At Least it Wasn’t Steroids

2008 Cy Young Award Winner Tim Lincecum was arrested in Washington after 3.3 grams of marijuana was found after a traffic stop.  Lincecum has a 40 – 17 record in 3 seasons, a Cy Young award and made it to the show after only one year of minor league ball.

Really, who still believes that only deadbeats and losers smoke weed?  Oh, that’s right.  The Government.

Como Se Dice “Class C Misdemeanor?”

Over the last three years, the Dallas Police Department has ticketed 39 drivers for not speaking English.  Although the great state of Texas has plenty of oyster related offenses on the books, at this point in time, it is still legal to speak a language that isn’t English.

The case that led to the discovery of all the others occurred Oct. 2, when Ernestina Mondragon was stopped for making an illegal U-turn in the White Rock area. Rookie Officer Gary Bromley cited Mondragon for three violations: disregarding a traffic control device, failure to present a driver’s license and “non-English speaking driver.”

Bromley, 33, is a trainee officer in the northeast patrol division, meaning he still works with a training officer during every shift. His training officer on that day was Senior Cpl. Daniel Larkin, 53.

According to department policy, a sergeant must also sign off on all citations. The supervisor who signed off on the Mondragon ticket was Sgt. David Burroughs, 50.

“In this case, the field training officer was aware of ultimately what the recruit officer had done,” Kunkle said. “The field training officer is going to bear more responsibility than the recruit officer.

According to the story, Dallas Police issue roughly 400,000 tickets per year.  At 13 non-English tickets a year, that represents a fraction of a percent of all the tickets written.  I would have a hard time believing that the Dallas Police Department has any kind of policy, written or unwritten, that involves ticketing people who don’t speak English.  Perhaps its a few “dey tuk er jeobs!” type of officers on a personal mission.

At the same time, why wasn’t this caught for 3 years?  I don’t know.  I don’t practice in Dallas, Maybe the traffic/municipal courts are back up for 3 years.  I actually think that the officers involved will face some discipline.  It’s one thing to Taser a grandmother that’s being mouthy.  It’s another thing to hand out embarrassing tickets making the whole department look bad.

Stating the Obvious: Tasers are Dangerous

Proponents of the Taser like to remind people that it’s not a lethal device, Taser itself markets it’s products as being “less-lethal.”  They’re right to a certain extent, getting hit with a jolt of electricity is a lot less likely to kill you than getting hit with several .40 caliber bullets.  But despite Taser’s claims, there’s been plenty of people who have ended up dead after being on the wrong end of a Big Man With A Badge (BMWAB) and his trusty attitude adjuster.

All this changed today, when Taser issued a warning, telling all the BMWAB’s out there not to shoot people in the chest, since “it could post an extremely low risk of an ‘adverse cardiac event.’”  Imagine that, shooting someone in the chest with 50,000 volts might be bad for them.  Who would have thunk it?  The company does not actually say that getting hit with the Taser will cause a heat attack, just that there’s a teeny, tiny chance that it could.

This reeks of CYA.  Assuming the list in the first link is accurate, that’s a lot of dead people of a less-lethal device.  Dead people mean potential lawsuits.  Costly lawsuits.  The type of lawsuits that stockholders don’t like.  If a loved one is killed in a Taser related incident, you would generally have two choices for potential lawsuit defendants.  Taser or the police.  The police have governmental immunity and legions of supporters.  Taser certainly has their supporters (police and police supporters) but they have deep pockets and don’t have any kind of immunity.

The solution?  Blame it on the cops.  When a BMWAB doesn’t like some punk’s attitude and gives him a 50,000 volt correction killing him, it’s convenient to have someone else to take the heat.  Now Taser can say, it wasn’t our fault, we told the police not to shoot them in the chest.  Sue the cops, not us.  Taser’s warning to the police basically says as much.

Taser officials said Tuesday the bulletin does not state that Tasers can cause cardiac arrest. They said the advisory means only that law-enforcement agencies can avoid controversy if their officers aim at areas other than the chest.

If you can’t read between the lines, controversy = lawsuits.  Will this make the police think twice before Tasering a grandmother who doesn’t give them the proper respect?  Who knows.  I’m just shocked (pun intended) that it’s taken this long for Taser to say, you know what, maybe our products could be dangerous.

Houston, Too Close To New Orleans

Got back from a weekend in New Orleans.  The Big Easy really might be my favorite city on the planet.  I love that it’s filthy, smells bad, there’s too many people, there’s a decent chance of getting robbed, and that’s just the touristy parts.  I keed, I keed.  Really, I love the culture, the attitude, the food, the architecture, the people, and yes, the grime.  Maybe it’s because Bryan-College Station can get a little Pleasantville at times, but I like going to a real city.  Too bad the Louisiana bar doesn’t offer reciprocity.  It was bad enough learning Oil and Gas law for the bar, I’m not about to try to figure out French Civil Code.

Anyway, a couple of legal observations from New Orleans.  As we were out walking around, I saw a campaign sign for someone running for Traffic Judge.  While one can probably make a decent argument that J.P. and municipal judges are glorified traffic judges who happen to have some additional responsibilities, that probably isn’t how they run their campaigns.  I wonder what percentage of the Bryan and College Station municipal court judges caseloads are traffic related.  My immediate thought was, how do you campaign for traffic judge.

Most judges seem to campaign that they’ll “git tuff on crime.”  Longer prison sentences for the dregs of society.  Lock ‘em up and throw away the key.  Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.  You get the idea.  It’s an idea that seems to resonate well with the voters.  It’s probably tough to convince people that lighter sentences for murders, rapists, robbers, kiddie diddlers, etc is a good idea.  And if you’re a voter, you probably think to yourself that there’s a very small chance you’ll be convicted of one of the above crimes.  The likelihood of having a “git tuff on crime” judge affect your life is pretty slim.

However, will that work when you’re campaigning for traffic judge?  John or Jane Q. Voter might not have any plans of catching a first degree felony, but there’s a decent chance they get some kind of traffic ticket.  Do they want to be facing the judge who has called for higher fines for all traffic violators?  I think if I was running of traffic judge, my campaign slogan would be “Deferred For Everyone!”

There were a couple billboards along I-10 in the middle of Cajun Country from the Louisiana State Police that said something to the effect of “Obey the Speed Limit…Or Else.”  I wish I had taken a picture of it now, I can’t remember exactly what it said.  After seeing the billboard, I slowed down to the posted speed limit.  I was out in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t want to find out what how rural parish sheriff interpreted “or else.”

Who Wants It More

As I’m writing, the Tigers have a 3 game lead on the Twins, with 4 games remaining (including today’s).  A win today clinches the first Division title since 1987.  A loss today means dealing with Jake Peavy and the White Sox while the Twins get the Royals at the Metrodome.

And yes, I’m actually working while watching the game.  I have several suppression issues coming up, and this is a good chance to do some research uninterrupted.  It’s amazing how much you can get done with no distractions, other than baseball.

As a side note, here’s Joe Mauer allegedly tipping pitches from Tuesday’s game.  Mauer should have gotten plunked for it.

No Good Deed

I realize the story in this post is a little outdated.  I’ve had some computer problems lately, in addition to being pretty busy.  There was an incident involving my beloved MacBook and a glass of water.  It’s best not to talk about it.

Moving on…

A Texas A&M University student was ticketed this week after he stopped to help a woman whose car was on fire, stepped into traffic and was hit by an oncoming vehicle.

J.D. Swiger was taken to the College Station Medical Center after the accident on Wellborn Road on Sunday.

So much for being a Good Samaritan.

He was in a hospital bed with a neck brace on and surrounded by several nurses when a College Station Police Department officer wrote him a $300 ticket for failure to yield the right of way to the vehicle.

The junior finance major from San Antonio said he didn’t understand the officer’s decision.

“It was like a slap in the face. It was insult to injury,” he said. “I begged him to write me a warning. I told him I had learned my lesson. And he proceeded to write the ticket. The nurses were livid at him for doing that.”

Kate Shafer, the woman whose car was on fire, was also surprised when she found out about the citation.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Here was this Good Samaritan, trying to help me. He gets hit by a car. And he’s not even mad at the person who hit him, he just wanted to avoid a $300 ticket. I think that’s ridiculous.”

So let’s get this straight.  Mr. Swiger, someone who doesn’t know Ms. Shafter from anyone else stops and helps out a woman who’s car is one fire.  He tries to run across the street to get a fire extingishure, looks both ways, doesn’t see a car, steps across the street and gets hit.  He reward, for trying to help (besides a trip to the hospital) is a ticket for failure to yield right of way.

Was the officer technically correct, yes?  However, I do not believe that CSPD is now employing a RoboCop that can only obey laws and has no discretion at all.  Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.

Swiger went to the Brazos County Courthouse on Thursday to pay the ticket and asked a county prosecutor about the chances of getting it dismissed.

Swiger said the prosecutor seemed embarrassed when he told her the story, and when Shafer verified the facts, the citation was dropped.

So, the price you pay for being a Good Samaritan in College Station?  A trip to the hospital and a ticket that you have to go to court to get dismissed.  I’m sure that will just encourage everyone to help there fellow citizens around town.

Shenanigans

Mac: But our shenanigans are cheeky and fun
Thorny: And his shenanigans are cruel and tragic

In a scene that could have been an outtake from Reno 911 or Super Troopers (see above), officers from one of those multi-jurisdictional drug teams in Florida got caught playing Wii Bowling, during a raid and subsequent search of a suspects home.

Given that these are some macho, kick-in-the-door type of cops, I’m surprised they didn’t go with Wii Boxing.

Now, in the whole scheme of bad things that cops do, this is relatively minor, a cheeky and fun shenanigan instead of a cruel and tragic one.  It’s not like they tasered a guy with no legs.

The outcome will probably be nil for the officers involved though.  My prediction is the bosses will let the news of this die down, and everyone involved will get a slap on the wrist.  Sad.  One standard for the police, another one for the rest of us.  I wonder what would happen if I was in the middle of a trial and started playing games on my laptop instead of doing my job.

A New, Get Rich Scheme

Want to become a millionaire without actually working for it, or winning the lotto?  Sure, you say.  Who wouldn’t?  Well then, I have got a plan for you.  Check it out.

Step 1: Get falsely accused and convicted of a crime in Texas.  Just a tip, make sure it’s not a death penalty case.  You may end up getting executed.

Step 2: Spend a good part of your life in TDC.

Step 3: Get the Innocence Project to get your conviction overturned.

Step 4: Here’s where it’s all worth it, time to cash in!  As Texas provides the most compensation in the country to people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes.

Here’s the story that caught my eye this morning on the topic.

Exonerees to be millionaires

By JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press

DALLAS — Thomas McGowan’s journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.

“I’ll let my girlfriend pick out the rest,” said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.

He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week.

The annuity payments are especially popular among exonerees, who acknowledge their lack of experience in managing personal finances. A social worker who meets with the exonerees is setting them up with financial advisers and has led discussions alerting them to swindlers.

The annuities are “a way to guarantee these guys … payments for life as long as they follow the law,” said Kevin Glasheen, a Lubbock attorney representing a dozen exonerees.

Two who served about 26 years in prison for rape will receive lump sums of about $2 million apiece. Another, Steven Phillips, who spent about 24 years in prison for sexual assault and burglary, will get about $1.9 million.

The biggest compensation package will likely go to James Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder that DNA testing later showed he did not commit. He eventually could receive nearly $2.2 million but first needs a writ from the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals or a pardon from the governor.

Maybe it’s just me, but I did not like the tone of the article one bit.  It reads like the author is writing about some guys who won the lotto and these guys are lucky to get anything from the state.  These are guys who lost years of their lives, probably the best years, to a system that is supposed to protect the innocent.  And the AP words the story as life these guys have hit the jackpot and are set for life.

First off, 2.2 million bucks isn’t that much.  Not what it used to be at least.  It might be enough for me to retire on if I went somewhere with a good exchange rate.  But how do you put a price on losing 27 years of your life?  The headline is misleading as it is.  Yes, some of the exonerees will become millionaires.  But at a payout of 80K a year, you’d have to be wrongfully imprisoned for 12.5 years to become a millionaire.

And if you asked Mr. McGowan what he’d rather have, $1.8 million or 23 years of his life, I can say with 99% certainly that he’d say those 23 years.  The State of Texas is getting off cheap.

Keep your government hands off my Medicare

That’s been my favorite line from these town hall meetings about health care reform.  The above was allegedly uttered by a gentleman in South Carolina to his Representative, Robert Inglis.

I had the opporuntity to attend the town hall meeting today with my Rep, Chet Edwards.  I admit I don’t know a whole lot about Chet Edwards, other than that he’s a Democrat who keeps getting reelected in a red part of a red state.  Even after he got redistricted to take Foot Hood away from him and to add College Station to his district, he still won.  So I don’t know if that means he’s really doing something right, or he just has a lot of dirt on people.  But since he’s a Democrat in a conservative part of Texas, he’s been getting some heat over this whole health care mess.

My plan was to attend the CLE today at the Brazos Center, and then slip on over to the town hall when the CLE ended.  My plans were thwarted when I found a divider between the CLE section and the town hall section of the Brazos Center.  By the time the CLE was down, the line to get in was backed out through the parking lot and into the street.  I wasn’t about to wait for that.

While waiting in my car for the 10 minutes it took to go 200 feet to get out of the parking lot, I got a pretty good look at the line.  It seemed to be representative of College Station.  Overwhelmingly white, and a mix between people under 25 and people over 60.  One younger guy was carrying a sign that said “No Forced Abortions.”  Another older gentleman had a sign that said “The same people who ran Hurricane Katrina now want to run your health care.”  I liked that one, although he could have worded it better.  And I’m going from memory, so he may have actually worded it better.

As I drove home, a thought regarding the health care reform hit me.  Maybe it’s a simple thought, but I’m a simple man.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from people in town is that they don’t want to pay for someone else’s heath care.  OK, I have had private health for four years now.  Let’s say, for example, I’ve paid a total of $3,000 in premiums.  I’ve only been to the doctor once in that time.  An unfortunate result of too much alcohol and poor depth perception.  I went to the walk in clinic, sat in the lobby for an hour, and spent another 45 minutes waiting in other various rooms.  I probably spent a total of 15 minutes getting my foot x-rayed and talking to the doctor about it.  My co-pay was $30.  So total, my insurer has taken $3,030 from me.

And let’s say I used $1,000 of resources, between the x-ray machine (which was all on computers and was pretty cool) the x-ray techs and the doctor; that’s probably not a terribly unreasonable estimate.  To keep the numbers simple, let us say I’ve cost them another $30 in administrative costs, utilities, etc.  So I’ve used a total of $1,030.  There’s still $2,000 left.  Now what’s happened with that money?  I haven’t gotten it back since it hasn’t been used.  As far as I know, my insurer hasn’t invested it and will be giving me a return.

So what has that $2,000 been used for?  I don’t know, maybe new rims for a doctor’s Porsche.  Or, more likely, it’s been used to pay for the health care of another person.  It seems to me that I’m still paying for someone else’s health care.

But I’m just a simple lawyer, so I could be wrong.

Slaves With White Collars

Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

A post over at Above The Law about contract attorneys caught my eye the other day.  Big Debt, Small Law was featured as a new blog they liked, so I read what he had to say.

Holy crap!  I am ever thankful I have my job and not doing what this guy does.  He describes doing contract document review as a cross between a Dickensian sweatshop and 1984’s Ministry of Love. Lawis4losers notes that as bad as those kids who just took the bar exam have it trying to find a job, the job you take to try to pay off those student loans may be even worse.

At Paul Weiss, for example, they crammed 120 people into a basement room that NYC  fire code rated for 80. This was in 2005. Like steerage passengers on the Titanic, we labored in the bowels of the building, right alongside the boilers and HVAC equipment. Lacking air conditioning and adequate ventilation, many came down with colds that went untreated due to the lack of health insurance. A cockroach problem soon erupted due to the crumbs and food garbage strewn about the cellar floor, which was treated with multiple Raid roach fogger bombs. The morning after the exterminators finished, dead roaches littered our keyboards and even crawled, stunted but still living, from the floppy drives and servers!

We were paid $21 an hour, straight time, and required to work from 9 am to 11 pm seven days a week. Forbidden to use the firm’s lavish upstairs restrooms, they had all 120 of us split a pair of airplane sized-bathrooms that were on the Concourse level under the Rock Center, open to the public and a favorite bathing spot for the homeless. One affable homeless chap named “Bones” would use the lone toilet in there as a foot bidet, rinsing his diabetic ulcer in the excrement-caked shitpot and yelling “I’m in here motherfucker!”every time one of us coders needed to relieve himself. Most of us just went next door and used the Heartland Brewery’s bathroom (did I mention that restroom breaks of over six minutes had to be deducted from one’s timesheet? As a coder, bowel movements can quickly cut into the bottom line).

Paul Weiss also blocked the fire exits with box upon box of the corporate shit-paper that arrived daily by the truckload like grist to a mill. Had a fire broken out, we would no doubt have burned to death in a modern day Triangle Shirtwaist incident, engulfed in flames while helplessly beating on box-blocked doorways. To work there was to truly feel expendable, utterly worthless and really just downright sub-human. The partners should all be ashamed of themselves.

The glorious profession of law.  It sounds like the BigLaw motto should be “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”    Lawis4losers goes on to describe the life of a contract attorney at another BigLaw firm.  And he rightly begins his post by telling anyone who’s starting law school in fall that this is a cautionary tale.  He points his guns at the law schools, the ABA, BigLaw, and comes out blazing.

Sadly, for most incoming One L’s that isn’t how this dreadful mistake will play out, despite propaganda to the contrary in those glossy admissions brochures. Instead, most will cold-send bales of resumes into a dead chasm of silence, eventually scrounging for document review temp-work at rates lower than a truck driver, bricklayer, or garbage man earns. Or there’s the “networking” farce, where you print reams of resumes on that creamy, ivory cotton-weave Staples resume paper and shove them in the face of every gray-haired loser at an alumni cocktail reception. I attended one of these once, and the first older-looking guy on the scene was gang-rushed and sent to the hospital as a horde of recent grads bum-rushed him with an avalanche of cover letters! I believe he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter, having choked on a peel-and-eat shrimp during the melee. I later learned he wasn’t even a lawyer, but instead a catering director merely there to inspect the buffet. Such are the risks one runs when overseeing events for desperate law school grads.  Just posting a craigslist ad for an entry-level lawyer is like strolling into Ethiopia with a box of Dunkin’ Dounuts and saying: “Hey, anyone here got the munchies?”

Bad as they are, these temp jobs (even with the recent plunge in rates and overtime) still pay far better than small ambulance-chaser firms, many of whom have cut salaries into the low 30s (annually) in this gruesome bear market. The supply of lawyers outstrips the number of available jobs by an absurd ratio, and this problem continues unabated since the ABA will accredit anyone who opens up a lawschool in the spare bay of his garage. Did you hear about Philly’s new “Drexel School of Law?” What the hell is a “Drexel,” anyway? Wasn’t he the younger brother of Screech on Saved by the Bell? And then there’s the infamous Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan, who received accreditation for having more “O’s” in their name than any existing law school. But I digress.

Ouch.   I read both his entries (can’t wait for the next one) and several of the blogs he linked, which are now linked in my blogroll.  I especially enjoyed Exposing The Law School Scam.

I started this post with one of my favorite lines from Fight Club for a reason.  It sums up law school.  When you sign up, you’re promised a 95% placement rate and a starting salary to put you in the middle to upper-middle class of most cities.  And for those of you who are extra special, you get six-figures to create and push around endless volumes of paper.  But it’s all built on a house of cards.  We just need more people out there saying it.  I’m glad to see there’s now another voice out there.