Law Blog

Everyone has a mother.  Whether you’re a person, dog, or cat, if you exist on this green earth, then you have a mother who was responsible for popping you out into it.  It’s no surprise then why so many of us are attached to our mothers and try our hardest to please them (that’s right, two lolcats in one paragraph because they are awesome).

However, most of the time, for some reason, no matter what we do, it never feels like we’re doing quite enough to please our beloved matriarchs and we always end up feeling like we’re nothing more than a constant source of disappointment to them.  We never call home or visit enough, we’re not eating enough vegetables, and don’t even get started on the career, which can never seem to outshine your cousin’s gig at Google.  It can all be very maddening, sometimes to the point where you wished you just didn’t care as much as you do.  Wouldn’t that be great?  To not care what your mother thought of you?  Well if that’s what you want (not me of course because I have a wonderful relationship with my mom), then you should ask Cheng Saelee.

Why ask him?  Well, because the dude definitely doesn’t seem to have a problem cutting the proverbial cord.  It takes guts to stand up to your mom’s authority, but it takes a really big pair to rob her at gunpoint after she refuses to give you $430 to pay off your parking ticket.

That last part sound a little nuts?  Well it should, but that’s exactly what Saelee, 27, did to his mother back in 2008.  He was convicted last week for the armed robbery of his mother, as well as for illegally soliciting her while he was in jail to drop the charges against him.

I love human drama, as I’m sure everyone does since that seems to be the only thing selling newspapers these days.  His own mother turned him in??  In the words of Dave Chappelle impersonating Rick James, “that was cooold bloodeeeeed.”

But honestly people armed robbery is a very serious crime.  It’s considered a crime of moral turpitude, meaning a conviction has a far greater impact in your life beyond being a huge blemish on your permanent record.  It often can lead to being barred from obtaining membership in and expulsion from government employment and professional organizations – which spreads across the gamut, ranging from the American Bar association to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.  And membership in these organizations is usually a prerequisite to employment their respective industry.  Moral turpitude crimes are also grounds for deportation, which is a possible fate awaiting Saelee.  Armed robbery is also a felony, which means a conviction will strip you of your right to vote.  And in this economy, having a say about what direction this country should be headed makes having the right to vote all the more important.

For these reasons, it’s easy to see why you shouldn’t commit moral turpitude crimes or crimes in general.  Conversely, it’s also even easier to understand how important it is to defend yourself against a moral turpitude criminal charge.  LegalMatch receives a very high number of criminal defense cases every year, and with good reason (in case you’ve forgotten them, scroll up).

And most important of all, don’t forget that mother knows best and apparently is also not above turning you in to the cops, so please don’t rob her.

What would you do if you came home one day and found your male neighbor sleeping in your house or apartment without your permission or knowledge?  To further complicate matters, let’s say your neighbor is not armed and is also a sleepwalker, however you’re unaware of the latter fact.  Would you:

1. Wake him up and tell him to get out
2. Call the police and have them remove him from your home or arrest him
3. Let him be because he’s tired and in the morning make him breakfast
4. Wake him up and beat the crap out of him with the help of two of your friends to the point that your neighbor needs hospitalization

If you picked D and you live in Iowa City, Iowa, then you and your friends would be arrested for willfully causing bodily injury to a person.  How do I know that?  Because that’s exactly what happened to three men who found themselves in that very same situation (see how clever I am?)  By the way, if you picked C please refer me to your shrink/religion/cult/voodoo-method-to-keep-you-calm because I have no idea how anyone would be able to stay cool if they found themselves in that situation.

According to the report, the three men, Jonathan Chun, Derryk Berger, and Kevin Lee, came back to Chun’s apartment after a night of drinking to find Chun’s neighbor sleeping in the apartment.  After they woke him, they proceeded to lay what I imagine to be an incredible beating on their neighbor since he had to be hospitalized afterward.  Chun then reported his neighbor for trespass to the police where he was promptly arrested for willful battery.

Now I’m not saying these three men were justified in their actions, but personally I’d be pretty terrified if I found a person in my house who I didn’t allow to be there, regardless of whether he was my neighbor or if I knew he was a sleepwalker.  However, I’d still fall in the A or B answer category since I’m not insane and also because I know the law.  It’s a wonderful field of study if you want to stay out of trouble.  Someone should’ve suggested taking it up to Chun and his friends because any lawyer or law student worth his salt knows that in a case like this, getting physical can only lead you to a felony.

From a legal perspective, self-defense is only allowed when you are under attack or imminent harm.  And in most jurisdictions, even if you are under attack, if you can escape the harm without resorting to violence, you have a duty to do so – unless the attack is happening in your home, then you don’t need to retreat (the so-call king-of-the-castle rule).

Even though Chun was in his home, his neighbor posed no threat to him since he was sleeping.  Though Chun could argue he felt threatened by his neighbor’s mere presence, most courts have held that trespass alone with the threat of imminent harm is not enough to justify self-defense.  Broad self-defense usage is a common misconception, as evidence not only by national criminal statistics on the matter, but also by the large number of self-defense claims received by LegalMatch every year.

So the moral of this story is: when in doubt, call the police, because they’ll have a much easier time justifying their beatings than you.

We often hear that victims of violent crime are more likely to know their attackers than to be the victim of a random act of violence. LegalMatch case data, covering intake reports from all 50 states over the past 12 months, appears to bear this out.

According to our case data, the most common responses prospective clients gave when asked about the identity of their attacker was “someone I know” or “a family member”.

This runs contrary to the image that many members of the public have with respect to violent crime; a crazed stranger jumps out of the bushes, assaults their victim, and runs off. While random acts of violence certainly occur, they are comparatively rare, and it seems that many people spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about them, given how unlikely they are to occur to a given person.

This is not to say that people shouldn’t take common-sense precautions to reduce the risk of violent crime committed by strangers. These include minimizing time spent alone, outside, at night. Other measures, such as traveling in groups, and sticking to well-lit areas, are also advisable. It might also be helpful, if you are comfortable doing so, to carry some kind of non-lethal defensive weapon, such as pepper spray (but be sure to check your local laws on this).

However, what might be overlooked are conditions that could lead to the more likely scenario: violent crime committed by acquaintances or family members of the victim. The ways to minimize these risks are not nearly as simple as the ones discussed above.

There aren’t many clear-cut ways to avoid violent crime by acquaintances, unless you want to become a hermit. Since that isn’t an option for most people, the situation is complicated.

Not being in a position to give relationship advice, this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it seems that things such as relationship counseling and getting out of abusive relationships (easier said than done) would be helpful in reducing such incidents. Eliminating violent crime altogether is not possible, but any reduction is a good thing.

As the end of October nears, children everywhere are wetting their pants in anticipation for the one time of year where wearing a Spider-man costume and asking for candy won’t land you in jail.  Ahhh Halloween, how we love thee.  It’s everyone’s favorite holiday, unless its hot sister Christmas is around, in which case take a message and tell it we’re washing our hair.  Halloween is great.  It’s a time for pumpkin-carving, trick-or-treating (as long as you don’t live in New Orleans), and of course, pranks.

Sometimes a well-laid prank can be even better than all that candy.  Who doesn’t love leaving a flaming bag of dog poop in front of your cranky neighbor’s doorstep or covering said neighbor’s house in toilet paper?  Not to mention the all-time classic, “bidding on a federal auction for oil and gas leases when you don’t have the money or intention to follow through on it.”

Don’t remember that one?  It was all the rage when I was still in elementary school.  I remember how my friends and I would dress up in a suit and tie, go down to the old Bureau of Land Management, or BLM for all you youngins, and place a phony bid posing as representatives for a kooky billionaire.  Still doesn’t ring a bell, huh?  Oh well, I guess I’m just getting too old to keep up with all these new fangled pranks…

But at least there’s one person who is keeping it alive.  But Tim DeChristopher is doing it for an entirely different reason.  Making a stand for the environment??  Psshtshaw…  Whatever happened to just messing with people because it’s fun?

Seriously though, this is a very serious offense.  DeChristopher is being charged with two felony counts, carrying up to five years in prison plus fines up to $750,000.  The reason he did it was to cause disruption in protesting what he believes are governmental acts that are contributing to the rise of global warming.

But whether you believe in DeChristopher’s cause or not, you’ve gotta admire the legal defense he’s planning to use: a necessity defense.  It’s basically a choice of evil defense, where a person is forced to choose between breaking the law and preventing some evil/harm, or letting that evil/harm happen.  The article does a good job of summarizing DeChristopher’s chances of succeeding with this defense.  Though I think they missed one important aspect: standing.

Usually to employ such a necessity defense, especially against the federal government, a person would have to show that he or she was actually harmed by the actions of the government.  No actual harm usually equals no defense.  I say usually because like every good law school will teach a first-year student, it depends.

I suppose DeChristopher could make some argument that the harm to the environment hurts the planet which in turn harms his life expectancy by increasing the chances of natural disaster or depleting the ozone layer which would lead to increased exposure to harmful UV rays.  But looking at most case precedent, these types of arguments are considered too nebulous and broad to ever succeed.

Good for him for trying though.  The number of lawsuits received by LegalMatch regarding environmental issues, land-use, and toxic torts has increased by approximately 20 percent from last quarter, so it seems like they’re all the rage now.  So maybe Lady Luck will smile in DeChristopher’s favor, though if you ask me, she’s probably terminally ill from skin cancer…

Whatever your thoughts on gun control, news like this gets law geeks and wannabe scholars of constitutional law (such as me) pretty excited.

In short, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari (Fancy Lawyer Talk for “agreed to hear”) to a case which will, one way or another, fill a massive gap in our 2^nd Amendment jurisprudence: whether or not the 2^nd Amendment applies to states, as well as the federal government.

Last year, the Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, ruled on the meaning and scope of the 2^nd Amendment for the first time, holding that it protects an individual, rather than collective, right to possess firearms for private, lawful use, including self-defense. However, because a Washington, D.C. law was being challenged, and D.C. is technically governed exclusively by the federal government, the Court only ruled on the 2^nd Amendment as it applied against federal law. This makes sense, because the Court could not have incorporated any 2^nd Amendment rights against the states without first ruling on the meaning and scope of the rights that it provides.

In Heller, the court essentially held that the 2^nd Amendment protects the right of individuals to keep handguns in their homes, for self-defense and other lawful uses. More specifically, Justice Scalia’s majority opinion held that individuals have a right to possess firearms that are “in common use at the time” for lawful purposes, but left open a great deal of wiggle-room for the government to put restrictions on the possession and use of firearms, such as banning guns at sensitive facilities, schools, or banning possession of guns by minors, the mentally ill, or convicted felons.

The upcoming case, known as McDonald v. Chicago, challenges Chicago’s handgun ban, and the ban’s opponents appear to argue that the Heller decision should be applied against state governments, as well.

Originally, the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, which protect our rights of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, etc.) only applied against the federal government. However, after the passage of the 14^th Amendment, beginning in earnest in the early 20^th century, the Supreme Court began to apply those protections against state governments as well (a process known as “incorporation”), relying on the 14^th Amendment’s Due Process clause as its rationale for doing so.

Considering that the legal meaning of the 2^nd Amendment’s “right to bear arms” was settled a little more than a year ago, after around 150 years of scholarly debate, the pace at which the Court is moving in filling in the centuries-old gaps in the law is quite impressive. Perhaps they feel as if they have some catching up to do? Or, as a more cynical person might argue, perhaps the conservative wing of the Court is simply granting cert to these cases so they can decide them before one of them retires and is replaced by an Obama appointee.

Whatever the result of this case, it is certainly going to ignite a storm of scholarly debate over the meaning of the 2^nd Amendment, and its relevance in modern times.

According to recent LegalMatch case data, the majority of prospective clients who sought an attorney for a criminal case related to gun possession had no prior arrests. While it is impossible to know the exact circumstances of each case from this data, it is possible that many of the crimes which these people are charged with would cease to be illegal if the 2^nd Amendment is incorporated. As for those who have prior convictions, they’re most likely out of luck, given the leeway that the Court has already indicated it is willing to give the federal government, when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons.