Watch my interview with Julie Grant on Court TV to discuss the case of Leilani Simon accused of murdering her son Quinton.
To watch the interview CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE
* Criminal Defense Attorney * Former Prosecutor * Former Parole Board Member * 724-658-8535
Watch my interview with Julie Grant on Court TV to discuss the case of Leilani Simon accused of murdering her son Quinton.
On Christmas day 1962, Universal Pictures released the
film “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The movie was based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel of the same name. The film adaptation earned Gregory Peck
an Academy Award.
The story takes place during the Depression in the
fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator’s father, Atticus Finch, a
lawyer and state legislator, is appointed to represent Tom Robinson, a Black
man accused of raping a white woman.
Many scholars have studied the implications of Lee’s
work. “To Kill a Mockingbird” is one of the most-read literary works in
American history with over 30 million copies sold. The book has been cited for
its influence on the civil rights movement, and the character of Atticus Finch
has been lauded as the model father, as well as possessing the integrity and
temperament for which all lawyers should aspire.
However, at times, Atticus Finch did not display the
“ethics” worthy of a trial lawyer or the “integrity” of an officer of the
court.
In the courtroom, Finch was cross-examining the
alleged rape victim Mayella Ewell. In the middle of questioning Mayella, Finch
grabs an empty drinking glass from a table and tells the defendant Tom Robinson
to stand up. He throws the glass to Tom who catches it with right hand. Tom
tosses it back and Finch says, “Now catch it with your left hand.” Robinson,
not yet sworn as a witness, answers, “I can’t use my left arm, Mr. Finch.” A
crucial revelation for the defense.
This should have resulted in a mistrial – it didn’t
because the all-white, all-male jury already knew the trial’s outcome, and so
did the prosecution. Having the defendant offer testimony unsworn is certainly
an ethical transgression, something no competent lawyer would do or even
consider.
While we remember Finch as a heroic figure who stood
up to racism and tried to save the life of a Black man in a racist Southern
town, Finch tolerated racism and even made excuses for it.
More than a decade ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about
Finch in the New Yorker. Gladwell laments that Atticus Finch lauded the
“character” of racists in Maycomb.
Gladwell examined Finch’s thoughts about Walter
Cunningham, a Maycomb man who attempted to lynch Tom Robinson, “Cunningham,
Finch tells his daughter, is ‘basically a good man,’ who ‘just has his blind
spots along with the rest of us.'”
Finally, after Robinson is convicted, and later killed
while trying to escape, Robert Ewell, Mayella’s father, attacks Finch’s
children while walking home one evening from a school function. Spoiler alert:
Finch’s neighbor Boo Radley, a shy, introverted recluse rescues the children
and carries Finch’s injured son home.
It turns out Ewell was dead. He had been stabbed with
his own knife. Sheriff Heck Tate comes to Finch’s home, and although initially
reluctant, Finch agrees with Sheriff Tate not to bring Boo Radley into the
spotlight of an inquiry or trial. “Let the dead bury the dead” says the
sheriff. He tells Finch, “Bob Ewell fell on his knife.” Finch is complicit in
the cover-up of a homicide.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” examines a number of
significant issues (race, gender, poverty, domestic violence, courage, and
cowardice) through the lens of a rural Southern criminal justice system. The
story also reveals the challenges that face all of us when trying to be
consistent with our values and beliefs. Even a revered character like Atticus
Finch struggled with right and wrong.
The book and the film are timeless classics. Every
critical reading or viewing provides new insight into the layered characters
and, more importantly, into the struggle to understand what Lee had in mind
when she brought this drama to life nearly 65 years ago.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg,
Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was
released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com
To read more CLICK HERE
According to The New York Times, “We’re so far removed from anything that’s ever happened,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s just guessing.”
Legally, Mr. Trump would
remain eligible to be president even if he were imprisoned. The
Constitution says nothing to the contrary. “I don’t think that the framers ever
thought we were going to be in this situation,” Professor Levinson said.
In practice, the election of an incarcerated president would
create a legal crisis that would almost certainly need to be resolved by the
courts.
In theory, Mr. Trump could be stripped of his authority
under the 25th Amendment, which provides a process to transfer authority to the
vice president if the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties
of his office.” But that would require the vice president and a majority of the
cabinet to declare Mr. Trump unable to fulfill his duties, a remote prospect
given that these would be loyalists appointed by Mr. Trump himself.
More likely, Mr. Trump could sue to be released on the basis
that his imprisonment was preventing him from fulfilling his constitutional
obligations as president. Such a case would probably focus on the separation of
powers, with Mr. Trump’s lawyers arguing that keeping a duly elected president
in prison would be an infringement by the judicial branch on the operations of
the executive branch.
On the federal charges only, he could also try to pardon
himself — or to commute his sentence, leaving his conviction in place but
ending his imprisonment. Either action would be an extraordinary assertion of
presidential power, and the Supreme Court would be the final arbiter of whether
a “self pardon” was constitutional.
Or President Biden, on his way out the door, could pardon
Mr. Trump on the basis that “the people have spoken and I need to pardon him so
he can govern,” Professor Chemerinsky said.
But that wouldn’t apply to the New York or Georgia cases,
because the president does not have pardon power for state charges.
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Prosecutors in the first criminal trial of an American president began laying out their case for a jury of 12 New Yorkers on Monday, saying Donald J. Trump engaged in a conspiracy to cover up a sex scandal in order to get elected president in 2016, reported The New York Times.
The first witness called was the tabloid publisher David
Pecker, whom prosecutors described as one member of a three-man plot to conceal
damaging stories — including a porn star’s account of a sexual tryst — as Mr.
Trump mounted his bid for the presidency.
Mr. Pecker was on the stand for only a few minutes in the
afternoon before court adjourned for the day. He described how his publication,
The National Enquirer, paid for stories, a practice he called “checkbook
journalism.” He is expected to return to the stand on Tuesday.
Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors for the Manhattan
district attorney’s office, told the jury in his opening statement that the
case was about “a criminal conspiracy and a coverup,” describing how Mr. Trump,
his longtime counsel Michael D. Cohen, and Mr. Pecker engaged in a strategy to
“catch and kill” negative stories.
The lead lawyer for Mr. Trump, Todd Blanche, insisted in his
opening statement that the former president had done nothing wrong. “President
Trump is innocent,” he told the jury. “President Trump did not commit any
crimes.”
To read more CLICK HERE
Just before noon last Saturday, a 9-year-old girl was with her mother at Grand Central Terminal when a man strode up to the child and, without warning, punched her in the face, according to the police, reported The New York Times.
The child, dizzy and in pain, was taken to the hospital.
Jean Carlos Zarzuela, 30, a man who had been staying in a homeless shelter in
East Harlem, was quickly arrested and charged with assault in the third degree,
harassment and endangering the welfare of a child.
It was the second time in nine days that Mr. Zarzuela had
randomly attacked someone at the terminal, the police said. On April 4, they
said, he punched a 56-year-old woman in the face, causing her nose to bleed and
her left eye to swell shut.
And it was among a number of recent assaults that have unnerved
New Yorkers, who
have seen a rash of attacks reported on the streets and on the subway.
Police leaders and Mayor Eric Adams have trumpeted
sharp decreases
in the number of murders, rapes, robberies and burglaries since 2022, when
crime rates began to fall in the city following a surge of violence during the
coronavirus pandemic. Most major crimes remain at a higher level than they were
in 2019, but officials said the trend was a promising sign that the city is
rebounding.
Still, assaults continue to vex police and city leaders.
Felony assaults, a major crime category defined as an attack where a dangerous
weapon is used or a serious injury results, are up in recent years. So are misdemeanor
assaults, such as the one at Grand Central, in which a victim is punched,
kicked or hit but no weapon is used.
In 2023, there were just under 28,000 felony assaults in New
York City, an increase of about 1,650 from 2022. And the number is rising in
2024: The police reported 7,419 felony assaults through April 14, a slight
increase from the same time last year. The number of misdemeanor assaults was
up 7 percent through April 14 compared with last year.
“They’re almost impulsive acts,” said Kenneth Corey, former
chief of the department. “Those are very, very difficult to police because of
the very unpredictable nature of the action. It’s not the type of crime that
the police can strategically deploy against.”
And it is their seeming randomness that unsettles New
Yorkers, he said.
“Your chances of being a victim of a shooting in New York are very small,” Mr. Corey said.
But the number of assaults in the city is far higher than
the number of murders or shootings. And even in a city of more than 8 million
people, the possibility of being suddenly attacked without provocation has also
begun to feel too real, he said — regardless of statistics.
“That’s not perception. That’s their reality,” Mr. Corey
said. “That things are not as safe as they used to be.”
What is an assault?
Under New York law, misdemeanor assault is fairly simple: It
is defined as intentionally striking another person, causing injury.
But an assault rises to the level of a felony when a
dangerous or deadly weapon is used or when the injury is so serious that a
person was at a substantial risk of death, is disfigured, is expected to
experience long-term health problems or hurts or loses an organ during the attack.
A person can also be charged with a felony for striking
public employees such as police officers or paramedics, even if a weapon is not
used. Criminal justice specialists noted that the number of felony assaults
began to rise after the State Legislature began classifying more public
employees as victims of felony assault if they were struck.
Like other crimes in the city, the number of felony assaults
has fluctuated over the past 20 years, falling to its lowest level in 2008, when the city recorded
16,284 such assaults. Amid some minor fluctuations, the number of misdemeanor
assaults fell from 57,304 in 2000 to 33,400 in 2020. But that figure increased
by 32 percent to 44,151 last year.
Officials noted some promising signs on the subway system,
where about
1,000 police officers recently began patrolling and 1,000 members of the
National Guard and the State Police were deployed after a surge in
crime. Felony and misdemeanor assaults on the transit system both fell last
month and are about the same through April 14 compared with last year,
according to transit bureau figures.
What is driving the numbers?
It is unknown how many assaults in the city are truly
random, according to the police, who say it is difficult to track the number of
unprovoked attacks because investigators often learn later that the victim knew
the perpetrator.
The police classify felony assaults under several different
categories including domestic violence, attacks on the police, attacks on
people over 65 and shootings. The remainder of the victims fall under the
category of “other.”
Domestic violence incidents made up more than 40 percent of
the felony assaults in 2023, according to the police.
Assaults on the police made up a little more than 8 percent
of felony assaults. Shooting victims made up about 4 percent of the cases,
while the number of assaults on people more than 65 years old was up nearly 8
percent.
Assaults on public safety officials have risen as the number
of arrests has also increased. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority saw a
jump in the number of attacks on its police officers and workers — from 23
assaults in 2019 to 65 in 2023. The assaults often happened when officers were
stopping people from evading fares, an M.T.A. spokesman said.
“The increase on assaults on police officers isn’t
surprising,” Mr. Corey said. Suspects, especially those arrested in cases of
violent crimes, “are going to fight when they’re arrested.”
The persistence of domestic violence incidents as a driver
of felony assaults is another troubling trend, and one that often leads to
tragedy, said Nathaniel M. Fields, chief executive of the Urban Resource
Institute. He pointed to an annual report commissioned the city, which
analyzed domestic violence deaths from 2010 to 2022. In that time period, there
were 420 cases in which someone was killed by an intimate partner. In 39
percent of those cases, the police had documented a domestic incident before
the death, according to the study.
Maureen Curtis, the vice president of the criminal justice
program at Safe Horizon, said she believed that there was not the same sense of
urgency around domestic violence as for crimes that are more visible or are
more likely to make headlines.
“As a society, we still don’t value domestic violence the
way we do the other crimes,” she said. “People still don’t see it impacting
them.”
What can be done to reduce assaults?
On Monday, Mayor Adams announced a plan to help find permanent housing for
domestic violence victims living in city shelters with their children.
The plan, part of a $43 million effort to push gender equity
programs in the city that would concentrate on women of color and people in the
L.G.B.T.Q. community, would start with 100 families, he said.
The city’s study found that Black women were more than twice
as likely to be victims of domestic violence homicides as any other racial or
ethnic group.
The mayor’s plan is a good start, Ms. Curtis said.
Lack of permanent housing often leads victims of domestic
violence to return to abusive partners, she said. “We still need to find more
affordable housing for the thousands of survivors in New York City,” she said.
Mr. Fields said higher salaries and better working
conditions for social workers who help domestic violence victims were also
necessary. In March, Mayor Adams announced an agreement with the city’s human
services workers that will give them a 9 percent raise over the next three
years.
Addressing the city’s growing struggle with those with
mental health problems is also critical, according to law enforcement
officials.
On Wednesday, Kaz Daughtry, the deputy commissioner of
operations, said the department would be deploying a squad of police officers with
degrees or experience in clinical psychology and social work to the subways to
identify people in crisis and connect them with services.
In
an opinion piece for The New York Times, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan
district attorney, called on Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature to
“make good on their earlier support for significant
investments in mental health care — especially for New Yorkers who have been
struggling, posing potential dangers to themselves and others.”
It was a call echoed by the police during a briefing with
reporters this past week, where Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives,
described a series of “unprovoked attacks” in the precincts covering southern
Manhattan.
Many of the perpetrators were homeless, he said.
“The majority of them,” Chief Kenny said, “seem like they
need some kind of help with mental illness.”
To read more CLICK HERE
Watch my interview with Julie Grant on COURT TV discussing the Chad Daybell capital murder trial.
To watch the interview CLICK HERE and HERE and HERE