There will be a hearing Monday in the James Holmes Aurora shootings case. Monday is the date by which the District Attorney is expected to announce whether he will seek the death penalty. According to a recent defense filing republished by the Denver Post, Holmes offered to plead guilty before his arraignment earlier this month and accept a sentence of life without parole.

Prosecutors dispute the defense made an "unconditional" offer to plead guilty and object to the defense referencing its "purported" offer in a court pleading. It appears from the DA's response that they wanted information from Holmes before deciding whether to take the death penalty off the table. The DA says Holmes has refused to provide the requested information, thus it does not consider his offer to be a true offer. I don't get the state's position at all. [More...]

Fox News reporter Jana Winter, who has been battling a subpoena to appear and testify about her source of information for an early article on the James Holmes case which contained court-restricted information, is scheduled to appear in court Monday pursuant to a defense subpoena. On Wednesday, the Court denied her latest request for an extension. The Court wrote: [More....]

The investments today:

Michigan +2 over Kansas, Michigan State +2 over Duke, Louisville -10 over Oregon, and Koch Bros U, aka FGCU +13 over Florida.

Yesterday 4-0 ATS, + 8 units (29-21 ATS, +23 units for MM.)

Go Gators!

Open Thread.

As I wrote the other day, George Zimmerman attorney Mark O'Mara filed a motion for sanctions against Florida prosecutors for withholding information favorable to the defense. It was a very civilized pleading, supported by factual instances, letters and e-mails.

Late yesterday, in response, the state filed one of the most scurrilous, unprofessional pleadings I have ever had the misfortune to read. I have uploaded it here.

I cannot imagine such a pleading being filed in our federal courts by any Assistant U.S. Attorney. If this is acceptable protocol for Florida state prosecutors, I'm glad I neither practice nor live there.

I have no interest in the diatribe contained in the pleading. But I do want to discuss a few factual allegations and the legal issue.[more..]

So you were tempted to root for Florida Gulf Coast over Florida were you? Nevermind, the 1%er coach, you thought, it is still a heartwarming Cinderella story.

Well think again:

It’s a great story: the virtually unknown, 15th seeded Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU), has made it to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. But there’s something you might not know about FGCU: its economics department is, as a consequence of grants from Randian businessman John Allison and the Charles G. Koch Foundation[.]

Rooting for the Cinderella Eagles is rooting for the Koch Brothers.

Do the right thing, root for the land grant public university established by Abraham Lincoln:

Go Gators!!!

The investments today:

Syracuse +6 over Indiana, Arizona +4½ over Ohio State, Marquette +6 over Miami Florida, Wichita State -4 over La Salle.

Currently 25-21 ATS, +15 units, for March Madness.

Open Thread.

There are lots of new developments in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case. Before I get to them, some readers will remember that about 10 days ago, I wrote about the newly released ABC recording of a portion of Benjamin Crump’s March 19, 2012 interview with Witness 8 and said I would follow-up with analysis. [More...]

The Supreme Court in Italy has overturned Amanda Knox's acquittal by a lower appeals court. According to media accounts, a new trial will be held. According to her U.S. Attorney, Ted Simon, only a "revision" of the acquittal was ordered, which is like a reconsideration, and it's far from certain a new trial will occur.

He characterized the outcome of Tuesday’s court decision as a "revision" of the case, as opposed to a retrial, saying: "Merely because they have sent it back for revision does not mean that anything else will happen other than she will be recognized as not guilty and the same thing will happen again."

[More...]

The return of the Texas search warrant for Evan Ebel's black Cadillac has been released. It took a while, but I finally found the document, thanks to Denver's Fox 31 News.

Other items found are more interesting to me than some random materials that might be used to make a bomb. For example, he had a wireless video surveillance system (Uniden Model UDW-155), surveillance cameras and a voice recorder. And at least one female had been in the car at some point in time -- there was one earring, a pink hair tie and a hair clip. [more...]

The Supreme Court has taken a step to keep the 4th Amendment from going to the dogs. It ruled today that police may not use the fruits of a warrantless dog search at the front door to a residence as probable cause for a search warrant. The case is Jardines v. Florida and the opinion, written by Justice Scalia, is here.

[More...]

TalkLeft's webmaster and I have spent the entire day working on having the premium content option for our content available on this site, rather than on the new premium site. We are almost done.

We are now working with Media Pass instead of Tiny Pass, which was able to accomplish this. We had an hour and half conference call on joinme, which is pretty cool since we could each show stuff on our computers. Media Pass has incredible customer service.

So, it looks like I spent a week and half designing a site that won't be used at TalkLeft. I'd much rather have spent that time writing blogposts. But, pretty as it is, it is better to keep all TalkLeft's content in one place.

I'll be back to regular blogging soon, this is an open thread, all topics welcome.

It's close to sundown here, which marks the beginning of Passover. Best wishes to all observing.

I just got back from the grocery store and was really surprised -- there was an entire aisle of Matzoh, from the U.S. and Israel, and all the regular Matzoh was sold out. Only options: Sodium free, gluten-free, etc. Also gone: white horseradish -- they had hundreds of bottles of the red horseradish. They also had an entire case of Kosher meats, but they were from Iowa, and ever since the labor violations of Agriprocessors came to light, I'm not buying meat from Iowa.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.