Appellate cases in the criminal arena frequently focus on the rights of those accused of crimes. It is only logical that this would be the case. The accused has an attorney and is a party to the proceedings. The system strives to ensure that those who are charged with crimes are treated fairly and that their Constitutional rights are protected.
Lucy Langston and Ralph Quarles loved one another. Their relationship had been going on for several years and Quarles intended to have Lucy move in with him and expand their family. But Lucy and Ralph could not let neighbors know about their relationship and they most certainly could not marry.
President Obama was in Ohio this week, speaking in the Cleveland area about the state of the nation’s economy. He surprised reporters (and no doubt Congressional Republicans as well) when he announced that he was appointing former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as head of the new federal consumer financial protection bureau.
Thanksgiving is behind us and thus a new season is upon us — Michigan season. After all, Thanksgiving was yesterday and Advent doesn’t begin until Sunday, so something has to fill the gap. In Ohio, that something is clearly focused on the football game to be played tomorrow in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Sometime during my first year of law school I received, as a gift, a sweatshirt that says across the front of it, “On the advice of my attorney, my shirt has no comment at this time.” It’s a common sentiment. Just about any time that a person is accused of a crime or involved in a situation in which they might be the target of a lawsuit, they tell the media that they would really, really like to answer questions, but their legal counsel has advised them not to. It happens so frequently that it has acquired a slang name– ‘lawyering up.’
You know that you have a substantial domestic problem when news agencies an ocean away take note of it. It caught my attention, therefore, when the British Broadcasting Corporation recently completed a report titled, “Major Epidemic: The Untold Story of Child Abuse in the U.S.”
On May 5, 1993 three eight year-old boys went missing in an Arkansas suburb. Relatives, friends and neighbors searched for them throughout the evening and overnight. In the morning, under the light of day, law enforcement teams expanded the search. By mid-afternoon the bodies of the three boys had been located in a drainage ditch. One of the boys died of extensive blood loss. The other two had drowned. They had committed no crime, done no wrong. They were the innocent victim of the most heinous crime.
Isoruku Yamamoto was 59 years old when he died in April of 1943. For the previous four years he had served as commander in chief of the combined fleet of Japan. In that capacity he had developed a plan to make a pre-emptive strike on the United States to draw down American naval power. He planned and led the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 in which 2,402 men were killed– the worst attack ever on American soil by a foreign force. Americans rallied to a common cause, rebuilt and fought back.