Conviction
I’ve Sheen Enough
Presumed Guilty
A few weeks ago, I posted a "Nightline" segment featuring an interview with John Jackson, the prosecutor in the death penalty case of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham, who was almost certainly innocent, was nonetheless found guilty and executed by the state of Texas in 2004. The basis for the conviction was evidence given by arson investigators that was subsequently shown to be entirely unscientific. READ MORE >>
The Restless Medium
Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before By Michael Fried (Yale University Press, 409 pp., $55) I. READ MORE >>
Polanski's Defenders, Cont'd
Unsurprisingly, the cinematic community has come out in strong support of Roman Polanski, typically invoking--like the French culture minister before them--his status as a great artist as if it granted him some form of legal immunity. READ MORE >>
Trouble in Beantown
A month-old labor dispute in Boston has taken a curious twist. It began when on August 31, a hundred housekeepers at three Hyatt hotels in Boston were fired and replaced by workers from a Georgia company, Hospitality Staffing Solutions. The housekeepers, some of whom had worked for Hyatt for over twenty years, were making between $14 and $16 an hour plus health, dental, and 401(k) benefits. Their replacements were to make $8 an hour with no health benefits. READ MORE >>
Making the Right Enemies
From a Richmond Times-Dispatch article on the controversy over a local strip club owner's decision to hang one of those Obama-as-the-joker banners on the side of his building: Moore's club is awaiting a Nov. 9-10 state Alcoholic Beverage Control hearing on alleged violations. Last year, Moore was convicted of three misdemeanor charges related to having sex with a minor and another female at his apartment above the club, and filming it illegally. READ MORE >>
Pungent Pundit of Pugnacity
The Bloodlust State
For any who were not adequately shaken by David Grann's masterful article "Trial by Fire," about a man put to death by the state of Texas for a crime he almost certainly did not commit, Ta-Nehisi Coates points to a Salon article by Alan Berlow that simply beggars belief: READ MORE >>
Bankers, Retribution, Justice and Jails
I am loathe to think that one solution to the problem of the credibility of bankers and the banking system is prison. Yes, I know Bernie Madoff is in prison and there are a few more Ponzi schemers who will join him there. But these are not the financiers who destroyed the American financial system basically on a lark, using their skills of ingenuity and deception without considering either the moral or legal constraints on their behavior. READ MORE >>
Madoff Has Cancer, Too. Why Not Release Him or At Least Send Him Home on House Arrest?
The New York Post and Reuters both report not exactly that Bernie Madoff has cancer. But that he's told his fellow inmates that he has cancer, pancreatic cancer, at that. Which means that, if the tale is true, he'll be a goner soon, very soon. Unless there's a medical miracle, as sometimes there is even in such terrible afflictions of the pancreas. READ MORE >>
