Tag Archive for 'crime'

Lori Drew & cyberbullying: sometimes justice means freeing the unspeakable

Published on 2 July 2009 in crime. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

The Judge, George Wu, presiding over the sentencing of Lori Drew declared that she had to be exonerated of bullying a 13 year old girl to death. Drew, 50 years old, allegedly in revenge for the bullying of her own daughter by the victim, created a fake 16 year old male identity to seduce Megan Meier. Having struck up a relationship the girl was eventually told by the 'boy' that the world would be better off if she was dead. She committed suicide.

Ghastly, ghastly, wicked behaviour. Even if Drew never intended Meier to commit suicide she deserves the strongest social opprobrium. But does she deserve jail? Most people, including Geeklawyer, would say 'yes'. Unfortunately neither Missouri nor California had (have?) cyber bullying legislation and the only way to throw meat to the media was to engage in some creative criminal law theorizing. This is where the law of unintended consequences starts to kick in.

California prosecutors hit on the idea that by breaking the terms and conditions of the MySpace website she had, apart from any breach of civil law, committed a felony computer misuse offence. Drew was convicted by a jury.

At this point alarm bells started to ring: did everyone who provided inaccurate details to MySpace, or Twitter/Facebook etc etc, thereby commit an imprisonable offence? If so then many of us who use the Internet will have committed such an offence and Judge Wu, one imagines reluctantly, felt compelled to throw the case out.

Hard cases make bad law. And sometimes the 'guilty' do need to go free for justice to survive.

It would never do to jail Geeklawyer just because he described himself as "loving and compassionate" on a dating website.

Just say ‘No, fuck you very much’ to Terrorbollocks

Published on 1 October 2008 in Civil liberties & human rights and terrorbollocks. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

If you are one of those weirdos who thinks it's OK to inter someone for a long period on no real evidence other than "he looks dubious', without meaningful judicial oversight, all because someone pushed the 'Fight Terrorism' button and waved a Union Jack flag, then you can look away right now.

Good, they've gone.

The government has had a long running phoney campaign for 90/42 day arbitrary detention for People Who Might Be Bad - We Don't Know For Sure that has turned into political machismo. No-one else wants it: sensible cops don't, the security services don't but a weak government thinks that it will make them look good to the electorate. Votes from Panic, in other words.

It's bullshit. Amnesty International have created a petition, sign it.

Ah, it feels good to use the civil liberties tag again...

Germany says: “respect data protection laws.” “Ours, we mean, not yours.”

Published on 20 August 2008 in data protection. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

German Data Protection officials are launching a criminal investigation into the illegal sale of personal data. Apparently call centres & lottery firms may have sold the data on the Internet. The data included bank details and personal information. All appalling obviously.

But. For the second time this week Geeklawyer gets to say IRONIC. It was only a month or so ago that German officials were defending breaking the data protection laws of Lichtenstein to get bank details on suspected tax evaders.

Lead exposure linked to criminality?

Published on 28 May 2008 in crime. 5 Comments Tags: , .

The human body is a bizarre mix of complex systems. Who'd have thought lead in the blood would be linked to criminality? Good news is that global lead pollution is dropping.

The bad news that some lead in the blood pollution is definitely still a crime issue.

The law of intended consequences?

Published on 7 May 2008 in Civil liberties & human rights and crime. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Geeklawyer was a trifle amused by the story of an accused being able to retain £14million following a botched civil seizure action by the government. As outlined here the government lost a case because it wouldn't pay barristers a proper rate. No barrister would accept the defendants brief so he had to defend himself while the state had an army of lawyers. The judge said this was an abuse of process. No fucking shit Sherlock: reverse the burden of proof deprive the accused of the means of defending himself.

The governments robbery scheme seems to have been undermined by the own parsimony. Idiots.

Geeklawyer visits the bottom end of the profession & nearly destroys a large criminal trial

Published on 1 May 2008 in Ruthie, crime and the Bar. 10 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Ruthie was, as many were aware, recently pretending to be junior counsel in a multi-million pound criminal trial that Geeklawyer visited as it was drawing to its inevitable conclusion. In fact it nearly drew to a conclusion more rapidly as a result of Geeklawyer's friendly visit.

Geeklawyer had merely intended to show up, provide Ruthie with moral support, dinner and some post-prandial 'entertainment' for a couple of hours while her Leader's attention was off in another part of the country.

Disappointingly Geeklawyer did not get to hear the sluttily voiced Ruthie provide each and every member of the jury with remote oral sex from across the courtroom. Her leader was at fault: a thoroughly charming old school barrister, he insisted on using her for the jobs for which junior female counsel are conditioned by nature; fetching coffee cooking and ironing shirts. That is to say, a wife: but one to whom one need not give over 50% of one's assets at the end of the trial/marriage.

It transpired however that the graceful and supple Geeklawyer's dark presence caused pandemonium to Ruthie's client. Not pandemonium of the usual heart, pitter patter, variety. No. Apparently Geeklawyer bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the defendants. When Geeklawyer turned up at court and sat at the back of the public area he was unaware of the turbulence he caused.

Why, said "impressive client", is junior counsel 'canoodling' with a defendant. Problematic? Err yea, just a bit. impressive client took a bit of convincing that nothing untoward was occurring.

Regrettably there was worse. Much much worse.

One of the key defendants in the trial was an alarming looking gentleman with a nervous tick and a reputation for, unproven, extreme violence due to a well known untreatable psychiatric disorder. He spent much of the day, according to watchful observers, pacing up and down eying Geeklawyer, when they were both in the court corridors, or glaring at him as he sat in the public area of the trial room. This was all misinterpreted by your author.

The assumption was that Mr Loonytoons believed that Geeklawyer was not a respectable, indeed glamorous compared to his criminal colleagues, barrister but a defendant engaged in surveillance to unknown and (for Mr Psycho) detrimental ends.

Geeklawyer is, of course, well known for being brighter than the entire population of the planet Mensa put together. Readers might thus ask "OK, why did you not spot all of this?". The problem is that Geeklawyer's ego is not that small. He had spotted the observation but the truth is that, while straight, he knows how very hot he is to gay guys as well as the ladies; and, well, you know, he just assumed that gay lust rather than a psychotic killing instinct was the basis for the attention ....

Fortunately for the psycho hardman he wasn't brave or stupid enough to try it on with Geeklawyer. Geeklawyer is known not just for his charm and wit but also his steel hard edge: he'd would have hated to have to deprive the court of its opportunity to mete out justice.

Gay Royal blackmail victim wont go into the witness box …

Published on 14 April 2008 in crime. 12 Comments Tags: , , , .

Which was not his attitude to his manservant's 'box'.

Geeklawyer has covered the story before. It seems that this is the first time in a century that a Royal has been blackmailed (though of course if it were successful how would one know?) Obviously it can't be true because the victim is a married Royal with children; and anyway there can only be one Queen in the Royal Family.

It did seem a bit odd to Geeklawyer not to have the victim on the stand - one imagines that that would significantly damage the prospects of the accused being convicted. Still even if the prosecution can't make a case perhaps the victim can? But he would need expert woodworking skills (please don't use that as a clue to try and hunt down the identity of the royal involved ;) )

Nothing changes

Published on 8 April 2008 in crime and politics. 10 Comments Tags: , , .

Twatty government minister are prone to saying that we are facing new types of [something dangerous/annoying] in society that needs legislating against to protect the public, or actually to appease Daily Mail readers. Hoodies are a classic example but Professor Robert Bartlett has done research and found that gangs of lawless binge drinking hooded yoofs were widely perceived as a problem

Prosecutor tripped by unexpected court argument

Published on 15 March 2008 in crime and trials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The Sun reports that a trial in Reading descended into anarchy when the defendant, a pikey accused of a shooting, leapt from the dock and made a successful dash for freedom. In the process he bit a cop's nose. He seems to have been helped by a friends who were waiting.

The funny bit that caught Geeklawyer's eye was that the prosecuting barrister Ian Hope tried to be a hero. He threw off his wig and gown and gave chase. It could have ended so well but one of McInerney's accomplices tripped him up as he ran.

Mr Hope will now be rueing the fact that he didn't prepare well enough for his case.

Police are stopping all pony and traps in the area.

Scientology and DDos attacks

Published on 25 January 2008 in crime and deranged ranting. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Broadly Geeklawyer would say that Denial of Service Attacks were, and should be, criminal offences.

Ah yes, you say, a 'but' is in the air;

There has been a recent sustained attempt to remove this evil quack religion/business/multi-level-marketing-scam from the Internet by online vigilantes who are engaged in DDos attacks.

Fucking good job too. Scientology is the scummy scam product of the fraudster Ron L. Hubbard who confessed to a friend that creating one's own religion was a great way to make a fortune. Geeklawyer would not, of course, encourage assist aid or incite the commission of any offence, except the murder of Tony Blair, but he remains supportive of their objectives. If they wish dogged vicious intractable and determined pro-bono legal aid in the event of their capture then they may have Geeklawyer's services gratis.

On a side note, Tom 'Loony Laugh' Cruise has recently been widely mocked for his embarrassing weird video that he has been trying to remove from the Internet because it demonstrates that not only is he a shit actor (Did you see "War of the Worlds"?) but a loony recruitment whacko for his pet cult. And he is, of course, not even slightly a closet homosexual.