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.

Man Robs Own Mother At Gunpoint, Bad Sons Everywhere Can Now Say At Least They Aren’t Him is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

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.

Data Proves Victims of Assault Likely to Know Their Attacker is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

I was curious of the most common causes for removal. According to LegalMatch.com intake reports compiled from thousands of client entries in the past 12 months, these are the most common reasons cited for removal from the U.S.:

• Convicted of a crime: 42%
• In the United States illegally: 40%
• Visa has expired: 16%
• Not paid taxes: 1%

A lot of squabbling goes on in the media and the blogosphere about whether an “illegal immigrant” is actually a criminal. The point of these “debates” is usually to score quick political talking points.

Contrary to popular belief however, mere unauthorized presence in the United States is not always a crime. The above poll matches Homeland Security data showing that in fact, the majority of aliens removed from the United States were not criminals. According to Department of Homeland Security statistics for 2007, only 31% of immigrants removed were actually convicted of a crime.

Although removal can subject one to criminal sanctions, the majority of removal cases are limited to civil penalties or based on breaches of administrative laws. When an immigrant is removed without criminal consequences it is incorrect to really refer to this person as a “criminal.” The “illegal aliens are criminals” talking point is nonetheless often used to somehow justify the mass jailing and deportation of illegal aliens, but it rings hollow when statistics show that the rule being broken by most of these people is mere unauthorized presence. According to the above statistics, it would be incorrect to assume that more than 42% of those immigrants facing removal are in fact criminals.

Most Removed Immigrants Not Criminals, Data Shows is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

Other reasons such as those brought up here may further contribute to a lack of reporting. Mandatory policies based on political grandstanding plus the limited repertoire of tools available to the Police may make people hesitant to call the boys in blue. When a cop’s toolbox is generally limited to handcuffs and a gun, there are only so many things they can do.

What is the exact problem we are looking at when over a fourth of victims are not reporting crimes to the police? That cops should be better trained to deal with these issues, and people should therefore be more encouraged to call them?

I’m skeptical of a solution that sees more police involvement in family disputes as an improvement. Obviously there are situations where the police should show up: a large amount of murders occur between spouses where the offender should have already been in jail, or should have been under more rigorous supervision from law enforcement officials.

On the other hand, there are also situations where police presence might have done more harm than good. The recent murder of 3 officers in Pittsburgh occurred after the shooter’s mother requested that the police come and kick her son out of her house. The police shouldn’t have to expect that an armed lunatic is going to greet them at the door of a domestic disturbance call, but situations like this will stay in the back of officers’ minds and make dealing with these calls all the more difficult.   

Should more people be reporting domestic violence? If there is a genuine crime occurring, yes. But like so many other issues in the criminal justice system, the law is often called on to fix situations it is ill-equipped to handle. Domestic violence and domestic disturbance runs the gamut from genuine crimes that warrant incarceration or arrest, to family disputes where guns and handcuffs may serve to only make matters much worse. Although there are serious problems associated with the non-reporting of violent crimes, there is a context. Should the police be involved in each and every domestic dispute? Does the use or threat of violence always warrant the involvement of the police and of the courts? I do not think so.

Over One-Fourth of Domestic Violence Incidents Go Unreported is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

According to LegalMatch.com intake reports collected over the past five years, the most common “white collar” crime charge people sought legal help for was credit card fraud.  Ironically, it may have been Madoff’s greed that prevented him from experimenting with credit card crime.  Many criminals make fairly modest credit card transactions in order to avoid the harshest penalties:  according to one source, the Secret Service doesn’t prosecute cases involving less than $150,000, and the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t investigate fraud cases unless they involve at least $2,000.  Madoff, whose giant Ponzi scheme involved about $65 billion, may have considered credit card scams not worth his trouble. 

The second most common charges facing LegalMatch clients involved insurance and unemployment fraud.  It’s obvious why Madoff, who was wealthy before embarking on his scheme, couldn’t pull off unemployment fraud, but it’s less clear why he avoided insurance fraud.  

The third most common charge facing LegalMatch’s white collar crime clients involved check fraud.  This crime is usually committed on a smaller-than-Madoff scale, which most victims losing an average of $5,000.

Madoff’s case differs from the average LegalMatch client’s case in other ways too.  While Madoff did not have any prior arrests or convictions, 34% of LegalMatch.com white collar crime respondents had prior arrests, 26% had prior felony convictions, 24% had prior misdemeanor convictions, and 16% had prior juvenile convictions.  Madoff’s clean record could have helped him avoid detection by authorities:  Madoff planted the seeds of his scheme in the early 1990s, and although concerns were raised as early as 1999, serious inquiries were not made until December 2008, and formal charges were not brought until 2009 after Madoff’s sons reported him to federal authorities. 

Finally, while Madoff is 70, most LegalMatch.com white collar fraud cases involved persons in their 40s and 50s, and no LegalMatch cases involved defendants in their 70s.  Perhaps Madoff’s age worked to his advantage: he probably acquired significant financial and social skills over the years, and investors may have perceived him as more “trustworthy” because he was older.  Of course it also helped that he had inside connections which allowed him access to numerous investors, wealthy and middle class alike.

LegalMatch Update on White Collar Crime in America is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

Most people have heard of a .08 blood alcohol content (BAC) limit, and will somehow assume this has something to do with driving drunk. In reality the law varies by state to state. (How many times have you heard that?) Some states have higher legal limits than others, or laws that do not require a blood alcohol measurement for conviction.

The following lists the most common BAC levels cited by the thousands of LegalMatch customers looking for a drunk driving attorney last year, in order of frequency: 

• I don’t know: 24%
• .10 to .15: 20%
• No test given: 16%
• .16 to .20: 12%
• .08 to .09: 9%
• .21 or more: 7%
• .07 or less: 7%

There is an easy joke here about not remembering what your test score was for driving drunk. I will eschew it as a matter of editorial professionalism. There are a variety of reasons besides inebriation for not knowing what the test results were.

My interest lies in the 7% who were pulled over and arrested for being below a .07%. The reason most states utilize a .08% blood alcohol level is because of studies showing a significant drop off in a person’s ability to drive with a .08% or above BAC. Prosecuting the offense follows a familiar pattern: introduce the reading, introduce the expert, and introduce the findings damning the defendant to the nether-regions of presumptive guilt-purgatory.

But what about the tee-totaling .07 percenters?  Presumably their state still allows for their prosecution. In California, for instance, you can be prosecuted either for being above a .08%, or for driving “while under the influence.” In English, that means that you were so under the influence that your ability to drive was impaired.

Even though the defendant can technically still be guilty of a crime, anything below a .08 BAC in a state like California will always be used by the defense. Why? Because jurors expect a .08 reading or above. It is akin to the CSI effect: jurors expect police investigations to have fancy forensic scientists with super-technologically advanced super-computers that can recreate three dimensional representations of a crime scene piece by piece. Which of course is a complete fantasy.

For whatever reason, jurors come into the court with a preconceived notion that drunk driving means driving above a certain level, usually .08%. The truly rational left brained jurors might be able to completely shed this preconception. The majority of jurors, on the other hand, are skeptical of a test below .08%, or the absence of a test at all. Throw in error rates and the fuzzy science often relied upon by prosecution experts as “proof” that field sobriety tests show impairment, and the prosecution usually has a loser on its hands.

Most Cited Breathalyzer Results for Drunk Driving Arrests in Past Year is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

How much could be saved? According to statistics compiled by LegalMatch, in 2007 44% of LegalMatch clients arrested for drug crimes were marijuana related. Federal statistics for the same period show that that 47% of all drug arrests were for marijuana possession. Nationally this works out to 775,137 marijuana possession arrests, or almost 10 times the amount of arrests for drug trafficking and sales.

Reducing the burden on our courts by shifting almost 3 quarters of a million defendants off the criminal docket could save a lot of money. Court costs for even the smallest of cases can still add up. A study of average court costs in Allen County, Indiana in 2001 show an average bill of $1,146 for processing drug offense charges. Factoring in inflation, this adds up to $1,345 in 2007 dollars. If we use this estimate for a national average (which seems on the low side as it is), that’s still over $1 billion spent simply processing marijuana possession offenses. That is not even taking into account the costs of other programs such as probation and incarceration.

Massachusetts estimates that it saves over $30 million a year by decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. How much can the nation as a whole save by following suit? Probably a few billion dollars. Although that may seem like chump change in the face of an $800 billion stimulus packages, that is still a lot of money that would be better spent elsewhere. In these tough economic times, we need to look everywhere we can to shed the extra fat. So let’s support a more rational criminal justice policy. It might just save you some money.

Decriminalizing Marijuana Possession Could Save Billion Annually, Data Shows is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

“Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”

Excellent! The Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer sarcastically points out that Fox will only target non violent offenders for these “hilarious” sting operations. I agree with his skepticism. What is a non-violent offender? A guy that missed jury duty? A jaywalker? Someone with one too many parking tickets?

Fox executives are good at one thing, and that is sensationalism. I doubt their focus on non-violent offenders has anything to do with thinking they deserve it more than others; instead, they probably want to avoid the danger inherent in prank-arresting someone with a violent felony history or problems with aggression.

To add insult to injury, (or if you are a Fox executive, to make the show even better) Fox has tapped Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as the show’s host.

For those of you who are not familiar with Joe the Sheriff, let me introduce you. Sheriff Arpaio’s accomplishments in Maricopa County, Arizona include making inmates march in pink underwear, creating a tent city jail in Arizona’s 110 degree heat to deal with overcrowding, creating juvenile chain gangs to bury the dead of local indigents, being sued over 2,000 times in federal court, and costing the state of Arizona over $40 million in legal fees over the course of his tenure.

Yes, that Joe Arpaio.

This show joins the already extremely pro-police and pro-prosecution culture of victimization and fear instilled on television viewers by shows such as Cops. This authoritarian mindset is exactly the kind of culture that allows people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio to not only get away with rampant prisoner abuse, but become wildly popular because of it. Everyone suspected of a crime is a bad person and deserves everything coming to them, due process (and human rights) be damned. Unfortunately, very few are able to see anything wrong with this until they wind up on the wrong end of the law.

Smile, You’re under Arrest is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

Some claim there is no link between recessions and increased crime.  People in this camp rely on U.S. Justice Department statistics that show crime flourished during the 1920’s, 1950’s and 1960’s-when the economy was also booming.  But wouldn’t one expect that during hard times, people who are suffering would steal to compensate for their lack of income?  While there have been reports of increased incidents of shoplifting during recessions, there may be counteractive forces at work which balance the overall property crime rate.  For instance, during economic downturns, people often move in with relatives and stay home more, both of which tend to have a stabilizing effect.    

Others have found a strong link between economic downturns and crime waves.  Those who believe this theory claim that statistics can be skewed by a number of forces.  For example, in the 1990s, when Michigan’s Ecorse Police Department retrieved dead human bodies from the Detroit River and classified them as “floating bodies,” the crimes weren’t recorded in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report since that crime category wasn’t recognized.  Additionally, crime rates during the Depression may have been distorted by Federal Government programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  In the 1930’s, the CCC took over 500,000 unemployed young men (who pose the greatest risk of committing crimes) from cities and moved them to isolated work camps where they lacked the opportunity to commit crimes.  Without these measures, would there have been a rise in crime during the Depression?  Who knows. . . .   

While the relationship between recessions and violent and property crime is debatable, it makes sense that certain crimes do in fact rise in tandem with hard economic times.  Specifically, domestic violence, alcohol-fueled crimes, and elder abuse have reportedly been increasing as families struggle with the stress of the current recession. 

What can be done?  While state budgets may be strapped, it may be cost-efficient to implement educational programs in order to prevent an increase in domestic crimes.  Another preventative measure:  don’t cut police department budgets!  If there aren’t sufficient officers in place, criminals will have more opportunities to offend.  And if the effects of decreased security resources illustrated by the recent holiday shopping tragedies are any indication, we cannot afford to under-fund law enforcement.

Stay tuned: LegalMatch is currently mining case detail related to criminal offenses since the Dow Collapsed.  Once we have a sufficient sample of this data we will advise if we see a correlation between the Dow and Crime.

As The Dow Plummets, Will Crime Rates Rise? is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog

Let’s take the Supreme Court case of Cone v. Bell as an example. Gary Cone was found guilty of a brutal double homicide in 1980. For more than a quarter century the case has maneuvered through the courts, (typical of capital punishment cases), with the latest installment coming today in Washington D.C.  Memphis prosecutors failed to release evidence to the defense that Cone was high on amphetamines at the time of the murder. The defense’s main argument was insanity, something that would have spared their client the death penalty. (And prevented 25 years of appeals and millions of dollars in court fees, paid by taxpayers.)

Being high on amphetamines would have lent credence to their claim, but Prosecutors today told the High Court such evidence was irrelevant. Some of the justices fervently disagreed, with Souter going so far as to call the respondent’s argument “utterly irrational.” Justice Stevens commented on the record that he worried about the ethics of the profession.

If the court rules against the state here, Cone might get spared the death penalty. But what about the prosecutors?  Don’t let the Duke Lacrosse case and what happened to disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong fool you-not every defendant is a wealthy white Duke Lacrosse player with money and clout to get a prosecutor disbarred.  In fact, cases such as this usually go silently into the night-or silently into the court’s archives-without anything happening to prosecutors.

Something needs to be done. Prosecutors have an ethical and legal duty to uphold the law; releasing exculpatory evidence to the defense is the law. If they fail to uphold this important constitutional safeguard, they must face discipline. This is a serious transgression-by failing to release evidence they are obligated to give up, they are being dishonest not only to defense counsel, but to the court hearing the case.

Although criminal sanctions may be going too far, some sort of mandatory bar disciplinary action is necessary here. Prosecutors should be motivated to err on the side of disclosure in deciding whether to release evidence to the defense. As things currently stand, some prosecutors seem preoccupied with winning the case, not upholding the law and the principles of the Constitution.

The Hypocrisy of Unethical Prosecutors is a post from: LegalMatch Law Blog