Kilty as charged

A case of being guilty of being Kilty.

The Guardian - Feb 25, 1969

Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 10, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Law, Judges, Odd Names, 1960s

The Judge who wanted to be fully informed

Nov 1976: Roxbury District Court Judge Elwood McKenney, presiding over a cocaine possession case, announced that he would need to try cocaine himself before he made his ruling... in order to be able to make an informed decision. He recessed the trial until he had done so.

Palo Alto Times - Nov 2, 1976

Judge Elwood McKenney

About a month later, McKenney abandoned his decision to try cocaine, saying that all the publicity about it had distorted his intent.

But he then proceeded to rule that the Massachusetts statutes forbidding the possession of cocaine were unconstitutional.

Obviously his ruling must have been dismissed or overturned at some point, otherwise cocaine would now be legal in Massachusetts. But I haven't been able to figure out when that happened.

Boston Globe - Dec 11, 1976

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 18, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Drugs, Law, Judges, 1970s

Judge’s wife serves as juror in his court

This was legal???

Macon Chronicle-Herald - Sep 8, 1989

Apparently so. Some googling reveals that this situation seems to happen fairly regularly.

Most recently, there was the case of Judge Thomas Ensor of Colorado whose wife served as a juror in his court. During the trial the judge repeatedly cracked jokes about the presence of his wife, such as, "Be nice to Juror 25. My dinner is on the line."

Inevitably the case was appealed, but in June 2020 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that it was legal for Ensor's wife to be on the jury, noting that the defense lawyer could have objected to her sitting as a juror, but didn't. (Though the defense lawyer had said that he was afraid to challenge her.)

More info: ABA Journal

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 25, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Law, Judges

Sentenced to watch Bambi

Source: Springfield News-Leader

Hasn't the judge seen A Clockwork Orange? For behavioral change, the guy should have been sentenced to watch Bambi constantly with his eyelids held open.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 19, 2018 - Comments (6)
Category: Law, Judges, Movies

Okay-Doke!

This was a great moment in American law. From the New York Times - Feb 7, 1935:

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jun 11, 2014 - Comments (6)
Category: Law, Judges, 1930s

Election Laws Sixty Years Ago

Modern U.S. elections have their problems, but at least election laws aren't as blatantly racist as they were as late as the 1950s. For instance, in Oklahoma, in the 1950s, if you wanted to run for public office you first had to file a form with the state declaring what race you were. There were only two options. If you were of "African descent" you were "Negro." If you were anything else (Chinese, Australian aboriginal, etc.) you were "White." If you indicated you were "Negro," then this descriptive term was placed in parentheses after your name on the ballot. "Whites" were not similarly labeled.

A black Oklahoma City attorney, A.B. McDonald, filed suit against the State Election Board in 1954 alleging discrimination. The District Court dismissed his case, ruling that, "The placing of the word 'Negro' on a ballot after the name of a candidate is merely descriptive and properly serves to inform the electors of the fact that the candidate is of African descent."


The Supreme Court eventually overturned the District Court's ruling, deciding that the Oklahoma law was unconstitutional. As for A.B. McDonald, I haven't been able to find much information on his subsequent career. All I found was a short paragraph in Jet magazine (Mar 1959) indicating that he had some other problems in his life:

Posted By: Alex - Mon Nov 05, 2012 - Comments (7)
Category: Politics, Racism, Judges, Lawsuits

Judge Parker’s Gallows

Here you see the main attraction at Fort Smith National Park. A recreation of the gallows where Hanging Judge Isaac Parker sent 79 criminals to their death.

And people say kids will get bored at such historical monuments! This makes history come alive! Er, come dead...?

Posted By: Paul - Sat May 19, 2012 - Comments (12)
Category: Death, Law, Judges, Recreation, Regionalism, Monuments

Beyond Belief – Weirdness in Religion

First up, a UK judge has spoken out to say children should be allowed to take knives to school. Not all children mind you, just Sikh children. Justice Mota Singh, a Sikh himself, is talking about the kirpan, a ceremonial three-inch knife worn as a show of faith by devout Sikhs, the wearing of which by one boy was banned by a North London school earlier this year. Singh later supported the boy's family's decision to withdraw him rather than accept their compromise offer that he carry a 'disabled' equivalent claiming the school's refusal was discriminatory (BBC News).

Meanwhile another UK court last week ruled that particularly pious Hindu Davender Kumar Ghai can have the open-air cremation he fervently desires. It's been a long battle for Ghai, who found his proposal to site traditional funeral pyres on land outside Newcastle blocked by the city council in a decision later upheld by England's High Court. Now the UK Court of Appeal has said that the open-air ceremonies can go ahead, and that the requirement that all cremations occur 'within a building' could be met by any reasonable structure and did not dictate that structure have walls or a roof. Davenda Kumar Ghai, who is 76 and in poor health, can now go ahead and build his roofless crematorium, once he gets planning permission to do so, from Newcastle City Council (Times).

And in yet another landmark decision, the councillors in Reading, England have given the local Muslim community permission to carry out their own burials in the borough's cemeteries at weekends, which council gravediggers do not work. Many Islamic traditions favour burial very soon after death, and the delays caused by the weekend closures was cited as a significant cause of stress for relatives. In response, the council have agreed to dig some graves beforehand for later use in a pilot scheme expected to last one year, or until the first Saturday night drunk falls in one and sues (GetReading).

Mind you, even once you're in the ground you're not always safe. A row over the siting of a new museum on a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalen has boiled over this week with families who claim to have relatives buried there petitioning the UN. The cemetery, which dates back several hundred years, is due to be excavated to make was for a new “Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance” being built by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who dispute the families' claims. “The Museum of Tolerance project is not being built on the Mamilla Cemetery. It is being built on Jerusalem’s former municipal car park, where every day for nearly half a century, thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews parked their cars without any protest whatsoever from the Muslim community,” said founder Rabbi Marvin Hier (Telegraph).



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Posted By: Dumbfounded - Sun Feb 14, 2010 - Comments (12)
Category: Ceremonies, Customs, Death, Government, Regulations, Law, Judges, Philosophy, Religion

Weird Britannia!

Time to point our telescopes of weirdness at "the old country", methinks.

Speaking of old, recent research carried out by the University of Michigan has revealed that US seniors are smarter than their UK counterparts. The study, lead in the US by Kenneth Langa, measured the recall abilities of over 8000 elderly Americans and over 5000 elderly Brits, and found that the yanks scored 1.4 more on the memory tests, out of a possible 24. Langa suggests that part of the difference was due to higher average levels of education and income in the US group, and higher levels of depression in the UK sample, but points out that nothing is certain at the moment. "It's like a view from 30,000 feet" said Langa (New Scientist).

And it's not just British brains that are shrinking, the UK's sheep are getting smaller as well. Because of a trend towards milder weather believed to be due to climate change, Sheep on the Outer Hebridean island of Soay are getting smaller at the rate of 100g/year, say researchers from Imperial College, London. Though it might seem that warmer winters and a greater abundance of food might make for bigger sheep, Tim Coulson, the professor leading the study, points out that fewer weaker and smaller lambs will die over winter, bringing down the average size (Telegraph).

Now, in some good news, UK campaigners have won a second victory in a three-year battle... to bring back a chocolate bar. The "Wispa Bar", made by European confectioners Cadbury, was introduced in 1995 along with a caramel laced version called the "Wispa Gold", only for both to be discontinued in 2003. This prompted some die-hard fans of the bubbly chocolate bar to start a petition to have it go into production again, resulting in a "limited edition" run of the original Wispa last year. When the 40 million bars produced sold out in just 18 weeks, Cadbury decided to relaunch the brand. Not satisfied with just one bar, campaigners have kept up the pressure, causing Cadbury to start producing Wispa Golds "for a limited period," as before. However to some commentators, this latest move looks more like slick PR than grassroots victory (Sky News).



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Posted By: Dumbfounded - Fri Jul 03, 2009 - Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Food, Candy, Law, Judges, Nature, Weather, Political Correctness, Religion, Products