Appellate courts often tell us that jurors are presumed to follow the trial court's instructions. Every now and then, reality intrudes. Jurors are always instructed to base their verdict on the law and evidence presented during the trial; they are not to consult sources of information outside the courtroom. That didn't stop jurors from trying to look up a witness' MySpace page in a sexual assault trial after hearing evidence about the page's content.

During the trial, the two jurors ended up looking for the home page of KJ, one of the alleged victims, whose mother had testified that she was withdrawn and not interested in older males.

The fact that KJ had a MySpace profile had come up during testimony. KJ had posted a comment on her page saying "remember my face because I'm going to be famous someday" and, according to the defense, used the account to communicate with older boys.

The bulk of the page had been restricted to invited friends by the time the jurors viewed it, but the West Virginia Supreme Court sensibly reversed the conviction to protect the integrity of the verdict.

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Rudy's latest story that the cops were complaining about late payments falls apart:

New questions were raised today about Rudy Giuliani's explanation for submitting police security expenses to obscure city agencies while he was mayor of New York and carried on a secret affair with his mistress, who also was given use of a police driver and city car. Giuliani said Thursday the unusual billing practice was not intended to hide anything but instead to speed payment of American Express credit card bills.

But the current New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today he knew of no problems with the delay of payments before Giuliani was mayor, when Kelly served under Mayor David Dinkins, or since.

He said all bills for the police details for Dinkins and now for Mayor Mike Bloomberg are handled directly "through the police department."

Update: It's over. The guy surrendered. NY Times report here. The suspect has been identified as Leland Eisenberg, in his 40's, with a history of mental illness and previously known to authorities.

Update (TL): Live video news coverage here. Web coverage at WMUR. The Clinton Campaign has released this statement. There may still be two hostages.

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A man claiming to have a bomb strapped to his body burst into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign office in Rochester, N.H., today and took at least two volunteers hostage, New Hampshire television stations reported.

"There is an ongoing situation in our Rochester, NH office. We are in close contact with state and local authorities and are acting at their direction," the Clinton campaign said in a statement.

The campaign confirmed to Manchester's WMUR that two workers were taken hostage. The report quotes a witness who said a woman and her baby were released by the hostage-taker.

The Giuliani campaign is now backtracking on its claims that prior mayors also used obscure agencies to bill expenses:

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."

The New York Times reports the statistics Rudy Giuliani uses to tout his accomplishments as Mayor of New York don't back him up.

Is he done yet?

Matt Yglesias writes:

Dana Goldstein remarks after watching the Republicans debate that they "are terrified of the words 'George W. Bush.' A smart Democrat would force her or his Republican opponent to face up, as often as possible, to the legacy of his party's leader." . . . I think Democrats need to worry about a possible Republican blurring strategy on Iraq especially if the Democratic nominee voted for the war. . .

Just so. What always is missing from Yglesias' analysis on this is what the current Congress can do - stand up to Bush on funding the Iraq Debacle:

President Bush sternly pressed Democrats to approve money to fund the Iraq war "without strings and without delay" before leaving town for the Christmas holidays, something congressional leaders have already indicated they will not do.

I liked Harry Reid's response:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., responded that Democrats will get troops the money they need as part of a "war strategy worthy of their sacrifices." "Bush Republicans have indefinitely committed our military to a civil war that has taken a tremendous toll on our troops and our ability to respond to other very real threats around the world," Reid said.

Now the hard part, just saying no. That is what Democrats need to do. It is good policy. It is good politics.

Via Atrios:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. "She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

There oughta be a law! Oh wait, there is one:

[NY State Comptroller Alan Hevesi's] decision to step down came as Albany prosecutors were preparing to ask a grand jury to indict him on charges of defrauding the government and on other felonies stemming from his use of state employees as chauffeurs and aides to his wife, a law enforcement official said, charges that could have yielded a prison sentence had he been convicted.

Sounds like Rudy committed a felony to me.

Via Greenwald, this is hilarious as it confirms what we already knew -Joe Klein was repeating Hoeskstra's false GOP line on FISA. This is supposed to help Joe in his moment of disgrace? Frankly, Hoesktra just buried him. As Glenn notes:

Today, Hoektstra went to National Review to defend his good friend, "liberal pundit" Joe Klein, in what Hoekstra called the "venomous debate [that] has raged between Time columnist Joe Klein and his far-Left critics." As always on the pro-Bush Right, those who believe in the radical instrument called "search warrants" are deemed to be "far leftists." Hoekstra pronounces Klein correct in everything he said, and then confesses that he was "one of Klein's sources for the complex technical and legal points that seem to be in contention." So, in other words, it was Hoekstra -- one of Washington's most partisan GOP operatives -- who lied to Klein by claiming that the House Democrats' bill requires warrants for every foreign terrorist's call and that the bill thus gives the same rights to foreign Terrorists as American citizens. That's a real surprise. And Klein The Journalist then mindlessly wrote down Hoekstra's smears without bothering to check if they were true, and Time printed them as fact.

Klein's disgrace is now complete.

Sam Stein of HuffPo reports:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani acted improperly and appeared to be covering something up when he charged the cost of his and his girlfriend's security detail to obscure New York City agencies, former mayor Ed Koch told the Huffington Post.

. . . "There is something improper about charging costs to a department other than the NYPD," said Koch. "They are the ones who are supposed to pick him up no matter where he is whether or not it's in the city."

Koch, who served as the mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, said that the episode gave off the appearance that Giuliani, who was at the time married to his second wife Donna Hanover, was trying to hide his affair. He also suggested that Judith Nathan received her own personal protection, which would have been, according to Koch, a flagrant misuse of taxpayer money.

"I found it strange that his lady friend was given protection," said the long-time New York politico. "That was bizarre. She's not the city's responsibility. Rudy is the city's responsibility. Your wife and his children get protection, and that's understood. But certainly not your lady friend."

Government funded trysts.

Via Digby:

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

This is about as low as I have seen an Establishment paper go. This is shameful stuff.

TalkLeft has been named one of the top 100 law blogs by the American Bar Association Journal.

Here's the catch. You get to vote for your favorites. TalkLeft is named in the "politics for sport" category.

I'm coming a day late to this news, so don't be put off by the large number of votes other blogs have gotten. There's still time for your vote to count. Voting ends January 2, 2008.

Three of the five blogs named are or tilt right -- Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt and Bench Memos (National Review.) The other two are Glenn Greenwald and TalkLeft. I hope you'll vote for TalkLeft or Glenn Greenwald-- just go to this link and select your choice. It takes less than five seconds. No identification is required.

As far as I can tell, only TalkLeft is written by practicing lawyers. The others in our category used to be practicing lawyers or in Instapundit's case, is written by a law professor. Thanks, I hope we get to keep this award on the progressive side of the blawgosphere.

I'm off to Key West for the annual NORML legal seminar where I'll be speaking Saturday on "Building Your Online Presence: Tech Tools for Lawyers." The full agenda is here.

It's just about my favorite seminar of the year, between getting together with other drug defense lawyers, the Pier House Resort and Spa (check out my favorite room) and the free-spirit, laid back style of Key West itself.

So wherever you might be today and this weekend, I hope you have as much fun as I will in Margaritaville. Here's an open thread to get you talking.

Sen. Trent Lott's brother-in-law and nephew, both lawyers, were indicted for bribing a state court judge in an effort to obtain a favorable ruling in a case involving Hurricane Katrina claims.

Prominent Mississippi trial attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, the brother-in-law of outgoing GOP Sen. Trent Lott, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges that he and four ther men tried to bribe a Mississippi state court judge. According to the 13-page indictment, Scruggs and three other attorneys -- including Lott's nephew Zach -- attempted to bribe Mississippi Third Circuit Court Judge Henry L. Lackey with at least $40,000 in cash.

Lackey was assigned to hear a lawsuit in which Scruggs' firm was named as a defendant in a dispute involving $26.5 million in attorneys' fees stemming from a court settlement with State Farm Insurance over Hurricane Katrina claims. The indictment alleges that the bribe was intended to resolve the case in Scruggs' and his firm's favor.

What does this have to do with Trent Lott? Maybe nothing. Or....[More]