Privacy and Criminal Justice

 Police Want Right To See Medical Records Without Consent
Police want new and expanded rights to access medical records and other confidential data without an individual's consent, a senior police chief has told the Guardian.

Sir Peter Fahy, the Greater Manchester chief constable, said the extra access to sensitive data was needed to help police cope with growing numbers of vulnerable people.


Judge Orders Rape Accuser To Turn Over Facebook Account
A New Jersey judge has ordered a teen who accused a man of rape to turn over access to her Facebook account, providing another example of social media's growing use in courtrooms and the resulting privacy concerns.

Mercer County Superior Court Judge Robert Billmeier this week agreed to a request from David Stevens-Parker's defense attorney, and the judge said he will privately review two weeks of Facebook postings for any comments related to the alleged rape before deciding whether any can be used in court.

Need-Blind Justice

FIFTY years ago, in Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court ruled that poor people accused of serious crimes were entitled to lawyers paid for by the government. But the court did not say how the lawyers should be chosen, how much they should be paid or how to make sure they defended their clients with vigor and care.

This created a simple problem and a complicated one. The simple one is that many appointed lawyers are not paid enough to allow them to do their jobs. The solution to that problem is money. 

The complicated problem is that the Gideon decision created attorney-client relationships barely worthy of the name, between lawyers with conflicting incentives and clients without choices. Now a judge in Washington State and a county in Texas are trying to address that deeper problem in ways that have never been tried in the United States. 

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Fascism and Contemporary Canada.

A series of articles by Robin Mathews, professor, poet, and political activist.

Part One:  Locating The Present Conservative Government Led By Stephen Harper

Part Two: The Strangulation Of Democracy in Canada. The New Global Partnerships

Part Three.  Canada's First Nations and TEPCO 

Part Four. Police, Government, Corporations

Part Five. Capitalist Fascism or Democratic Socialism

Part Six. The Courts. Jessica Ernst And The Honourable Neil Wittmann, Chief Justice, Court Of Queen's Bench, Alberta 

Part Seven.  The Prime Minister's Office - A Criminal Organization?

 

Barrister who called young girl,13, a 'sexual predator' suspended from abuse cases

Attorney General to consider whether to ask Court of Appeal if suspended eight-month jail sentence was unduly lenient

  Anti-sexual abuse campaigners, among them the author who successfully put Jane Austen on the £10 note – before having to fend off the resulting torrent of online rape threats – have reacted angrily after it emerged that a man who admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl walked free from court; while his victim was described by the judge and prosecution as sexually “predatory”.

Neil Wilson, 41, faces having his eight-month suspended jail sentence reviewed after the Attorney General Dominic Grieve agreed to look into the case yesterday. And the Crown Prosecution Service was forced to admit that its own prosecutor acted “inappropriately” when he placed a portion of the responsibility upon the victim in court.

This afternoon, the CPS said that it is considering the involvement of the barrister in question, Robert Colover, in future sexual cases and that it "will not instruct him in any ongoing or future cases involving sexual offences in the meantime".

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Elizabeth Warren Laments ‘Striking Lack Of Professional Diversity’ On Federal Courts, As ‘Corporate Capture’ Escalates

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) brought renewed attention to the critical battle over nominees to the federal courts Thursday evening, in remarks that blasted the “corporate capture” of the federal courts, and called on those concerned with the political system to care as much about the make-up of the courts as of the legislature.
Observing courts’ increasing tendency to side with corporate interests and narrow individuals’ access to justice, Warren flagged a glaring skew in the professional experience of federal judges, the vast majority of whom have experience either as corporate attorneys or prosecutors. Warren lamented that only three percent of federal appeals court judges have substantial legal experience working for a nonprofit organization, and a similar percentage have worked in some capacity to enforce civil rights, according to an American Constitution Society report. And while President Obama has been responsible for some of the most notable exceptions to this trend, recent accounts show that the federal courts continue to be dominated by the same sorts of professional backgrounds.

I want to be clear — there are some really, really talented judges who come from the private sector. I myself have worked for private clients. And it is of course true that the personal views of an attorney often diverge from those of his or her clients. But I think diversity of experience matters.

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Obama's Judicial Nominees Blocked On All Sides By Senate Republicans

- It's bad enough that there are 82 vacant federal judge slots around the country, a level so high that many observers have deemed it a crisis situation.

But perhaps even more startling is the fact that of those 82 vacant slots, 61 of them don't even have a nominee.

On its face, the absence of nominees would appear to be a sign that President Barack Obama is slacking. After all, he is responsible for nominating judges, and he did put forward fewer nominees at the end of his first term than his two predecessors. But a closer look at data on judicial nominees, and conversations with people involved in the nomination process, reveals the bigger problem is Republican senators quietly refusing to recommend potential judges in the first place.

The process for moving judicial nominees is simple enough. A president takes the lead on circuit court nominees, while, per longstanding tradition, a senator kickstarts the process for district court nominees, which make up the bulk of the federal court system. Senators make recommendations from their home states, and the president works with them to get at least some of the nominees confirmed -- the idea being that senators, regardless of party, are motivated to advocate for nominees from their states. The White House may look at other nominees on its own, but typically won't move forward without input from the corresponding senators. Once a nominee is submitted to the Senate, he or she receives a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. If approved, the nomination heads to the Senate floor for a full vote.

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Judges Needed for Federal Courts

There has been a severe breakdown in the process for appointing federal judges. At the start of the Reagan years, it took, on average, a month for candidates for appellate and trial courts to go from nomination to confirmation. In the first Obama term, it has taken, on average, more than seven months.

Seventy-seven judgeships, 9 percent of the federal bench (not counting the Supreme Court), are vacant; 19 more seats are expected to open up soon. The lack of judges is more acute if one considers the growing caseload. The Judicial Conference, the courts’ policy-making body, has recommended expanding the bench by 88 additional judgeships. 

President Obama must make fully staffing the federal courts an important part of his second-term agenda — starting with the immediate Senate confirmation of the 18 nominees approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

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This is an editorial from the NY Times.  Tom

The Courts: How Obama Dropped the Ball

In his novel King of the Jews, Leslie Epstein sets his story in the wartime ghetto of Lodz, Poland, where the Gestapo ruled through an appointed council of Jewish elders. Epstein, researching the book, tracked down the gallows humor of the time. In one such joke, told by a character in the novel, two Jews are facing a firing squad. The commandant asks if they would like blindfolds.  One of the condemned whispers to the other, “Don’t make trouble.”

“Don’t make trouble” could have been the credo of the first year of the Obama Administration. The White House calculated that if the president just extended the hand of conciliation to the Republicans, the opposition would reciprocate and together they would change the tone in Washington. This was the policy on everything from the stimulus to health reform to judicial nominations. It didn’t work out so well.

Now, spurred by the tailwind of a re-election victory and the realization that public opinion is on his side, President Obama has displayed a new toughness in his budget battle. He has declared that he won’t negotiate against himself, and the strategy is working. But the White House is still stuck in don’t-make-trouble mode on the crucial issue of judicial appointments, where the pace of nominations is only now catching up with that of Obama’s predecessors and the strategy for avoiding partisan confrontation gives Republicans something close to a veto over who is nominated.

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Quebec appeal judge seen as likely pick for top court

A former university professor who is a respected expert in constitutional, administrative and labour law is emerging as a strong favourite for the next appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to choose imminently from a list of three candidates that an all-party Parliamentary committee has prepared.

Two more Quebec vacancies will arise in the coming years, when Mr. Justice Morris Fish reaches mandatory retirement in 2013, and when Mr. Justice Louis LeBel retires in 2014. The two people not selected in this round are bound to figure prominently later.

Madam Justice Marie-France Bich, 56, of the Quebec Court of Appeal is widely seen as the leading contender for the nomination. A full-time law professor at the University of Montreal from 1983 until her 2004 appointment to the Quebec Court of Appeal, Judge Bich also presided over the Quebec bar association’s labour and employment law committee from 1997 to 2004. Choosing her would spare Mr. Harper the controversy of not replacing Madam Justice Marie Deschamps with a woman.

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Speed up B.C. court process, 270-page report urges

British Columbia’s justice system must transform itself from a “culture of delay” to a “culture of timeliness,” the head of a government-ordered review says.

Geoffrey Cowper, a lawyer with Fasken Martineau, made dozens of recommendations in a report of 270-plus pages issued on Thursday. Premier Christy Clark appointed Mr. Cowper in February to lead the legal-sector review of the justice system after excessive delays caused more than 100 cases to be stayed last year and endangered thousands more.

However, the government did not commit immediately to act on his recommendations.
Mr. Cowper proposes a province-wide plan to reduce crime, and measures that would revise how prosecutors handle cases and resolve them sooner. His primary aim, he said, is reducing delays and backlogs, and he suggests a system to track cases to prevent them from being stalled.

“In my consultations, there’s really one topic on which there appears to be universal agreement: the system works too slowly,” Mr. Cowper told reporters in a news conference at a downtown Vancouver hotel. “People also agree that delay undermines all of the goals of the justice system.”

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Courts turn to video-conference testimony to cut costs

Faced with increasing costs and delays associated with hearing cases, a growing number of judges are trying to drag the court system into the electronic age, including using video links to allow witnesses to testify from afar.

Legal traditionalists are aghast at the prospect of cross-examining witnesses via video, but others believe the new moves will enhance justice and keep the courts credible and accessible.

“The legal system is going to be exposed to ridicule if we don’t move forward with innovative ways of taking evidence,” said Brian Gover, a veteran Toronto lawyer at Stockwoods LLP. “One of the great issues for us in a time of austerity is going to be cost control and delivering justice in an efficient way. Technology has provided an answer to the problem.”

Two recent rulings broke new ground, opening the door to testimony by Skype and teleconferencing.

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The War on Women in the Courts

In 2007, five men on the Supreme Court told Lilly Ledbetter that she was out of luck. Ledbetter, after two decades working as the only female supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, had sued her employer for wage discrimination–she had discovered that for all those years she had been paid less than male colleagues doing the same job. But the Supreme Court told her that the way they did the math it was too late for her to sue.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at that time the only woman on the Supreme Court, took the unusual step of reading her dissenting opinion from the bench, accusing the five-Justice majority of not understanding the reality of Ledbetter’s situation. She declared, “In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”

The Ledbetter case was a stark example of what it means to have women judges and justices on the bench. Many great pro-equality decisions have been made by male judges, and women judges are by no means guaranteed to rule in favor of female litigants. But having women on the courts means that women’s voices are heard in the halls of justice.

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Tory crime bill will overburden court system: retired judges

A group of justice critics, including two retired judges, spoke out Thursday against the federal government’s omnibus crime bill, saying they worry it could result in a “litany of negative consequences” for the justice system.

The judges, retired chief Yukon judge Barry Stuart and former Ontario Superior Court judge James Chadwick, said they had yet to see evidence that bill C-10 would reduce crime or the already heavy load on the justice system.

Chadwick said he worries the mandatory minimum sentences required in the Safe Streets and Communities Act could lead to fewer pleas and more trials that last longer.

The longer those trials last, the more likely it may be that the case gets thrown out because of a delay in justice, he said.

“One size does not fit all in the sentencing structure,” Chadwick told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.

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Pa. judge gets 28 years in 'kids for cash'

SCRANTON, Pa. — A longtime northeastern Pennsylvania judge was ordered to spend nearly three decades in prison for his role in a massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the state's high court to toss thousands of convictions.

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced Thursday to 28 years in federal prison for taking $1 million in bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a case that became known as "kids for cash."

Ciavarella was motionless when the decision was announced and had no reaction. From behind him, where family members of some of the children he sentenced sat, someone cried out "Woo hoo!"

In the wake of the scandal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.

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America's judiciary: Courting disaster

Denouncing a proposal to cut $150 million out of a courts budget that has already absorbed a $200-million reduction, California's chief justice, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, recently warned that the "devastating and crippling" cuts would "threaten access to justice for all."

California's not alone. Last month, 350 court employees in New York were laid off to offset $170 million in cuts to the state judiciary's budget. Remarkably, 65 dismissed part-time judges continued to work as volunteers to ensure that the courts' indispensable work wouldn't grind to a halt.

It is inexcusable, not to mention unsustainable, when an institution vital to our democracy must depend on former employees to work as volunteers — or simply lock the courthouse door.

But this is happening nationwide. According to the National Center for State Courts, 32 states experienced judicial budget reductions in fiscal year 2010 and 28 others saw reductions in fiscal year 2011. These cuts will continue, and in some cases accelerate, in fiscal year 2012. Strapped for cash, courts have reduced hours of operation, fired staff, frozen salaries and hiring, increased filing fees, diverted resources from civil trials — which in some cases suspended jury trials — and, in the worst cases, closed courts entirely.

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This is an op-ed from the LA Times. Tom

Court to rule on whether law that makes public nudity criminal is unconstitutional

An Ontario court judge will hear arguments Tuesday about whether laws that make it a criminal offence to be nude in public are unconstitutional and should be struck down.

Lawyers for Brian Coldin will argue it should not automatically be a criminal offence to be without clothes in public and that discretion of prosecuting people for being nude should be left up to police.

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Woman Gang-Raped by 7 Halliburton Employees "Signed Away" Her Right to Sue? How Justice Has Become the Privilege of Corporations

Worried about the influence of money in American politics, the huge cash payouts that the US supreme court waved through by its Citizens United decision – the decision that lifted most limits on election campaign spending? Corporations are having their way with American elections just as they've already had their way with our media.

But at least we have the courts, right?

Wrong. The third branch of government's in trouble, too. In fact, access to justice – like access to elected office, let alone a pundit's perch – is becoming a perk just for the rich and powerful.

Take the young woman now testifying in court in Texas. Jamie Leigh Jones claims she was drugged and gang-raped while working for military contractor KBR in Iraq (at the time, a division of Halliburton). Jones, now 26, was on her fourth day in post in Baghdad in 2005 when she says she was assaulted by seven contractors and held captive, under armed guard by two KBR police, in a shipping container.

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10 Important Court Cases in College History

Most people don't think of colleges as litigious or important in the legal world, but the fact is that important court cases sometimes find their start in colleges. From affirmative action to the Fourteenth Amendment, colleges have had their part in major court case decisions in history. Here, we'll take a look at 10 of the most important ones that made it all the way to the Supreme Court.

1. Dartmouth College v. Woodward: Dartmouth College v. Woodward considered whether a state legislature could change the charter of a college. The case determined whether Dartmouth would stay private or be forced to become a state school, changing the duties of the trustees and how they were selected. The court sided with Dartmouth, allowing the school to continue as a private college, as the school's original charter was a contract between the King of England and the trustees of Dartmouth.
2. Berea College v. Kentucky: Berea College v. Kentucky paved the way for determining that segregated educational facilities were unconstitutional. Berea College educated African American and white students together, but the newly passed Day Law in Kentucky prohibited educating the two different groups together. The US Supreme Court upheld states' rights to prohibit private educational institutions chartered as corporations from admitting black and white students together. Although the decision stood, Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a strongly worded dissent. The Day Law was eventually amended to allow voluntary integration.

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The folks at Onlinecollege.org, many of whom are regular followers of Crimbrary, suggested this post to me. Tom

Now vacant: A confirmation crisis in our courts

By Eric H. Holder Jr.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

More than a year ago, President Obama nominated Jane Stranch, a respected Nashville labor lawyer, to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. That vacancy had been declared a "judicial emergency" because the Sixth Circuit does not have enough judges to promptly or effectively handle the court's caseload, leading to serious delays in the administration of justice to people in Tennessee and other parts of the 6th Circuit. Yet despite the fact that Judge Stranch enjoyed the support of both of her Republican home-state senators and bipartisan support in the Senate Judiciary Committee, she was forced to wait almost 300 days for an up-or-down vote by the full Senate. When she finally received that vote earlier this month, she was confirmed overwhelmingly.

Unfortunately, her story is all too typical. Nominee after nominee has languished in the Senate for many months, only to be confirmed by wide bipartisan margins when they finally do receive a vote. As Congress finishes its last week in session before the November elections, our judicial system desperately needs the Senate to act.

Read on....

Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States. Tom

Martin Horn: Five Research Questions I Want Answered.

Vera Institute of Justice Guest Speaker Series