Robert L. Stinson, 44, walked out of a Wisconsin prison yesterday after a judge threw out of his conviction based on evidence presented by the Wisconsin Innocence Project which proved that current bite-mark impressions and DNA did not match the evidence taken from the crime scene. Stinson, who served 23 years in prison on a life sentence for a 1984 murder, is the eighth person to be freed as a result of faulty bite-mark evidence.
It’s the kind of news that the N.F.L. doesn’t want bandied about during the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. At a news conference held in Tampa last week, doctors from Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy announced that they had found a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.) in the brain of Tom McHale, a N.F.L. lineman who played from 1987 to 1995. He died last year at the age of 45. CTE is a progressive condition which results from repetitive head trauma and can bring on dementia in people as young as 40. Hack has written about this before (see “Another professional football player exhibits traumatic encephalopathy,” September 29, 2008, posted under Items of Interest).
CTE is essentially brain damage primarily seen in boxers who have undergone a lifetime of head beatings. As such, the research being conducted by Boston University suggests that football players are undergoing similar bouts of deadly brain trauma, particularly when they sustain hard head shots, with or without concussion. BU uses techniques to study these test brains only after the subjects have died. Doctors have identified CTE in all six NFL vets between the ages of 36 and 50 who donated their brains to research and were tested for this specific condition. The bottom line is that this latest finding is further evidence of the dangers of improperly treated brain trauma in football. (more…)
But you wouldn’t know it from the screaming headline in today’s Globe News: “Stripper pole, booze found at teen party.” Teenagers, skimpy lingerie, beer, a 12-year old boy getting an up-close anatomy lesson, a secret “panic room” where some frightened teenagers took refuge in. What’s next on the front page? Will the ANG splash Oprah Winfrey’s dire warning of a few years back on its front page when she warned parents about the scourge of a teen-age oral sex epidemic? Yes, it all sounds worrisome and the latest news from the National Center for Health Statistics reporting a rise in births among 15- to 19-year-olds doesn’t help. But it’s also misleading. Let’s look at some hard numbers before you lament that today’s youth have just gone to hell in a handbasket with all this reckless “sex without consequences.” (more…)
We all know that the Japanese have the stupidest TV game shows imaginable. That, and they will eat just about anything that swims in the ocean. So, it didn’t surprise me when I came across this item. Seven diners in northern Japan were sickened, three of them being hospitalized in very serious condition, after eating a poisonous delicacy. The owner of the restaurant involved did not have the proper “license” to serve the particular entree which caused the patrons to experience paralysis and severe respiratory distress. And the “delicacy” in question? Blowfish testicles. Put that in your blunt and smoke it.
The Court handed down some opinions yesterday and I’ll need some time to digest them. However, two cases decided merit limited discussion here and now. To begin, in Rivas v. State, No. PD-1113-07, a unanimous court decided that defense counsel’s meandering objections made to the introduction of a sexual assault exam report were preserved for appellate review. In and of itself, no big deal since the court has passed on manner of preservation many times before, the lead case being Lankston v. State, 827 S.W.2d 907 (Tex.Crim.App. 1992). But, this time, the court weighed in on the ubiquitous use of the old “bolstering” objection which is hard for some practitioners to jettison. I guess it goes back to those good old days when there were such things as the carving doctrine (remember that one?), fundamental error in indictment defects, “laying behind the log” (I swear, if I hear that one more time, I’ll throw up). The appeals court in Rivas had held that from what it could discern, defense counsel’s objections were primarily “bolstering” objections since that was about all which could be fathomed from the inarticulate statements made by the lawyer. That being so, it held that a general objection to “bolstering” was not sufficient to preserve error because it did not sufficiently inform the trial court of the nature of the objection and secondly, any “bolstering” objection has been subsumed within the unified Rules of Evidence. Because counsel for Rivas had failed to identify which evidentiary rule he was relying upon which to base his objection, nothing was preserved.
The Court, although not outright disturbing the appeals court’s ruling that “bolstering” is passe and really fails to preserve any error, did note that its holding that counsel needs to identify the specific rule of evidence when objecting was a statement that the Court could not agree. As held in Lankston, “straightforward communication in plain English will always suffice.” So, what to make out of all this? I think the Court was being subtle and trying to avoid ham-handedness by pointing out that a “bolstering” objection is so ambiguous (since it figures into so many rules) that it indeed may preserve nothing for review. What will be sufficient is to stand up, think about why you believe the proferred evidence is objectionable and then state in clear, everyday terms why it is so. It appears to me that the Court bent over backwards to parse understandable objections out of the load of gibberish that the defense lawyer was shoveling out. Fine and good. But you may not run into an appeals court that is so accommodating. Bone up on your everyday speech and try to object on the record as if you were writing common prose. That should do the trick or at least, that’s how I read Rivas. And ditch the old “bolstering” objection for good. (more…)
Last Saturday was Sunshine Millions Day at Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita. It’s a fine race day with the Florida and California tracks putting on excellent race cards, chocked full of competitive stakes races. I thought it would be an excellent day to play the horses. As I said, the races are competitive, the fields deep with good, stakes-quality horses which means that there’s money to be made. With a field of twelve horses going to post and each capable of hitting the wire first, some of the winners on the day are going to have a fat price. But what happened in the Sunshine Millions Dash at Gulfstream did more than just disappoint me (I didn’t have the winner). It was the way the horse won, given his past performances leading up to the race. Which brings me to the subject of this post.
The Sunshine Millions Dash, a 6-furlong sprint for three-year olds, featured an up-and-coming colt by the name of You Luckie Mann. He was favored to win the race, primarily based on his performance in his last outing. And he would have won had it not been for the eventual winner, This Ones for Phil, who blew by You Luckie Mann at the top of the stretch like he was tied to a pole. It wasn’t just an impressive burst of speed - it was eerie, unbelievable, the kind of run that has you breathless because of the horse’s explosiveness. But all one had to do was look at the horse’s previous outings to know something wasn’t right. (more…)
James Swett, a Marine fighter pilot who was awarded the Medal of Honor for having downed seven Japanese planes in a single day, died last week in California at the age of 88. April 7, 1943 was the fateful day. Lt. Swett had just returned from a routine patrol off Guadalcanal when the report came in that over 150 Japanese dive bombers and fighters were headed for the island, coming in from the north. Swett immediately took to the air again once he was refueled and refitted with ammunition.
Flying a Wildcat fighter, he immediately shot down three Japanese dive bombers which were attacking American shipping at Tulagi, near Guadalcanal. He was then separated from his fellow pilots and turned on another group of bombers by himself. He shot down four more into the sea. By this time, his left wing was damaged by what he figured was friendly anti-aircraft fire. Having lost top speed, he nevertheless attacked yet another bomber. The plane’s tail gunner fired back, striking Swett’s windshield and taking out the plane’s engine. (more…)
Pity Steward Pearce, the proprietor of a shop in a village in Devon, England. Whenever he orders something over the phone, the inevitable question comes up about what exactly is his address. Mr. Pearce has learned there’s just no way around this so he goes right to the bone. “I say, ‘It’s spelled “crap”, as in crap,’ ” said Mr. Pearce. What else could the resident of Crapstone say, having lived there for decades? Often he reports that he can hear the person on the other end of the phone repeat it to his co-workers, followed by bursts of laughter. Mr. Pearce is far from being alone as one who lives in a village with an embarassing name.
Britain is full of places which were named at a time when the words or phrases weren’t considered inappropriate at all. But now, well, that’s another matter. For instance, take East Breast in western Scotland or North Piddle in Worcestershire. Don’t forget Spanker Lane in Derbyshire. These are amusing. Then you get to the more dramatic, downright risque names that are sure to arch an eyebrow or two. These include Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Wetwang in East Yorkshire; Slutshole Lane in Norfolk or Pratts Bottom in Kent. And my favorite? Titty Ho in Northamptonshire. (more…)
The tragic death of Kara Neumann, 11 years of age, raises thorny legal and ethical issues concerning the permissible reach of government into privacy issues, notably the free exercise of religion and parental authority - or so some legal observers opine. But not for me. As far as this writer is concerned, there is no issue at all save and except the one properly before a jury: were Kara’s parents reckless in their failure to take care of their child as she slowly, inexorably drifted into a coma from untreated juvenile diabetes. (more…)
Did you hear the one about the mail carrier up in Michigan who stashed thousands of piece of mail in a storage unit instead of delivering them? She entered a plea in a Detroit federal court to one count of desertion of a mail route. Investigators determined that over the course of two years, Jill Hull placed unopened mail in the storage unit at Flowerville, a community about 50 miles west of Detroit. She told investigators she simply couldn’t keep up with her job. Now harken back to the good old days of sitcom TV when “Barney Miller” was hot. In one episode, “Wojo” brought in a postman who was accused of the same thing: hoarding mail, not in a storage facility, but his own apartment but for different reasons - as a sign of protest against all the junk mail he was compelled to schlepp on his route. When confronted by Captain Miller about why he forsook his oath to deliver the mail “come rain or shine or snow,” the hapless postman was defiant. “Look,” he said, ”I always made sure that the people on my route got the three essentials - utility bills, social security checks and TV Guide.” Back to you.