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PHILADELPHIA — A landmark sex-abuse trial opening Monday in Philadelphia may unveil the operations of a Roman Catholic archdiocese and detail how children's complaints were buried for decades in secret archives next to a soaring cathedral as the priests they named went unpunished.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first ...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As Talma Isabell coped with the crushing heartache of losing her daughter and five grandchildren in a house fire that killed nine people in all, several dozen people surrounded the woman and her family at church Sunday with their arms raised and their heads bowed in ...

NEW YORK

Training on Everest climb helps man wins memory contest

NEW YORK | A Florida man who trained for a national memory competition by memorizing a randomly shuffled deck of cards as he climbed Mount Everest won the mental bout Saturday and broke a U.S. record.

Nelson Dellis, 28, ...

Government nonsense is blooming in Michigan:

Michigan DNR Going Hog Wild
By Pete Kennedy, Esq. | March 15, 2012

In a brazen power grab threatening the livelihood of hundreds of small farmers, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is using the state Invasive Species Act to expand its jurisdiction beyond hunting and fishing to farming operations. On April 1, 2012 an Invasive Species Order (ISO) that DNR issued in December 2010 prohibiting the possession of a number of different types breeds of swine will go into effect.

The order allows DNR to seize and destroy heritage breeds of pigs that farmers are raising; and DNR will not compensate farmers whose pigs are destroyed. In the logic of the department, “Indemnification in [Michigan] statute is for livestock and invasive species are not livestock, and are therefore, not eligible for indemnification.”
-Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund

Aye, it’s crazy, unscientific and a blatant trampling on the Constitutional rights. But, it’s easy to understand. It is all about greed and cutting out the competition. What is particularly, almost, amusing is that Big Ag feels threatened enough to have pushed for this.

I have often asked myself, and heard it asked by others, why so many wealthy people support liberal causes. (This is the flip side of the usual election-year frustration of the liberals with the working classes' clinging to their guns and religion.) In this presidential campaign season, as in 2008, ...

The affidavit for the search warrant in this case was signed before a notary public working for the DA, but not one authorized by a judge in violation of the Rules of Criminal Procedure. A violation of the Rules was not a Fourth Amendment issue, defendant cannot show he was prejudiced, and the court will not order suppression of the evidence. Copley v. Commonwealth, 2012 Ky. LEXIS 26 (March 22, 2012):

Suppression under this test is not warranted in this case because neither prong is satisfied. Copley was not prejudiced by the violation of RCr 2.02 and 13.10. There was no allegation or proof that the search would not have occurred absent the rule violation or that the search was abusive. Nor is there evidence that law enforcement officials deliberately disregarded the rules. Rather, given that Ms. Hardy was a notary public, was generally qualified to administer oaths and was employed by the Commonwealth Attorney's office, and that all other requirements for securing the warrant were carefully observed, such as complying with KRS 15.725(5) by having the Commonwealth Attorney and the County Attorney certify that no judge or commissioner was available, it appears that the violation of Rules 2.02 and 13.10 was simply inadvertent.

The notion of needing to show prejudice is a death knell to nearly any suppression motion. How can you show prejudice from the wrong notary? You can't. The affidavit was sworn and seemingly truthful, that's all that's really required.

In a FIPF case where the gun was the target of a search warrant, the defendant did not show enough to get access to the CI’s identity under Roviaro. The CI was not central to the charge under the government's theory of constructive possession. Here, it was all speculative what the defense was trying to prove. United States v. Anthony, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38123 (D. N.J. March 20, 2012):

Defendant offers a series of contentions for why disclosure is warranted, including: the need to challenge the basis for the warrant; the fact that the informant is the only person who claims to have seen Defendant in possession of the firearm; and the need to investigate Defendant's theory that the informant played a role in framing Defendant. None of these reasons provides a sufficient basis to overcome the qualified privilege.

First, the validity of the search warrant does not turn on the informant's intentions or mental state. ...

Second, the Government does not intend to introduce the informant's testimony at trial in order to prove possession; instead, the Government will present a case for constructive possession. Therefore, there is no need to cross-examine the informant regarding the informant's claimed observations.

The third and final issue is the question of whether disclosure is necessary because the informant's identity is helpful to Anthony's defense involving the gun having been planted by the informant or the informant's co-conspirator. This is the kind of defense theory that does not rise above mere speculation or hope. ...

Roviaro was decided in 1957, yet I still occasionally see charges where the prosecuting attorney charged the defendant with the underlying CI offense thereby making the CI a material witness. They apparently were not paying attention in law school or when reading the file.

Officers pulled guns on defendants and ordered them to sit down, and this was with reasonable suspicion somebody in the group was armed. The district court erred in suppressing the frisk. United States v. Lewis, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6073 (11th Cir. March 23, 2012):

As the Supreme Court emphasized in Terry itself, a brief stop-and-frisk is permissible, even absent probable cause to arrest, "for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual." 392 U.S. at 27 (emphasis added). In fact, the very rationale underpinning Terry -- the protection of officer safety and the safety of others nearby, especially from the dangers posed by firearms -- is presented by the facts of this case. We add that the detention took place at night in a high crime area, which, while surely not dispositive, is still another relevant consideration in the Terry calculus. See Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 124; United States v. Gordon, 231 F.3d 750, 755-56 (11th Cir. 2000). And we further emphasize that, as in Clark, the defendant here was not some "unrelated bystander," Clark, 337 F.3d at 1288, but rather "an associate of [the] persons being investigated for criminal activities," id.

In short, under the totality of the circumstances of this case, the officers were entitled to control the scene and exercise command over the situation in the course of briefly detaining McRae for further investigation. A brief detention of all four associated individuals was reasonable, in light of the substantial risks to the officers' safety. Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court's order granting Lewis's motion to suppress, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

That defendant may have had a pocket knife didn’t mean he was false when he said he had no weapons on him because small pocket knives are not considered weapons to most people. Defendant’s frisk was without reasonable suspicion he was armed. United States v. House, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6081 (10th Cir. March 23, 2012) (unpublished):

It is likely that many law-abiding citizens would not consider themselves armed with a weapon, while carrying a folded pocket knife, when approached on the street and questioned unexpectedly by an officer. To allow a search based on the hunch that a citizen walking down the street is illegally carrying a firearm, without more, serves to erode the precious protections of the Second and Fourth Amendments. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 22 ("[I]ntrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches [are] a result this Court has consistently refused to sanction.").

An officer is free to initiate a consensual encounter without any articulable suspicion. Such an encounter may develop previously unconfirmed suspicions of criminal behavior and/or result in genuine concerns for officer safety. United States v. Jones, 606 F.3d 964, 968 (8th Cir. 2010). The difficulty in this case is that the consensual encounter did neither; in the absence of which, the evidence must be suppressed as violative of the Fourth Amendment.