Lou Dobbs, a CNN television anchor and managing editor dodged gun shots fired at his New Jersey home earlier this month.
A veteran journalist, Dobbs is known for his outspoken views on topics including illegal immigration and believes he was singled out because of it. Dobbs is a fervent proponent of U.S. border enforcement.
An insurance salesman living in Illinois has been charged with taking (and attempting to sell) the hotel peephole videos of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews. Michael David Barrett has been arrested and charged with interstate stalking.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Barrett stalked Andrews across multiple states and on more than one occasion booked a hotel room in the same place she stayed.
Though prosecutors claim his conduct included physically following the sportscaster across state lines, they charge that Barrett's alleged use of his cellular phone to take and send the videos, along with his emails offering to sell the videos to online gossip magazine TMZ.com, violated the federal law against interstate stalking.
So, what exactly is interstate stalking?
The Manhattan District Attorney's office has indicted Robert Joel Halderman for attempted grand larceny over the David Letterman blackmail plot. So what exactly is larceny, when is it "grand," and what constitutes extortion?
The alleged blackmail attempt and Letterman's comments about it to his studio audience yesterday have been widely reported. Someone tried to blackmail him for $2 million using the threat of exposing Letterman's dalliances with staff members.
That someone was allegedly Robert Joel Halderman, who has long worked as a CBS news producer, most recently on 48 Hours Mystery. Halderman was indicted today on one count of first degree attempted grand larceny, which carries a possible sentence of 15 years. He pleaded not guilty.
Larceny is the wrongful taking of someone else's property. It can take many forms. Under New York law, larceny includes taking someone's property:
In New York, larcey becomes grand larceny if the property taken or demanded is worth more than $1,000, is amongst certain special types of property, or is taken in certain ways (including extortion).
So what exactly constitutes extortion?
The saga of Roman Polanski's sex crime in 1977 and recent arrest took yet another turn this week. A former prosecutor, whose interview plays a large part in an influential documentary about the case, now says he made the whole thing up.
The line between film and life was already blurred when a documentary film intervened to bolster legal arguments that the director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby got an unfair trial more than 30 years ago. Now it turns out that fiction in that documentary could prevent the charges against Polanski from being thrown out.
In Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, former Malibu, California prosecutor David Wells spoke at length about issues which Polanski's lawyers seized upon as evidence that the famous director's trial was improper.
Now that Polanski's lawyers have cited those statements in requests to have the charges against dropped, Wells says he made it all up.
Check out his less than graceful explanation to Wolf Blitzer (which contains an excerpt from the documentary):
As widely reported, Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland over the weekend, in coordination with US attempts to have him face allegations of sexually assaulting a 13 year old girl in 1977. With decades having passed and contradictory stories about his original trial, here's a quick rundown of what the legal battle is all about.
In 1977, Polanski pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with then 13 year old Samantha Gailey (now called Samantha Geimer). He was initially charged with 6 counts including drugging and raping the girl, but reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and the consent of the victim's family.
Here is Polanski's original indictment.
Though the short version of what happened next is that he skipped town before his sentencing, the particulars of how his trial and plea agreement went down in 1977 may mean his release if he is extradited to California.
As depicted in the recent documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, some believe that judicial and prosecutorial misconduct marred the director's trial. The documentary alleges that now deceased judge Laurence J. Rittenband improperly coordinated with prosecutors, misused the psychiatric observation process as punishment, and went back on the plea agreement reached by Polanski, prosecutors and the victim's family (and which allegedly had consent of the judge as well).
On Tuesday, Corey "C-Murder" Miller, rapper and member of his cousin Master P's 1990's southern rap empire, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for the attempted murder of two people in a Baton Rouge night club in 2001. Earlier this month, he got a life sentence for the 2002 murder of a teenager in a Harvey, Louisiana night club.
As reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Miller received the 10 year sentence just weeks after receiving a life sentence for the 2002 murder. One might wonder why another 10 year sentence is needed for a man already sentenced to life. The answer is that prosecutors want to ensure his incarceration even if one or the other of the convictions gets overturned on appeal. And in the case(s) of C-Murder, this concern is particularly apt -- his murder conviction has already been overturned once.
To help sort out C-Murder's murder and attempted murder raps, here is a brief timeline of his cases:
The AP, citing a law enforcement official, is reporting that the King of Pop's death was ruled a homicide by the LA County Coroner. While no official ruling from the coroner's office has been released, statements in a search warrant affidavit that Jackson died of lethal levels of propofol have eyes focused on Jackson doctor Conrad Murray.
As the AP reports, the search warrant affidavit was recently unsealed. In it, the LA County Coroner states that a deadly level of the anesthetic propofol killed Michael Jackson. The affidavit does not state that Jackson's death was a homicide. For this, the AP cites an unnamed law enforcement official.
As discussed in the LA Times, it appears increasingly likely that one of Jackson's doctors, Conrad Murray may face charges over the death.
That makes this a good time to remember that there are many types of homicide. None of what's been reported today has anything to do with murder.
The charge (if any) Dr. Murray would likely face is at the other end of the homicide spectrum -- involuntary manslaughter.
Cousin of M.C. Hammer, and presence on Hammer's reality show Hammertime, Marvin Grant has been accused of raping a woman he met via Twitter. Getting to the bottom of Mr. Grant's case will need investigation and, should he be charged, trial. Discussion of this as the first "Twitter rape case," however, has been immediate.
As we've explored in relation to many "Craigslist crimes" and "Facebook divorces," social media tools have been tied to an ever increasing array of crimes and lawsuits. We've seen alleged murderers finding their victims via Craigslist, and law enforcement portraying Craigslist as an enabler of prostitution, just to name the most discussed examples.
Now enters Twitter, into the case of Marvin Grant, known as "Lyin' Marv" on M.C. Hammer's Hammertime. As the AP reports, a San Francisco Bay Area woman has accused Grant of raping her in a Livermore hotel room.
Bernie Madoff granted his first jailhouse interview this week. Speaking with attorneys who have filed suits against his family members and various feeder funds, Madoff shielded others from blame by saying he pulled it all off by himself.
Madoff saying that he pulled it off alone, to lawyers who have sued his wife, isn't too surprising. (Whether she knew about the scheme or not, Ruth Madoff has now been sued by the Madoff operation's bankruptcy trustee for $45 million to help repay victims).
What did surprise attorney Joe Cochett, however, was to hear that since 1995, while billions of dollars plowed through the Ponzi scheme, Madoff's operation didn't trade a single stock or security.
We've long known that the money funneled into Madoff's operation was not exactly invested as promised. However, news that he never bought any stocks, even to try to cover himself, begs the two questions that won't go away: who knew?; and why didn't anyone stop him?
Three New Jersey mayors, multiple state officials, and even a group of Rabbis have been arrested in a federal political corruption probe. In all, 44 people were arrested in the case which a U.S. attorney says illustrates "the pervasive nature of public corruption" in New Jersey.
To see the complaint, along with details about how the investigation went down, take a look at this post in FindLaw's Courtside.
For some insight into what charges can be used to bring down widesweeping corruption, let's take a look at the crimes and jailtime on the table here.
