2 Crimes for the Price of 1: Woman Scams Man Who Gets Shot
Sometimes even the best of plans go awry. Almost right out of a movie, Brandi Bradley enticed a casino customer to leave the casino to “party.” The plan was simple. Once Brandi got the victim, – in the words of the Court, “a Mr. Mataya, [who] wore enough gold, diamond, and ruby jewelry to mark him as the right kind of target” liquored up and into his car, two men planned to jump in the car at a predesignated spot to rob him, stuff him in the trunk and leave him there.
Unfortunately, Mataya was either so drunk or just couldn’t pull it together that when the time came to put him in the trunk, he couldn’t get it open. Frustrated, the two men pumped eight shots into Mataya and sped away.
Fortunately for Mataya, he survived. Unfortunately for Brandi, she got caught – as if we couldn’t figure out that was going to happen given her brilliant planning.
This case is more interesting for its facts, but here’s the actual holding: previously depublished, but certified for publication today, the California Court of Appeal found that although Brandi could be convicted of two crimes, she could not be consecutively sentenced for both crimes because she only intended to commit one: rob Mataya.
Kind of reminds me of my first appellate case, Hajek v. Iowa Board of Parole regarding sentence enhancements for committing two, separate consecutive crimes. While in law school as a student, I succeeded in reversing the Iowa Court of Appeal and the Iowa Attorney General.
The moral of these stories is that it never pays to commit a crime twice, or for that matter, two crimes.
[thanks to j. craig williams and tiffa130 via cc]
Looking Back at 9/11: State of Airline and Airport Security
Here is what we still don’t know, over seven years after the 9/11 attacks, about airline and airport security on that day:
1. We don’t know if all of the metal screening machines at the airports involved had been tested and were actually working as designed;
2. We don’t know if the security personnel working on those machines and screen passengers were qualified and properly trained to find barred and dangerous items; and
3. We don’t know how the terrorists made it through the checkpoints with their deadly box-cutters, knives and mace.
All that, and more, was unilaterally designated by the aviation industry defendants as confidential, wrongfully exploiting a protective order issued by a federal judge in 2004, designed only to protect trade secret and competitive information. The order was entered in lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims against certain airlines, security companies and others responsible for airline and airport security (the “aviation defendants”) on that fateful day. The remaining three families, out of 96 who filed lawsuits, have challenged the defendants’ “confidential trade secrets” designations, claiming that one of their major motivations for filing lawsuits and not going into the no-fault Victims Compensation Fund created by Congress was to ask questions, demand accountability and shed light on the checkpoint failures that allowed 19-for-19 hijackers to board aircrafts with prohibited weapons and hazardous materials. While the families have access to this information within the confines of the litigation, the public does not.
Today, the attorneys for the victims’ families, joined by news organizations, will stand before a federal judge and argue for their latest motion to release a huge stash of documents (a million pages or more) which could finally reveal the truth about the status of airline and airport security leading up to and on that horrible day.
The idea that the airline and airport security regime in existence over eight years ago is a “trade secret” is preposterous. Yet, in producing aviation industry documents and witness testimony to these families, the aviation defendants designated over 99% of the evidence (documents and transcripts) to be trade secrets. None of the machines in operation on 9/11 at any airport in the U.S. are in use today – all have been upgraded by orders of magnitude. All of the personnel now working them on that day were released and/or retrained with much tougher federal standards.
Yes, I represent the attorneys of the 9/11 victims before Congress and the Executive Branch and have assisted them in ensuring the release of government documents pertinent to the issue. But that doesn’t change the point: there is no logical reason to permanently seal industry documents on old, outdated, and replaced airline and airport security procedures or the sworn testimony of nearly 200 witnesses who have testified in these cases.
The procedural rules which govern the confidentiality of “trade secrets” don’t exist to protect businesses from public embarrassment and possible civil liability. Ironically, trade secrets and competitive information are usually intended to be kept secret from other industry members, in this case, the secrets are shared among all of the aviation defendants, but kept secret from everyone else. Civil litigation in the United States is meant to conducted in full view.
UPDATE, March 26: The federal judge told the victims’ attorneys that he favors not publicly disclosing the evidence until a trial occurs. A trial date has not been set.
[via counterterrorism]
Marc Dreier Assets Itemized: Over $400 Million Taken From Investors
The New York Law Journal reports today on a list of Marc Dreier’s assets compiled by Mark Pomerantz, the receiver appointed by the court to “locate, recover and safeguard” whatever Dreier and his firm had left out of the $400 million allegedly taken from investors.
Dreier was the single equity partner in the now-defunct Dreier LLP, a situation that, as the ABA Journal observantly opined, posed some risk for the other 249 lawyers in that firm. One such risk: the single equity partner may be a crook. Dreier is charged with defrauding investors by selling them more than $700 million in bogus real-estate and pension-plan notes.
I had assumed that Dreier intended to use any profits from this scheme solely for the public good, but it appears that he treated himself to a few items as well. According to Pomerantz, who has been combing through documents and interviewing former employees of the firm, Dreier and/or his LLP owned, in addition to the expected attorney trust account and other bank accounts:
• 
more than 300 works of art allegedly worth nearly $39 million;
• a Manhattan apartment bought in 2007 for $10.4 million (but probably now worth a lot less);
• three homes worth in the neighborhood of $15 million;
• a 37-meter yacht worth more than than all the homes put together ($18 million), which has five cabins and is “luxuriously equipped with flat-screen televisions and a wine collection”;
• five cars, including an Aston Martin DB9;
• $1.2 million in “home furnishings”;
• two watches valued at $11,000 (combined, presumably, unless they are nuclear-powered);
• and law firm accounts receivables and work-in-progress from Dreier LLP.
Don’t get too excited about that last item, as the value of “work-in-progress from Dreier LLP” has likely declined somewhat.
Nor is the value of the artwork entirely clear which shows an etching of a chair with a hole in it and a bronze sculpture vaguely resembling Ziggy. On the plus side, though, the sculpture appears to depict a person putting up his hands while being robbed, which seems appropriate for something found in Marc Dreier’s office.
[via loweringthebar and newyorklawjournal]
