McBlogmick

The NYT had a really interesting article Sunday about a man killed in Texas. He was black, they were white, they all were friends, and the community is divided. Some questions you might think about while reading this are:

1. Just because the accused and the victim were friends, does that negate the possibility that this was racially motivated?

2. What does it say about the community that the two weren't charged until after an outcry. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

3. How might the DOJ's community mediators called in help to work this out?

4. And how might the community heal and move forward?

So Larry Langford, Mayor of Birmingham got arrested in a kickback scheme, and today, Rod Blagojevich, Illinois' governor was arrested for making Illinois state government a pay to play system. Lots of good stuff in there . . .

I was in such a hurry to get to the general defenses that I accidentally skipped over the podcast on doctrines of imputation. Here it is: crimpod7.mp3

You might find this current case interesting in light of our discussion in class on immaturity. Prosecutors in St. Johns, Arizona are seeking to try an 8-year-old as an adult. The article also explains the process the parties will have to go through to make the determination.

So, here is the podcast covering all of the general defenses. It includes information on subjects we didn't cover to help make the big picture a bit more clear, but you don't need to know those other defenses in any detail. Gendefense.mp3

crimpod6.mp3

crimpod5.mp3

This podcast includes causation, a topic that will not be tested on Thursday's quiz.

crimpod4.mp3

8806-crimpod3.mp3

Enjoy! And feel free to ask questions, provide feedback, or make requests in the comments, on TWEN, or through e-mail.

I realize that it's only been a week, but there are two podcasts available for the introductory material. Section 1 crimpod.mp3, and section 2 Crimpod2.mp3. Neither is especially long. Let me know if there's anything you would like me to cover in more detail.

According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian-Serb President has been arrested, thirteen years after he was indicted for war crimes committed in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This is really a huge victory for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which indicted him in 1995 in connection with a massacre of almost 8000 men and boys in a town called Srebrenica. He was also charged in connection with crimes committed by forces under his control throughout the conflict, beginning in 1992.

Karadzic is generally viewed as the architect of the "ethnic cleansing" in that conflict, using his training as a psychiatrist to whip up a nationalistic frenzy, manipulate the beliefs of Bosnian Serbs, and inspire terror in the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations. Based on the work I did documenting the use of sexual violence in this conflict, I am very pleased to see him arrested, and will be even more pleased to see him tried by the Tribunal.

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You may have heard or read about Sara Jane Olsen's drama this past weekend. Several of my criminal law students sent me great links to articles, and here's the story in a nutshell. remember that we read about two people connected to the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s, Kathleen Soliah and Patty Hearst. Soliah was possibly involved with the group's plans to bomb two police cars, which was foiled when the pipe bombs fell off the cars. She went underground, changed her identity, fled to St. Paul, MN, got married, had kids, and essentially lived as a model citizen for more than 20 years. She was arrested in 1999 and finally pled guilty to some of the crimes she was charged with. She was sentenced under the law as it existed when the crimes were committed, which resulted in substantially shorter sentences than she would receive if the crimes were committed today. She was released on parole Friday and told she could spend that time in St. Paul. At the airport she was detained, and the next day, brought back to prison. Authorities said that they had miscalculated and that she wasn't due for parole for another year. Ouch.

Here's a CNN story and the San Francisco Chronicle story.

This is the podcast to cover all of the material for the entire rest of the semester. It goes beyond what we have covered so far, and includes material that we will not cover at all (lesser evils and public authority justifications). Consider those just as part of the big picture, to give you context. crimpod8.mp3

Here are the podcasts to get you up to date for the next quiz in just under two weeks.

Inchoate offenses, crimpod6.mp3

Imputation, crimpod7.mp3

Even though we're not all the way through homicide and causation, it seemed a good idea to post the podcast summary for that topic, given that our quiz is only a week away. And here it is: crimpod5.mp3

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

I can't believe how much we've covered already in criminal law. I hope that you're finding our current work a little more concrete than our prior work. And to help with all of that background material, I've done three podcasts: 1. on the analytical structure of criminal law crimpod1.mp3; 2. on the legality principle Crimpod2.mp3; 3. and on the theories of punishment crimpod3.mp3.

And just for good measure, here is the podcast on culpability: crimpod4.mp3

Enjoy!