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Obit watch: November 15, 2024.

Friday, November 15th, 2024

Theodore B. Olson, noted lawyer. I sort of vaguely remember him from the Reagan administration:

He was a founding member of the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal group, and a leading figure in many conservative legal triumphs of the 2000s, including Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United (2010).

Later on, he became involved in the effort to overturn California’s gay marriage ban, and opposed the first Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

His political views emerged in college, centered on a particularly Western, libertarian brand of conservatism. During a debate trip to Texas, he watched as a restaurant manager in Amarillo refused to seat a Black teammate. Mr. Olson shouted down the manager, telling him they would all leave if he wouldn’t serve everyone.

…

Mr. Olson worked on the White House’s behalf during the initial stages of the Iran-contra affair, Congress’s investigation into the illegal arms sales to Iran to support right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. He was also accused of committing perjury during a congressional investigation into the White House’s withholding of environmental records.
That investigation, which lasted five years and personally cost Mr. Olson $1.5 million, ended without charges. It made him a darling among conservative commentators, but left many Democrats convinced that he was dangerously partisan.

…

His third wife, the conservative commentator Barbara (Bracher) Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 to Los Angeles from Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked it, crashing it into the Pentagon and killing everyone aboard.
She had planned to leave the day before, but had stayed an extra day to be with Mr. Olson on the morning of his birthday. As the plane veered back toward Northern Virginia, where they lived, she called him from a bathroom, and Mr. Olson was able to record some of the call. His telephone is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History.

Gerry Faust, former coach at Notre Dame.

John Robinson, former coach at the Universty of Southern California and of the Rams.

…Attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, he met a fellow fifth-grader, John Madden, the future Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster, and they became lifelong friends.
“Just two doofuses from Daly City,” Robinson told The Los Angeles Times in 2021.

Timothy West, noted British actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Nicholas and Alexandra”, “Crime and Punishment” (the 1979 TV miniseries)…

…and what was, according to the obit, a disastrous production of “Macbeth” with Peter O’Toole.

Mr. O’Toole, who had not appeared on the London stage for 15 years, had insisted on complete artistic control over the production, Mr. West wrote in a memoir — “a sure recipe for dissent if not disaster” — and refused to make any suggested changes.
The first night was a critical failure (“Not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous,” The Daily Mail wrote), and ignited a public war of words (“West Disowns MacBeth,” one headline blared). But the play drew so many curious theatergoers that it became a box office hit.

He was also married to Prunella “Sybil Fawlty” Scales, who I did not know (until I read the obit) has Alzheimer’s. Damn.

Posted in Law, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#133 in a series)

Friday, November 8th, 2024

Winter is coming, if it hasn’t showed up already in your neck of the woods. We need something to keep us warm, and what better than flaming hyenas?

The mayor of Jacksonville, Mississippi, Antar Lumumba, has been indicted on federal bribery charges.

Also indicted: Aaron Banks, who is a councilman, and Jody Owens, the county DA.

I missed this, but another city council member, Angelique Lee, pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit bribery” charges in August. I get the impression she hasn’t been sentenced yet, and I’m wondering if she’s now a “cooperating witness”.

Owens is facing eight felony counts; Lumumba is facing five felony counts and Banks is facing two felony counts.
Owens faces one count of conspiracy, three counts of federal program bribery, one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering and one count of making a false statement.
Lumumba faces one count of conspiracy, one count of federal program bribery, one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, one count of wire fraud and one count money laundering.
Banks faces one count of conspiracy and three counts of federal program bribery.

…

According to the recently unsealed indictment, Owens facilitated over $80,000 in bribe payments to Lumumba, Lee and Banks in exchange for their agreement to take official action on the city’s long-sought after hotel development project across the street from the Jackson Convention Complex. It is a project the city has been trying to build since the mid-2000s. The city released a statement of qualifications, or SOQ, for the project on Jan. 31.
Owens accepted at least $115,000 in cash and “promises of future financial benefits” from two developers from Nashville who turned out to be undercover FBI agents. The agents used Owens’ relationships with the elected officials “to act as an intermediary” for the bribes. Smith helped Owens facilitate the bribes.
“Owens, Banks, Lumumba, Lee and Smith were not aware that, in reality, the Developers were working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the indictment states.

…

On Jan. 11, Banks allegedly requested $50,000 in exchange for his future vote in favor of the “developers” bogus real estate company that was bidding on the city’s SOQ. In February, Banks allegedly accepted an “initial payment” of $10,000 from the undercover agents through Owens, along with a promise of an employment opportunity for a family member. Additionally, Lee accepted nearly $20,000 in February and March also in exchange for her vote in favor of the undercover agents’ company.
During the meeting, Owens dismissed Banks then told the agents:
“We never give them the asking price. I buy [expletive for women’s genitalia], I buy cars, I buy cows, I buy drugs, whatever. My point is like [Banks] need 50, you get 30. He gets installments. That’s my game,” according to the indictment.

…

On Feb. 12, 2024, Owens arranged a dinner with the agents, Lumumba and Smith. After introductions, Owens told Lumumba, “I’ve done background checks. They’re not FBI by the way.” He also told the mayor the agents’ focus “shifted” to the hotel project across from the convention center.

…

Owens then allegedly stated:
“I don’t give a [expletive] where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a [expletive]. I’m a whole DA. [Expletive] that [expletive]. My job, as I understand it, with a little paperwork, is to get this deal done, and get it done most effectively … We can take dope boy money, I don’t give a [expletive]. But I need to clean it and spread it. I can do it in here. That’s why we have businesses. To clean the money. Right? I don’t give a [expletive]. You give us cash, we deposit it and give it back that way. That’s easy.”

NYT coverage. I think this is better organized for non-locals, but it lacks a lot of the more colorful quotes from DA Owens.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 30, 2024.

Wednesday, October 30th, 2024

Teri Garr. Tributes. NYT.

While making many of these films, she noticed troubling physical symptoms. She didn’t suspect their cause, but she remembered running in New York City in the late 1990s. “When I was jogging, I would get this horrible pain in my arm like a knife stabbing,” she told CNN in 2008. “And I thought, well, I’m in Central Park — well, maybe it is a knife stabbing.”

…

For years, she was a spokeswoman for MS research and support, continuing to make appearances in her wheelchair. “I really do count my blessings,” she wrote in a memoir, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood” (2005), written with Henriette Mantel. “At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.”

Other credits include “One from the Heart”, “Honky Tonk Freeway”, “McCloud”, “Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood”, and an episode of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

John Gierach, author and fly fisherman. I recognized the name, probably because I’ve seen some of his books around. (Half-Price Books puts the fishing books right above the firearms books.)

Charles Brandt, former prosecutor and author.

But [“The Irishman”] was fiercely criticized by journalists and Mafia experts, who said Mr. Sheeran had exaggerated (at best) or fabricated (at worst) his role in Mr. Hoffa’s death.
“Frank Sheeran never killed a fly,” John Carlyle Berkery, an Irish mob figure in Philadelphia, was quoted as saying in a 2019 Slate article with the headline “The Lies of the Irishman.” “The only things he ever killed were countless jugs of red wine.”
Selwyn Raab, who wrote about the Mafia for The Times for more than two decades, told Slate: “I know Sheeran didn’t kill Hoffa. I’m as confident about that as you can be. There are 14 people who claim to have killed Hoffa. There’s an inexhaustible supply of them.”

I read I Heard You Paint Houses and I think Frank Sheeran’s claim that he killed Hoffa is B.S. Sheeran even admitted to the author at one point that he’d lied about an easily checkable point: if he lied about that, why should we believe the rest of what he said?

Posted in Books, Fish, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: October 3, 2024.

Thursday, October 3rd, 2024

Jay J. Armes passed away on September 19th. He was 92.

I had been thinking about him recently, wondering if he was still around and enjoying a comfortable retirement, or if he was still working.

I’m not sure how many people remember him, but he was a pretty famous private investigator in El Paso.

Described as “armless but deadly” by People magazine, Mr. Armes appeared to live the life of a superhero. In the 1970s, the Ideal Toy Corporation even reproduced him as a plastic action figure, with hooks like those he began wearing in adolescence after an accident in which railroad dynamite exploded in his hands.

…

In May 1946, Julian and an older friend were horsing around one afternoon with a teenager who had a pair of railroad blasting caps. Julian was holding them when they blew up, shooting him into the air, mangling his hands and nearly killing him.
A few months later he was fitted with prosthetic hooks.

He tried acting for a bit, but went into PI work.

Mr. Armes (pronounced arms) catapulted to investigatory stardom in 1972 after Marlon Brando hired him to find his 13-year-old son, Christian, who had been abducted in Mexico. Working with Mexican federal agents, Mr. Armes said he found the boy in a cave with a gang of hippies.
He told other daring tales of triumph: flying on a glider into Cuba to recover $2 million for a client; helping another client escape from a Mexican prison by sending him a helicopter, which he said inspired the 1975 Charles Bronson movie “Breakout.”

He was a self-promoter. Perhaps a bit too much of one.

After Newsweek, People and other national publications chronicled his adventures, the Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright went to El Paso to write a profile of Mr. Armes. His article — headlined “Is Jay J. Armes For Real?” — is widely regarded as a classic of magazine writing.

The Cartwright article is linked from the obit, but Texas Monthly is kind of skirty about reading without a subscription. Here’s an archived version. Brutally summarizing (you should really read the whole thing), Mr. Cartwright found a lot of inconsistencies between what Mr. Armes claimed and what could be documented.

Mr. Armes’s son said in an interview last week that Mr. Cartwright’s article was a “hatchet job” and that it was retaliation for his father’s unsuccessful campaign for sheriff of El Paso County against a friend of the writer. Mr. Cartwright died in 2017.
In 2016, the public radio program “Snap Judgment” revisited the Texas Monthly article and the puzzle of Mr. Armes.
The private eye couldn’t tolerate even hearing Mr. Cartwright’s name.
“He’s got a wilted hand, and I guess he had an inferiority complex,” Mr. Armes told “Snap Judgment.” “He saw Jay Armes had accomplished all this. So, he had to write a cutthroat story. Don’t tell me about anything about this corrupt Gary Cartwright. Don’t even mention his name to me.”

…

He told interviewers that he appeared in more than three dozen movies and television shows. But he is credited as an actor with just one TV appearance on the Internet Movie Database — a 1973 episode of “Hawaii Five-O” in which he played an assassin.

“Hookman”, season 6, episode 1. He was a violent criminal who was out for revenge against the four cops that caused him to lose his hands…one of whom was Steve McGarret. I admit, I haven’t seen every episode of the good “Hawaii Five-O”, but I have seen this one, and I would agree it is one of the best of those I’ve seen. Mike Quigley seems to agree with me.

(It was remade for the bad “5-0” (season 3, episode 15), but without Mr. Armes.)

He had some notable successes and seemed to earn enough money to support his lifestyle. In 1991, he was credited by authorities with tracking down the body of Lynda Singshinsuk, a Northwestern University student who had gone missing. Mr. Armes also persuaded the suspect, Donald Weber, to confess to killing her.
“Without Mr. Armes’s assistance, there is a significant possibility that Mr. Weber would not be brought to justice,” a prosecutor told The Chicago Tribune.

I found two action figures on eBay. One is $61.19 and it doesn’t look complete. The other one is $149.99. I can’t tell how complete it is, but it does have the “briefcase” with the various “hands”.

In other news, Masamitsu Yoshioka has passed away. He was 106.

His death was announced on social media on Aug. 28 by the Japanese journalist and author Takashi Hayasaki, who spoke with Mr. Yoshioka last year. He provided no other details.

He was “the last known survivor among some 770 crew members who manned the Japanese airborne armada that attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941”.

He explained last year in an interview with Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, for the English-language website Japan Forward, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”
Asked in that interview if ever thought of visiting Pearl Harbor, he at first replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” He then added: “If I could go, I would like to, I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. I would like to pay them my deepest respect.”

This made me snort:

He participated in the attack on Wake Island on Dec. 11, 1941, and a raid in the Indian Ocean early in 1942. (As Professor Morgan put it, he “was involved in many additional campaigns for the liberation of Asia from white colonialism.”) But when Emperor Hirohito announced his nation’s surrender, Mr. Yoshioka was on an air base in Japan.

“…the liberation of Asia from white colonialism”.

The Rape of Nanjing.

“Now I think of the men who were on board those ships we torpedoed. I think of the people who died because of me,” Mr. Yoshioka said. “They were young men, just like we were. I am so sorry about it; I hope there will not be any more wars.”

Bob Yerkes, stuntman. IMDB.

His backyard was equipped with rigs for high falls, mats to practice flips and a springboard powered by compressed air that launched people end-over-end. He is said to have invented the airbag for stunt use.
“There will never be another backyard like Bob’s where you could train for free or even live for free if you needed a place to stay,” Williams wrote.

Posted in 1970s, History, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Dumber than a bag of hair watch.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

“Dumber than a bag of hair” is how I have previously described the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. They have a long history of corruption and incompetence, some of which I have documented here.

Today’s example is a criminal indictment brought to us by the FBI by way of Brian Krebs.

The whole thing is slightly confusing, and I’d recommend reading the Krebs article, but in brief: the FBI has been investigating a crooked cryptocurrency guy who founded a platform called “Zort”.

But the feds say investors in Zort soon lost their shorts, after Iza and his girlfriend began spending those investments on Lamborghinis, expensive jewelry, vacations, a $28 million home in Bel Air, even cosmetic surgery to extend the length of his legs.

But that’s not the part that jumped out at me. What jumped out at me is: crypto bro apparently had LASD deputies “on his payroll”.

The FBI later obtained a copy of a search warrant executed by LASD deputies in January 2022 for GPS location information on a phone belonging to E.Z., which shows an LASD deputy unlawfully added E.Z.’s mobile number to a list of those associated with an unrelated firearms investigation.
“Damn my guy actually filed the warrant,” Iza allegedly texted someone after the location warrant was entered. “That’s some serious shit to do for someone….risking a 24 years career. I pay him 280k a month for complete resources. They’re active-duty.”

And relevant to Lawrence’s interests: “E.Z.” is apparently a man named Enzo Zelocchi. Mr. Zelocchi is one of the two listed directors, and the star of, “Angels Apocalypse”, “once rated the absolute worst sci-fi flick on IMDB”.

1.4, Lawrence.

The FBI said that after the incident at the party, Iza had his bribed sheriff deputies to pull R.C. over and arrest him on phony drug charges. The complaint includes a photo of R.C. being handcuffed by the police, which the feds say Iza sent to R.C. in order to intimidate him even further. The drug charges were later dismissed for lack of evidence.

I’m not seeing any reports that LASD officers have been charged. Yet. Kind of makes me wonder if some of them rolled, perhaps in hopes of doing time in a white-collar resort prison.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law, Movies | No Comments »

Obit watch: September 27, 2024.

Friday, September 27th, 2024

Dame Maggie Smith. THR. Tributes. Other credits include “Richard III” (1995), “Murder By Death”, “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, and voice work in “Sherlock Gnomes” and “Gnomeo & Juliet”.

Barbara Leigh-Hunt, actress. Other credits include “Oh Heavenly Dog”, “The Plague Dogs”, and “Longitude”.

Muriel Furrer, Swiss cyclist. She was 18. Her death was a result of head injuries she sustained in a crash yesterday during the UCI World Championships.

Frank Coppa died in October of 2023, but his death was not announced until recently.

In 2002, he was serving time for securities fraud when he was indicted on racketeering and extortion charges. Facing an even longer prison sentence, he notified the F.B.I. that he wanted to cooperate with the government.
It was the first time a Bonanno member had flipped, violating the mafia’s solemn oath of loyalty, Omertà.
Mr. Coppa’s decision to cooperate with federal prosecutors, knowingly putting his life at risk, led at least 10 other members to do the same and ultimately helped the government convict Joseph Massino, the Bonanno boss, of seven murder charges and immobilize his mafia family.

…

Mr. Coppa, known as Big Frank, spent two days on the witness stand describing a world seemingly drawn from a Mario Puzo novel, with characters nicknamed Bobby Wheelchairs, Sally Bagel, Gene the Hat, Patty from the Bronx and Little Nicky Eyeglasses.

…

Mr. Coppa also detailed his role in the death of Dominick Napolitano, a Bonanno member, known as Sony Black, who was executed in 1981 for unwittingly connecting the family with an undercover F. B.I agent, Joseph D. Pistone, who used the alias Donnie Brasco. Mr. Pistone later wrote a book about that experience and was played by Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco,” a 1997 film adaptation.
The night of Mr. Napolitano’s murder, Mr. Coppa testified, he had bought fried chicken for the hit men as they prepared for the execution, at a Bonanno member’s house in Queens.

…

Among law enforcement officials, Mr. Coppa was known as a clever wise guy. He made millions of dollars for himself and the Bonanno family in pump-and-dump schemes, boosting the value of penny stocks to quickly turn a profit. He also shook down underworld figures outside the Bonanno family who were engaging in securities fraud.
“He was one of the smartest mob guys you’re ever going to meet,” a former F.B.I. agent involved in the case said in an interview on the condition of anonymity so that he could speak about the investigation. “He understood how to engineer these financial frauds. He was at a completely different level when it came to most of these guys.”

Posted in Cycling, Law, Music, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Your tax-fattened hyena follow-up.

Thursday, September 26th, 2024

I’ve been struggling all day to get time to myself to go through the coverage.

Right now, it looks like the charges against Mayor Adams involve…wait for it…yes, the Turks! I think I called that one.

The indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday morning, follows an investigation that started in 2021 and has focused at least in part on whether he conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions and whether he took official actions on its behalf.

…

Mr. Adams had “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits” since at least 2014, when he was Brooklyn borough president, according to the indictment.
The benefits included luxury travel — free and discounted Turkish Airlines tickets and free meals and hotel rooms — from wealthy foreigners and at least one Turkish government official, prosecutors said. He traveled on the airline even when it was inconvenient, they said, including a 2017 flight to France from New York that first stopped in Istanbul.

…

In exchange, prosecutors said, Mr. Adams pressured officials at the New York Fire Department to permit a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan despite safety problems. A Fire Department official overseeing the safety assessment said he was told he would lose his job if he did not follow the order.

Gracie Mansion was raided early this morning. And the feds took Mayor Adams cell phone (phones?). Again.

Reports I’ve seen say he doesn’t have to resign, and he can’t be recalled by the electorate. The only person who has the authority to remove him is Governor Hochul, and she hasn’t shown any inclination to do so yet.

“Here Are the Charges Eric Adams Faces, Annotated“. Yes, I’m burning a gift link for you, my loyal readers. But this is big.

Summary: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions and accept bribes (1x), wire fraud (1x),
solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national (2x), and bribery (1x). That link includes the actual indictment, both annotated by the paper of record and the original unannotated PDF.

“Eric Adams promised to be a mayor such as New Yorkers have never seen. Much about him remains head-scratching.” Well, I wouldn’t say “never seen”, but most New Yorkers today probably weren’t alive during the days of Tammany Hall and “honest graft“. (Yeah, okay, Tammany Hall didn’t officially dissolve until 1967, but my impression is that it had ceased to be an influential organization long before that.)

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do…

Thursday, September 26th, 2024

Both Lawrence and I have been intermittently covering the Harding Street Raid in Houston and the fallout from it. To briefly refresh your memory, the Houston Police Department killed two people in a drug raid that turned out to be based on a falsified search warrant.

Yesterday, Gerald Goines, the (now former) HPD officer at the center of the raid, was found guilty of two counts of felony murder.

More from Reason, which has also been on this case like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation. Reason notes that Goines was also convicted of tampering with a governmental record.

The jury is considering punishment. The maximum for felony murder is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Goines’ lies in this case were part of what Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg described as a “pattern of deceit” going back more than a decade. The Harding Street raid prompted Ogg’s office to re-examine some 1,400 drug cases involving Goines, a 34-year veteran who had a habit of framing suspects by inventing drug purchases. “The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned at least 22 convictions linked to Goines,” the Associated Press reports.
[Art] Acevedo, who initially hailed Goines as a “hero,” has insisted that the Harding Street raid did not reflect “a systemic problem with the Houston Police Department.” But Ogg saw things differently. “Houston Police narcotics officers falsified documentation about drug payments to confidential informants with the support of supervisors,” she said in July 2020. “Goines and others could never have preyed on our community the way they did without the participation of their supervisors; every check and balance in place to stop this type of behavior was circumvented.”

Posted in Cops, Law | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#132 in a series)

Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

NYC Mayor Eric Adams indicted.

The indictment is sealed, and it is unclear what charge or charges Mr. Adams will face.

This is still developing. I expect much much more tomorrow morning.

(Hattip: Mike the Musicologist.)

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

Watching the hyenas…

Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

Yesterday was an interesting day for political hyenas, flaming or otherwise.

David Banks, the NYC schools chancellor. announced he’s resigning at the end of the year. This doesn’t seem to be linked to any specific allegations of corruption yet, but:

The announcement came just weeks after federal agents seized Mr. Banks’s phone as part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée — and it promised to roil not just the nation’s largest school system but also a mayoral administration already reeling from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries.
The schools chancellor’s resignation is the fourth in less than two weeks among top officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, following the resignations of the police commissioner and the city’s top lawyer and a statement from the health commissioner saying he would leave office at the end of the year.

This next one could almost be a “News of the Weird” entry:

Three members of the Liberty County Fire Marshal’s Office are out on bond following an investigation by the Texas Rangers where they have been accused of committing crimes on the job.

Fire marshals? What kind of crime could they commit on the job?

In this case, the three accused individuals responded to a crashed 18-wheeler. They are accused of siponing off diesel fuel from the truck’s tank into a “55-gallon drum in the bed of their hazmat vehicle.”

But wait, there’s more:

Additionally, the 18-wheeler carried frozen items, such as duck meat, high-end cheese, croissants, butter, and venison.
“After draining the saddle tank of the 18-wheeler, [deleted] and approximately three other members of his hazmat company proceeded to unload product from the trailer of the 18-wheeler and put it into their own vehicles to keep for personal use,” the affidavit states.

They’re also accused of stealing items from another truck crash. In addition, the indictment claims that the men were doing fire inspections, approving permits, and doing fire investigations without any licenses to do so. Also, one of the men is accused of using his fire marshal’s gear to gain “early access” to scenes for his non-profit “South Liberty County Hazardous Materials Team”.

In court records, he is also accused of using his position to convince towing services that they must pay his hazmat company a fee to operate in Liberty County.

The human resources department of the New Jersey State Police is now being run by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.

Why? Well, turns out the NJSP has a habit of using disciplinary investigations as a weapon.

A separate review done by the attorney general’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability highlighted two troubling episodes involving a retired lieutenant, Joseph Nitti, who had worked in the agency’s internal affairs unit.
After receiving an anonymous letter containing a complaint that a trooper had made a racist comment about a senior Black officer, Mr. Nitti “squandered police resources” trying to identify the tipster rather than investigating the accuracy of the concern, according to the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Nitti, who according to state treasury records retired last year with a $8,893 monthly pension, obtained typewriter samples and video from the area near a post office where the envelope had been mailed and evaluated fingerprints found on the letter. Against orders, he also submitted it for DNA testing. Then, at the lieutenant’s urging, the Black officer who had been the reported target of the racist comment was brought up on bogus internal affairs charges.

…

In another case, investigators found that Mr. Nitti had sent a text message to colleagues discussing the arrest of a trooper who had been charged with giving alcohol and having sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl on a school sports trip. “Can we at least see a pic of her. I’d like to see what all the hubbub is about,” he wrote, according to the attorney general’s office.

Finally, Stewart Rosenwasser died yesterday. Mr. Rosenwasser was a former judge and prosecutor in New York (I believe in Orange County). He was indicted on Monday for taking $63,000 in bribe money.

According to the 43-page indictment, Rosenwasser and millionaire businessman Mout’z Soudani conspired to build a case against Soudani’s sister and nephew and recoup the allegedly stolen cash.

…

The plot targeted Martin Soudani and his mother, Eman Soudani, who were allegedly involved in embezzling $1.6 million from Mout’z Soudani, a wealthy former restaurateur, the indictment said.
On March 8, 2023, Rosenwasser, as an Orange County assistant district attorney, charged Soudani’s kin with grand larceny for allegedly stealing the money from Mout’z Soudani and had arrest warrants issued.
When they appeared in court, defense lawyers asked that Rosenwasser recuse himself from prosecuting the case because he had represented Mout’z Soudani in the 1990s and that presented a conflict of interest.
Rosenwasser denied the claim and remained on the case.
But by June 2023 the DA’s office was getting wise and Rosewasser was replaced on the case, the indictment said.
By March 2024, the case against Soudani’s sister had been dropped and his nephew agreed to plead guilty to grand larceny in the embezzlement case in exchange for a prison sentence of one to seven years.
Martin Soudani and Eman Soudani later filed a $22.5 million lawsuit claiming the cases against them were tainted.

Mr. Rosewasser resigned earlier this year. The FBI was coming to arrest him yesterday on the charges in the indictment, and he allegedly decided to open fire on the agents. SWAT responded, and Mr. Rosewasser was found dead when the police entered his home. The FBI claims he committed suicide, but it isn’t clear to me if an official determination has been made yet.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Politics | No Comments »

Obit watch: September 23, 2024.

Monday, September 23rd, 2024

Mercury Morris, one of the great NFL players. ESPN. NYT (archived).

Morris made no secret of the fact that he was filled with pride about the 1972 Dolphins being the first — and still only — undefeated and untied team in NFL history, pulling off a truly perfect season.
He also tried to make this clear: No, the Dolphins were not rooting against the teams that came close to matching their feat of perfection or had champagne on ice waiting for the moment that the last unbeaten team in a season gets defeated.
“And for the record, we DO NOT TOAST every time an unbeaten team loses,” Morris posted on social media in 2015, when the Cam Newton-led Carolina Panthers started 14-0 before losing the next-to-last game of their regular season. “There’s no champagne in my glass, only Canada Dry Ginger ale! Ha!”

Kathryn Crosby, der Bingle’s wife who had a pretty successful career of her own. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Anatomy of a Murder”, “The Phenix City Story”, and “The Night the World Exploded”.

Tongsun Park, who was at the center of the 1970s “Koreagate” scandal.

In 1978, he was indicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery and making contributions as a foreign agent, and he fled the country. He returned with a promise of criminal immunity to testify in Congress and before a grand jury.
He said that he had passed money to 31 members of Congress — up to $273,000 in one case — and while he denied acting on behalf of the South Korean government, a former Korean intelligence officer told Congress under oath that Mr. Park was working for Korean intelligence as part of an influence-buying operation code-named Ice Mountain.
But the accusations, splashily covered in the post-Watergate period, largely fizzled out. Only three of the 31 current and former congressmen Mr. Park named were indicted, and only one, Richard T. Hanna, a California Democrat, was convicted. He served a little over a year in jail.
The House, which considered disciplinary action against 11 sitting members, ended up reprimanding just three, in what critics called an example of Congress’s inability to discipline its own members.

He later got caught doing illegal lobbying for Saddam Hussein, and served five years for that.

Shortly after I posted Friday’s obit watch, the NYT posted their Nelson DeMille obit.

KMart. Sort of. The last “full-sized” store in the United States, in Bridgehampton, New York, is closing in October. There is one store left in Miami, but it is described as being the size of a CVS, not a full-sized store. There are also other stores in places like Guam and the Virgin Islands.

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Random notes: September 18, 2024.

Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

Lawrence sent over two stories that I don’t think justify a blog post individually, but together might make a good one.

Story #1, which is actually getting a surprising (to me) amount of press coverage: Adrian Wojnarowski is leaving ESPN to become the GM of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team.

The GM role has become more common in college basketball in recent years, as the transfer portal has made wholesale roster turnover an inherent part of the sport. The role includes name, image and likeness allocation, recruiting and supporting successful Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt.

The New York Post says he could be walking away from up to $20 million dollars. I probably wouldn’t have noted this, since it isn’t a firing, but Lawrence tells me this is a big freaking deal for basketball fans: Mr Wojnarowski has a reputation for breaking NBA news on Twitter.

I saw in another story (which, of course, I can’t find now) that Mr Wojnarowski had talked for years about his fantasy of throwing his cell phone into the ocean when he retired, as he was pretty much tied to it 24/7/365. “Kemosabe kiss my ass, I bought a boat, I’m going out to sea” indeed.

Story #2: Erma Wilson had her lawsuit against Midland County and former prosecutor Ralph Petty dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a “plurality decision”, which apparently means that it doesn’t set a binding precedent. The decision was on somewhat narrow technical grounds: the Court of Appeals felt she hadn’t exhausted her remedies in state court yet.

Why was she suing?

…Wilson had been convicted in Midland County 23 years ago on felony possession of cocaine charges and given an eight-year probation sentence.
Long ago, Wilson had appealed her conviction to the state’s 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost.

Okay, so? Turns out that prosecutor Petty was moonlighting. He was a prosecutor by day…and a law clerk for “several district judges” at the same time.

By day the prosecutor was making the case against the defendants, while by night he was siding with himself from the judge’s chambers.

And I’m going to pause here to insert a quote from one of the greatest philosophers currently walking the earth, Judge Don Willet.

“This was a DEFCON 1 legal scandal,” Willet wrote in a dissent describing the background of the case.

…

“Wilson claims it would be unfair to force her back into the very state system that injured her,” states the plurality decision by Judge Andrew Oldham. “But it is also important that civil plaintiffs do not put the cart before the horse. Criminal proceedings and criminal judgments require criminal remedies—not civil ones. If and when Ms. Wilson pushes aside her criminal conviction, then but only then can she come back to civil court and ask for money. Until then, her § 1983 suit must be dismissed.”

Judge Willet disagrees. Strongly.

Willet, on the other hand, led a fiery dissent in which he stated that he would have let Wilson’s lawsuit proceed, noting, “A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.”
“The Constitution’s fair-trial requirement is Con Law 101 — a bedrock due-process guarantee. In fact, the Framers cared so much about the sanctity of the criminal jury trial that our Constitution specifically mentions it twice — not only in the Sixth Amendment, but also in Article III,” he wrote.
“And to underscore they really meant it — that criminal-justice fairness is sacrosanct — the Founding generation doubled down, enshrining a host of procedural non-negotiables in multiple provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, more words are devoted to We the People’s fair-trial right than to any other constitutional guarantee. Safe to say, the Framers were fixated on the adjudication of criminal charges — both the power to bring them and the process for resolving them — and spilled a lot of ink to ensure that the Constitution’s inviolable fair-trial guarantee is no empty promise.”

…

“Unfortunately for our circuit — and unfortunately for Wilson — wisdom remains a no-show. The only hope for wronged noncustodial plaintiffs like Erma Wilson is that the Supreme Court will at last confront the persistent circuit split, seize this occasion to settle the issue, and vindicate a bedrock constitutional guarantee that, sadly, is even more tenuous in today’s plea-bargain age than when the Founding generation first enshrined it.”

Just in case you were wondering, Mr. Petty has been disbarred, and according to “The Texan”, has been ordered not to use his name “in any manner in conjunction with the words ‘Attorney at Law,’ ‘Counselor at Law,’ or ‘Lawyer.'” He was also fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage. No, wait: “He also had to notify any of his clients in writing of his disbarment, give them back their money and documents, and notify all judges with whom he may have business pending.“

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