Sounds partly like my experience. During voir dire we were asked to essentially support the idea that cops are inherently more trustworthy witnesses than defendants. They came around to me and asked me about this proposition and I said, “Well, obviously defendants have incentives to lie or fudge or exaggerate, because they don’t want to go to jail or get fined or whatever, but it seems to me that it is less recognized that cops also have incentives to lie or fudge or exaggerate, including career advancement, pressure from superiors to clear cases, and sometimes even petty personal reasons.” Of course the prosecuting attorney immediately scribbled on his notepad and I was out shortly thereafter. I hope I infected the jury pool, but I don’t know what happened. The defending attorney did give me a big thumbs up when I ran into him later that day on the street.

It’s mostly just making a big show for all the powerful out-of-towners. My Dad does HVAC repair in Charlotte. He’s been swamped as everyone even remotely involved in the DNC has been trying to get their systems in tip top shape. Hotels that have been neglecting regular maintenance for ten years, suddenly need their whole system replaced in a week.

My guess is the liquor law change is to try and make NC look a little less bible-belty. Also its a holiday weekend so that would be like two days of a national convention without booze. They might screw up and help somebody.

he wears a hoodie upside down to cover his scrotum

My mind’s eye! It burns!

BTW, his condition was not caused by overconsumption of yogurt and did not leave him walking with swagger.

Proofread, dammit!

Like before he reached retirement and qualified for his nice cushy police pension.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151015106580935&set=a.192871065934.167136.655960934

Suing IndieGoGo is over the top.

Suing the National Wildlife Foundation and the American Cancer Society? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?

So, you mean, a Tuesday?

* My father isn’t dead.

During voir dire, the fact came up that spitting on a cop can carry a ten year in jail penalty. (vs just a fine if you spit on a regular person)

I told them straight out that there was no way I would convict with that kind of disparity and apparently my opinion contaminated a bunch of the other potential jurors because suddenly a bunch of them agreed with me and the lawyers were unable to get enough people for a jury.

At police boards there is a a perception that an allegation of spitting is air tight, even there are videos because the videos are usually too unclear to be sure that there was no spitting. So you will see winking suggestions that a suspect who was viciously attacked on a police, or jailhouse, vid might have been spitting, which justifies any level of force (to the denizens of police boards anyway).

I have always wondered if these kind of spitting allegations would really work in court. Didn’t work in this case, happily.

Kudos to the defense atty on that case (even though it sounds like his client might have been guilty of drunk driving and obstruction).

In another spitting case: I think that New Haven case that is now being investigated by the feds (the one where, as reported here at the Adge, a woman got arrested for not turning over her camera to police as “evidence”), the police are making an allegation that the arrestee who got stomped had been purposely spitting blood. So that may be another spitting allegation case that gets some decent level of scrutiny.