Jury Duty Across the Years - 20 June 2024

I have had several calls for jury duty in multiple states across multiple decades.  My early jury duty was in Chicago in the 1980s, then there was a long blank period in Massachusetts, and then three calls to jury duty in Washington.  Each of them contributed to my understanding of the legal process in the United States.  Although not entirely pleasant, I strongly recommend that everyone serve on a jury duty at some time in their life, earlier if possible.

The first jury duty call was in metro Chicago.  Chicago had a one-day-one trial jury process.  We reported for jury duty for one day, and if not empaneled onto a jury, we were done.  If we were empaneled, we served for one case.  

For this case, we waited in a pool for the morning and were released for lunch.  When we came back from lunch at 1pm, we were told that the defendant had accepted a plea deal and we were dismissed.  Evidently this is common.

The second jury duty call in Chicago was for a drug case.  I was put on a jury for a drug case.  A defendant had been found in a basement apartment, fleeing from police officers.  An officer came into the room to see the defendant sitting on the bed in skimpy clothing (I no longer recall the details, but "underwear and a man's shirt" would not be too far off).  Searching the room, the officer found a syringe in the wastebasket.  The officer arrested the woman on drug possession charges.   A lab report (submitted in evidence) later confirmed the presence of an illicit drug on the syringe.  The officer told the jury that the defendant must have been holding the syringe when the cops burst in, she dashed to her bedroom and tossed the syringe into the wastebasket.

Complication #1: The officer did not see the syringe or any drugs in the hands of the defendant, and she testified that the drugs belonged to her boyfriend (not present at the time of the arrest).  

Complication #2: her fingerprints were not on the syringe.

If convicted, this would be the third drug conviction for the defendant and she would be sent to prison for a long, long time (10 years or longer).

The officer told the jury that a group of officers were responding to a report of domestic violence when they came across the defendant.  When she ran, they chased her into the basement apartment.

Complication #3:  The defendant did not live at the address associated with the domestic violence.  The police were at the wrong address. 

Given a choice of conviction or release, the jury did not find enough evidence of a crime by the defendant.  

The next jury duty call was in Massachusetts.  The MA rules were for two-days-one-trial and my first day in the pool was uneventful.  I was selected on the second day for a workman's compensation case.  A man working as a plasterer was standing on a moveable scaffold when it collapsed, injuring the man.  He had been studying to become a mycologist, and the injury meant that he was incapable of performing the physical duties of raising mushrooms (hefting heavy bags of compost, etc.).  The man was suing the scaffold company for lost wages and lost opportunities.  Each side brought in witnesses and experts to present their story.  The dueling experts were professors, one explaining that the caster would fail in a way to cause the injury, and the other explaining that the caster failing could not happen without damage to the caster (therefore the scaffolding company would not be liable and someone else would be).  Everyone agreed that the accident happened and that a failed caster contributed; the question was the cause and timing of the failure of the caster and the answer would point to a different party.  Some miscellaneous facts that I recall:  the scaffold was discarded after it failed and the claimant had to return to the worksite to pull it from the on-site garbage pile; there was no chain of custody of the scaffold;  and the casters were to be inspected each day before use by the workmen before they used the scaffold.  

It was a hung jury split down the middle, six and six.  We were told after the trial that the injured workman had already been covered for medical expenses under Workman's Compensation (fund, laws).  We were not told this and only presented with a question of liability and the damages (if any) were to be based on liability and lost income.  This was also the second trial; the first trial had also resulted in a hung jury.  I do not know if the workman went for a third trial.  

I was called for jury duty since then, but my wife received the call and explained that I had just served for a week of jury duty withn the year, and the clerk marked by records so that I would be exempted for two years.  That was twenty years ago and I have not been called since.

As citizens, we have few formal duties.  Follow the laws, vote, and serve on juries.  Service on a jury gives deep and personal insight into how the laws are applied and how citizens are deprived of their liberty.  We should each welcome jury duty.

Celebration and Sorrow - 30 May 2024

Today is a day of celebration.  A citizen perpetrated a crime and has received a conviction from a jury of his peers deciding unanimously.  

The sorrow is that said citizen was able to manipulate the system to avoid responsibility and evade accountability while rising to the highest office in the land.  

Yet, somehow, his machinations are not yet over.  It is not a simple matter of remanding him to authorities to be held until sentencing; in fact, he roams free.  The battle continues.

CNN reports Trump Guilty on All 34 Felony Counts 

Bad Reporting #1: Radio Tower Stolen - 9 February 2024

No.  One does not just steal a 200-foot tall radio tower.  No.  There are two major problems with this simple-minded assertion, size and power.

The obvious problem is the size of the 200-foot tower.  It takes time and equipment to down it and haul it away.  You need a couple of hours to rig it, to lower it to the ground, to dismantle it, and then to haul it away.  The word "stolen" implies surprise or stealth.  The radio station had hours to respond to any surprise attempt to take the tower.  The police had hours to respond when called.  This tower was not stolen.  

The other problem is the electrical power being pumped into the antenna.  There are thousands of watts of power being pumped into the antenna in order to broadcast, perhaps as high as 50,000 watts, but likely less in this case.  When you walk up to the tower and touch it, you become the path to ground.  Big shock - literally.  Someone had to have the smarts to cut off the transmitter before anyone touched the tower.  Yes, the report talks about evidence of a break-in, suggesting that the thief did have the requisite smarts.  But radio stations monitor their signal - they listen to themselves to make sure they are still transmitting.  Again, no surprise is possible when the transmitter gets cut and the antenna gets "stolen".

Reporters really need to pause and think before they report this stuff.

Source: Alabama station in disbelief after 200-foot radio tower stolen at NBC News.

Innovation keeps rolling - 15 January 2024

Employed by IBM as an engineer means that there will be continuous opportunity and pressure to create intellectual property, specifically patents.  I was exposed to this during my time there from 2001-2005.  It was one of the better parts of the job.  Engineers would write up an internal document that proposed and described a patent idea.  These proposals would be reviewed by teams of senior engineers under the guidance of an internal patent lawyer (external patent lawyers would be used for the process of drafting and submitting the patents, and the internal lawyers would oversee them).  

Among the patent ideas I wrote in about 2003 or so was the idea that a camera should combine GPS information with compass readings and focus data to determine what someone was photographing.  If you are standing in a particular location (GPS data) and pointing your camera in a particular direction with a focus point about 200 yards away, then you are probably taking a photo of the Eiffel Tower.  And so on.  Clearly this did not work for photos of people or pets, but you would at least be able to say that the Eiffel Tower was in the background of your photo of little Fee-Fee.  This was in the days before AI - long before something as small as a camera could carry the training set or network of a large language model (LLM-AI).  

Sadly, the idea was denied by the local patent team.  They felt it was too easy to fake using false GPS transmitters and the like (as if anyone wanted to disrupt your photos of Fee-Fee such that they would spend thousands of dollars and risk arrest to disrupt your GPS signals.  But I digress.)

Recently, Swarovski has announced new binoculars that will identify birds.  The Swarovski product is a variant of my idea - the one I could not patent.  (Viz., to use geospatial and image data to deduce situational information when taking or viewing an image.)  I wish them well.

Trials - 3 October 2023

Trials and court cases seem to be the mark of our times.  Today is the start of Sam Bankman-Fried's trial for the FTX debacle and yesterday was the start of the penalties phase of Donald J. Trump's trial for real estate fraud in New York.  Defendants along with Donald are Don, Jr., and Eric.  No one has explained how Ivanka (or Jared) escaped, but they do not seem to be on the indictments.  

I have long enjoyed a podcast called All the President's Lawyers with Ken White and Josh Barro.  That podcast ended about a year ago and morphed into Serious Trouble, in part because Trump's legal problems had metastasized far beyond Trump himself.  

It is a comment on our founding fathers that they assumed that actors on the political stage would have some sort of values and a sense of decency.  Others have fractured that assumption, but Trump has blown it into dust.  Teapot Dome, Watergate, and other scandals have rocked the United States, but none of them compare to the constant, flagrant scandals of Trump.  The fact that some 40% of the US voting population cannot see his criminality, fraud, and deceipt is something that astounds me.  In any other country, he would be forgotten (e.g., Boris Johnson) or gone (e.g., your favorite revolution).  Somehow, Trump combines deceipt and fraud with deep white nationalism and misogyny, yet retaining his base of supporters.  SMH.

During these trying times (no apologies), the USA has depended on a trustworthy judicial system.  I refer here specifically to courts and judges.  Unfortunately, Trump and the Republicans have spent years - decades - installing incompetent, biased, and corrupt judges throughout the federal judicial system, enough of these such that the judicial system is losing its trustworthyness.  If you have any doubts, look at Thomas and Alito on the US Supreme Court; if doubts remain, look at the rest of the recent appointments such as Kavanaugh and note that Roberts is no shining example of anything, himself. 

My point is that democracy needs to be strengthened against attacks by political, financial, and judicial hacks.

US Supreme Court faces a legacy of self-redemption or of corruption - 23 June 2023

SCOTUS, the Supreme Court Of The United States, has faced some recent tests.  No, I am not referring to the infamous confirmation shows for the last 2-3 justices, but rather to the recent relevations about Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.

Clarence Thomas had rambunctious hearings when he was nominated.  Anita Hill came forward with shocking allegations that would have derailed any other nominee, but Clarence Thomas cruised on to confirmation.  I do not remember Sam Alito's confirmation hearings, but I suspect he was better coached and trained such that the hearings went more smoothly.  The most recent three,  Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh, were a sorry bunch, both through their own antics and with contributions from Senator Mitch McConnell as supported by the Republican members of the Senate.  These are old news.

In the last month or so, journalists have uncovered allegations (being formal here - just allegations) that Thomas has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of "gifts" from a Republican billionaire named (ironicaly) Crow.  Crow took Thomas and his wife on all-expenses-paid junkets around the world and bought the birthplace home of Thomas - and gave Thomas' mother free rent to live there.  Is this bad?  Yes, but Thomas failed to report these gifts even though he is required by law to report such gifts.  More recently, he was given a window to restate and refile his attestation paperwork, and he has blown through the deadline.  

While Thomas is redoing his paperwork, journalists have uncovered similar allegations (being formal here - just allegations) that Alito has accepted thousands and thousands of dollars of gifts, including an infamous salmon fishing trip to Alaska, none of which he reported as required.  Alito claims some wordplay that exempts him from reporting requirements, claiming an trip in a private jet is some sort of infrastructure?  It is hard to explain his position because it is stupid.  

Both Alito and Thomas offer explanations that the law is complex.  If true, then they are not qualified for their current positions and honorable people would resign.  If we assume that they are smart enough on the law to hold their jobs as the ultimate arbiters of the law in the US, that SCOTUS gig, then they are disengenuous and honorable people would resign, again.  It is quite clear that honor, impartiality, and the appearance of impartiality mean more about theatrics than actual compliance to Alito and Thomas.  Even if the allegations of corruption are merely appearances and not actual corruption, these two men have failed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., has a choice: he can redeem SCOTUS, impose ethics standards, and evict Alito and Thomas based on severe ethical lapses, or the Chief Justice can continue to oversee and overlook corruption on SCOTUS.  It strikes me that this is not a difficult choice, but the fact that Roberts continues to dither suggests that he is willing to tolerate severe ethical failures, making him a co-conspirator of the failings.

God Save SCOTUS,

Travel to the Following States is Restricted - 9 May 2023

The headlines get ever worse.  Texas and Florida have been States of Concern for over a year.  Florida recently achieved Do Not Travel status when the legislature - led by the so-called governor - passed an unrestricted-carry law for firearms.  No license required, no safety training required, no background check required.  Texas achieved Do Not Travel with their string of (endless?) mass shootings, including the most recent shootings by a white supremecist in a shopping center.  

Today, Louisiana achieves Do Not Travel status with the shooting of a small girl who was playing hide-and-seek, straying into the neighbor's yard.  The neighbor promptly shot her.  Fortunately, she survived, but rampant firearms are not a joke.

I will not travel to or spend money in Texas, Florida, or Louisana until the state leaders demonstrate that they value life.

Cat photo for soothing purposes.

https://people.com/crime/louisiana-homeowner-accused-shooting-14-year-old-girl-in-the-back-of-head/

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson - 22 March 2022

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is presently being reviewed by a committee of the U.S. Senate for a position on the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS).  There are many arguments coming up.  We can put aside the arguments from the people that want Yet Another White Man because they are so familiar and so expected.  The noisy protestations from Cruz, Hawley, Graham, and Blackburn (I think) fall along the expected lines based on racism and hot-button issues with little inherent meaning (CRT - Critical Race Theory), and so the argument that stands significant to me is the split along originalism and "lived experience".  

A repeated argument in favor of Judge Jackson is that she expands the SCOTUS to represent a broader slice of America.  She adds a point of view not already on the court, not in the history of the court.  Besides being the first black woman on SCOTUS, and besides being one of the few women on the SCOTUS, she is an experienced defense attorney.  She was a public defender, defending those arrested for crimes.  Further, she has defended some of those locked up in Guantanamo for crimes during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Most (perhaps even all) prior Justices on SCOTUS have had experience on the prosecuting side of cases rather than the defense side.  The Judge's experience broadening perspective of the Court is viewed as a Good Thing.  The Judge is expected to apply her "lived experience" as a defense lawyer to issues brought to the SCOTUS.

The originalists generally advocate a literal interpretation of the Constitution.  They feel that the words of the Constitution must carry the argument.  If the Constitution does not mention "privacy", then there can be no "right of privacy"; the Constitution states a "right to bear arms", so there is an impregnable right to "bear arms"; and so on.  This originalist model is either lazy or intellectually bankrupt.  It is lazy when one fails to take the words from 1789 and adapt them to nearly 250 years of change.  The 1789 document, itself, is a replacement for the Articles of Confederation that were barely two decades old, and the 1789 document, itself, spells out procedures to amend (change) the very document.  The originalist model is intellectually bankrupt because it denies the 27 amendments, it denies 250 years of change in the world, and because it binds us to a mind-reading exercise of a group of white men from 250 years ago.  White men who owned property, who owned slaves, who were only familiar with 18th Century technology, and white men who, themselves, were arguing that change is a necessary part of the human existence.  The famed original authors did not ever argue for stasis or stagnancy or they would never have started out on the revolutionary path that they followed.  The Jeffersons and Franklins of the 18th Century argue in favor of change and in favor of adapting to lived experience.

The reactionaries of today, generally the GOP Republicans, and the Federalist Society are arguing that our judicial system be run on the basis and mores of the 18th Century, and such an argument is bogus.

Let us proceed with all due haste to confirm Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Another shooting - 9 February 2022

Although my blog headline is a tad misleading, the problem remains the same.  The particular shooting that triggered this note is not from today, but I am sure there will be another shooting today or any moment.  It has become impossible to keep up with the shootings; we have so many.  But I refuse to accept that this is acceptable.

For reference, an article complains that the recent Richland shooter  "had been experiencing declining mental health for weeks."   Richland Fred Meyer shooter: A tale of fraying mental health and early warnings  The article explains that the sooter was showing signs of instability and he had been seen with a gun.  As of now, it appears premeditated, although I cannot find a report that says what the motive might have been.

We are trapped.  A large minority has prevented governments in the US from taking guns out of ciculation.  Opponents say that this deprives law-abiding citizens from their right to own guns.  (This is completely bogus, but that is for another day.)  The opponents give no suggestions or methods to identify the law-abiding gun owners from the (one assumes) criminals.  As a result, everyone gets guns, lawful or criminal, sane or insane, stable or declining.  As a result, innocent people die.

A key element of the problem is that we (as a society) have no way to determine who is "sane" and who is not until a victim is dead.  We have psychologists, psychoanalysists, sociologists, and counselors, but none of them are able to identify risky groups or individuals. 

Until we can figure out what is going on, we have to restrict guns.

Seals and Chops - 11 January 2022

In 1215, King John applied the royal seal to the Magna Carta, indicating his assent to the terms therein.  We in the West think of a physical seal or signet ring largely as an historical practice, one long since replaced with a signature or modern cryptographic "signatures".  The idea of a physical Great Seal struck into a blob of hot wax that might represent us in a legal sense is a complete anachronism.  The seal was also somewhat of a security device in terms of protecting the contents of a letter.  Recent articles reinforce this.  Among them ,the New York Times was so struck by a recent discovery that they ran an article, saying:

To safeguard the most important royal correspondence against snoops and spies in the 16th century, writers employed a complicated means of security. They’d fold the letter, then cut a dangling strip, using that as an improvised thread to sew stitches that locked the letter and turned the flat writing paper into its own envelope. To get inside, a spy would have to snip the lock open, an act impossible to go undetected.

Catherine de’ Medici used the method in 1570 — a time she governed France while her ill son, King Charles IX, sat on its throne. Queen Elizabeth did so in 1573 as the sovereign ruler of England and Ireland. And Mary Queen of Scots used it in 1587 just hours before her long effort to unite Britain ended in her beheading.

The "dangling strip" was extended the identification stamp to seal a letter for security purposes.  Presumably the combined task of recreating the wax seal and the folding of the strip was beyond the ability of craftspeople to counterfeit. The idea of a seal is long gone in the West.  But it remains significant in some Asian cultures, especially in PRC-China.

As reported in The Register:

Crucially, Wu [the CEO of ARM-China] retains Arm China's company chop — an item akin to a company's official seal. Under Chinese law, possessing the chop gives Wu authority over the company regardless of its board's intentions. Transferring possession of a chop is not straightforward so even though he's not wanted by Arm, Wu remains in charge. Lawsuits battling over the future of the outfit are percolating through the courts.

Arm is not happy Wu remains in charge, and continues to engage with China's government to explore a resolution.

Ref. Arm says it has 'successful working relationship' with Chinese joint venture run by CEO who refuses to leave

In the West, if a CEO is deposed, their signature is no longer legally binding.  The signature of John Doe, CEO, is superseded by the signature of Jane Smith, CEO.  Done.  None of John's pens or pencils can validate a check or conclude a contract once Jane is declared CEO.  In contrast, Mr. Wu retains the chop of AMD-China and therefore remains in control.  Mr. Wu can conclude contracts, validate large payments through checks, and conclude other legal business.  The parent company of ARM can only look on.

About five years ago, I was in PRC-China and a colleague there had a chop carved for me.  I was thinking about posting an image of the stamp face here, but it occurred to me that would make forgery trivial.  I may not view the chop as a legal commitment, but others may.  So here is the chop with the associated ink pad.