Free Republic

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has decided to launch a federal investigation into whether the Baltimore Police Department has engaged in a “pattern or practice” of excessive force. Lynch’s announcement about the Justice Department’s probe — the latest in a string of municipalities that are being investigated by the federal government for civil rights violations — could come as early as Friday, according to two law enforcement officials. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday night. Lynch hinted Thursday that a decision could come soon, when she testified during her first hearing on Capitol Hill as attorney general. She...

It is already clear that Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney who is prosecuting the Baltimore Six is not up to the responsibilities of her job. The only questions are: 1. how deeply incompetent?; and 2. what consequences will result from her bungling? The second question is the more important one, for Mosby has set up her prosecution as a response to the “No justice, no peace” movement. If and when she fails to secure a conviction through her ineptitude, then by the standard of the mob to which she is catering, more riots will be justifiable, and therefore the likely...

Alan Dershowitz, the famous defense lawyer, has called the case against the six Baltimore officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray “a show trial.” The actions of prosecutor Marilyn Mosby “had nothing to do with justice,” but instead amounted to “crowd control,” Dershowitz said in remarks reported by the Daily Caller. With regard to the second-degree murder charges against Caesar Goodson, Dershowitz stated that “there’s no plausible, hypothetical, conceivable case for murder under the facts as we now know them.” At most, there may be a case for involuntary manslaughter. Dershowitz believes that, having overplayed its hand, the prosecution...

JACKSON, MI – Concerned he would have to send an innocent man to prison, a Jackson County judge on Friday set aside a jury's guilty verdict in a criminal sexual conduct case. The rare decision, a first in Circuit Judge John McBain's 13 years on the bench, means Gregory Patterson, 50, is not guilty of three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, felonies that would have sent him to prison for a minimum of 25 years. A jury convicted Patterson of the offenses at the close of a March trial, but McBain granted a motion made by defense lawyer George...

Hillary cited all sorts of stats about incarceration rates in her speech yesterday.  I could write paragraphs about her misuse of the statistics to make a point rather than build understanding.  But at bottom of all the statistics she cited is one simple question, “In each instance that is a part of the stats was the defendant guilty?”  If so then regardless of the statistics, the law was followed and presumably justice was done.  To contend differently is to contend that somehow the law and justice parted company. Justice is measured in the facts of each individual case.  It is not...

Amy Murphy, the dean of students at Texas Tech, believes that giving students of her college the rights that they have access to has a “chilling effect” on people’s ability to accuse others of assault. Murphy told Texas Tech’s college paper that, as a part of the Student Code of Conduct, students at the university do not have the right to confront their accuser. More than that, they cannot have a representative ask questions of the accuser at all, and cross-examination is simply not allowed. According to Murphy, this process is a “learning experience” that “will be conducted in the...

During his farewell address to the Justice Department Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder referred to his tenure at the Department of Justice as its “golden age” and in the same mold as Robert Kennedy’s storied tenure.. Loretta Lynch will take over the department following the Senate’s 56-43 confirmation vote Thursday. HOLDER: I said earlier that when we celebrated Robert Kennedy’s 50th anniversary of his swearing in 2011, people said that was the golden age for the United States Department of Justice. Well, I think 50 years from now, maybe even sooner than that, people will look at the work you...

Crime, at its core, inflicts harm on the victim. As such, one of the primary purposes of the criminal justice system should be to repair the damage done by the crime and prevent further victimization by rehabilitating and holding accountable the offender. Yet, with the criminal justice system and reform dialogue so often focused on offenders and taxpayers, the needs of individual victims frequently go undiscussed. Although it is important to acknowledge the damage crime does to society at large, we must not forget the tremendous and often emotionally paralyzing impact crime has on the affected individuals. America’s criminal justice...

**SNIP** EARLIER: WASHINGTON - A U.S. congressional panel will examine whether federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents divulged secrets at sex parties that Colombian drug lords may have staged to elicit sensitive information. Following revelations of misconduct by DEA agents, a senior Obama administration official told Reuters on Tuesday that DEA chief Michele Leonhart, who was grilled in a congressional hearing last week about the sex parties, was expected to step down from her post in the near future. A DEA spokesman had no immediate comment. A spokeswoman for the Republican majority at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform...

Judiciary Federal court: no liability for PA judge who made up criminal charge By Rachel MartinPublished April 13, 2015watchdog.org A federal court recently told a Lawrence County woman she’s simply out of luck and can’t sue local officials, including a Common Pleas judge who apparently made up a criminal charge that was used to place her on electronic monitoring. A judge has absolute civil immunity, even if the action “was in error, was done maliciously, or was in excess of his authority,” the three-judge panel ruled in its six-page opinion. Judge Thomas Piccione had ordered Lynn Van Tassel to report...

Dozens of cases involving four former Fort Lauderdale police officers accused of engaging in racist exchanges have been dropped by the Broward State Attorney's Office. The cases dropped include eight misdemeanors, 12 felonies and one juvenile case. Seventeen more cases are expected to be dropped... James Wells, 29, Jason Holding, 31, and Christopher Sousa, 25, were fired last month after racially charged text messages were brought forth to the police department by 22-year-old Alex Alvarez’s ex-fiancee.

Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter, has blown a big hole in the case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying to avoid blame for outing a CIA agent. Miller was a key witness in Libby’s trial, but in her new book she has repudiated her testimony. Libby was “railroaded in his conviction” by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, she said in an interview on Fox News yesterday. In her book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, she writes that Fitzgerald cajoled her into testifying in 2007 that Libby had told her Valerie Plame, the wife of a critic...

The White House clearly could not permit a prominent Democratic senator to tell the Israelis and the world what a bunch of jackasses they were. I’d be surprised to learn that anyone in the Obama and Holder Department of Justice even knows how to spell “justice.” On the same day it announced an indictment of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez (D) for allegedly taking bribes and engaging in various forms of corruption, it also announced that it would not pursue a criminal contempt of Congress resolution against Lois Lerner, the member of the Internal Revenue Service at the center of...

In a post which may be found here, Father Robert McTeigue, SJ writes: "Very often, I hear folks speak of mercy as if it were a cancellation of justice. On this view, “justice” means, “you have to pay off your debt—or else.” “Mercy”, then, says, “About that debt—never mind!” And who wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief when told that one’s debt has been dismissed, made irrelevant? That’s an appealing, even tempting image of justice and mercy, especially if you’ve ever been deeply in debt. Unfortunately, such a view tragically distorts justice and mercy. If left uncorrected, such a view...

 Individual Justice Or: Our Obligations to God and Neighbor  We hear about justice a lot in our culture. We hear discussions over legal justice systems, or what constitutes a just war, or a just societal order. We hear phrases like "just cause," "just desserts," and "just wage." (We also hear phrases like "just in time" and "just kidding," but those phrases have nothing to do with our present discussion, so why even bring them up?)  If you asked a group of people what the idea of "justice" conjured up in their minds, most would probably tell you it made them...

Back in 2009, just months after his swearing in, president Barack Obama was crowned with an unexpected glory: he won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 due to "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Back then there was little indication that just a few years after his crowning achievement of "ending the war" in and returning US troops from Iraq, he would send US troops right back in Iraq for the 3rd US invasion of the country in three decades, but also send out US troops across the globe, and launch the second cold war,...

Argentina is using the 1957 Hollywood classic, “12 Angry Men,” to teach the public about how juries function, just days before the country’s largest province begins its first ever trial by jury.

Attorney General Eric Holder plans to push, during his final weeks in office, a new standard of proof for civil-rights offenses, saying in an exit interview with POLITICO that such a change would make the federal government “a better backstop” against discrimination in cases like Ferguson and Trayvon Martin.

The U.S. Department of Justice secretly spies on millions of cars by gathering and storing information about motorists in order to build a national database to track movements, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The database was originally used by the Drug Enforcement Administration to hunt vehicles involved in drug crimes by tracking license plates, but according to the WSJ, the program expanded to hunt for criminals sought for crimes that were non-drug related. DEA officials have been on record saying they track vehicles near the U.S.-Mexico border to help fight drug cartels, but the new...

Former CBS News reporter sues Justice Department for $35 million alleging her family was put under surveillance while she covered Benghazi A former reporter with CBS News is suing the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging she was illegally spied on and digitally monitored. Sharyl Attkisson's lawsuit alleges that the illegal surveillance took place while she covered stories on Benghazi and the Fast and Furious gunwalking case and refers to three forensic exams conducted on computers. She is suing over alleged violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, and her husband and daughter are named as co-plaintiffs. Attorney General Eric Holder,...