Right now, Steve Shannon is attacking Ken Cuccinelli for failing to support a bill of Shannon’s from back in 2007 that Shannon claims would have prevented the pending Charlie-Foxtrot regarding forensic techs being required to testify for drunk driving cases. The problem? His bill would have done no since thing according to “The Jaded JD”:
Most importantly, the bill is completely unrelated to the Melendez-Diaz decision. Melendez-Diaz says the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment allows a criminal defendant to confront the forensic analyst who analyzed the forensic evidence introduced at trial. Not only does Shannon’s bill not presciently recognize a right of confrontation, it restricts the ability of the defendant to object to the admissibility of the forensic certificate:
[…]
So, had Shannon’s bill become law, it wouldn’t have alleviated the current problem because it would itself be invalid under Melendez-Diaz. What’s worse, by linking the bill to Melendez-Diaz and criticizing Cuccinelli for not supporting it, Shannon appears not to realize that. That doesn’t inspire confidence in an Attorney General candidate.
You really need to read the whole thing as they say.
As you may be aware, Caroline County High School football coach Ben Boyd was indicted on July 1st for forgery of a public record and uttering of a public record. Below you’ll find a story from Jon Burkett of WTVR Channel 6 in Richmond (I apologize if you experience popping in the audio but that’s WTVR’s doing, not mine):
By Major Scott Moser’s own admission “the case is currently under investigation” and “could take a couple weeks” according to Jon Burkett. So, you know, don’t worry about making sure the guy is actually guilty or anything, let’s just indict him. Anyone remember the age old quote about being able to indict a ham sandwich? Perfect example here.
In certain situations, that would be alright. If you catch a suspect standing over a dead body with the proverbial smoking gun, then yeah, you would indict the guy while forensics testing and whatnot were still being done. But this situation takes on a completely different light because the sheriff — the chief law enforcement officer in the county — has publicly and falsely accused Boyd of a different crime previously while displaying zero knowledge of the situation.
And according to The Free Lance–Star (get your own link), Boyd was arrested at the school. That’s right, he wasn’t even given the opportunity to turn himself in. After all, when you have a vendetta against a guy, you want to cause the biggest scene and most embarrassment possible.
Who knows, Boyd could very well be guilty of these charges. But the Sheriff’s Office sure as heck doesn’t know for sure since they have “a couple weeks” of investigating to do still.
And, of course, there’s also the matter of Tony Spencer in this whole thing. He is the Commonwealth’s Attorney after all. But at least he’s been mum to the newspapers and other media stating “This case needs to be tried in a court, not in the press.” That’s a far cry from Lippa’s public announcement of vendetta against Boyd previously as well as Lippa’s personal friend (i.e., Jon Burkett) rushing to do a story about the case for WTVR while parroting everything that comes out of the sheriff’s office.
Yes, they’re friends before you ask. If you don’t believe me, think about this: When does WTVR do any stories about Caroline County? When it involves Lippa and his sheriff’s office. I don’t recall them covering the Gaudenzi case (a 14 year cold case) and, after all, Lippa wasn’t involved in the case, only the Virginia State Police was.
I would love to know why Lippa decided to pursue a vendetta against Boyd, an interesting theory has been suggested elsewhere (primarily on one newspaper’s website) — which I don’t plan on repeating on this space currently — but you better hope that the next person Lippa decides to go after it isn’t you or someone you care about.
Paul W. Powell will not be executed tomorrow night.
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay of execution today pending review of his petition for a writ of certiorari to the high court.
The three-sentence order indicates that Powell shouldn’t put but so much faith in the stay, however.
If the court denies the petition, “this stay shall terminate automatically,” according to the order. If it is granted, the stay will not end until the Supreme Court decides the case, the order says.
The image of the hard-bitten soldier grabbing a post-battle smoke may be a cliche, but it’s one that the U.S. Army hopes to change.
To that end, the Texas Medical Center reports that one of its researchers has been awarded $3.7 million grant by the Army to create an anti-smoking video game for military personnel.
Remember this the next time the Army says they don’t have money for soldiers’ body armor or to up-armor HMMWVs. It’s bad enough they’ve been wasting money for almost seven years on “America’s Army” — another video game they created in an attempt to improve recruitment — but this is just ridiculous. And as one commenter on GamePolitics pointed out, if there’s one group that should be able to smoke without being harassed it’s our military personnel.
Del. Chris Peace, R-Hanover, (whose district includes part of Caroline County) and Del. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodbridge, (whose district includes Fauquier County) also are unchallenged.
Yes, while Chris Peace’s district — the 97th— does include a portion of Caroline County, it also includes a portion of Spotsylvania County as indicated by the map below:
Spotsylvania County is obviously part of The Free Lance–Star‘s coverage area so they might want to correctly point out which districts are composed of what counties.
Of course, these are the same geniuses that think all of the 99th House district is part of the 28th Senate district; it isn’t.
Someone needs to invest in message coordination. First, this e-mail from Jody Wagner in which she attacks Ken Cuccinelli:
During his comments, Cuccinelli said “I tell people this is a rematch, a math test, and a debate, along this ticket. And I think we should just have the math test this week and end the Wagner-Bolling race right now. Put her out of her misery!” Well, we couldn’t agree more with a math test, so we took a look at the numbers, and posted the results below. Now we need YOUR HELP in spreading the news:
The Warner-Kaine-Wagner Math Test
2
“Best Managed State” awards
3
“Best State for Business” awards
1
“Best State to Raise a Child” award
$731 Million
2004’s record new investment in public education
$1.6 Billion
2008’s record investment in higher education facilities
195,000
New jobs created in the Warner and Kaine administrations
= The Warner-Kaine-Wagner Record of Success
First, isn’t she running for Lieutenant Governor, not Attorney General? So why is she focusing on what Ken Cuccinelli has said and not her opponent Bill Bolling? She must really be on the defensive if she’s spending time responding to a wisecrack remark made by someone that isn’t even her opponent!
Anyway, check out these quotes from “Stand Up For Virginia” (get your own link), a “A Project of the Democratic Party of Virginia”, where they attack Republicans for refusing to raise taxes on businesses in the middle of a recession:
Nearly 300,000 Virginians are unemployed — with unemployment rates in places like Martinsville as high as 20.2%.
unemployment rate in Martinsville, the highest rate in the state
That’s the real legacy of eight years of Democratic (snort) leadership under Warner–Kaine folks: 20.2% unemployment in one city in our state. Wagner doesn’t get to cherry pick and talk about some stupid award that Virginia has received and then gets to ignore massive unemployment rates in the state and in particular areas, especially when the political party she’s affiliated with is using those same numbers to attack the other side of the aisle for not raising taxes.
I asked that question in a previous post regarding Bobby Scott’s youth crime and gang prevention bill that Rob Wittman is a cosponsor of. It was an admittedly snarky argument since 99.99% of the stuff Congress does has no authorization in the United States Constitution.
However, as I was browsing the legislation that Wittman is currently cosponsoring I came across H.R. 450. H.R. 450 would “require Congress to specify the source of authority under the United States Constitution for the enactment of laws”. The text of the bill reads:
Each Act of Congress shall contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that Act. The failure to comply with this section shall give rise to a point of order in either House of Congress. The availability of this point of order does not affect any other available relief.
So Wittman is cosponsoring legislation that would require people that introduce legislation in Congress to enumerate where in the Constitution it says that Congress has such authority to enact the legislation while simultaneously cosponsoring legislation that Congress has no authority in the Constitution to enact. Unless, of course, I missed a mention to youth crime and gang prevention in the Constitution. It wasn’t in the edition I have, but who knows, right?
While H.R. 450 hasn’t been passed — and never will be — Rob Wittman is supposed to be a leader, correct? One of 435 special people elected due to the their perceived unique abilities by the public, including their leadership ability. Now, if Rob Wittman was a leader, shouldn’t he be following this resolution before it was even pass and ensuring that every piece of legislation that he sponsored or cosponsored specified where in the Constitution it was permitted and authorized?
Forensic scientists may be more frequent visitors to Virginia courtrooms as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today that laboratory reports are testimonial evidence and therefore invoke the Confrontation Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The court split 5-4, with Justice Scalia, the author of Crawford v.Washington, the 2004 opinion that rewrote the concept of what prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys usually put in the category of hearsay testimony.
The opinion shifted the analysis from whether an out-of-court statement is reliable to whether it was “made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the treatment would be available for use at a later trial.”
That’s the whole purpose of laboratory analysis, so Crawford clearly applies, Scalia concluded in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.
Head on other to their site to read the whole thing.
Just think of the impact this might have on prosecutions in the state if this is actually required. Requiring a scientists to come for a DNA test for a murder is one thing, but every drug charge is (usually) accompanied by a test by the Department of Forensic Science that states that the substance the suspect is accused of processing or selling was actually a drug. I don’t know how many of this test are done every year or how many are actually used at trial but if a tech that does a 100 of those tests a day has to be in a dozen jurisdictions on the same day just to testify for the cases there are going to some major problems.
