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Recent Blog Posts
Emmette Flynn, and Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge
In February I wrote two posts about Dr. Emmette Flynn, the San Angelo, Texas surgeon who performed a nonconsensual (and medically unnecessary, though medical necessity wouldn't justify a procedure against the competent client's wishes) proctoscopy on an arrestee at the behest of the police who brought the arrestee to the hospital along with a search warrant that order the police to present the accused, Mr. Gray, to
qualified medical technician to examine [Gray] for the concealment of controlled substances and to remove said controlled substances from his body in accordance with recognized accepted medical procedure as described in [Hethcock's] affidavit.
What's important about this is that the order didn't order Dr. Flynn to do anything. He could have told the pigs to fuck off and, because Mr. Gray refused the proposed treatment, he had an ethical obligation to do so.
Erratum
I am informed by a usually reliable source that, contrary to popular perception (and my implication here), counting scalps was not a big thing in the Holmes / Rosenthal / Siegler DA's Office. Wins and losses were not a big factor.
By contrast, he says, prosecutors in the Lykos DA's Office are afraid to dismiss bad cases because dismissals are counted against them. So in his view the transition to the Mike Anderson DA's Office will be an improvement where the counting of scalps is concerned.
One less thing for the criminal-defense bar to worry about?
Screw the DHS
(Thanks to the Electronic Privacy Information Center; PDF from Washington State University, see the source PDF, h/t Hit & Run. We didn't start the fire.)
Assassination Attack Domestic security Drill Exercise Cops Law enforcement Authorities Disaster assistance Disaster management DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office) National preparedness Mitigation Prevention Response Recovery Dirty bomb Domestic nuclear detection
HAZMAT & Nuclear
Hazmat Nuclear Chemical spill Suspicious package/device Toxic
National laboratory Nuclear facility Nuclear threat Cloud
Ethics Redefined
In closing, do not confuse deception with lying during court proceedings, falsifying official documents and evidence or lying during internal investigations.No police administrator would tolerate this behavior which destroys an officer's ability to perform their official duties in a moral, ethical and just manner.
That's what Daytona Beach Police Chief Michael Chitwood told the Daytona Beach News-Journal (H/T Scott Greenfield) about police officers' lies in the course of an investigation, and why they are different than lies in court.
The background: this order by Volusia County, Florida Circuit Judge Joseph G. Will, granting a motion to suppress in a swearing match between a cop and the defendant's mother because the cop had shown himself to be a liar by lying to the mother in order to get into her house. I quote at some length, but read the entire order:
Kimberlin v. Internet: Not a Partisan Issue
Ken at Popehat, writing about attacks on critics of Speedway Bomber Brett Kimberlin:
This is about everybody's rights, not just the rights and interests of "conservatives" or any other political group. We need to transcend partisanship over this - conservatives need to transcend it because making this partisan will marginalize the situation, and liberals and others need to transcend it because this could happen to them.
I disagree with Ken. Conservatives don't need to transcend partisanship to avoid marginalizing the situation. If they really see this as a conservatives-vs.-progressives issue rather than a censorious-thugs-vs.-free-expression issue should continue expressing that view. It says a great deal about them.
The Popehat Signal
Ken at Popehat needs "a federal criminal practitioner in the Middle District of Florida, or admitted there and familiar with its courts....to help and advise a blogger who is being unjustly threatened with criminal consequences....because of what he has written about Brett Kimberlin and his crew.... I also need someone in the Middle District of Tennessee, or at least admitted there and familiar with its courts."
If you're a federal criminal-defense lawyer in MDTN or MDFL, trust him: It's worth it.
Vial = Trial
Texas counties are moving toward getting blood tests for alcohol in more DWI cases.
Tarrant County prosecutor (and sometime Defending People commenter) Richard Alpert likes to say, "If it bleeds, it pleads." That does not need to be true.
Pre-testing issues
Collection tubes and directions
The laboratory
Personnel
Testing
Specimen suitability for testing
Analytical methods-calibration
Validation and approaches to calibration
Quality control and matrix validation
Batch analysis
Quality control
Acceptance criteria
Monitoring quality control performance
Instrument maintenance
Proficiency tests
Post testing
Reporting
Uncertainty
Records and specimen retention
The Great DA Purge of '12
Not only was Pat Lykos ousted by Harris County primary voters, but John Bradley of Williamson County was as well.
I don't know anything about his successor, Williamson County Attorney Jana Duty, but I hope she'll drag the county out of the ranks of hellish white-flight suburban backwaters, where Bradley fought so hard to keep it for so long. Congratulations to the voters of WIlliamson County.
Harris County Primaries
Lloyd Oliver ("Ollie the Cabdrivertising Attorney," here) beat Zack Fertitta in the Democratic primary for Harris County DA. There's no chance that Harris County will elect a Democrat to that position in 2012, but I thought there was zero chance that voters would pick Oliver over Fertitta, so what the hell do I know? We could wind up with Lloyd Oliver running the Harris County DA's Office.
Stranger things have happened.
No, they haven't.
On the Republican side, Mike Anderson kicked Pat Lykos's butt. I was not surprised by the outcome, but the numbers were striking: 63% to 37%.
Kristin Guiney beat "Lateral Hire" (and Gary Polland favorite) Lana Shadwick by an even stronger margin (67/32) in the Republican primary for the 179th District Court. For many reasons-Guiney is a friend, Shadwick is unfit to be a judge, Polland is Polland)-that makes me happy.
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