Total Criminal Defense Blog

According to an AP story, a young man dressed as The Joker—complete with purple suit, green dyed hair and clown face paint—was apprehended by local police inside a Three Rivers, Michigan movie theater last Sunday. Like his cinematic counterpart, 20-year-old Spencer Taylor was making mischief: police caught him trying to take movie posters and other “The Dark Knight” paraphernalia in the theater lobby.

The story states that Taylor will be arraigned on August 5.  Just a thought: Mr. Taylor may want to call in legal defense from Georgia District Attorney Paul Howard, a.k.a. “Superlawyer.” Howard even has his own cape.

For more unusual criminal defense cases, visit the Total Criminal Defense articles page.

At Total Criminal Defense, we recently profiled the tragic story of the Curtis brothers, who saved their home and an entire town from a California wildfire by setting backfires near their property, only to find themselves arrested because they were not professional firefighters.

So where were the professional firefighters while the Curtis family risked their lives and risked being charged with crimes in order to save their home?  According to a recent LA Times article, they may have been flying around looking pretty for the tv cameras.

The article interviews fire chiefs and other professionals disgusted with political pressure to make impressive-looking drops of water and fire retardant from helicopters and planes even when it does no actual good, because it looks good for television.  By giving the visual impression of doing something helpful to stop the fires, authorities look better in the face of wildfires that can sometimes be virtually impossible to stop.

Makes their arrest of the Curtis brothers all the more absurd, doesn’t it?

Per a Law.com item, the state of Louisiana has called for the US Supreme Court to reopen the case Kennedy v. Louisiana, which the court ruled on one month ago. The court had ruled that the death penalty was inappropriate for a child rape, despite the horrific nature of the crime.

The state’s request is unusual, but is based on its failure to consider a national law that was implemented in 2006 that authorizes the death penalty for members of the military who are convicted of child rape. This would undermine the court’s statement in its official opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, that there is a “national consensus” against execution for rape.

The state’s lawyers, who were not aware of the law to include it in the legal defense, are hoping that the court’s failure to consider the military law will cause it to reopen the case.

In a busy week for the court after an equally busy spring, the Supreme Court has made two rulings in the last couple of days that address issues that lie at the very heart of U.S. law and its constitutional foundations.

The most recent verdict, issued this morning, D.C. v. Heller, strikes down a 32-year-old ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., ruling that the ban is unconstitutional according to the Second Amendment.  The 5-4 ruling was the first broad interpretation of the Second Amendment’s provision that citizens have “the right to bear arms” since its ratification in 1791.  The majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia stated that the Constitution does not provide for “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”

A verdict yesterday touches on a still-more controversial issue, that of child rape.  In another 5-4 decision, the court overturned a death penalty in Louisiana given to a man who was convicted of raping his 12-year-old stepdaughter.  The majority of justices ruled that the despite the awfulness of the crime, it does not warrant capital punishment.  The court interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” to include death penalty in the case of rape in a ruling in 1977, and the recent decision clarifies this precedent in the case of children.

For more analysis of Supreme Court decisions past and present, visit the Total Criminal Defense article section.

Though not exactly hardened criminals, several attendees of graduation at Fort Mill High School in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were marched away in shackles, as local police began cracking down on disruptive celebrations during the event.  That’s right, they were arrested for cheering when the names of the family members they came to support were announced.   A warning was given before the ceremony, though no intimation that those who violated the rule could be arrested.

The school requested that the police force be brought in to deal with what it deemed was excessive disruption in previous graduation ceremonies.  However, it seems that instead of hewing to their role as intimidating discouragers, the officers chose instead to arrest the offending parties.  Those arrested face up to 30 days in prison and a $1,000 fine on charges of disorderly conduct.

One of those arrested wanted to cheer because, according to him, “it was like a funeral in there.”

Facing 15 years in prison in conjunction with charges stemming from a video that allegedly showed him engaging in sexual acts with a 13-year-old girl, R & B singer R. Kelly escaped penalty as the jury acquitted him of all child pornography charges after deliberating less than one day.

Defense attorney for Kelly were apparently able to successfully convince the jury of Kelly’s claims that he was not the man who appears in the video—questions were also raised about the identity and age of the female, since the alleged victim denies that the girl in the tape is her.

Neither Kelly nor the victim testified in the trial.

Updates happen every week at Total Criminal Defense—here are some of the most recent:

David Hinkson was in big trouble with a slam-dunk case against him in a murder-for-hire trial—that is, until Elven Joe Swisher, a key witness against him, was found guilty of perjury at trial: Perjury Botches Murder-for-Hire Trial.

Police are contending with new technology as they try to chase down scofflaw drivers: Drivers Use Technology and a Social Network to Dodge Cops.

Curious about gun laws in your state?  See our new guide to common State Gun Laws.

Also, don’t forget to check out our Celebrity Criminal Update!

The New York Supreme Court recently upheld the removal of Judge Robert Restaino.  Restaino was removed from the bench following an episode last March during which he snapped and had 46 people thrown in jail because a cell phone rang in court. 

During a domestic violence trial in his courtroom, Restaino heard someone’s phone ring and became infuriated when no one would admit that it was their phone.  Since he could not find the one person who should have been punished, Restaino went berserk and had everyone in the courtroom taken to jail.  He ordered their release after he cooled down later that day.

Restaino had no prior record of improper behavior in the courtroom and told the commission and Court of Appeals that he was under a lot of personal stress at the time of the incident and that he knew he was wrong and that it would never happen again.  He was right - it won’t happen again because the state Commission on Judicial Conduct voted 9-1 for his removal in November and the New York Supreme Court has unanimously upheld that decision according to a report by the Associated Press.

According to this article from techradar.com, minor social networking site Faceparty, which bills itself as the “Biggest Party on Earth,” has deleted the accounts of all users older than 36 in an effort to prevent sexual predators from misusing the site.

In a company notice, Faceparty acknowledges that only a minority of users older than 36 are sex offenders, but that because of new legislation requiring social networking sites to check users’ email addresses against those of registered sex offenders, they had to delete all over-36 accounts. It seems Faceparty doesn’t have an email-verification policy, and the mass deletion was the only way to be safe.

Except that the “new legislation” mentioned in the notice is actually only a proposal. Faceparty executives have insisted that their move was not “ageist,” despite the fact that it was based solely on the ages of users.

But the bigger question seems to be what’s so magical about 36? Does this mean some otherwise harmless, law-abiding citizens magically become sex offenders on their 36th birthdays? Either the coordinators of Faceparty are following some abstruse logic or they’ve made a bizarre and arbitrary decision about their users.

New Jersey passed legislation early this year banning sex offenders from social networking sites.

A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a criminal penalty imposed by a lower court concerning promotion of child pornography.  The ruling was specifically intended to clarify one provision of a 2003 law establishing criminal penalties for possession of child pornography; the new decision establishes penalties for promotion of the offensive material, even if one does not “possess” it in the legal sense.  The decision established a five-year mandatory prison sentence for those convicted of promoting child pornography.

One of the points of contention in the case was the nature of child pornography covered, which, in the interpretation made by the Supreme Court, could include adults portraying minors engaged in simulated intercourse in Hollywood movies such as Titanic or Traffic, or even pictures of nude children sent to grandparents of even descriptions of pictures that may be interpretable as pornographic.

Critics of the decision, which had been reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals prior to being taken on by the Supreme Court, believe that there is too much leeway in the definition established and that it could result in prosecutions of innocent activities.