Readers who have computer security expertise might be able to shed some light on whether it was smart of the San Francisco District Attorney's office to make public "150 usernames and passwords used by various departments to connect to the city's virtual private network" (VPN).

The passwords were filed this week as Exhibit A in a court document arguing against a reduction in $5 million bail in the case of Terry Childs, who is accused of holding the city's network hostage by refusing to give up administrative networking passwords. Childs was arrested July 12 on charges of computer tampering and is being held in the county jail.

While "city prosecutors do seem to think that they are sensitive," the disclosure seems difficult to reconcile with claims that the City is making against Childs. [more ...]

Bump and Update (TL): The "Spam King" Eddie Davidson is dead. His body as well as that of his wife and three year old daughter were found today. All died from gunshots. An eight month old son was unhurt and a teenage daughter was grazed by a bullet but is okay. Developing...

Further update (TChris): Good background on Davidson's mental health problems here.
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By TChris

It isn't likely anyone will make a movie about this less-than-daring escape, and there's no need to fear that this former prisoner will terrorize the community. You might soon find your email box filled with even more spam, however, if he evades capture and returns to his former employment.[More...]

Al Sharpton's tax woes will not land him in prison, according to Sharpton's lawyers.

Federal prosecutors have disbanded their criminal investigation into the financial dealings of the Rev. Al Sharpton and his Harlem civil rights group, the minister and his lawyers said Tuesday. Prosecutors concluded that Sharpton's substantial tax problems were better handled as a civil matter by the Internal Revenue Service rather than in criminal court, his lawyers said.

Given the Republican aversion to business regulation that has dominated government for so many years, it has become increasingly unusual to see civil penalties assessed against businesses that manufacture unsafe products, that install those products in an unsafe manner, or that provide an unsafe working environment for their employees. It is extraordinarily unusual to see criminal prosecutions of businesses when negligence leads to death. That's what makes the prosecution of David Lionetti both newsworthy and troublesome.

David Lionetti was arrested yesterday on a manslaughter charge in the death of Zachary Cohn. Six-year-old Cohn drowned last summer after becoming trapped by the suction of a drain in his family's pool in Greenwich, Conn. The pool had been installed by Lionetti's company Shoreline Pools. ... In issuing the warrant for Lionetti's arrest, law enforcement officials state that he failed to have his company install mandated safety devices in the Cohn family pool. As a result Zachary Cohn was able to remove the cover and was caught in the suction power of the drain. His parents were unable to free him before he drowned.

If the alleged facts are true, Lionetti's company was clearly negligent and civilly liable for damages. But if Lionetti is criminally responsible for negligence, why not also arrest the actual installers who failed to install the required safety devices? And why not arrest the parents who failed to supervise their child as he removed the drain cover? Should every act of negligence be treated as a crime? [more ...]

Didn't this happen on an episode of X-Files?

Inmate loses weight, escapes through jail vent

The vent was less than a foot wide. The Sheriff's explanation:

"We just found out he's been slimming down a lot recently"

Thomas Jefferson described the right to a jury trial as "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." So important was the jury trial to Jefferson that he said: "Were I called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the Legislative or Judiciary department, I would say it is better to leave them out of the Legislative."

We elect presidents and legislators but not federal judges. Juries bring democracy to the third branch of government. In a criminal case, only the jury -- not law enforcement, not a paid representative of the government, but twelve randomly chosen members of the community -- can decide the fact of guilt. As Jefferson pointed out, juries even have the power to decide the law (or at least to decide whether it's fair or reasonable to apply the law as the judge explained it), although judges don't like to tell juries that they have that right.

As the embodiment of democracy in the courtroom, it is unconscionable that reasonable members of the community who have no reason to be unfair to the government are summarily removed from death penalty juries because they are philosophically opposed to capital punishment. How representative of the community is a group of people who represent only one side of a controversy that sharply divides the nation? [more ...]

It's customary for criminal defense lawyers to tell new clients, "Don't do anything stupid while these charges are pending." The advice isn't always heeded. Now it seems necessary to be more specific: "If you're going to do something stupid, don't publicize it on your MySpace or Facebook page."

Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.

Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Of course, social networking sites hold some benefit for defense lawyers as well. Young people who claim to be distraught victims of crimes have trouble explaining why they're posting pictures of their drunken parties, taken just days after they were supposedly traumatized by a criminal act. It's great evidence when you find it, and it's surprising how often you do.

Susan Atkins, age 60, has served 37 years in prison, has one leg, is paralyzed on her right side and has three months to live. Today the California Parole Board denied her compassionate release so she could die outside of prison.

Atkins' doctors and officials at the women's prison in Corona made the request in March because of her deteriorating health. She also has had her left leg amputated and is paralyzed on her right side, her husband, James Whitehouse, told the California Board of Parole Hearings.

Whitehouse, also acting as one of Atkins' attorneys, had argued that his wife was so debilitated that she could not even sit up in bed. He told the parole board there was no longer a reason to keep her incarcerated. "She literally can't snap her fingers," he said. "She can put sentences together three or four times a day, but that's the extent of it."

Atkins' lawyer will now ask a state court judge to order her release. [More...]

Actors Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright were arrested in Shreveport today, along with some members of the crew filming the Oliver Stone movie "W." Apparently they are suspected of participating in a bar fight. Perhaps they were just getting into the spirit of the president's partying days at Yale.

Russ Walker, a former Yale classmate and friend from Oklahoma City, recalls returning from a party with Bush one night in college when the inebriated Bush dropped to the ground and started rolling in the middle of the street. "He literally rolled back to the dorm," recalled Walker. "It was raucous, teenage stuff that he perhaps grew out of later rather than sooner."

Texas goes farther than most states in authorizing the use of deadly force to prevent a thief from making off with property. The more common and sensible position recognizes that a thief should not suffer death at the discretion of a vigilante property owner, that human life has greater value than property. That is not the Texas view.

And so it is shocking to the sense of justice but not surprising to learn that a grand jury declined to indict Joe Horn, who made no secret of his intent to gun down two people who had burglarized his neighbor's house. During a 911 call (listen here), Horn asked if he should intercede to prevent burglars from escaping. (Horn misidentified the burglars as black men.) The dispatcher assured Horn that officers were on their way, warned him to stay inside and reminded him that "Property’s not worth killing someone over, OK?" After Horn saw the men climbing out of the window, Horn said "I'm gonna kill 'em." Horn told the dispatcher "here it goes, buddy. You hear the shotgun clicking and I’m going." Horn is soon heard yelling "Move, you’re dead!" followed by gunshots. Horn shot both men in the back, although he claimed he had no choice because they were running through his yard. [more ...]

The police love asset forfeiture laws because they get to keep lots of cool stuff that used to belong to drug dealers (among other crimes to which the laws apply). So imagine how happy the Dallas police were to seize a black 2004 Infiniti at a drug house. It became a nice ride for undercover police officers.

Of course, before they put the car into service, they searched it for contraband. Not well enough, it seems. After two months:

An officer cleaning the car at a patrol station Wednesday discovered the nearly 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of cocaine carefully hidden in hydraulically controlled compartments.

On a more serious note, wouldn't the public be better served if (as is true in some states) seized assets were sold and the money directed to school budgets? That would certainly give the police less incentive to indulge in questionable seizures.

When we last checked in on Julie Amero, she was facing sentencing for "impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor" by showing porn sites on the web to students in her seventh grade class. Amero's side of the story, which proved (albeit belatedly) to be convincing, is that the computer was infected with malware that kept popping up porn sites faster than she could close them. The state's "expert" testified that Amero must have deliberately accessed the porn, a false proposition that computer experts from across the nation derided after Amero was convicted.

The good news: "In June of 2007, [Superior Court Judge Hillary] Strackbein threw out the initial conviction and ordered a new trial." The bad news:

Unbelievably, more than 13 months after Strackbein set aside Amero's conviction on charges that she allowed seventh-graders to view pornography in her classroom, the state is apparently still planning to bring Amero back to trial.

Why? [more ...]