Whipped Cream Difficulties

The courts are busy. Here’s a couple of quick things:

• Fred Yazdi has been convicted of murder. I touched on this story briefly back when it was fresh, but mostly ignored the trial: a drunk guy crashed his car, walked away from the wreck, and wound up in Yazdi’s front yard. Yazdi confronted him, and ended up shooting him – according to Yazdi, in self-defense. I have a feeling this is not over yet. In any case, it gives me an opportunity to repeat the point I made at the time (and which has been made better by other people): “Use your gun defensively, and even if it is a good shoot, your life is going to change; probably not for the better.”
• Michael Skakel is getting a new trial in the Martha Moxley murder. Oh, I do love me a circus. More seriously, it seemed to me like there were enough questionable aspects to the original trial that a new one is justified, though I’m not sure I would have ruled that way based on “ineffective assistance of council”. If Michael Sherman was good enough for Skakel at the time (and I don’t recall hearing Skakel, or anyone else, suggest he wasn’t), how was he not good enough in hindsight? (I also have qualms about this because it puts me in the position of agreeing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: if RFKJ said the sun was going to rise in the morning, I’d start gathering firewood and sweaters.)
• The trial of Angela Spaccia, former assistant city manager of Bell, who served under Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, and who Rizzo is blaming for much of Bell’s corruption, started yesterday. So far, we’re just in the opening arguments stage. But I did want to make note of this:
  

  [Harland Braun, Spaccia’s defense attorney] said Spaccia wrote her email to Adams as a way to encourage him to lower his demands.

  That would be Randy Adams, the former police chief of Bell, who was making $470,000 a year. I thought I’d quoted those emails before, but I can’t find them now. Here’s the LAT‘s quotes:

  In an email to Spaccia, Adams wrote: “I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money?! Okay … just a share of it!!”
  She responded: “LOL … well you can take your share of the pie … just like us!!! We will all get fat together … [Robert Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occasion. Pigs get Fat … Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So as long as we’re not Hogs … All is well!”

  Yes, those are out of context, but I find it hard to see any context in which those quotes are not damming, or indicate that Spaccia was trying to get Adams to lower his demands.

• Sigh. Remember “Baby Hope”? Guess what the NYPD taped: yes, the confession. Guess what they didn’t tape? Yes: the twelve-hour long interrogation. Guess who now says their confession was coerced?
  

  A year after the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, pledged in a speech at the Carnegie Council that the department would begin videotaping interrogations from start to finish in murder and sex crimes, two-thirds of detective squads in the city have not yet begun recording interrogations of any kind.

  Guys, taping interrogations from start to finish doesn’t just protect the suspect: it also protects you. Or would you rather spend your retirement answering questions from NYT reporters?