s piece also includes some interesting data on Sumption’s time on the bench. The Brick Court Chambers barrister turned Supreme Court justice has, Lee says, delivered the highest percentage (30.3%) of lead or joint lead judgments in the cases in which he sat in 2015/16. For these reasons and others, Lee appears to have no problem concluding that Sumption has made a “considerable impact” in his years on the bench. Lee finished:
This conclusion broadly aligns with research undertaken by Dr Chris Hanretty, a University of East Anglia academic. Hanretty found that Sumption — along with Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger and deputy president Lady Hale — was one of the most “celebrity” justices on the bench, based on mentions in the press. Read the research in full here:For all the latest commercial awareness info, and advance notification of Legal Cheek’s careers events, sign up to the Legal Cheek Hub here. The post King’s College London law lecturer compares Lord Sumption to Lord Denning in new research about the Supreme Court judge’s ‘individuality’ appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/05/kings-college-london-law-lecturer-compares-lord-sumption-to-lord-denning-in-new-research-about-the-supreme-court-judges-individuality/ The morning’s top legal affairs news stories Lawyers warn May against scrapping Serious Fraud Office [Financial Times] UK wrong to deny residency rights in test case, EU’s legal adviser says [The Guardian] Lawyer ‘stalked by ex-she met on dating app Happn who camped outside her office with beer cans’ [The Sun] England: Planned night courts prompt anger from women barristers [Scottish Legal News] Dick Turpin’s conduct before execution praised by judge in court ruling [Aberdeen Evening Express] China’s cyber security law rattles multinationals [Financial Times] Russia inquiry expands to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen [BBC News] Facebook claims Germany’s new law to tackle fake news will cause tech companies to delete legal content [Independent] Apply to attend: Commercial Awareness Question Time: Inside the acquisition of Visa Europe — with Macfarlanes [Legal Cheek Hub] “Such a bad question to give in an EU paper. Full of speculation and hypotheticals and hardly anything tangible involved which they learnt in class.” [Legal Cheek comments] For all the latest commercial awareness info, and advance notification of Legal Cheek’s careers events, sign up to the Legal Cheek Hub here. The post Morning round-up: Wednesday 31 May appeared first on Legal Cheek. from https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/05/morning-round-up-wednesday-31-may/ Three married US Marines could face charges after a February incident in Colombia in which they allegedly went out drinking with several women before getting drugged and robbed, the Miami Herald reported. Col. Roger T. McDuffie, Maj. Andrew L. Mueller, and Maj. Mauricio Saenz may have fallen victim to a "burundanga poisoning" a type of crime where victims are slipped a drug so they can be robbed or kidnapped. According to a Marine investigation, the men started the night of February 3 by going to two bars with a larger group of Marines. After the rest of the group went back to their hotels, the three Marines in question went off on their own, apparently meeting four local women and eventually ending up a working-class section of Bogota that Pentagon personnel are not allowed to enter. At some point during the evening, the three officers drank a highly intoxicating Colombian liquor called aguardiente and were slipped a drug called benzodiazepine. Security cameras at the hotel filmed the officers walking the women through the lobby to their hotel rooms at 4:30 a.m., past other Marines who were gathering to catch a ride to the airport. They broke a 1 a.m. curfew in the process. At least two of the Marines blacked out in their rooms while with two of the women, according to a report. Another officer withdrew money from his government travel card and brought two women to his room.
Mueller's work laptop and iPhone 6 were stolen, as were his personal iPad and iPhone. McDuffie's work iPhone 6, as well as his personal iPhone, iPod, and cash, were also stolen. This isn't the first time US military personnel have gotten in trouble in Colombia. In 2012, two Marines and 11 US Secret Service officers were caught paying at least two strippers to go back to their hotel rooms with them. The three officers could face "appropriate administrative or judicial proceedings,” according to the Herald, which means they could be charged with conduct unbecoming an officer. Read the full story at the Miami Herald. SEE ALSO: Former U.S. Navy admiral sentenced to 18 months in bribery scandal Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This is the inside account of the secret battle US Marines have been fighting against ISIS from http://www.businessinsider.com/marines-could-get-charged-after-getting-drugged-and-robbed-colombia-2017-5 Jury selection began Tuesday for the trial of Jeronimo Yanez, the St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer charged in last July's fatal shooting of 32-year-old Philando Castile. Yanez, 29, is charged with second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. The case is being heard in the Ramsey County District Court in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, and the court is expected to take several days to narrow the pool of 50 prospective jurors. One woman has already been dismissed from the jury pool after it was determined she was related to Yanez. According to the Pioneer Press, the jury pool contains "a handful of people of color," and a little more than half are men. A friend and former colleague of Castile who attended court on Tuesday told the Pioneer Press he wished the jury pool was "a little more diverse," but he still believed they can be fair. Here's what you need to know:SEE ALSO: The Cleveland police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice has been fired What we know about the shootingYanez shot Castile on July 6, 2016, during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, a suburb of Minnesota. Castile's death immediately drew national attention, as Castile's girlfriend Diamond Reynolds had livestreamed the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook, where it quickly went viral. In the video, which also features Reynold's then-four-year-old daughter in the backseat, Reynolds can be heard calmly speaking to Yanez and describing the events that had unfolded. Reynolds says in the video that they had been pulled over due to a busted tail light, at which point Castile informed Yanez he had a firearm and was reaching for his wallet when Yanez opened fire. In the video, Yanez can be heard shouting expletives and yelling, "I told him not to reach for it," as Reynolds responds, "You told him to get his ID, sir. His driver's license." Reynolds is expected to testify at trial. Prosecutors have said that in addition to her' Facebook Live video of the shooting's aftermath, footage taken from the police cruiser also captured video and audio of the incident and its aftermath. It is expected to be played for the first time in public at the trial, according to the Pioneer Press. The first day of Yanez's trialTwo of the issues already in contention are Castile's marijuana use on the day he was fatally shot, and whether his permit to carry a gun was obtained legally. Yanez's defense attorney Earl Gray argued in a motion that all references to Castile's permit should be struck from the transcripts jurors will be provided with, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Reynolds had referred to Castile's permit three times on video taken during and after the incident. Gray reportedly said the inclusion of such references would be "opening the door" to whether the defense could argue that Castile had lied about using marijuana on his application for the permit. One of the prosecutors, Jeffrey Paulsen, argued that any inaccuracy on the application, which was submitted in 2015, was irrelevant as it was not known to Yanez at the time of the incident. The dispute is expected to be more fully resolved Wednesday, although Judge William Leary proposed that Reynolds' references to the permit be omitted from the trial and the jury instructed not to wonder whether Castile had a permit. Leary also granted a motion from the defense to question Reynolds on the stand about a marijuana purchase she and Castile had reportedly made just hours before the shooting, although he did not compel prosecutors to re-interview her. Reynolds has said the pair did not smoke it in Castile's car, and Castile did not ingest any on the day of the shooting. Toxicology tests turned up some THC in his blood, but prosecutors have argued that its presence does not prove Castile smoked it that same day. What we know about YanezYanez, who is 29 years old and Latino, has worked for the St. Anthony Police Department since 2011. He is believed to be the first police officer in Minnesota to be charged with killing a civilian, according to the Star Tribune. His defense attorneys have maintained that he shot Castile in self-defense. Prosecutors, meanwhile, have emphasized that Castile was not resisting or fleeing when Yanez shot him. "No reasonable officer, knowing, seeing and hearing what Officer Yanez did at the time would've used deadly force under these circumstances," Ramsey County Attorney John Choi told media. "There simply was no objective threat posted to Officer Yanez." Some policing experts have raised questions around law enforcement seminars Yanez attended, including one called "The Bulletproof Warrior" conducted by private company Calibre Press. The seminar has been criticized for fostering paranoia among officers, although the firm says the course is actually designed to save lives.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider from http://www.businessinsider.com/trial-begins-for-police-officer-jeronimo-yanezwho-fatally-shot-philando-castile-2017-5 The Cleveland police officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice has been fired effective immediately, city officials told media on Tuesday. The officer, Timothy Loehmann, had been on the force for less than a year before the 2014 shooting. He was placed on desk duty while an administrative review took place. Loehmann's partner Frank Garmback, who had been driving the police cruiser in the moments leading up to the shooting, has also been suspended without pay for 10 days. "This has been tough on our entire community, and definitely on the Rice family," Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams said at a news conference Tuesday. "When this happened in 2014, I made the comment that this is of course a tragedy, but it's even more tragic that it happened at the hands of a Cleveland police officer." City officials said in a disciplinary letter that Loehmann's termination was due not to the Rice shooting, but to inaccuracies on Loehmann's application to the Cleveland police department, Williams said. Loehmann had previously been hired as a police officer at Missouri's Independence Police Department, but was reportedly allowed to resign after a six-month probationary period. His Independence supervisors deemed Loehmann's job performance "dismal" and found that he could not "follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections," and was "distracted" and "weepy" during firearms qualification training, according to the personnel file reviewed by Cleveland.com. According to a disciplinary letter from the Cleveland Police Department, Loehmann allegedly lied on his application regarding how his job in Independence ended. The disciplinary action against both Loehmann and Garmback comes more than a year after Cleveland settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the Rice family for $6 million. Rice's shooting occurred in November 2014 after Loehmann and Garmback were called to a Cleveland recreation center. They had received a report that a person with a gun was outside, and the 911 dispatcher did not convey to the officers that the caller had said the gun was "probably fake" and its owner was likely a juvenile. Security footage from outside the recreation center shows Loehmann and Garmback's police cruiser skidding to a halt near Rice, at which point Loehmann opens the car door and begins firing at Rice within seconds. Only after the shooting did it emerge that Rice was 12 and had been playing with a plastic pellet gun that had its orange safety tip removed. A grand jury declined in 2015 to indict both officers in Rice's death. Both the shooting and the lack of prosecutorial action prompted national outrage and protests over police use of force and racial bias in the criminal justice system. This story is developing... Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: China built a $350 million bridge that ends in a dirt field in North Korea from http://www.businessinsider.com/cleveland-police-officer-who-shot-tamir-rice-fired-2017-5 |
AuthorHi I am Alana Smith 35 years old living in New York. I am working as an assistant in local law office. I like to share legal news with people to educate them. Archives
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