Eideard

The first juror to be prosecuted for contempt of court for using the internet has been sentenced to eight months in jail.

Joanne Fraill, 40, admitted at London’s high court using Facebook to exchange messages with Jamie Sewart, 34, a defendant already acquitted in a multimillion-pound drug trial in Manchester last year.

Fraill, from Blackley, Manchester, also admitted conducting an internet search into Sewart’s boyfriend, Gary Knox, a co-defendant, while the jury was still deliberating…

When the lord chief justice, Lord Judge, announced her eight-month sentence, Fraill said “eight months!” and put her head on the table in front of her and cried…

Sentencing Fraill, the judge said in a written ruling: “Her conduct in visiting the internet repeatedly was directly contrary to her oath as a juror, and her contact with the acquitted defendant, as well as her repeated searches on the internet, constituted flagrant breaches of the orders made by the judge for the proper conduct of the trial…”

Knox, Sewart’s 35-year-old partner, is applying for his conviction to be overturned on the basis of alleged jury misconduct. He was jailed for six years after being found guilty of paying a police officer to disclose information on drug dealers…

Fraill admitted emailing Sewart while the jury was still deliberating in the drugs trail in August last year because she felt “empathetic” and saw “considerable parallels” between their lives…

The lord chief justice, discussing the reasons for the sentence in the high court, acknowledged that Fraill was “a woman of good character” and was not involved in an attempt to pervert the course of justice. But “misuse of the internet by a juror” was always “a most serious irregularity and contempt”.

He warned that a custodial sentence for any juror committing similar contempts “is virtually inevitable”.

He added: “The sentence is intended to ensure the continuing integrity of trial by jury.”

The solicitor general made the relevant point: “Long before social networks, the courts have been in no doubt that discussions inside the jury room must stay there. The internet doesn’t make judges’ warnings not to talk about a case or research it any less important.”

A mortally wounded man’s identification of his assailant may be repeated by police officers in court, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday. The 6-to-2 decision was a significant retreat from the court’s recent embrace of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause, which guarantees criminal defendants the right to confront witnesses against them.

Justice Antonin Scalia had been the leading proponent of a robust interpretation of the Confrontation Clause, and Monday’s decision drew a slashing dissent from him. He called the majority’s account of the facts of the case “so transparently false that professing to believe it demeans this institution…”

Justice Sotomayor, responding to criticism from Justice Scalia, acknowledged that determining whether the primary purpose of a crime victim’s statement was to provide information about past events or to aid in addressing a current emergency requires “a highly context-dependent inquiry…”

Justice Scalia’s dissent was comprehensively critical of the majority’s approach. He said it represented a significant shift away from the court’s 2004 ruling in Crawford v. Washington, which had breathed new life into the Confrontation Clause…

Justice Scalia added that the majority had smuggled back into the law a factor that the Crawford decision had rejected — whether the out-of-court statements were “reliable.”

“Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty,” Justice Scalia wrote for the majority in Crawford. “This is not what the Sixth Amendment prescribes.”

An essentially Republican court renders an essentially conservative opinion. One that reeks of frontier justice and the laws of Judge Lynch.

With no right to confront and question a witness defendants lose a basic constitutional right.

Virginia Hernandez Lopez admitted to knocking back two shots of tequila with Sprite chasers on an August night in Julian, Calif., a couple of years ago. But she said she was not drunk when her Ford Explorer collided with an oncoming Toyota pickup truck later that night, killing its driver.

In May, a California state appeals court affirmed Ms. Lopez’s conviction for vehicular manslaughter. Her blood-alcohol level two hours after the accident was, according to a report presented to the jury, just over the legal limit of .08 percent.

But the appeals court reconsidered the case after a decision in June from the United States Supreme Court that prohibited prosecutors from introducing crime lab reports without testimony from the analysts who prepared them.

The appeals court reversed Ms. Lopez’s conviction, saying prosecutors had violated her constitutional right to confront witnesses against her by failing to put the analyst who prepared the blood-alcohol report on the stand.

But now, in an unusual move, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Jan. 11 in a new case that raises questions about how lower courts may carry out its six-month-old precedent. Many state attorneys general and prosecutors are hoping the court will overrule its decision in the earlier case, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, before it can take root, saying it is a costly, disruptive and dangerous misstep.

“Already data and anecdotal evidence are demonstrating an overwhelming negative impact,” a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by 26 attorneys general last month said. The decision, they said, “is already proving unworkable.”

RTFA. Prosecutors and defense lawyers have the world of differences on the question – as you might presume.

The article doesn’t mention what Ms. Lopez had to say about the constitutional rights of Allan Wolowsky, the driver she killed.

In Derbyshire, officers are swapping their notebooks and pens for a small memory card, so that hours of film can be gathered as evidence on something as small as a fingerprint. It is the latest way to get the best out of technology that’s already been tried and tested.

Headcams have been worn by police officers in other parts of the country for quite a while, but here in Derby city centre they’re being used alongside a new computer system which means officers can store and retrieve the footage quickly and easily.

In the time it takes to burn the evidence onto a DVD, an officer could be back out onto the street…

Using film as part of a police statement not only reduces their workload by 30%, but also the force says it is cheaper because some of the typical cases they deal with don’t reach court anymore.

Officers have shown footage to people who were under the influence of alcohol at the time they filmed the incident. In the cold light of day, it has been harder for them to dispute the evidence they see in front of them. As a result, they admit the crime.

Its also been useful to record certain types of crime, like domestic violence.

Officers say that victims often feel compelled to change their statement a few days after it happened, but when the injuries are caught on camera straight away, its more likely that the case will reach court.

An advance in the use of technology to record events for police forces. IMHO, recording always works better than trying to remember.

The financial analyst who nine years ago discovered Bernard Madoff’s multi-billion dollar alleged fraud scheme today lambasted US securities officials who ignored his warnings, calling for a shakeup of the US securities and exchange commission’s structure.

Harry Markopolos, a Massachusetts financial analyst who since 2000 several times sought to alert the SEC to Madoff’s fraud, told a House of Representatives committee that the agency should replace its lawyer-heavy enforcement staff with senior securities professionals who have years of industry experience and can understand cutting-edge financial instruments used by hedge fund traders.

That’s putting what he had to say about SEC lawyers – politely.

Markopolos discovered Madoff’s alleged malfeasance in May 2000, after he became suspicious of his years-long record of success in all market conditions. Markopolos said it took him about five minutes perusing Madoff’s marketing materials to suspect fraud, and another roughly four hours to develop mathematical models to prove it. He eventually delivered a detailed case to securities regulators in Boston and followed up several times over the next eight years as he continued to gather evidence. He said that important SEC officials in New York and Boston brushed his reports aside.

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Empty chair the Judiciary Committee saw the last time they subpoenaed Rove

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Monday subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove, The Hill reported. The subpoena is intended to compel Rove to testify about his role in the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys during the administration of former President George W. Bush, as well as the Justice Department’s prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, the report said.

Rove is one of several former White House officials who refused to testify voluntarily in the House and Senate in 2007 on the dismissal of the federal prosecutors. The Bush White House offered to allow executive branch officials to be interviewed behind closed doors, but insisted the officials could not be put under oath and there would be no transcripts of the interviews.

Rove has claimed executive privilege exemption from being compelled to testify but a federal court has rejected the claim.

“I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today’s action is an important step along the way,” said Conyers in announcing the subpoena.

So, is this when Karl Rove switches from “executive privilege” to the Fifth Amendment?