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Jamiel Alexander Chagra, aka Jimmy Chagra, big-time El Paso drug dealer and high-stakes gambler, died of cancer on Friday in Mesa, Arizona.  Chagra spent the better part of a quarter century in prison following his arrest on the Las Vegas Strip in 1980.  A year earlier, he had been convicted of federal drug distribution charges but fled, only to be nabbed in Sin City, his favorite hangout.  Following his arrest in Las Vegas and subsequent imprisonment, he pled guilty four years later to attempting to murder the federal prosecutor in charge of Chagra’s drug distribution prosecution.  Can you say future dangerousness?

The son of a produce trader, Chagra, unlike his two other brothers who went on to become lawyers, drifted into the drug trade.  Chagra worked hard at his given profession, raking in millions of dollars through his cocaine and marijuana smuggling operation out of El Paso and into southwest Texas.  He was known as a high-stakes gambler who played in the roped-off areas at various Vegas casinos, blithely wagering $500,000 on single draws or a roll of the dice on the come line.  But his life as a high-roller came crashing down on February 26, 1979 when the federal government indicted him on drug trafficking charge.  (more…)

Now here’s something that I did not know.  Some laser printers leave a series of nearly imperceptible yellow dots on the printed page.  These dots contain the encoded serial number of the printer as well as the time and date that the particular document was printed.  These yellow tracking dots have been identified on more than 100 color laser printer models from major manufacturers.  And you can see why the Secret Service is so interested in them.  Any federal criminal defense practitioner will tell you that a good color printer in the hands of a counterfeiter is as indispensable to him as the federal guideline manual is to the lawyer.  Once agents decode the information contained in the dots, then they can work with the printer companies to find out where the printer was sold.  That proves to be useful when starting a counterfeiting investigation.

A problem arises.  What if government wants to track the user of a particular printer in the absence of a counterfeiting investigation?  What legal provisions are in place to limit the parameters of such an investigation and what’s to stop agents from tracking documents in all kind of cases, criminal or otherwise?  The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, has put up a page of related links to address the issue.  It can be accessed here.  EFF has compiled a list of printer models it says are found to create those little yellow dots.  You might want to check out to see if yours does as well.  But note: the yellow dots, which have been around for a long time, have been spotted only on documents printed by color laser printers, not the more ubiquitous color inkjet printers.

Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because all citizens, and that includes Texans as well, have a substantive right to engage in private intimate conduct of his or her own choosing, sec. 43.23, Texas Penal Code, violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that the statute criminalizes the sale of dildos and other related sexual devices utilized in pursuit of our happiness.  Outlawing the sale of these sexual devices to the general public burdened this constitutional right. Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle, 517 F.3d 738, 743 (5th Cir. 2008). 

Beatrice Villarreal is a lowly cashier and sales clerk at a business called Friends 4 Ever which sells a variety of sexual devices and sex toys.  She had the misfortune to be on duty when an undercover police officer for the city of Corpus Christi, hard at work at ferreting out crime, purchased from her a vibrator called “Lick it Lover” which resembled - ahem - a male sexual organ.  A few hours after the purchase, Corpus Christi police arrived at the business in force, armed with a search warrant.  They placed Beatrice under arrest for violating sec. 43.23.  She pleaded not guilty and proceeded to trial where she was convicted and sentenced two six-month terms in the Nueces County Jail.  To add insult to embarassment, she has to serve these sentences consecutively. 

On appeal, Beatrice sought to take advantage of the Fifth Circuit’s holding in Reliable and asked the Corpus Christi court to likewise hold sec. 43.23 unconstitutional.  But this the Court, although clearly sympathetic, could not do because Fifth Circuit precedent is not binding on an intermediate Texas appellate court.  That court must look to the State’s highest criminal court for precedent and unfortunately for our intrepid appellant, the Court of Criminal Appeals shows no sign of coming off its decision in Yorko v. State, 690 S.W.2d 260 (Tex.Crim.App. 1985).  Indeed, although the Corpus Christi panel “embraced” (an apt action verb) the legal reasoning in Reliable, it was and is “constrained from following it.”  All this hand-wringing brings to mind the great observation made by Chief Justice J. Curtiss Brown in Regalado v. State, 872 S.W.2d 7 (Tex.Ct.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 1994, pet. ref’d.) when that court, bound by Yorko, commented: “Here we go raising the price of dildos again.  Since this appears to be the law in Texas, I concur.” 

That leaves Beatrice with one remaining avenue on direct appeal and maybe a writ at that after the CCA denies her PDR.  Or maybe that august body down in Austin thinks the law needs another look.  There have been many times over the past fifteen years when the Court of Criminal Appeals junked precedent when it concluded that the law either served no useful purpose, frustrated recognized fundamental rights or was incapable of even, consistent enforcement.  Can’t we get to a point where we can simply say, with a straight face, that it’s no one’s business if someone wishes to buy a dildo?  I wonder how much manpower, effort, money and time went into this latest case styled Villarreal v. State, slip opinion no. 13-05-00123-CR & 13-05-00124-CR.

You’re going to love this one.  A lawyer who was deeply involved in the 2000 Bush-Gore recount and started an grass-roots organization devoted to voter reform has been accused of using it to launder the profits from his other interest: a strip club that offered more then just lap-dancing.  Our hero is  Louis Posner, a 52-year-old tax lawyer in Manhatten, New York.  He runs, or did run, the Hot Lap Dance Club out of a fifth-floor loft in Hell’s Kitchen where wealthy clients paid up to $5,000 for sex with dancers in private rooms.  (more…)

Was it F. Scott Fitzgerald or Raymond Chandler who said that the very rich are very different from you and me?  Maybe this explains in part why we take so much delight in the suffering of others?  It definitely explains the success of “Cops” or the popularity of grocery store tabloids.  There’s nothing like seeing or hearing about the misfortunes of the rich and famous because deep down, we all believe, or a great number of us believe, that they don’t deserve all this wealth and recognition in the first place.  Leave it to the Germans to have the perfect word for this: schadenfreude meaning enjoyment in the misfortune of someone else. 

So, to honor that little bit of schadenfreude in all of us, I give you two links to some of the best stuff available to wallow in the experience.  There’s nothing like celebrity mug shots to get a little lift for the day.  The Smoking Gun website probably has the most complete collection of mug shots for the rich and famous, rock stars, politicians, mobsters and infamous crooks.  And they even have a B-List.  You can access it here.  For the more refined and selective, the LA Times maintains their own.  Check it out here.  You’ll find a rare one of Al Pacino dating back to 1961 when he was picked up on a weapons charge and Bill Gates when he was booked in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1977.  Gates looks at goofy then as he does now.  It reminds me of the Dennis Miller joke back when Miller was funny and not political.  No matter how many billions of dollars that Gates has amassed, a good haircut must cost an extra dollar. 

This is All-Star night so Hack might as well get trendy and write something about baseball.  This one involves the old Amarillo Giants of the Texas League (1968-1974).  Since the last post about Yankee Stadium focused on those things that the players don’t like about various stadiums, we can’t forget that one critter that has played a vital role in baseball history - the bug.  And in the annals of ballpark bug stories, the events of August 6, 1972 loom large.  On that night in Midland, Texas, a game between the Midland Cubs and the Amarillo Giants was called on account of grasshoppers.  The sports editor of the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Ted Battles, described it this way.  “You’d have to have been there to believe it.  The sun had just set.  Suddenly the grasshoppers came in ahead of a cold front.  When they hit the stadium, it sounded like an amusement park funhouse.  Women and children were screaming.  Men were swatting with their arms.  The players were swinging bats at the grasshoppers.”

The headline in next day’s paper carried the headline: GRASSHOPPERS: MILLIONS FLY IN AHEAD OF BLUSTERY FRONT.  The sports section had its own catchy tag: SWARMING GRASSHOPPERS ROUT CUBS, GIANTS, FANS.  The story showed that Pete LaCock, who later went on to play first base for the K.C. Royals and Chicago Cubs, had been at bat when the game was called.  Lacock recalled it all vividly.  “You could hear the ball hitting grasshoppers all over the park.  There were marks from dead grasshoppers all over the ball.  If you hit a pop foul, grasshoppers would fall out of the sky.”  Nothing like it has ever been recorded before or since.  True.

Tonight, the All-Sar Game is to be played at venerable Yankee Stadium.  It is the fourth time that baseball’s best has gathered there since the inception of the All-Star game and it will be the last at the old - the very old - ballpark in the Bronx.  As all know, they’ll be tearing down the park to make way for the new stadium.  But from reports floating around, while fans may wax prophetic about the magic of the place, most players won’t depart with teary eyes.  While major leaguers were glad to say goodbye to the Astrodome and its rats, Candlestick Park’s tsunami-like winds and Cleveland Stadium’s spiders, there seems to be one major detraction that crops up among those players who have stepped onto the turf at Yankee Stadium - the smell. 

Look, the structure is 85 years old and it underwent a major renovation back in the 70’s.  But its pleasures are beginning to sag and the smell of the place seems to dominate the complaints.  Jason Varitek of the Red Sox stated that when it rains, the smell that comes up through the drainage system is not pretty.  It affects your sinuses, I’ll tell you that much.”  The Texas Rangers’ Michael Young has this to say on the aromas that waft about The House That Ruth Built: “It depends on the day.  The last time we were there . . . a pipe burst.  I was going back up the tunnel, and there was a flood - a sewer line broke or something like that.  So I still have that kind of in my nose right now.”  But as bad as Yankee Stadium can stink the place up, there’s a place that reeks even more.  “I think Shea [Stadium in Flushing, New York, home to the Mets which is also destined for razing this year] smells worse,” said Brandon Webb of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Remember the cult classic “Day of the Triffids?”  This little 1963 film, shot on a shoestring budget in Great Britain, told the story of the Earth invasion of weird, man-eating plants from deep outer space.  The invasion was accompanied by a spectacular light show that people thought was a harmless metorite display.  But when the townspeople woke up the next morning, they found themselves permanently blinded by the lights - and then the triffids move in, taking over everything and gobbling up humans, swallowing them whole.  Anway, something eerily similar occurred over in Russia on July 5, sans carniverous plants.

It seems that dozens of people who attended an outdoor rave near Moscow lost vision after a laser light show burned their retinas.  City health department workers in Moscow confirm 12 cases in which ravers experienced partial loss of vision because of their exposure to lasers.  A daily newspaper there also reported an additional 17 people with similar symptoms who were being treated at local hospitals. 

Those who attended the all-night affair said that heavy rains had forced the event organizers to erect large tents so that the dancing could continue into the night.  Lasers that normally point toward the skies were instead reflected off the tent and refracted into the participants’ eyes.  Many of those seeking medical help had retinal burns, not something to sneeze at, and significant vision loss. 

Several years ago, Amarillo lawyer Van Williamson and I were sitting around, commiserating about the appellate practice of law when we began to list the different ways that the various courts of appeals and CCA had held, for each of us, how we had managed to waive error on some point of law.  It seemed that the more we talked, more variations of waiver cropped up in our memory banks.  So, we sat down and drew up what we called “The Top Ten Ways To Waive Error.”  I think I even ran off a bunch of copies to pass around to other criminal defense lawyers.  I occasionally read over it to remind myself of just how easy it is to waive error.  And this morning, I came across an otherwise pedestrain memorandum opinion out of the Amarillo Court of Appeals, issued yesterday, that underscores the need for the trial practitioner to know his (or her) rules of waiver. 

In Pena v. State, slip opinion no. 07-07-0484-CR, appellate counsel argued that appellant was harmed by the admission of an extraneous offense where a witness told the jury that she knew appellant through “the dope game.”  Trial counsel objected, noting that the evidence was not admissible as an extraneous offense under Rule 404(b) since it related primarily to propensity evidence.  The opinion does not reflect exactly how the trial court responded to this objection.  However, immediately after the witness’s reference to “the dope game,” the prosecutor went right into this area, asking the witness if she participated and whether appellant did as well.  The witness affirmed that she sold dope and that was exactly how she came to meet and know appellant.  Unfortunately, all of this came in without any objection.  And the rule?  Unless one has obtained a specific, running objection from the trial court as to objectionable evidence or testimony, counsel must complain and bring to the attention of the court, with a specific objection, each time that the matter resurfaces.  If counsel does not, the complaint is waived.  Since trial counsel did not object anymore after the first reference to “the dope game,” the error, if any, is waived for good and appellant’s 99-year sentence is affirmed. 

The critics who constantly complain about all those defendants who get off on technicalities have no idea that for every defendant who gets the benefit of such, there’s ten in the joint who are doing time precisely because of technicalities.  This little opinion is a perfect case in point.  So, for the benefit of the practitioner, let’s review those “Top Ten Ways To Waive Error” once more. (more…)

The weekend is fast approaching; let’s lighten it up some and look at new words and terms, as they apply to the office work environment, for the year.

Blamestorming - Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

Assmosis - The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

Cube Farm - An office filled with cubicles.

Prairie Dogging - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s head pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.

Mouse Potato - The on-line, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.

SITCOMs - Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.  What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. (more…)