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So You Don't Have To

Posted in Truth Is Stranger Than (Legal) Fiction! on Saturday August 28 2010 @ 6:17pm

Recently, it came to our attention that the techie half of court-o-rama hadn't heard about LiLo's misdiagnosis. He was too upset by the news (the fact that it was news, rather than the content of the news) that Paris Hilton had been arrested to notice.

So, we have the celebrity legal news of the week! We read it so you don't have to.

Paris Hilton was arrested for cocaine possession. Will any sleb (aside from Woody Harrelson) ever come out in favor of legalization, rather than using the I was holding it for a friend defense? That didn't even work for Greg Brady! (Yes, perhaps it belonged to the guy who was trying to break into her house.) Plus, she ?smiled in the mugshot. As court-o-rama's brother can tell you, never ever smile during the mugshot process.

Meanwhile, Miss Lohan was misdiagnosed with ADHD. See LIndsay Lohan Misdiagnosed with ADHD, Celebrities with Diseases (August 26, 2010). As if that didn't explain all!

Meanwhile, LiLo's dad wants to open a rehab center. How nice for him. Why does this remind us of Straight, Inc.?

And there you have it -- a complete (more or less) recap of the Hilton/Lilo legal issues of the week!

News from Kosovo

Posted in Wanted on Wednesday August 25 2010 @ 8:09pm

Nice to hear from former Michigan State Court Adminisrator, John Ferry. John is currently working on the NCSC Kosovo project. He writes:

Hello from Kosovo! One of our more successful (and fun) recent projects relating to teaching the community and kids about the justice system, and the promise that a strong justice system brings, is the development of a series of coloring books for primary school students. I’ve attached a summary of results, along with a “flyer” requesting help in buying crayons for the kids here to use. Our project has developed and printed the coloring books, and we provide training (along with local judges) to the teachers. The summary provides information about the feedback. My favorite is the story of the young student who drew a Sun in a courtroom scene. When asked about it – he said, where there is justice, there is sun.

How can you help, you ask? The classic Crayola 8-Pack, needed to color the aforementioned book, are available from Personal Wholesaler, for example.

Send them to:

National Center for State Courts
Attn: Michael Sweikar, c/o Kosovo
2425 Wilson Blvd., Suite 350
Arlington, VA 22201
Phone: 703-841-5619

Please send an e-mail to let them know you're donating to USAID Justice Support Program Officer John Cipperly, jcipperlyncsc-ks.org.

Quiz Show

Posted in Truth Is Stranger Than (Legal) Fiction! on Sunday August 15 2010 @ 4:04pm

How much do you know about the Blago trial? More than Juror 120? See Time for a Bleepin' Blagojevich Trial Quiz, Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune (August 15, 2010).

Guess a bunch of Landmark US Supreme Court Cases!

Try to name all the SCOTUS Justices, ever!

Under Juror No. 120's Rock

Posted in Jury on Thursday August 12 2010 @ 3:37pm

A white man. He has applied to the College of DuPage for the fall. Worked in computer sales at Best Buy. Mother is in the Army. He is undecided on what he wants to do in life, but he likes to play sports and video games and hang out with friends. He couldn't recall having heard anything about the case.

-- A Closer Look at the Blagojevich Jurors, Redeye (July 29, 2010). Hat/tip to Mr. Flannery for the souvenir paper in which this appeared.

Toldya So

Posted in Judges on Tuesday August 10 2010 @ 8:30pm

Did we not say, at least a million times, Hug an activist judge?

We did. We even put it on a damn t-shirt.

Now everyone (OK, not EVERYone) else is saying it, too. See In Defense of the New Judicial Activists Emily Bazelon, Slate (August 9, 2010). Mr. Rettenmund of Boy Culture says Recuse This (August 5, 2010).

Hug an activist judge!

Con Law Fun

Posted in Judges on Tuesday August 10 2010 @ 2:21pm

So we strung three words together, one of which doesn't belong.

Fun? Really?

A barrel of monkeys it's not, but anyone who ever wanted to get inside the mind of Justice Breyer and learn something to boot might check out On Handguns and the Law, Stephen Breyer, New York Review of Books (August 19, 2010).

It Was 20 Years Ago Today

Posted in Access on Wednesday August 04 2010 @ 4:11am

Well, 20 years plus a week that Bush I signed the ADA into law. What everyone feared -- an avalanche of litigation, a ruined economy -- never happened (well, at least not the avalanche of litigation, and certainly we can't blame the ADA for today's economic problems).

What did happen was this: quietly, and without much fanfare, society has become accustomed to ramps, railings, closed captioning, and other innovations that make life easier for people. Some of these innovations, called universal design, are useful to all of us at one time or another, particularly as society (read: Baby Boomers) ages.

And the major goal -- employment of individuals with disabilities (read: more taxpayers)? The Kessler Foundation and National Organization on Disability report that, according to their survey, only 21% of working-age individuals with disabilities are employed. For working-age people without disabilities, this number is 59%.

Internet access also continues to be a problem. Only 54% of individuals with disabilities have access to the information superhighway, compared with 85% of adults without disabilities.

Does the ADA apply to courts? Oddly enough, nobody was sure at first. But we know now that the answer is yes. Some questions remain -- how much access? Must every room in an entire courthouse be accessible? Or is it enough to have some rooms reserved for use by people with disabilities?

And access by whom? Parties, attorneys, judges, and court staff -- of course. But does a defendant's hearing-impaired brother get use of an interpreter at trial? What about the defendant's great-aunt? What if the great-aunt raised him?

NPR's Talk of the Nation discusses What's Changed in 20 Years Since ADA Passage, (July 28, 2010).

See also: the ADA megasite, housed by the DOJ. If you can't find it here, it probably doesn't exist.

As a p.s., Bush II signed the ADA Amendments Act in 2008. CHADD offers a nice summary.

Everybody Loves Retirement...

Posted in Jury on Monday July 19 2010 @ 8:30pm

...just not today!

That's pretty much how we feel about the news (sad for us, yay for him) that G.* Thomas Munsterman is retiring.

And in case you didn't know, the title and beginning are a paraphrase of his famous phrase: Everybody loves jury duty, just not today!

For decades, Tom has been THE jury expert in the world. He helped numerous cities, counties, states, and countries ensure that juries are done right.

Without Tom there would be few if any jury managers in the courts. Without jury managers, lists are in disarray, methods are haphazard (or nonexistent), and juries can end up racially, economically, and otherwise imbalanced.

Without Tom there never ever would have been a Jur-E Bulletin. Without the Jur-E Bulletin there never ever ever would have been a court-o-rama.

Here's the obligatory bio, but it just doesn't seem like enough somehow. It's not enough to lead various interesting projects -- Tom's engineering mind made sure he followed through on each one, sharing ideas and learning new ones all the time from a wide variety of sources. That's why, as we said in each issue of Jur-E, Theory to practice (and vice-versa) was so important to him. Nowhere in the bio does it mention that Tom was one of the most fun and innovative people at NCSC, ever.

Mahalo Tom, and good luck cleaning out your basement!!!!!!! We hear that everybody loves a clean basement, just not...oh, never mind.

* We have long maintained that the G stands for Guru.

Pop Quiz

Posted in Juvenile on Thursday July 15 2010 @ 7:14pm

Q: How many full-time psychiatrists does the state of New York employ to treat the over 800 children in its juvenile justice system?

A: Zero.

See Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons, Nicholas Confessore, NYT (July 14, 2010), and For 800 Youth Jailed by State, Not One Full-Time Psychiatrist, Julie Bosman, NYT (February 11, 2010).

Score one for Legal Aid and the New York City Family Court for fixing this.

Overlawyered or Overhyped?

Posted in Access on Wednesday July 14 2010 @ 4:35am

If you think things are crazy where you work, imagine this -- downtrodden celebrities (society's favorite kind) parading through, day after day, leaving paparazzi in their wake like so much confetti after a parade.

On top of that, it all takes place in a state where furloughs and other cutbacks have become de rigueur (though Furlough Fridays are, thankfully, over for now).

See Stars, Cameras and Theatrics Strain Courts, Michael Cieply, NYT (July 9, 2010).

L.A. court PIO Allan Parachini is the man! We remember back in the day when he would send out informational faxes regarding Winona's shoplifting case. Getting the word out to the people who are going to show up (whether invited or not) is just one of Mr. Parachini's tasks.

Eriq Gardner at THR, Esq., doesn't get it but tries with Are Celebrities to Blame for an Overburdened Court System? (July 12, 2010). It's not about the celebrity legal problems themselves -- they're not so different from anyone else's. It's the logistics. Traffic, security, cameras in the courts (and their concomitant procedures), long lines, parking...the confetti falls on all of these and more.

One person's DUI is another person's photo op. As the threshold for fame dips to a new low, gawkers increase and multiply. The result is chaos, which is just one more piece of the court PIO's life.

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