Category: Legal
I believe him. I really do. And I think that anyone who has been under so much stress for a long time would probably understand this outstanding citizen turned bank robber. I don’t know if I would actually go and rob a bank but who knows?
In any case, this guy from Detroit has been sentenced to two years in prison for robbing banks. Jimmie Lee Fortune started robbing banks in April of 2008. His reason, as he told the judge, was that he needed money to pay for his mother’s plumbing bills. He also needed money to get his driver’s license reinstated. Without money, he wouldn’t have been able to do these things. As such, he decided to go ahead and rob a bank.
After the first successful attempt, he just kept going. Fortune’s MO was quite simple. He would enter a bank and demand money. His threats ran along the lines of “Large bills or I start shooting!” The funny thing is, he was not even armed when he did this.
Then the inevitable happened – he got caught. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman was the one assigned to hear Fortune’s case. He said that he received 17 letters of support for Fortune, who asserts that he was very depressed and stressed at that time. He said that he was having difficulty separating reality from fiction. Prior to his bank robbing spree, he was an outstanding citizen. This is what saved him from a worse fate – more years in prison.
14-year-old Gets The Best Of Chicago CopsPicture this. A 14-year-old boy walks into a police station in Chicago wearing a cop get up. He not only was not found out to be what he really was, he also managed to get an assignment – to patrol in a squad car for a whole 5 hours! It was not till the end of this period that he was found out to be a boy and not a cop.
So how was his real identity discovered? At the end of his “shift,” some officers noticed that the boy’s uniform lacked a star. Apparently, this star comes with the regulation police uniform. One thing led to another and the disguise was uncovered.
What happens to the boy now? He has been charged with impersonating a police officer – something that is as grave as grave can be, we all know that. However, since he is only 14 years old, he was charged as a juvenile and his name has not been released as well.
What do police officers have to say about the whole thing? First, that they are conducting an investigation as it is a serious security breach (Heck, yeah! A 14-year-old being able to pose as a police officer, you think?). Second, that the boy did it because he has aspirations of being a police officer and not because of malicious intent (I wonder, will he still have the chance of becoming a real one?).
At the end of the day, the responsibility falls back in the cops’ court – they have to make sure that they have proper authentication procedures in place.
I don’t know about you but I have always dreamed of working for any one of the government’s intelligence or law agencies; say the FBI or CIA. This year, it seems that the FBI is going to make some people’s dreams come true. According to Reuters, the FBI is launching a mass hiring campaign for agents. The report states:
The FBI said on Monday it had launched one of the largest hiring blitzes in its 100-year history involving 2,100 professional staff vacancies and 850 special agents aimed at filling its most critical vacancies.
The agency, which seeks to protect the United States from terrorist attack, fight crime and catch spies, among other duties, said it currently has more than 12,800 agents and about 18,400 other employees.
Over 2,000 job openings in the FBI – can you imagine that? This is the premier government agency dealing with all sorts of issues and to be part of the FBI is an honor in itself. If you’re wondering why they are conducting a hiring campaign on such a huge scale, the answer lies in many things, one of them the September 11 attack. Though it has long been over, the FBI has since then received a lot of criticism for not having enough people to handle the needs that they face. These include agents and staff who are multilingual and experts in computer science. As such, the agency is seeking to add fresh blood to its ranks.
If you’ve got the skills – and you pass the security check – then this just might be the perfect time to consider a career move.
Without wanting to turn this blog into a National Enquirer of sorts, I just had to share this story about Sharon Stone, in which a judge denies her custody of her 8-year-old son Roan.
Its a terrible thing for any parent, but the things that this legal document speak of, make the old Shazza look very Joan Crawford-esque indeed. Of course she later denied the allegations of wanting to get botox injections for her son’s feet because they were smelly, but the damage was done (who wouldn’t be afraid to leave any child with this woman?), and the judge ruled that Roan stay with his dad, Phil Bronstein, in San Fransisco, and not in L.A. as Sharon wished.
The document, known as the Tentative Statement of Decision, was obtained by TMZ, and said:
“Mother appears to overreact to many medical issues involving Roan…..
Despite his young age, Ms Stone’s alleged over-reactions were “painfully real” to the boy….
….Another example of an overreaction is that Mother suggested that Roan should have Botox injections in his feet to resolve a problem he had with foot odour……As Father appropriately noted, the simple and common sense approach of making sure Roan wore socks with his shoes and used foot deodorant corrected the odour problem without the need for any invasive procedure on this young child.”
…..Father has championed for Roan’s well-being out of, what appears to this court, nothing less than the unconditional love for his son.
……Unfortunately, and for unexplained reasons, it appears that Mother did not involve herself to the extent she could or should have in this process … Mother has attempted to put up roadblocks to Roan’s getting help, or has decided against participating in his care.”
But for me, the clincher was this:
“If Mother has, in fact, limited her career to make herself available for Roan, she has done little to make this evident to Roan, his school or this court.”
Sharon has 2 more adopted kids, I wonder how they’re doing?
It seems like crazy logic, but what’s been happening with record companies and their lawyers these days does indeed sound like JK Rowling’s writings. In “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, Bill Weasley explains to Harry:
“To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs,…..They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft.”
In fact, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who is now in a lawsuit with Universal used that very quote, and more from Rowling’s work in their brief. The legal battle, though it involves the sale of promotional music, is actually a worthy one, one which could implicate our personal cd and LP collections – so what we pay for and buy could very well NOT be ours, and we could get sued by the record companies.
“UMG seems to think that the promotional use only label somehow gives it eternal ownership over the CD,” says the EFF.
“While this might make sense to a goblin living in Harry Potter’s world, it’s not the law under the Copyright Act.”
It should be interesting to see what the US courts decide. Hopefully it won’t mean we live in Harry Potter’s world.
For more on this story, go here.
