The law and the jungle

Marcus Schrenker, the Indiana "businessman" who took more than $1 million from clients of his financial service, then tried to fake his own death in a plane crash, says he plans to write a book about his ordeal, which will explain that, really, it wasn't his fault at all:

Authorities aren't always sympathetic when someone suffers a mental breakdown, so it's heartening to see this compassion from the Marion County Prosecutor's Office:

An Indianapolis man who prompted a seven-hour standoff with police after he wouldn't come out of his downtown apartment will not be charged.

It's a chicken-or-the-egg thing:

In my view, Scalia is half-right. We are indeed devoting more of our “best minds” to law than we ideally should; perhaps more of our merely average minds too. But the high salaries of lawyers suggest that there is a genuine demand out there for all that lawyering. Quite simply, we need a lot of lawyers because we have a lot of laws.

But we have a lot of laws because we have a lot of lawyers invested in keeping the law complex and confusing.

The Indiana Supreme Court will hear an interesting case that tests the limits on exceptions to the Constitution's unreasonable search & seizure provisions. East Chicago police went to the wrong apartment when searching for a suspect and arrested the man in the apartment when they found cocaine there.

Road Rage poster boy of the week:

The case of a New Castle resident charged with biting off a sizable portion of another man's ear has taken another twist, with the defendant now claiming he was justified in using "allegedly deadly force."

Curtis A. "Alan" Cross, 44, is charged with battery resulting in serious bodily injury, a Class C felony carrying a standard four-year prison term, in an April 1 attack on Jeffrey Guffey.

For the "It's a sick world" file. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on an important First Amendment case involving graphic videos depicting pit bull fights and other acts of animal cruelty. One side said the challenged law in question is aimed at treating animal cruelty like child pornography, not entitled to constitutional protection. The other side says the government should not be able to punish anyone for making films that are not obscene, inflammatory or untruthful.

I'm baaaack!

A little bit of irony here:

A Cloverdale man convicted in 1995 in Tippecanoe County for killing a 10-year-old boy is expected to be sentenced in November to life in prison without parole.

In exchange, the boy's parents agreed to stop seeking the death penalty during a scheduled retrial, after a federal appeals court overturned the original death sentence.

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, Lou Garry: A sleazeball who runs a video store in Ashley us accused of taking upskirt photos of three female customers, including a 10-year-old girl, and all they're charging him with is a misdemeanor battery charge for brushing against the girl.

"We had had three different occasions where allegations were made," said Ashley Police Department Deputy Chief Garry Osborn.

You probably know that some panhandling can get pretty aggressive, and maybe you've even experienced some of it. This seems a little over the top, though, doesn't it?

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Police are looking for a suspect in a shooting in the parking lot of Lafayette Square Mall.

According to police, the victim was sitting in his car when he was approached by another man asking for money. When the man refused the other man shot him once in the abdomen.