Eideard

The owner of a large southwest Alabama car dealership derided as “Taliban Toyota” by a competitor has been awarded $7.5 million in damages after a jury trial for his slander claim.

Iranian-born Shawn Esfahani, owner of Eastern Shore Toyota in Daphne, Alabama, sought $28 million in compensatory and punitive damages from Bob Tyler Toyota, claiming employees at that Pensacola, Florida-based dealership falsely portrayed him as an Islamist militant to customers.

“The feeling I received in the courtroom for the truth to come out was worth a lot more than any money anybody can give me,” Esfahani told Reuters…

Esfahani’s lawsuit said that Bob Tyler sales manager Fred Kenner told at least one couple considering buying from Eastern Shore Toyota in 2009 that Esfahani was of Middle Eastern descent and was “helping fund the insurgents there and is also laundering money for them…”

A Bob Tyler salesman was accused of telling the same couple that Esfahani was from Iraq and calling him a “terrorist” who put soldiers including the salesman’s brother in harm’s way…

The jury deliberated for three hours before awarding Esfahani $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages on Monday evening…

Esfahani said the dollar amount awarded by the jury was irrelevant unless the case sets a precedent by which other business owners can seek recourse against tactics he considers “un-American.”

Slimeballs who perpetuate slander and discrimination against minorities – whether for business or demented pleasure – represent the sickest form of bigotry. They are so preoccupied with their Limbaugh-like hatred they pay no heed to ordinary standards of civility or public conduct.

A judgement like this one warm the cockles of my heart. Hitting these creeps where it hurts them most – in the wallet – is especially just.

It doesn’t have quite the appeal of sending a robot to do your shopping, but this Smart Cart service being trialed by SK Telecom could definitely take some of the hassle out of trolling the supermarket aisles.

Just launched at the Shanghai Lotus Supermarket in China, the system consists of WiFi-enabled, tablet PC-equipped shopping carts and a smartphone app that can be synchronized with the tablet. By utilizing indoor positioning technology and augmented reality, the shopping “Smart” cart becomes a virtual shopping aide.

The Smart Cart application allows customers to search for shopping and discount information, store coupons, as well as to create a shopping list.

After getting to the market, the app synchronizes with the tablet PC mounted to the cart’s handle, uploads the shopping list and authenticates the user. Wandering through the store’s aisles, customers get product and discount information linked to their current location within the store, which is established to within three feet via a WiFi network.

Way cool. I’m the sort of regular shopper who knows aisle-by-aisle what I’m looking for; but, that doesn’t allow for new goodies to tempt the palate.

Dalia Dippolito never planned to have her husband killed, her attorney told a jury on Tuesday. Rather, she thought she was acting in a reality show orchestrated by her husband to achieve fame and publicity.

In his opening statement in her murder-for-hire trial, defense attorney Michael Salnick said Michael Dippolito was a controlling husband who duped his wife into taking part in his hoax.

“Michael Dippolito’s hoax to orchestrate his own murder to achieve fame and fortune was a bad prank,” Salnick said. “It was never anyone’s intention to harm anyone…”

Video from an undercover sting by Boynton Beach police showed Dalia Dippolito in August 2009 trying to hire an undercover officer to kill her husband. Video of her wailing at news of his murder went viral and will be featured on the television show “COPS.”

Salnick told jurors that Dalia Dippolito knew the entire time that she was being recorded, because her husband persuaded her to take part in his reality-show idea. Michael Dippolito won’t admit it, Salnick said…

Dippolito faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Her alleged plan to have a hit man kill her husband backfired when the man she hired to do the job was the undercover Boynton Beach police officer.

Boynton Beach police were fooled by Michael Dippolito’s staged murder-for-hire scenario, Salnick said, and were more focused on pleasing COPS producers…

On Aug. 5, 2009, police staged the elaborate crime scene, and recorded video of her shrieks and tears when they told her that her husband had been killed.

Later they confronted her, brought her face-to-face with her husband and arrested her. Her reaction and arrest also were caught on video, which will be evidence in the trial.

Michael Dippolito was the victim in the case, Parker said, and was blinded by his love for his wife of six months.

Do you think this is going to work better than the twinkie defense used in San Francisco to justify the murder of Harvey Milk? You have to admit it’s creative and including in a reasonably sleazy reality TV show like COPS is brilliant.

Melchert-Dinkel leaving court in Minnesota
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A judge in the US state of Minnesota has ordered a former nurse accused of encouraging suicide on the internet to stay offline.

William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, is charged in connection with the deaths of Briton Mark Drybrough in 2005, and Canadian Nadia Kajouji in 2008.

He allegedly posed as a female nurse, advising people in chatrooms on how to take their own lives. He reportedly admitted helping up to five people kill themselves…

If convicted, Mr Melchert-Dinkel faces up to 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors say Mr Melchert-Dinkel admitted he had encouraged “dozens” of people to commit suicide for the “thrill of the chase”…

The criminal complaint mentions two people: Mark Drybrough, 32, who hanged himself in Coventry in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, who drowned in 2008 in a river in Ottawa…

Some legal experts say it could be difficult to prosecute Mr Melchert-Dinkel because he allegedly only encouraged the victims to kill themselves without physically helping them.

On one hand, I’ve long counseled and fought politically to support the right to die with dignity. On the other, a nutball like this who’s active on the Web just to see how many people he can push over the edge is disgusting.

The tale of how he was caught by an amateur geek-sleuth is a special tale on its own.

Russian forces have freed the crew of a Russian oil tanker seized by Somali pirates off the coast of Yemen, in a dramatic rescue operation.

Forces on the warship Marshal Shaposhnikov approached the tanker with 23 Russian crew on board by helicopter. As they did so, the pirates opened fire, sparking a shoot-out.

The Russian forces then abseiled onto the Moscow University tanker, freeing the crew who had locked themselves in a safe room after disabling their ship.

Ten pirates have been arrested, and one was killed during the gun battle. They are being held aboard the tanker, Russian defence ministry spokesman Col Alexei Kuznetsov said.

Not a bad scorecard.

They will be transferred to Moscow to face charges…

Also this year, there have been three incidents when foreign forces have managed to board hijacked boats and capture the pirates. But this can only be done if all the crew have managed to lock themselves in a secure room on board the ship and have contacted the nearest navy forces to say they are safe – exactly what happened in Thursday’s incident.

The decision to free the ship was made knowing “that the crew was under safe cover inaccessible to the pirates and that the lives and health of the sailors was not threatened by anything”, Novoship added.

The U.N. Security Council has suggested special piracy courts to plug a gap in the legal response to piracy.

I guess there’s not enough profit involved to motivate Congress or any of the Euro parliaments.

A civil trial that opened Wednesday in Portland will show that the Boy Scouts of America knew it had child molesters in its leadership for decades but kept the problem quiet, according to an attorney for one of the victims.

The case, expected to attract national attention, centers on a Portland man who confessed to Scout leaders that he had molested 17 Scouts but was allowed to continue joining boys in Scouting activities.

On a broader scale, the case is one of the first to bring into open court hundreds of confidential files that the 100-year-old organization kept on Scout leaders and others suspected of sexually abusing boys. Though the Scouts, based in Texas, have been sued dozens of times over allegations of sexual abuse, most cases have been settled out of court, keeping files from becoming public.

Patrick Boyle, the Washington, D.C.-based author of “Scout’s Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution,” said Wednesday that this case may be only the second time such files have been used in a trial…

The Scouts, Clark said in opening statements, knew it had pedophiles in its organization yet allowed Dykes and others to continue to associate with its members. He held up file folder after file folder from Boy Scout headquarters that he said proves the organization knew of at least 1,000 suspected child molesters from 1965 to 1985.

“Those decisions led naturally, predictably and foreseeably to the abuse of boys like” my client, he said.

RTFA. Yup, the trial should be interesting especially as a parallel to the coverups maintained for decades by the Catholic Church, the hacks in Congress who belong to The Family, so many godly patriots ripping off the folks they swear to protect.

Not looking too polished for court

A former top official for the US Department of Homeland Security in Boston violated a law she had taken an oath to uphold by encouraging a Brazilian housekeeper who was an illegal immigrant to stay in the country, a federal prosecutor…

Lorraine Henderson — who is suspended without pay from her job as regional director of Homeland Security, Customs, and Border Protection — was caught on a wire worn by her housekeeper, Fabiana Bittencourt, advising Bittencourt not to leave the United States because she would not be let back in, said Assistant US Attorney Diane C. Freniere.

The housekeeper was secretly cooperating with authorities. She had allegedly cleaned Henderson’s Salem condominium for several years, even though a co-worker who had also employed Bittencourt later warned Henderson that the housekeeper was in the country illegally, Freniere said.

“Lorraine Henderson violated the same immigration law that she had taken an oath to uphold,’’ Freniere said in her opening statement to jurors in US District Court in Boston…

The trial is expected to last six to eight days.

When Henderson was arrested on Dec. 5, 2008, prosecutors characterized the case as an extraordinary example of hypocrisy by a law enforcement official who managed 190 armed officers who oversee ports of entry in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Can you possibly imagine that we might have government officials who are hypocrites, who would violate the laws they are charged to protect, who are greedy and selfish enough to ignore their mandate?

I mean – other than Congress.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Two mothers sat on hard wooden benches Monday in a Dallas County courtroom, waiting for a hearing that would bring joy to one and anguish to another.

It was the day Richard Miles was freed from prison after a prisoner advocacy group discovered that evidence had been withheld before his murder and attempted murder trial in August 1995. Dallas police never told prosecutors or the defense that an anonymous caller implicated another man in the shootings.

Miles’ mother could barely contain her excitement.

“It’s a great day,” said Thelma Lloyd, who smiled brightly after ceremoniously cutting the jail ID bracelet off Miles’ wrist. He had spent 14 years behind bars. “He’s reborn now.”

The mother of the murdered man could barely contain her tears. Ruby Williams cried in a courthouse hallway after the hearing as she clutched an 8-by-10 photo of her son in his red high school graduation robes.

“I’m devastated,” Williams said. “Just when I’m comfortable to deal with this, it’s an open wound…”

And then there was the piece of evidence that jurors never heard about: Three months before the trial, a woman phoned police to say her former boyfriend had admitted the crime to her and showed her the 9 mm pistol he said he had fired. That call was noted on a memo found in police files years later.

Tom D’Amore, the original prosecutor in the case, said he recalls the case but not in detail. He said Monday that he never had information about that phone call…

Judge Andy Chatham told Miles as he stood before the judge’s bench that he could not guarantee anything, but it appeared that his convictions would be overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Chatham released Miles on his own recognizance, …

Texans can take pride in the few folks in their justice system who are prepared to right the wrongs of the past. Maybe guarantee a difference in the future? That’s up to Texas voters.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Michael Jackson’s death has been ruled a homicide.

Eight weeks after the King of Pop was found unconscious, a search warrant of his doctor’s office revealed Monday what had long been suspected – that Jackson was given “lethal levels” of a dangerous anesthetic.

Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, the target of a manslaughter probe, told Los Angeles cops that he had been treating the singer for insomnia for about six weeks, according to the document…

On the morning Jackson died, Murray told cops he tried again to get the singer to sleep without using propofol, the records state.
Murray said on that fateful night he first gave Jackson valium at 1:30 a.m. When that didn’t work, the doctor said he injected lorazepam intravenously at 2 a.m.

An hour later, Jackson was still awake so Murray said he gave him midazolam. Still, Jackson could not sleep.

Finally, at 10:40 a.m., and after Jackson insisted on the propofol, Murray said he caved and gave into the singer’s demands.

And Jackson was doomed.

I wonder if there will be a trial verdict, say, before the next presidential election?

President George W. Bush considered using U.S. soldiers to arrest terror suspects in New York.

Quoting unnamed former Bush administration sources, Saturday’s Times reported that Bush in 2002 mulled using federal troops to arrest six men suspected of connections to al-Qaida in Lackawanna, N.Y., despite constitutional prohibitions against using U.S. soldiers in domestic operations.

The officials said former Vice President Dick Cheney, armed with a post-Sept. 11 Justice Department memorandum, argued in a high level meeting that using federal troops to arrest terror suspects on U.S. soil could be justified legally, reportedly saying that since there may not be enough evidence to convict the “Lackawanna Six” in criminal courts, they should be arrested by the U.S. military and held as enemy combatants.

Bush ultimately opted to let the FBI arrest the men, who later pleaded guilty to terror charges. Had he approved the move, the deployment of active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity without specific statutory authority would have been a first since the Civil War.

Shades of posse comitatus, gang! Is there any desecration of the Constitution that wasn’t advocated by the Dark Prince Cheney?