Inheritance tax 'set to survive in spite of its unpopularity' Financial Times (9/5/2006)
Inheritance tax is likely to survive in spite of its unpopularity, a leading economist argued last night.
Alan Auerbach, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, said in the annual lecture of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the think-tank, it was neither desirable nor likely that capital inc-ome taxes - which include IHT and capital gains tax - would be eliminated in the foreseeable future.
His comments came after Stephen Byers, the former Labour minister, courted controversy by calling for the abolition of IHT.
Prof Auerbach, who is also a participant in the Mirrlees review of the tax system launched yesterday by the IFS, acknowledged that "fewer economists now see a future for taxes on capital income" but argued that a shift to the main alternative - a consumption tax, such as value added tax - would mean "we will still have many of the problems of the income tax, while exchanging other problems for new ones".for the abolition of IHT...
Experts: Sex Slavery Widespread in US New York Times (8/20/06)
New York (AP) -- Raids that uncovered more than 70 suspected sex slaves focused on 20 brothels in the East, but they illustrated a long-ignored national problem found in towns large and small, experts say...
Such forced labor also thrives in agricultural and domestic work, as well as in sweatshops or unregulated industries, said Laurel Fletcher, law professor at the University of California at Berkeley International Human Rights Law Clinic.
Fletcher was one of several authors of a 2004 report believed to be the first comprehensive study of forced labor in the United States.
That study, by Free The Slaves and the Human Rights Center of the University of California at Berkeley, concluded that at least 10,000 people are forced laborers at any time across the United States...
Ex-Apple Lawyer Hires Own Counsel Los Angeles Times (8/11/06)
On July 24, San Diego law firm Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins sued Jobs, Tevanian, Rubenstein and 13 other Apple executives and corporate directors. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleges that senior Apple executives diverted to themselves hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate assets via the manipulation of option grants since 1994...
The alleged irregularities occurred before the 2002 passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which requires companies to report option grants within two days, said Jesse M. Fried, a professor at UC Berkeley law school...
"My sense is that these forms of manipulation — the backdating, 'spring loading' and then delaying option grant dates until bad news has been released — these practices have been pervasive" in Silicon Valley, Fried said. "What we've seen is just the tip of the iceberg..."
UnitedHealth's Directors Hold $230 Million in Stock Bloomberg.com (8/10/06)
UnitedHealth Group Inc. Chairman William McGuire sparked outrage among some stockholders over his $1.8 billion in potential stock-option gains. Turns out, the board of directors that granted those options got a share of the wealth, too...
Each UnitedHealth director makes at least $400,000 a year, counting pay and exercisable options, according to Jesse Fried, a professor at the law school of the University of California at Berkeley. The Corporate Library, a Portland, Maine-based governance group, says UnitedHealth had the eighth-best- compensated board in the nation in 2004, with total compensation of $5.4 million...
Says Fried: "What is the cost of standing up and saying, 'We think the CEO should go, or we think the CEO should not be paid as much, or we think the CEO should not be able to backdate his options?'''...
Killings ripple across much of Bay Area San Jose Mercury News (8/6/06)
A random, violent crime wave is sweeping the most urban parts of the Bay Area, producing 150 killings in Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond, and inspiring controversial initiatives to help stem the murderous tide.
Oakland police unveiled a plan to identify the city's 100 most violent residents and, in the words of Mayor Jerry Brown, give them "nowhere to go but to change their lifestyle or go to jail.''...
"It's very understandable and it is much too hasty,'' said Franklin Zimring, a University of California-Berkeley law professor and author of the coming book "The Great American Crime Decline.''...
While he applauds most of the ideas as "worth trying,'' he fears quick-hit programs and crack-downs without long-term focus and funding won't produce major changes over the long haul.
Zimring acknowledged that Oakland's current plight appears to be "something more than a bad stretch,'' and much publicized murder-rate drops are leveling off elsewhere. Yet, he said, most California cities continue to experience murder rates far below highs reached in the early 1990s.
"As far as I'm concerned, one murder is too many,'' he said. But Zimring also warned that an overreaction can falsely raise expectations, especially when "the number of proven preventions is rather small,'' and typically requires huge new police forces...
Opposing Experts Square Off Over Grasso?s Pay New York Times (8/4/06)
Was the $200 million awarded to Richard A. Grasso in his four final years as head of the New York Stock Exchange just and reasonable? Or was his pay an egregious misstep approved by a beholden and blindfolded board?
It depends on which expert you ask.
Next month, a jury will begin hearing testimony in the lawsuit filed against Mr. Grasso by Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general. The suit contends that the $80.6 million in compensation and $119.8 million in retirement benefits awarded to Mr. Grasso from 1999 through 2002 was unreasonable and violated the state?s laws governing nonprofits. Mr. Grasso contends that the pay was reasonable and justified by his many contributions to the Big Board, a nonprofit organization.
Court filings made this week by experts on both sides provide a glimpse of what the jury will hear in the case...
Opining for the attorney general were Melvin A. Eisenberg, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Brian J. Hall, a professor at Harvard Business School and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and W. Bruce Johnson, an accounting professor at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa...
Study: Sex Crimes in Prisons Underreported New York Times (7/30/06)
Washington (AP) -- Fewer than three prisoners in every 1,000 report they were sexually abused or harassed, but that probably is not the whole story, a government study says...
There may be far more sexual violence in prisons than is reported, the study's authors said, because inmates fear reprisal, adhere to a code of silence, do not trust the staff or are embarrassed...
''It's a real and serious problem,'' said Malcolm Feeley, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. ''It may be the single largest shame of the American criminal justice system, and that's saying a lot..."
White House Bill Proposes System to Try Detainees New York Times (7/26/06)
Washington, July 25 - Legislation drafted by the Bush administration setting out new rules on bringing terror detainees to trial would allow hearsay evidence to be introduced unless it was deemed "unreliable" and would permit defendants to be excluded from their own trials if necessary to protect national security, according to a copy of the proposal.
The bill, which officials said was being circulated within the administration, is not final, but it indicates the direction of the administration?s approach for dealing with a Supreme Court decision that struck down the tribunals established to try terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba...
"This draft shows that the executive branch doesn?t think the Supreme Court got the questions on the Geneva Conventions right in Hamdan," said John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who as a Justice Department lawyer helped draft the president's original order establishing the military commissions...
Feds, Local Police Team Up on D.C. Crime Washington Post (7/22/06)
D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams said yesterday that the city is teaming with at least a dozen federal law enforcement agencies to take those responsible for the recent spike in violence off the streets...
Hours before signing an emergency crime bill into law, Williams (D) said he wants to use the newly formed Violent Crime Task Force to cut violent crime in half within 30 days. "We can get this problem under control," he said....
Franklin E. Zimring, director of the criminal justice research program at the University of California at Berkeley, said the idea of reducing crime dramatically in such a short period seems unrealistic.
"Just don't bet the ranch on it," Zimring said....
Lawyers Debate 'Gay Panic' Defense New York Times Online (7/21/06)
San Francisco (AP) -- Prosecutors said Thursday they want to limit the use of ''gay panic'' defenses -- where defendants claim their crimes were justified because of fear or anger over their victims' sexual orientation.
''The suggestion that criminal conduct is mitigated by bias or prejudice is inappropriate,'' said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who organized a two-day national conference on the issue. ''We can't outlaw it, but we can combat it.''
Lawmakers in California and New York are considering bills to deter the common courtroom strategy of making a victim's sexual orientation central to a criminal defense....
Angela Harris, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, said that while laws barring certain defense claims would be helpful, the use of panic defenses would naturally lose their effectiveness as society becomes more accepting of gays...
San Francisco: 'Gay panic' defense tactic under scrutiny at conference San Francisco Chronicle (7/19/06)
A gay Atlanta man was bludgeoned to death and his confessed killer walked free after claiming he was forced into a sexual act and responded in self-defense. The killer of a Kentucky man whose body was stuffed in a suitcase and dumped into a lake also claimed he acted to thwart a sexual advance and was convicted of manslaughter instead of murde....
Thursday, prosecutors and law enforcement officials from across the nation will gather in San Francisco to discuss strategies to counter the "gay panic" or "transgender panic" defenses used in courtrooms to gain acquittals or reduced punishments for violent crimes.
"We need to be able to understand who the victims are and explain why who they are can never be argued as a justification for their demise," said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who organized the conference. As many as 200 prosecutors and law enforcement officers are expected to attend the event, which is sponsored by gay, lesbian and transgender groups along with the state and national associations of district attorneys....
Prosecutors and legal experts define gay or transgender panic as when a person is provoked to violent action against another person after learning the other person's sexual orientation or gender identity. Such provocation is used as an argument for justification of the action or for lessening the punishment for the action.
"The standard for these kinds of cases has been 'Would a reasonable person react that way?' " said Angela Harris, a professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley who will speak at the conference. "Our culture being a very sexist and homophobic culture has said 'yes,' but now I think people are starting to say that's not where our culture is anymore."...
Dyleski trial highlights jury selection difficulties Contra Costa Times (7/18/06)
In the ongoing struggle to persuade people to be jurors, Monday's gasp perhaps explained the battle most effectively.
The collective intake of breath Monday afternoon was from potential jurors in the murder trial of 17-year-old Scott Dyleski, when Judge Barbara Zuniga said the case could take as long as five weeks to finish. While Zuniga cautioned that five weeks would be the "worst-case scenario," she also told prospective jurors it was their job to serve...
While it's relatively easy to eliminate jurors whose opinions clearly conflict with either side's attorneys, there's little to suggest that jury selection is a science, some experts said. Juries always will be subject to the emotional and factual twists and turns that are part of most murder trials, they said.
"Neither lawyers nor social scientists are very good at picking jurors," said Robert MacCoun, a professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. "There's very little correlation between the choices they make and the outcomes of the verdicts."
Bids & Offers [Column]: Irrepressible Energy Flows From Fallen Firms' Alumni
Taking Sides Can Lose Clients With Opposing View Wall Street Journal (7/15/06)
Enron Corp. and Dynegy Inc. no longer rule the energy-trading world. But their alumni continue to try....
Earlier this year, TD Banknorth Inc.'s board said that because the company missed its 2005 profit targets, top executives went home without cash bonuses. A few months later, it had a newfound appreciation for them. Chief Executive William J. Ryan will collect $993,145 -- more than triple his 2004 award....
Governance advocates say that retroactively awarding the bonuses is unusual and troubling. "What this board is saying is, 'We're going to set an objective, but if you don't make it we'll just give it to you the next year,' " says Jesse Fried, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley. "Why set it in the first place?"
Lawsuit over sale of papers Sacramento Bee (7/15/06)
A rich and colorful San Francisco politico tossed a legal monkey wrench Friday into The McClatchy Co.'s efforts to spin off four newspapers from the Knight Ridder Inc. takeover.
Clint Reilly, a former mayoral candidate who succeeded in bottling up the sale of the San Francisco Chronicle for several months in 2000, is suing to block McClatchy's plans to sell four papers, including two in the Bay Area, for $1 billion to a group led by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc....
Antitrust expert Stephen Barnett, a law professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, said Reilly could have "a valid antitrust claim."
Letting MediaNews own practically every paper in the region probably isn't an issue "because there are so many news media in the Bay Area," he said. But Hearst's involvement could be a sticking point because it "compromises the little competition that's left" in the Bay Area, he said...
School Vouchers Are Facing a Different Set of Legal Challenges in State Courts ABA Journal (7/06)
It's been four years since the U.S. SUpreme Court ruled that providing parents with vouchers to pay tuition at private schools does not violate the First Amendment's ban on mixing church and state. Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639...
In January, the Florida Supreme Court sidestepped the religion question--in this case, whether the program violated a state constitutional ban on funding religious schools. Holmes v. Bush, 919 So. 2d 398...
The case is significant because it moves the argument over vouchers out of the realm of religion and into hard-edged policy issues, says Goodwin Liu, an education law expert at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall.
"By not relying on the establishment clause provision of the state constitution and instead talking about the impermissibility of vouchers in purely secular terms, the Florida Supreme Court has latched onto the type of reasoning that most opponents of vouchers on a policy or political level typically raise," Liu says.
Detainee Rights Create a Divide on Capitol Hill New York Times (7/10/06)
Washington, July 9 -- The Supreme Court decision striking down the use of military commissions to bring terrorism detainees to trial has set off sharp differences among Republicans in Congress over what kind of rights detainees should be granted and how much deference should be shown the president in deciding the issue.
The debate is expected to consume the rest of the summer in Congress as lawmakers head into an election season expected to be dominated by issues of national security. The issue reflects the difficult legal, diplomatic and political choices the government faces in dealing with terrorism suspects.
The divisions do not fall strictly along traditional partisan lines and are as much within the parties as between them, particularly for Republicans. On one side of the debate are Republicans who believe Congress should give the president the authority to set up the kind of military commissions that were struck down by the court. Such commissions would sharply curtail defendants' rights...
John C. Yoo, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on orders expanding presidential power in the treatment of detainees as a former lawyer for the Justice Department, said, "The debate that people are having is whether it's going to be a short bill that just overrules Hamdan completely, which you could do in one sentence, or whether it's going to be a much more comprehensive law that tries to set out essentially a code of procedure for the military commission."
But any effort simply to codify the president's order establishing commissions would be fiercely resisted by influential Democrats...
The $18.2 million Nike paid William Perez in 2005 made him the highest-paid chief executive in the Northwest last year, according to The Seattle Times' annual calculation of how the region's public companies compensated their leaders...
In Perez's case, it would be hard to argue he earned it...
During his one-year tenure, Nike's stock price fell by more than $7 per share and The Swoosh lost nearly $2 billion in market value...
Nike's board did not demand a refund when it asked the underperforming Perez to leave in January. Just the opposite. On top of his 2005 compensation, Nike gave Perez $8.3 million in severance pay, including $150,000 to cover moving expenses...
In this post-Enron era, such excesses have disturbed investors, who may grouse but have failed at curbing pay packages regardless of performance, and federal regulators, who proposed changes in January so investors can get a clearer picture of what CEOs make...
"Flawed compensation arrangements have not been limited to a small number of 'bad apples'; they have been widespread, persistent and systemic," wrote professors Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School and Jesse Fried of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored "Pay Without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promises of Executive Compensation."
County sees a startling spike in juvenile crime The Sacramento Bee (7/8/06)
Across Sacramento County, more teenage boys are standing before a judge, charged as adults in some of the most vicious homicides of the year, a startling fact that defies national trends and one that has left police, community groups and families searching for elusive answers...
"It's been pretty evident that younger kids are involved in more violent crimes," said Sacramento Police Capt. Daniel Hahn, who leads the department's Youth Services Section. "Crime is getting younger -- the victims and the suspects. We see it on a daily basis..."
Daniel Okada, assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento, said the recent spate of arrests could be an anomaly. Or, it could signal the start of a cycle of youth violence he predicted would begin in 2008, based on population trends and other patterns...
But Okada cautioned against thinking Sacramento could be at the forefront of a violent trend...
Frank Zimring, an adviser on the National Research Council Panel on Juvenile Crime, agreed...
A trend, he said, should show significant percentage changes in murder arrests in a number of California cities, not just Sacramento...
"That's the difference between being worried and seeing a trend," Zimring, a Boalt Hall School of Law professor at UC Berkeley, said of the Sacramento arrests. "And everyone has my permission to be worried."
Expert backs preferential tax policy China Daily (7/6/06)
Despite the popular argument that China should have a single corporate tax rate, a leading expert in the United States said the country should maintain preferential tax rates for overseas investors.
Alan Auerbach, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said favourable tax rates for foreigners were an easy target for those arguing for equal treatment for all enterprises.
However, from an economic perspective it makes sense, he said in an interview with China Daily.
Auerbach said that foreign investment was very sensitive to local tax rates.
As long as a country is keen to compete with others for inbound investment, preferential tax rates for foreign investment were justified...
Levi's was ahead of its time on domestic partner benefits for employees San Francisco Chronicle (7/6/06)
If you'd like to get a rip-roaring argument started, bring up same-sex marriage. It is a hot-button wedge issue, an article of faith for both conservatives and liberals. It seems there is no middle ground...
Last week, the nation's largest equal rights organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people released a report showing that, for the first time, more than 50 percent of the Fortune 500 countries in the United States offer domestic partner benefits...
"I am amazed at that figure,'' says Gillian Lester, a professor of law at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall. "I really find that quite striking...''
"I think,'' says Lester, "it is good business. And I think the other 50 percent ought to be paying attention...''
That's quite a change from 1992, when exactly one of the Fortune 500 offered benefits. That company was San Francisco's Levi Strauss & Co. Robert Haas, the former CEO, and the great-great-grandnephew of the original Levi Strauss, recalls when the decision was made...
The Court Enters the War, Loudly New York Times (7/2/06)
John C. Yoo, a principal architect of the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, sounded perplexed and a little bitter on Thursday afternoon. A few hours earlier, the Supreme Court had methodically dismantled the legal framework that he and a few other administration lawyers had built after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"What the court is doing is attempting to suppress creative thinking," said PROFESSOR YOO, WHO NOW TEACHES LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. "The court has just declared that it's going to be very intrusive in the war on terror. They're saying, 'We're going to treat this more like the way we supervise the criminal justice system.' "...
Commentary: Tide turns against rape --but why? Chicago Tribune (6/29/06)
Predators on the Internet, priests molesting children, Duke lacrosse players accused of rape--judging from the news or TV crime dramas, sexual assault appears to be an endless national epidemic. So powerful is this impression that when evidence emerges to suggest otherwise, Americans may have trouble believing their eyes. But the truth about the incidence of rape and other sex crimes is no mirage: It has declined drastically and is still dropping...
What's going on? In the last decade and a half, the nation's prison population has doubled, taking many sex offenders out of circulation. The number of people imprisoned for sexually abusing children tripled between 1986 and 1997. According to David Finkelhor and Lisa Jones of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, "High-frequency offenders are more likely to get incarcerated, so potentially small increases in incarceration of high-volume offenders can have large effects on the overall offense rate."
But imprisonment alone can't explain what's happened. As criminologist Franklin Zimring of the University of California at Berkeley notes, Canada also has seen crime recede--even though its prison population has shrunk. DNA databases have made it easier to catch rapists, but the trend emerged long before they assumed a major role in solving sex crimes...
By John Yoo. John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, served in the Justice Department in 2001-03.
By putting on hold military commissions to try terrorists for war crimes, five Supreme Court justices have made the legal system part of the problem, rather than part of the solution to the challenges of the war on terrorism. They tossed aside centuries of American history, judicial decisions of long standing, and a December 2005 law ordering them not to interfere with the military trials...
As commander in chief, President Bush has the authority to decide on wartime tactics and strategies. Presidents Washington, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR settled on military commissions, sometimes with congressional approval and sometimes without, as the best tool to punish and deter enemy war crimes. Bush used them to solve a difficult tension: how to try terrorists fairly without blowing intelligence sources and methods...
Two years ago, the same justices declared they would review the military's detention of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Congress and the president expended time and energy to overrule them. Hamdan will force our elected leaders to go through the same exercise again, effort better spent preventing the next terrorist attack...
Raising a $60 billion question San Francisco Chronicle (6/28/06)
Warren Buffett has made clear over the years that he invests for the long haul and that he always does his homework before putting his money to work.
So what does that say about Buffett's decision to give away the bulk of his $44 billion estate to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is committed to improving health care in the developing world and education in the United States...
The danger, of course, is that a private-sector entity with the economic heft of the Gates Foundation will be in a position to hijack the public-policy agenda...
What if, for example, the Gates Foundation decides that malaria is a higher priority than AIDS? How would governments worldwide respond? And how would this impact the pharmaceutical industry, which historically has focused its research efforts on areas that hold the greatest promise of profit?
"These are good questions," said Robert MacCoun, a professor of public policy at U.C. Berkeley. "We're really in uncharted territory here, and it's very hard to see how this is going to play out."
He emphasized that, to date, the Gates Foundation "has shown itself to have noble interests." But MacCoun said it's not hard to imagine the foundation "taking an interest in more controversial topics."...
MacCoun said it's difficult to comprehend the influence a $60 billion private-sector foundation will have on world affairs.
"They could put a topic on the map and everybody else could end up following because this is what the Gates Foundation is interested in," he said. "Conversely, some governments might cut back on spending for certain things because they'll figure that the Gates Foundation is involved."...
High Court Saves Some Best Cases for Last Washington Post 6/24/06)
Washington -- The Supreme Court has had divisive rulings this year on the environment, police power and whistleblowers, and the justices are not even through with their hardest cases...
Justices have lined up some significant cases for next fall, on abortion, public school affirmative action and the environment...
"Justices are willing to test the new lineup right away. Next year is where the rubber is going to hit the road," said John Yoo, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor...
High Court Draws Line On Bosses' Retaliation
Discrimination Decision Could Affect Dealings In and Out of Workplace Wall Street Journal (6/23/06)
Washington -- A unanimous Supreme Court sent a warning to employers: Be careful how you treat workers who file discrimination complaints...
Thursday's decision could affect a wide array of dealings between managers and employees -- not just promotions and discipline, employment lawyers say, but actions ranging from the way performance reviews are written to, in some cases, who gets invited to lunch. "It's unquestionably going to make it more difficult for employment decisions that need to be made in the course of running the business," said Ann Elizabeth Reesman, a lawyer who filed a friend-of-the-court brief for business groups supporting the employer...
Employee advocates said the decision would help ensure that antidiscrimination laws have teeth. In deciding whether to complain, "it's not just being fired that people are worried about. It's all the subtle advantages and disadvantages that over time can make or break someone's career," said Linda Hamilton Krieger, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and former trial lawyer with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...
Lawsuit confronts a barrier of secrecy
At&T Wiretap Case A Test Of Powers San Jose Mercury News (6/18/06)
When a federal judge in San Francisco considers a government request Friday to dismiss a wiretapping lawsuit against AT&T, he will step into an acrimonious national debate over the power of courts to check the alleged excesses of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs.
While the class-action lawsuit is against AT&T, the government has intervened to invoke a military and state secrets privilege, in which it contends that the matters involved are too sensitive and vital to national security to be made public...
The government believes it has a trump card in that debate. It contends that because the nation is at war against terrorism, the president has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to override a citizen's right to have his or her day in court...
"It's very simple,'' observed University of California, Berkeley law professor Jesse Choper. ``Whether you are convinced or not convinced is another matter. Article II [of the Constitution] defines executive power, makes the president the commander in chief of the armed forces. That includes the power to wage war. That power includes all necessary and proper for waging of that war. He considers this [Sept. 11] to be an attack on the United States..."
Judge admonished for his behavior
Complaints include sarcastic responses to lawyers, ex parte communication Contra Costa Times (6/16/06)
When he ran and lost in a bid for municipal court judge in 1992, then-prosecutor Bruce Mills accused his opponent, Judge Bruce Van Voorhis, of abusive behavior toward attorneys.
Ultimately, the state Commission on Judicial Performance agreed, and in 2002 it made Van Voorhis the first judge in the state to be tossed from the bench solely for his courtroom demeanor.
Now, 11 years after joining Van Voorhis on the bench at the Walnut Creek courthouse, Mills is the one facing fire -- partly for what the commission this week called "a pattern of making comments that are discourteous, sarcastic, demeaning and belittling to those appearing before him."
The commission imposed a "public admonishment" on Mills, 48, of Moraga. The order follows a private admonishment in 2001 against him for "ignoring a defendant's request for counsel and attempting to coerce him into a guilty plea..."
Mills is the fifth judge in the state this year to receive a public admonishment from the 11-member commission, which is made up of six public members, three judges and two lawyers. Though it comes with no other fines or penalties, the threat of being removed is strong, said Stephen Barnett, a Boalt Hall law professor.
"Judges are certainly terrified by the commission. Every judge in the state sits under this hanging sword," Barnett said. "So one assumes that its actions have some effect on the judges. On the other hand, that may wear off over time..."
Girl's savior faces 3rd strike San Jose Mercury News (6/14/06)
There is a growing pile of books in Matthew Hahn's cell at Elmwood Correctional complex in Milpitas. Among Plato dialogues, the Tao Te Ching and ``Law for Dummies'' is a paperback titled ``Martyrs'' -- a collection of stories about Christians who sacrificed their lives for their faith...
It was a present from the mother of a young girl, in gratitude for helping bring the girl's molester to justice...
Last year, Hahn, a 26-year-old Los Gatos felon with a rap sheet full of residential burglaries, anonymously sent police some stolen photographs -- photos that showed a man molesting a toddler. Using the photographs, police found and arrested John Robertson ``Robbie'' Aitken. Last month, Aitken pleaded no contest to molestation charges and received a 30-year sentence...
But Hahn, who was later arrested for a burglary spree after he turned in the photos, is facing a prison term that could be longer than Aitken's. The latest series of burglaries was Hahn's ``third strike,'' and prosecutors have decided to seek a life sentence. His trial could begin this month...
The conundrum of weighing Hahn's crimes against his good deed has people across the country debating whether he deserves leniency...
Said Franklin E. Zimring, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley: "He's not violent, yet not inactive either. The question is how to balance these two. My tendency is to give him a break. If I ran for district attorney and all the people who worry about child sex abuse voted for me and all the people who worry about burglary didn't, I think I would get re-elected...''
Feds ask more time to look at sale of four KR papers San Jose Mercury News (6/14/06)
Federal regulators reviewing the purchase of Knight Ridder by McClatchy need more time to examine McClatchy's proposed sale of four Knight Ridder newspapers, including the Mercury News and two other Northern California papers, to Denver-based MediaNews Group...
If any of the companies are worried about the outcomes of the investigations, they aren't saying so publicly. Knight Ridder has scheduled a shareholder meeting for June 26 when investors are expected to give final approval of the deal...
The acquisition by MediaNews of the Bay Area papers does not appear to pose a legal problem, said Stephen Barnett, emeritus professor law at the University of California, Berkeley...
"I think they'll decide the market is large enough that this merger doesn't occupy a dangerous share of it,'' he said...
Execution opponents get boost Sacramento Bee (6/13/06)
The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling unanimously Monday, refused to derail dozens of lawsuits in which death row inmates are challenging lethal-injection procedures in California and other states as being unconstitutionally cruel under the Eighth Amendment...
The justices upheld use of a relatively liberal Reconstruction-era civil rights statute as the proper vehicle for the lethal-injection suits...
Because of restrictions placed on habeas corpus relief in recent years by Congress and the courts, requiring the lethal-injection suits to proceed on that track would have doomed many of them, including in all likelihood the case filed in California by Lodi killer Michael Angelo Morales...
"Here the court is saying if a method of execution inflicts what the Eighth Amendment prohibits, there has to be a means by which the court can assess it," said Elisabeth Semel, a death penalty expert at the University of California, Berkeley, law school...
The upshot of such assessments was by no means clear, however, and Semel compared the decision to "directing traffic" on a crowded road...
Killing estate tax could be deadly to federal budget San Francisco Chronicle (6/11/06)
If nothing else, give the Republicans points for chutzpah...
Last week, a congressional subcommittee approved spending an additional $50 billion next year in Iraq and Afghanistan (mostly Iraq). This would bring the cost of both wars to nearly $450 billion -- with a price tag of $500 billion expected by the end of 2007...
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers attempted yet again last week to repeal the estate tax that primarily affects only the superwealthy -- a move that some analysts say would put a $1 trillion hole in federal pockets over the next decade...
"They have a tax-cutting agenda, and this is one of the taxes they hate the most," said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley and Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance...
"There are some arguments for cutting taxes while increasing spending during very bad recessions," Auerbach observed. "Given that the economy has strengthened considerably since 2001, you certainly can't make that argument now..."
"The policies that we're seeing in Washington are irresponsible under most circumstances," Auerbach said. "Under the current circumstances, it's much worse..."
California's Crisis In Prison Systems A Threat to Public
Longer Sentences and Less Emphasis On Rehabilitation Create Problems Washington Post (6/11/06)
Norco, Calif. -- This is what conditions are like at one of California's best prisons, the California Rehabilitation Center: Built to hold 1,800 inmates, it now bulges with more than 4,700 and is under nearly constant lockdown to prevent fights. Portions of the buildings, which date to the 1920s, are so antiquated that the electricity is shut off during rainstorms so the prisoners aren't electrocuted. The facility's once-vaunted drug rehab program has a three-month-long waiting list, and the prison is short 75 guards...
As the prison population grew and rehabilitation stopped, the Department of Corrections turned into an organization with "no other pretensions but human warehousing," said Franklin Zimring, a professor law at the University of California at Berkeley...
Zimring and others say the Department of Corrections effectively ceded its managerial role to the state's correctional officers union. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association today has 31,000 members and one of the wealthiest political action committees in the state....
Study Sees Increase in Illegal Hispanic Workers in New Orleans New York Times (6/8/06)
About a quarter of the construction workers rebuilding New Orleans are illegal immigrants, who are getting lower pay, less medical care and less safety equipment than legal workers, according to a new study by professors at Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley....
Few of the illegal workers said they planned to stay in New Orleans permanently, telling researchers that they would stay as long as there is work. That could be a long time, given how much construction work there is in the city, and the prospect of more as federal money for rebuilding begins to flow in earnest.
"It leaves open the possibility that they will be here for 10 years, though it's not clear it will be the same workers in 10 years," Said Laurel E. Fletcher, an author of the study and a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at Berkeley...
The report recommends that even workers without documents should be allowed to work legally in disaster zones, and should receive the same protections as American workers.
"It's inconsistent with American values, to say, 'You're here working six days a week, nine and a half hours a day, and you don't have any rights,' " Professor Fletcher said.
During the sentencing phase of Zacarias Moussaoui's trial last month, members of his defense team were assigned a monumental task: They had to create a sympathetic portrait of the only person tried on American soil in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They had to convince the jury to look beyond his hostile demeanor and anti-American vitriol, and consider mitigating evidence that helped explain how he ended up the way he did. In short, they had to humanize a confessed al-Qaida terrorist, and convince a jury to spare his life...
"In order to understand who he was now, you have to understand what came before," says Gerald Zerkin, assistant federal public defender for the eastern district of Virginia, who represented Moussaoui. "That's how I presented it to the jury..."
It was an effort that required a team of American and foreign lawyers, interpreters, and perhaps most important, mitigation specialists, trained investigators who research a defendant's personal history -- and who are becoming increasingly important in capital cases. They traveled overseas five times over several years, to France, Morocco and England, in search of family, friends, school and medical records -- any information that might shed light on Moussaoui's past...
[T]here is a chronic shortage of experienced specialists, says Elisabeth Semel, a clinical professor at Boalt law school at the University of California at Berkeley and director of the Death Penalty Clinic, which represents people on death row. In Alabama, for example, there are only three or four specialists to handle some 400 murder cases that qualify for the death penalty. "It's a long-standing problem," says Semel. "[The work] is very grueling. It's months and months of driving, knocking on people's doors and asking them to talk about things they've spent whole lives trying to hide..."
Class Actions Are Here to Stay Los Angeles Times (6/5/06)
The law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman may not survive its recent indictment, but legal experts say the multibillion-dollar shareholder class actions that it pioneered will continue to proliferate as other firms enter the lucrative field...
Although Milberg spokesmen insist that the 20-count federal indictment involving fraud and conspiracy is groundless and does not jeopardize the firm's future, some partners have announced their departures, and the New York firm's own clients and its adversaries are challenging its credentials in litigation...
The government alleged that Milberg lawyers recruited "paid plaintiffs" to buy stocks in anticipation of a drop in value, positioning themselves and Milberg Weiss to take the lead in securities class actions, which entitled them to extra fees. The firm concealed the kickbacks by paying plaintiffs in cash or through intermediary law firms, according to the indictment...
Before the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, the lead plaintiffs' firm was the one that won the race to the courthouse filing window, even if the plaintiffs it represented owned just a few shares. Now to win that appointment, the lead firm must represent a client with what plaintiffs' lawyer Coffey called "more skin in the game..."
The 1995 act probably has "winnowed out an awful lot of frivolous litigation," said Eric Talley, a UC Berkeley Boalt Hall law professor...
Nonetheless, the number of fraud suits has exploded, Talley said, largely because of the accounting scandals of recent years. Nearly 500 shareholder class actions were filed in 2001, almost twice as many as during the years before and since. Talley said last year's total was "in the mid-200s..."
Serial killer seeks a lifeline
'Night Stalker' appeals death sentence, claiming a faulty defense The Mercury News (6/4/06)
More than 20 years after he terrorized Southern California in a grisly killing spree, ``Night Stalker'' Richard Ramirez's challenge to his death sentence is reaching the state Supreme Court...
But when lawyers argue one of the state's most notorious death row cases in the Supreme Court's chambers Tuesday, Ramirez's devil worship and eerie crimes will not be center stage. Instead, the focal point will be a pair of San Jose defense lawyers whose inexperience in capital cases and controversial behavior at trial are at the heart of the effort to get Ramirez's death sentence set aside...
To death penalty experts, Ramirez's appeal also is a stark example of how important it can be for courts to ensure that even the most nefarious defendant gets adequate counsel at trial. A Mercury News investigation several years ago found that incompetent representation is one of the chief reasons the state and federal courts have reversed dozens of death sentences since 1987...
"The more serious the crime, the more inflammatory the allegations, the more critical it is that the lawyer know what he or she is doing,'' said Elisabeth Semel, head of the death penalty clinic at Boalt Hall School of Law. ``There isn't something written in invisible ink in the Constitution that says this right exists except when charged with a horrible crime..."
Book Review: Everything You Always Wanted to Know . . .
From "Captain Condom" to abstinence-only, how much should children be taught about sex? Washington Post (6/4/06)
When Sex Goes To School: Warring Views on Sex -- and Sex Education -- Since the Sixties
By Kristin Luker
As a child of the 1970s, I grew up in an era drenched in sexuality. An early edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves was coffee-table reading at my mom's house; our liberal church offered detailed sex ed even to pre-teens....
Strangely, I remember almost nothing of my public school sex education curriculum: just one session with a red-faced male eighth-grade teacher who labored to explain facts that most of us already knew, and a high school health class in which we watched a scratchy cartoon featuring "Captain Condom." I'm not kidding.
Which is to say that, today, as a mother of two small children who remains blissfully in denial that the thought of sex will ever cross their minds, I think I'm in the dead center of mainstream America when it comes to sex education....
In this context I picked up U.C. Berkeley sociologist Kristin Luker's fascinating new book, When Sex Goes to School . Her argument is that our heated debates on sex education are not so much about practicalities (which methods of sex ed do and do not work, and why?) as about highly fraught values pertaining to marriage (is it the one sacred place for sex, or is it one of many equally viable kinds of sexual relationship?) and gender, in particular women's roles in society and in the bedroom....
Luker's proposal? That we come clean with today's students. Let's tell the kids that the debate about sex ed is really about the grownups' deep values conflict over marriage and gender, especially women's roles, and that this conflict is seen across the American spectrum, politics included....
Local officials support U.S. plan to save Web data
E-Mail, Search Records Would Help Convict Criminals San Jose Mercury News (6/3/06)
Some local law enforcement officials said Friday they support a U.S. Justice Department proposal that would require Internet companies to save records of people's Web activity for up to two years, however none could recall a case that was stymied from a lack of online data.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller began discussing a proposal May 26 with companies such as Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Comcast that would force them to save data relating to Web searches and e-mail exchanges -- but not the content of e-mails. Discussions between Justice Department officials, company representatives and privacy experts continued Friday....
Deirdre Mulligan, a law and public policy expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said the need for information to catch and prosecute criminals should be evaluated within the context of reports that federal intelligence agents have been secretly reviewing personal data in a wholesale fashion. Among the allegations: The National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone calling records of millions of Americans, as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.
"If we have a surveillance camera on every single street corner and in every office, if we monitor every telephone conversation, certainly it will be easier to catch criminals,'' she said.
Critics Still Hammering At Home Depot CNNMoney.com (6/2/06)
In the wake of Home Depot Inc.'s annual meeting flap, observers say the home improvement giant's board may have created some unintended consequences...
On Thursday, the company said next year's annual meeting would include the board and feature discussion on proxy issues up for a vote...
The pledge follows the past week's annual meeting, which none of the directors attended, except for Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Nardelli, who has been derided for reluctance to respond to shareholder comments...
Richard Buxbaum, associate dean at the University of California at Berkeley's law school, said Home Depot's meeting flap could also focus increased analyst scrutiny on the company, particularly in light of Nardelli's controversial compensation...
"The absence of the board isn't a vote of confidence in the future of the company," he said. "The inability or refusal of the board at an annual meeting to defend its compensation decision could weigh with analysts. I doubt anybody is going to change to a 'buy' in this situation..."
CAMPAIGN 2006: State attorney general
Brown's rivals question commitment to death penalty
He says regardless of his past, he'd enforce the law San Francisco Chronicle (6/2/06)
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown insists that his 46 years of opposition to the death penalty is a "nonissue" in the race for California attorney general...
But his opponents argue that Brown -- who opposed the death penalty as a Catholic seminarian, as governor and as a three-time presidential candidate -- should explain his position in 2006...
His opposition to the death penalty and his family's history on the issue is perhaps the most significant issue separating Brown, 68, from his rival for the Democratic nomination, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, 45. The two men, while differing in approach, agree on virtually every other issue. (State Sen. Charles Poochigian of Fresno, who is running unopposed for the Republican nomination, is also a strong death penalty backer and has used his Web site to criticize Brown in anticipation of a November general election.)
As governor, Jerry Brown vetoed death penalty legislation, but the Legislature overrode the veto in 1977. He came under fire for appointing judges who opposed capital punishment, most notably Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird...
Bird quickly became a lightning rod for death penalty supporters, because she found reason to invalidate the death penalties of every defendant's case she reviewed...
"It's fair for (Brown) to say he'll enforce the death penalty; he couldn't refuse and expect to be elected," said Stephen Barnett, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law and a prominent critic of Bird. "But it's also fair for his opponents to try to tar him with the conduct of his appointees..."
