When you stab someone 193 times you will be found guilty.

I didn't kill anyone but I want you to sentence me to be killed.

It's okay to let evidence in which is not admissible under the federal rules of evidence as long as it's only used when you are determining whether a guilty man should be killed or not.

She can't be convicted of manslaughter. She wasn't driving; she was only giving a blowjob to the guy behind the wheel. See, the guy's pants were down when he was thrown out of the car and killed.

Assistant State's Attorney Maureen Platt said the defense is flawed.

"His pants could have been down because he was mooning a car he was drag racing," Platt said. "His pants could have been down because he was urinating out of a window. His pants could have been down because he wasn't feeling well."

Oh my.

Your drug dealer is North Korea.

A 75% drop in heroin use. That's pretty amazing since almost nobody I've seen is able to walk away from heroin.

But now there's ketamine.

Charges from gay marriages. Next comes the mayor of San Fran.

He volunteered for WHAT?!?!?! UUuggggg. I can't even bring myself to do that to my dogs. Of course, they probably don't deserve it as much . . .

This comes across as a mite trifling:

Eight hours after a Saudi man was acquitted by a federal jury of all charges for carrying three small sparklers on a flight from Germany to Boston and was told he was free to leave, five federal officers stormed his South End apartment just after midnight Saturday and arrested him for not having a valid visa. He was jailed until he flew home late that afternoon.

Because, you know, there's no way to know what a guy capable of having sparklers might do.

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines
Section 3C1.1 Obstructing or Impeding the Administration of Justice

I ran across this a while back (the first time I looked at the guidelines) and just spotted it again. Under this section if you "obstruct" your offense level increases by 2 (perhaps adding a couple of years or more to a sentence). Under the commentary it states:

This provision is not intended to punish a defendant for the exercise of a constitutional right. A defendant's denial of guilt (other than a denial of guilt under oath that constitutes perjury), refusal to admit guilt or provide information to a probation officer, or refusal to enter a plea of guilty is not a basis for application of this provision. In applying this provision in respect to alleged false testimony or statements by the defendant, the court should be cognizant that inaccurate testimony or statements sometimes may result from confusion, mistake, or faulty memory and thus, not all inaccurate testimony or statements necessarily reflect a willful attempt to obstruct justice.

In other words, even if I believe my client is as pure as the driven snow and more honest than George Washington, after the 5 federal agents and 6 snitches have testified I had better make sure he sits there and quietly accepts his fate or else they'll put him in prison even longer for exercising his right to testify on his own behalf. Naw, that doesn't violate everything which the constitution stands for. Not at all . . . No. Nope. Not in the least.

The sad thing here is that the federal sentences are already so far over the top that this blatant unconstitutionality is not required. Yes, to those out there who will write me, I realize that courts out there have certainly engaged in some sort of sophistry to excuse this (much as they certainly have for the plead guilty or we punish you provision). What is the great evil addressed here? The possibility of going to trial and testifying contrary to what the government wishes to hear. It is disturbing that the government is allowed to suppress rights in this manner.

Oh great! Now school principals are trying to frame their students.

This guy is hilarious. If it wasn't for him I don't know who all the defense attorneys would talk about each time we get together:

Asked about a recent study that showed Virginia is near the bottom of the list of states in compensating public defenders, Horan was unequivocal. "I think it's nonsense," he said. "If anything, public defenders get paid more than prosecutors.

Yeah, that's why I don't have a secretary (unlike every prosecutor's office I've ever been to) because I'm making so much money.

An editorial calling for DNA testing after Virginia killed a man.

You steal people's lawn gnomes, you will get caught.

NY is supposed to have a death penalty. Supposedly . . .

Discussing the difficulties of the rape shield laws.

More recall silliness in California:

The Pacific Lumber Co. [against whom the district attorney had previously brought suit], through its corporate parent Maxxam Inc. of Houston, has fueled the recall of District Attorney Paul Gallegos with $229,000 in contributions.

That kind of action has got to be reigned in somehow.

You know waiting to find out if you've been selected for jury duty can be boring but?

a juror was arrested and charged with public intoxication after appearing unsteady and groggy when he returned from lunch

Remind me never to get called for jury duty in Oklahoma.

21 people got trepassing charges trying to sneak into the Oscars.

Jury takes 15 minutes to impose a death penalty. That's one vote folks.

Do they want the death penalty in Michigan or not?

Yes, let's outlaw scouring pads. That'll stop drug abuse.

440 pounds of cocaine and $400,000.

"The cracking of a major cross-border drugs ring and the seizure of 12 million US dollars worth of methamphetamine last month was just the latest in a string of successes for China's international anti-drugs cooperation, said a senior police official here Monday. "

"The youth told the jury: "If I was going to rape her, why would I leave lovebites over her and tell her where I lived and who I knew?"

He was acquitted of rape by a unanimous verdict on Thursday."

Two exactly identical cars, from the same Mexican city, with the same hidden compartment, and the same amount of drugs in each. I don't care how dumb you might think the border guards are, they will catch on.

18 years in a Nigerian prison for dealing heroin. You know, if we could send our drug dealers to spend 18 years in a Nigerian prison it would probably cut down on the number of dealers.

In Dublin as men people die from heroin overdoses as do from traffic accidents.

In case anyone has any doubt, the Kobe case is going to get really, really nasty.

In Scotland they sentence a woman to life in prison and reccomend that she serve at least 15 years.