The law and the jungle

I like reporting like this, which tells us something we probably wouldn't know if we'd never been involved. If you get a traffic ticket, you've got nothing to lose by going to court:

Maybe this guy should be forced to put a sign in his yard that says, "I am a greedy, opportunistic jerk who got what he deserved":

The Indiana Supreme Court says a Munster man who leaned back too far and tumbled backward off the top row of gymnasium bleachers is responsible for his own fall.

Ah, the workings of the legal mind. John Stephenson, 42, is to die by injection after a jury convicted of him in the March 1996 shooting deaths of three people along a rural Warrick County road. Stephenson is seeking a new trial or new sentencing. Here is what his attorney says:

The death-penalty appeal in this country has been so perfected that many people who are on death row have about as much chance of dying of old age as they do of the state actually carrying out the sentence. Now, in a case in which the resolution has been delayed for two and a half decades, the defense is using the delays ("some of which" he blames on the state) as reason for another appeal:

As it happens, I agree with this editorial that a flag-burning amendment is a waste of time and effort -- it's not as if there's a national epidemic. But I don't agree with the newspaper's reasoning that such a measure would somehow dilute the First Amendment:

The writers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights never envisioned freedom of speech applying only to pleasant words. There is no need to amend the First Amendment.

It's nice that the president has put the White House on record as being opposed to the use of eminent domain strictly for economic development purposes. But critics are right that this is mostly window dressing and that much more is needed:

If a man deliberately sets out to get a woman drunk so she loses her inhibitions and has sex with him, I doubt too many would object to the state charging the man. Until it recently changed its law, Wisconsin  apparently was the only state left that did not define alcohol as a potential legal intoxicant in rape cases:

Lafayette is among the growing list of cities thinking about putting cameras in public places as a deterrent to crime and aid in crime solving. Those of us who worry about such things are increasingly seen as cranks. As even Fran Quigley of the Indiana ACLU notes:

. . . courts have consistently held that cameras taping acts in public places cannot be challenged because residents do not have an expectation of privacy in such settings.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees, among other things, that an accused person "shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with witnesses against him." The Supreme Court in 2004, in an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, also applied that standard to "testimonial statements" in criminal trials, but it left unclear what would be considered "evidence," which does not require being able to cross-examine one's accuser, and what would be considered "testimony," which does. What about 911 calls?

Here's a nifty case that should test what people really think when they have to weigh constitutional principles against personal beliefs. San Francisco tried to ban handguns and make possession of long guns tougher. This was done by in a voter referendum, with 58 percent of voters agreeing with the ban. But a judge said no, the citizens of San Francisco did not have the right to make this decision: