by TChris

A second trial against a former police officer accused of using excessive force against a California teenager has ended in a hung jury. Prosecutors argued that a videotape presented clear evidence that Inglewood police officer Jeremy Morse used excessive force when he slammed a handcuffed teenager into the hood of a car and punched him in the face. Defense lawyers had argued that the teenager grabbed Morse's groin during a struggle. The teenager, Donovan Jackson, testified that he did not fight with the officers.

The jury was split 6-6, forcing a mistrial. An earlier trial also ended in a mistrial after jurors divided 7-5 in favor of conviction. It is unlikely that the prosecution will seek a third trial in light of the outcome of the first two.

by TChris

Notes made by a victim's advocate during a police interview with the woman who accuses Kobe Bryant of raping her cannot be released to Bryant's defense lawyers, according to a ruling by Judge Terry Ruckriegle on Friday. The judge wrote

that state law provides such strong privacy protection for communications between victims and victim advocates that he cannot even review the notes in private to determine whether they are relevant to the case.

It is difficult to understand how, at least under these circumstances, the public's interest in promoting honest communication between an alleged crime victim and a victim's advocate could outweigh Bryant's constitutional right to discover evidence that would assist his defense. This was not a private communication between the accuser and the advocate. Rather, the advocate was merely a witness to a conversation. How is justice promoted by treating her differently than any other witness who overheard a police interview, simply because of her status as a victim's advocate?

by TChris

Complaining that "sensationalistic" media coverage based on "inaccurate information from law enforcement" has made it impossible for Eric Rudolph to receive a fair trial in Birmingham, Rudolph's lawyers are seeking a change of venue. Rudolph is charged with bombing a clinic in Birmingham, killing a security guard and injuring a nurse.

The defense said the argument was reflected in polling it conducted. With only minor prompting, 97 percent of those polled were aware of the case and 65 percent said Rudolph was either definitely or probably guilty.

The defense also pointed out that, among those who supported the death penalty, "78 percent felt that the death penalty was a more appropriate punishment for Mr. Rudolph than life without the possibility of parole."

Yikes! When 65 percent of the likely jury pool have made up their minds, picking an unbiased jury becomes difficult at best. The defense polling indicated that while fewer citizens of Tennessee were predisposed to find Rudolph guilty and to impose the death penalty, the numbers were still high. Although the case received nationwide attention, potentially tainting the jury pool in any venue, fairness can best be achieved by moving the trial from Birmingham.

by TChris

Freedom of the press isn't so free in San Mateo County, at least for television stations that want their reporters and camera crews to have a convenient space to work while covering Scott Peterson's trial. For a mere $51,000, San Mateo County is allowing stations to use one of sixteen 13 by 17 foot spaces next to the courthouse.

The $51,000 fee amounts to about $230 per square foot. At the height of the dot-com boom, prime office space in San Francisco leased for about $80 per square foot.

The fee doesn't include a $7,500 a month charge for parking satellite trucks. Reporters are not being charged for using a media center located a block from the courthouse.

Steve Alms, the county's real property services manager, defends what might be seen as an effort at profiteering, stating that the county is being "fiscally responsible" by "trying to recover the cost burden" on the county. But stations complained both about the amount of and the deadline for the payment.

When Alms said the fee was due Saturday at noon, he was nearly shouted down by reporters and producers in the room, saying that even major networks can't get that kind of money together in less than a day.

Alms responded by extending the deadline to February 13.

by TChris

The testimony of a key prosecution witness against Martha Stewart and her stock broker, Peter Bacanovic, has been delayed because prosecutors withheld documents from the defense that could cast doubt upon the witness' credibility. The witness, Douglas Faneuil, is now expected to testify on Thursday, a week after the originally scheduled date. Prosecutors expect Faneuil to say that he alerted Stewart to the fact that the company's founder, Sam Waksal, was selling large amounts of his stock in ImClone Systems Inc. Stewart sold 4,000 shares of ImClone stock after Faneuil allegedly gave her that tip.

At issue is an ambiguous statement that Faneuil's former defense lawyer Jeremiah Gutman gave investigators a year ago.

The defense interpreted the document to read that Gutman told investigators that Faneuil could not recall whether Bacanovic or Waksal instructed him to tip off Stewart. However, prosecutors said it was Gutman with the faulty memory. They said it was Gutman himself who could not recall Faneuil's statement about which man gave the order.

If enough doubt can be established as to who ordered Faneuil to reveal confidential stock information, it could undermine the government's charges that Bacanovic lied about his involvement in Stewart's suspicious stock sale.

While the withheld information may not have a direct impact upon the charges against Stewart, any evidence casting doubt upon the credibility of a prosecution witness should be helpful to her defense. This seems to be another case of over-zealous prosecutors deciding for themselves that evidence isn't exculpatory (regardless of how others might view it) and neglecting their obligation to share evidence that might benefit the defense.

Art Garfunkel has decided to fight his pot charge rather than pay a $100 fine. Our prior post on the bust in which a state trooper stopped the limo in which Garfunkel was a passenger is here.

In a "rousing defense" Tuesday during opening arguments, Robert Morvillo, Martha Stewart's defense attorney lashed out at the Government charging they were overzealous prosecutors who made the erroneous assumption that Martha lied when she had intended to get rid of her shares all along.

Attorney Robert Morvillo offered a rousing defense of Martha Stewart Tuesday, telling a jury she had no motive to lie to investigators probing the reasons why she sold her stock in ImClone Systems Inc.

In an opening statement that sounded like a closing argument, Morvillo said his client was the victim of overzealous prosecutors who assumed Stewart lied when she said she planned to sell the shares all along. Intent on making a case against Stewart, he said, prosecutors chose to believe only that she sold the stock because she knew ImClone founder and family friend Samuel Waksal was unloading millions of his own family's shares in the company.

"This case is brought to you by the U.S. Department of Justice, headed by John Ashcroft," Morvillo said as he prowled in front of the jury box and ridiculed Congress for leaking erroneous information about Stewart and her co-defendant and former broker, Peter Bacanovic.

"Same government," Morvillo said, who at points slammed his open palm on the bar in front of the jury box for emphasis. "Leak it on one side, prosecute on the other. Same system. I think George Orwell was 20 years too early."

While other news stories are leading today with "Proseuction Says Martha Lied", we're rooting for Martha so don't expect to see those articles here, unless we decide to deride them. We'll be concentrating on the defense.

You Go, Roy!

Rush Limbaugh's attorney went on the offensive Monday:

Rush Limbaugh's attorney mounted an offensive Monday, accusing Palm Beach County prosecutors of smear tactics and likening his client to any ordinary American with chronic pain.

''This nation is full of people who take medication every day and will do so for the rest of their lives,'' said Roy Black, speaking in a news conference in Miami.

Discussing the prescription-drug abuse allegations in unprecedented detail, Black reasoned that the quantity of medicine Limbaugh is accused of ingesting -- 1,800 pills in 210 days -- works out to roughly 8.5 pills a day, ``certainly not an outrageous amount.''

The State prosecutor's office released confidential plea negotiation documents pursuant to a public records request by the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation, headed up by the ultra-conservative Mark Levin. (We used to debate Levin on cable during the Clinton impeachment days. We find his views insufferable.)

Michael Edmondson, spokesman for the Palm Beach County state attorney, said prosecutors were confident they'd done the right thing. Prosecutors consulted the Attorney General's Office and the Florida Bar in response to the Jan. 15 public records request by the Landmark Legal Foundation, which sought all available documents in the case. They concluded the state public records law required releasing the plea dealings, even though doing so violates ethical rules for lawyers.

'The way the Florida public records law works is, anything that is not specifically exempted under the law is permitted,'' Edmondson said. State law trumps any ethical concerns, he said.

But he offered nothing in writing to back up that account. And Limbaugh's legal team produced documents Monday that seemed to contradict it.

No matter how you feel about Rush, Roy is right. And we're kind of curious as to why Landmark is going after Rush--it's like eating one's own.

As we opined yesterday, professional women are a good bet for Martha Stewart jurors. Her jury was finalized yesterday and consists of 8 women and 4 men.

The jury is weighted toward working women — a pharmacist, a woman who belongs to an organization of art directors, one who travels a lot for business, another whose best friend used to work at Merrill Lynch, and a fifth who works at a law firm.

The men on the jury are for the most part, non-blue collar:

At least three of the four men in the pool also seem savvy about financial matters. One owns shares in Merrill Lynch, for example. Another complained that the Enron scandal hurt the value of his mutual funds (and said that he plays poker with people who work on Wall Street). A third used to work for a brokerage firm as a computer technician.

There are additional dynamics at play here:

But everyone involved in this case has paid careful attention to the atmospherics, and to the sexual politics of putting a powerful woman on trial for a corporate crime. It is unlikely to be an accident that both the judge and the chief prosecutor, Karen Patton Seymour, are women. All of the defense lawyers are men, as is Ms. Stewart's co-defendant and former stockbroker, Peter E. Bacanovic.

We can't help but remember the movie Working Girl with Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith. Sigourneys would be far better than Melanies on the jury. Looks like the defense succeeded.

Of course, jury selection is an art, not a science. It will be interesting to see how the trial unfolds and whether the defense jury consultants earned their fee.

Update: Another description of Martha's jurors:

A minister who counsels married couples, a computer technician and a pharmacist born in Uganda were among the 12 jurors chosen on Monday to decide whether Martha Stewart committed stock fraud....a translator; a woman who recently sued her dry cleaner for damages over an antique dress; an events planner whose husband knows high-profile technology analyst Mary Meeker; and a man who blames the Enron scandal for losses in his mutual fund.

Opening statements are Tuesday --the Government will launch its attack.

Martha Stewart's jury has been selected. There are eight women and four men. Among the alternates, four men and two women. Who's likely to convict Martha and who's likely to acquit? Here's our analysis:

A Juror likely to convict Martha:

Blue-collar worker from a working-class neighborhood with a young family. Someone with strong moral, religious or politically conservative views. One who is angered by the idea of a rich person buying her way out of trouble.

People who are very frugal, concerned about money and who are not financial risk takers. Somebody who has had bad investment experience, somebody who has been burned, somebody who thinks that corporate executives get away with murder.

A juror likely to acquit Martha

by TChris

Four jurors who voted to convict Kevin Cooper are joining Denzel Washington and other actors in asking Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to postpone Cooper's February 10 execution in order to hold a clemency hearing. Cooper was sentenced to death in 1985 after being convicted of murdering four people, including two children, in Chino Hills.

In its plea to the governor, Cooper's newly assembled defense team said there was evidence that could exonerate Cooper, including an alleged confession by a mental health patient and possible DNA evidence from hairs found in the hand of one of the victims.

Prosecutors dismiss the evidence as old news, but the question is whether Schwarzenegger will think it casts enough doubt on Cooper's guilt to warrant greater scrutiny of facts that the jury never considered. He may be influenced by the unusual effort jurors have made to communicate their concerns about unanswered questions in the case and the conduct of police detectives.

Cooper's defense team includes Lanny Davis, "the Washington, D.C., attorney who helped the Clinton White House with damage control during the Monica Lewinsky scandal," and "ex-boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who spent nearly 20 years in a New Jersey prison before his conviction for three murders was overturned." Interestingly, Cooper's request for a clemency hearing is supported by Denzel Washington, who portrayed Carter in the movie "The Hurricane," and by actors Sean Penn and Richard Dreyfuss. Will the pleas of his fellow actors capture the Governor's attention? If so, enlisting their support was a smart move.

by TChris

In a less depressing story from Houston than the one below, Judge Larry Standley has defended his decision to require a man who slapped his wife to attend yoga classes as a condition of probation. Noting that publicity surrounding the sentence had caused the case to take on a life of its own, Judge Standley (apparently concerned that he might be viewed as taking a lenient view of domestic abuse) emphasized that probation had been recommended to him by both parties as part of a plea agreement, and noted that he only tacked on the yoga class as an additional condition. Asked to explain why he required the Yoga class, Judge Standley responded:

I'll tell you what compelled me to do it, simply put, anger is a result of a feeling of a loss of control. And more and more I start seeing people that feel like they can control others around them. And the people that are really into yoga, just being in their presence, it is calming. And if it takes effect, I think it will help this individual. If not, then he will get revoked and do a year.

Asked whether he was worried that the sentence didn't send a sufficiently strong message to people who slap their spouses, Judge Standley assured CNN that he would be "tough on crime" in the appropriate case and pointed to offenders he had sentenced to the Harris County Jail for the maximum term of a year.