The jury has been selected in the Enron trial of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. Eight women, four men, and alternates. For those who want the play-by-play, down to the kinds of muffins served to jurors, check the Houston Chronicle trial blog, written by lawyers in attendance.

Lay and Skilling have their own defense tables in the courtroom. The Judge told the jurors,

"We have some of the finest lawyers in the United States trying this case."

Dominatrix Mistress Lauren M was acquitted of manslaughter and dismemberment of a body today in Massachussetts.

Prosecutors said that 53-year-old Michael Lord suffered a heart attack in 2000 during a bondage session in a "dungeon" in Asher's condominium and that Asher did nothing to help him for five minutes for fear authorities would find out about her business.

Asher had her boyfriend chop up the body of the 275-pound retired telephone company worker, and they dumped it behind a restaurant in Maine, prosecutors said. His remains have never been found. Prosecutors said Asher confessed to police, but the alleged confession was not taped, and investigators testified they did not save their notes.

Defense attorney Stephanie Page argued there was no proof Lord was dead -- "no body, no blood, no DNA."

The fraud trial of Enron's Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling begins in Houston tomorrow. The Judge has said he expects jury selection to take one day.

The two are the biggest fish in a federal probe of the fallen Houston-based energy giant that has produced criminal charges against about 30 people. They were the only chief executives Enron ever had and were chief architects of its storied rise during the 1990s.

Medical marijuana activist Steve Kubby, afflicted with a rare form of adrenal cancer, was deported from Canada Thursday to begin serving a four month sentence in the U.S., and it could be his death sentence. He was taken into custody when his plane landed in San Francisco. The jail is refusing to provide him with marinol, a lawful prescription drug that is a synthetic form of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, that relieves the debilitating pain and other symptoms of his disease.

Steve Kubby, a cancer patient, began coming ill two hours after his 8:10 p.m. arrest following police refusal to provide Marinol, NORML spokesman D. Gieringer reported...."I'm really sick already," Kubby told Gieringer by telephone said from jail. "I'm gonna start puking my brains out."

"He says his guards laughed at him when he requested Marinol. Kubby says he hasn't had marijuana for half a day and has begun to experience all of the symptoms of his life-threatening disease -- nausea, headaches, swollen kidneys. He has chills and has not been able to get a blanket from the guards," Gieringer stated.

A little background from yesterday's news. Kubby had a prescription in Canada that allowed him to smoke up to one ounce of marijuana a day. The only charge against him right now--and the one he was arrested on--is a probation violation for which he would serve 120 days.

Former NYC cop Charles Schwarz, convicted in one of the most brutal cop-beatings ever, that of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima who was sodomized with a broomstick in the police station, is seeking a sentence reduction. Schwarz was convicted of perjury by lying when he told authorities he was not in the bathroom of the police station when fellow cop Justin Volpe, now doing 30 years for the assault, attacked Louima.

Prosecutors say Schwarz held Louima down while another officer sodomized the handcuffed prisoner with a broken broomstick; Schwarz maintains he wasn't there.

Schwarz was sentenced to 60 months and maintains prosecutors promised to ask the Bureau of prisons to cut 13 months off his sentence if he refrained from publicly discussing the case. The prosecutors made the request and BOP turned it down. Schwarz is now seeking to have the Judge throw out his original 5 year sentence and resentence him to 47 months.

by TChris

Judge Edward Cashman caved to public pressure, increasing the sentence he imposed on a sex offender from 60 days to 3 to 10 years. Recognizing that society becomes more safe if we treat sex offenders, and that treatment in the community is more immediate, more readily available, and more effective than treatment behind bars, Judge Cashman initially imposed a sentence with that reality in mind. The subtleties of sentencing were lost on the "lock 'em up" crowd, who belittled Judge Cashman for his perceived leniency:

Ever since, he's been vilified by television commentators, bloggers and even the governor who say he was too light on the crime. ...

After Cashman announced the sentence, Gov. James Douglas called for the judge to resign and several lawmakers suggested he be impeached. On FOX News, Bill O'Reilly told viewers as video of Cashman rolled: "You may be looking at the worst judge in the USA."

Judges are supposed to rule without regard to public sentiment. Justice does not depend on opinion polls or on the views of Bill O'Reilly. Mark Kaplan, Hulett's lawyer, said it all:

"The sentence in this case may not be popular, but the court cannot be swayed by the media or the mob," he wrote in court papers.

The court was swayed, protections against double jeopardy notwithstanding.

High-profile Allegheny county coroner Cyril Wecht has been indicted on 84 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and related offenses arising from his alleged use of government resources to benefit his private practice.

FBI agents searched his office, seizing computers and his private files last spring, and three of his employees resigned as the federal investigation proceeded.

Wecht... has said he is careful to not do private work on county time. He also has said he has never been questioned about the private consulting work he has done for the decades he has held a government job.

....Wecht, who is also an attorney, teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University. He did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.

The husband and wife team who faked finding a finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili were sentenced today to 12 and 9 years, respectively.

I'd bet they'd give up a finger of their own to undo their deed.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times reports today that, with the GOP leading, both parties in Congress are proposing new ethics rules to limit relations with lobbyists.

Barn door? Damage control?

Update (TL): AmericaBlog reports on the loophole which Atrios says is hilarious. Sean-Paul at Agonist says it's a bad idea for Democrats to get involved in the lobbying reform debate. Firedoglake weighs in.

by Last Night in Little Rock

A Florida 15 year old 8th grade student is brain dead after being shot by police because he pointed a pellet gun at them.

CNN reports this morning that the police were told by the school officials that the gun was a pellet gun before the shooting occurred, quoting the student's family's lawyer. One of the students friends who had the gun pointed at him at school took the gun away and could tell it was fake, and he told the school who told the police.

Apparently he painted it to look real, and he brandished it in a threatening manner in a classroom, apparently terrorizing other students.

Shoot first, ask questions later.

For those concerned about the possibility of Judge Sam Alito voting to overturn Roe v. Wade, consider the Connecticut Supreme Court's opinion yesterday upholding the conviction of Michael Skakel for the murder of Martha Moxley. Precedent? Forget about it.

Convicted killer Michael Skakel's best bet for freedom was rooted in a 1983 state Supreme Court ruling that would have barred his prosecution for the 1975 fatal bludgeoning of his friend and neighbor, Martha Moxley, 25 years after the slaying. But the Supreme Court, in upholding Skakel's conviction Friday, dramatically reversed its own precedent, saying the 1983 ruling was "fundamentally flawed."

"Although we will not lightly reverse long-standing precedent, we are unwilling to compound the error that we made in [1983] by approving it again today," Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote in the court's unanimous ruling.

by TChris

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Examiner reported that a "homeless man suspected of planting a bomb at a Starbucks on Monday has not been charged in connection with the case." Today we learn why, from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle: the "bomb" was "nothing more than a flashlight with corroded batteries."

The Examiner story described the bomb as "an explosive with a fuse stuffed into a flashlight." The story also claimed:

The bomb, which police defused on the scene, is currently at an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms testing facility in the East Bay, ATF spokeswoman Marti McKee said.

It turns out that "defusing" the bomb meant that police shot it with a water cannon. They thought the bomb exploded. But there was no fuse, no bomb, and no explosion.

[Anonymous authorities] said a muffled noise that police heard when the water cannon hit the object, which they took to be an explosion, may have been the sound of a chemical reaction between the water and the corroded batteries.