Author Archive for eric-muller
A Small Step Closer to Knowing Who Killed Theresa Allore?
posted by Eric Muller
I blogged last week about my friend John Allore’s search over the weekend of the wooded site in Quebec province where his big sister’s body was discovered nearly three decades ago.
The search party did find some stuff — forensic value currently unknown — and drew lots of attention to this cold case and many others like it across Quebec and across Canada.
Here’s the follow-up article from the National Post. I found it quite moving, and not only because the guy on a quest is my friend.
(Incidentally, if I’m not mistaken, John is wearing a Carolina Hurricanes t-shirt in the photo, which appears today in the National Post. A gutsy move for a Canadian expat returning to Canada on the weekend of Games 6 and 7 of the Stanley Cup series between the ‘Canes and the Edmonton Oilers.)
June 19, 2006 at 10:35 am
Posted in: Criminal Law
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Your Honor Your Father
posted by Eric Muller
A Wyoming trial judge stepped into the role of father to a troubled teenager whose case he’d handled, and he stayed in that role for years after the young man left prison — paying his bills, giving him advice, finding him living quarters, helping him get financial aid and health care — all the while signing his letters “Dad.”
The young man died recently of a drug overdose. His real father is now complaining that the judge’s involvement with the young man was unethical.
An odd case to think about on this Father’s Day.
June 18, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Posted in: Legal Ethics
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The Election … and the Duke Lacrosse Case.
posted by Eric Muller
An odd twist in the Duke lacrosse situation: Durham (NC) prosecutor Mike Nifong’s campaign manager has announced that she’s leaving the Nifong campaign to head the campaign of a write-in challenger.
June 16, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Posted in: Criminal Law
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Searching for Justice for Theresa Allore — And Other Candian Crime Victims
posted by Eric Muller
In the fall of 1978, somebody murdered my friend John Allore‘s big sister Theresa and left her body in the woods in Magog, Quebec. Police investigation at the time was shoddy, and rapidly came to a “blame-the-victim” conclusion.
Since 2001, John has been on a quest to solve his sister’s murder, often without much help from Canadian authorities.
Their do-it-yourself search is drawing significant attention north of the border — not just to Theresa’s murder, but to other “cold cases” and to the frustrations of Canadian crime victims and their families in their dealings with the Canadian criminal investigation bureacracy.
The National Post has a very good article about it that you can read by clicking here.
Best of luck to John and his fellow searchers tomorrow.
June 16, 2006 at 11:19 am
Posted in: Criminal Law
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Issei Internment and the Turkmen Opinion: The Shoe Does Fit.
posted by Eric Muller
I blogged yesterday about Judge Gleeson’s decision in Turkmen v. Ashcroft, permitting the Executive to single out certain illegal aliens for prolonged and unreviewed detention on the basis of race or national origin. I suggested that Judge Gleeson framed his opinion in a way that would support the multi-year incarceration of the Issei in World War II — a racial internment for which the Congress apologized and offered reparations in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
My comparison to the internment of the Issei has led some to cry foul. The claim is that because the Turkmen ruling applies only to illegal aliens, and the Issei were legal resident aliens, the analogy to the Issei internment is inapt, even scandalous.
Not so. The Issei were legal resident aliens until December 7, 1941 — but after that date they were also enemy aliens, over whom the President, by statute, had as complete a power as is imaginable. The Alien Enemy Act (50 U.S.C. sec. 21) gave FDR the power to arrest, detain, and deport aliens of countries with which the U.S. was at war, under rules of his own making, without (or virtually without) judicial review.
Attorney General Francis Biddle decided to offer hearings to individuals arrested as enemy aliens after Pearl Harbor, even though the Alien Enemy Act did not formally require this. But in administering the system of hearings, the government engaged in stark racial discrimination. The government selectively arrested certain German and Italian aliens, and gave them hearings. (These hearings were not models of fairness, it must be noted. But they were hearings of a sort.) The government detained the Issei en masse, and offered hearings to almost none of them — just a very small subset of a couple of thousand who were arrested immediately after Pearl Harbor.
It was this racial selectivity in enforcement — even as to enemy aliens — that led the Congress to apologize and pay reparations in 1988.
And it is just this sort of racial selectivity in enforcement that Judge Gleeson’s opinion in Turkmen permits.
UPDATE: David Cole, one of the Turkmen plaintiffs’ attorneys, draws the parallel with the Issei internment in this piece, “Manzanar Redux,” in today’s Los Angeles Times.
June 16, 2006 at 8:24 am
Posted in: Privacy (National Security)
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Going “Desert Storm” One Better.
posted by Eric Muller
The U.S. military launched an assault against the Taliban yesterday.
They are calling it “Operation Mountain Thrust.”
“We’re very pleased with this code name,” said Lance Corporal Orel Sachs, head of the Pentagon’s Office of Double Entendre.
June 15, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Posted in: Humor
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Japanese Internment Gets A New Breath of Life in the Eastern District of New York
posted by Eric Muller
Federal district judge John Gleeson (E.D.N.Y.) yesterday filed an opinion of potentially enormous significance (.pdf file) in Turkmen v. Ashcroft, a class action challenging the government’s prolonged confinement of Arab and Muslim aliens on immigration charges in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In a nutshell, Judge Gleeson dismissed all claims asserting that the government violated the law in singling the detainees out for arrest and prolonged detention on the basis of their race, religion, and ancestry. He declined to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims challenging the conditions of their confinement.
It is the dismissed claims that interest me, especially the claim that simply because of their nationality and their religion, the government detained these post-9/11 detainees for far longer than necessary after they had received final orders of removal or grants of voluntary departure, without affording them a hearing to determine whether the continued detention was warranted. Naturally, the plaintiffs presented this claim under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.
Judge Gleeson made quick and dismissive work of this claim: these plaintiffs were aliens, not U.S. citizens, and for that reason the government was free to single them out for special enforcement on account of the unadorned fact of their national origin without violating norms of equal protection.
June 15, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Posted in: Constitutional Law
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For the Love of Dear Old Fountainhead U.
posted by Eric Muller
The University of North Carolina Board of Governors is considering the establishment of a college based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Proposals for a college slogan, mascot, and fight song are welcome. Leave a comment.
June 14, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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A Quotable Quote on Karl Rove
posted by Eric Muller
My UNC colleague, presidential historian Bill Leuchtenberg, on the non-indictment of Karl Rove: “This is one of those turning points in history that didn’t turn.”
June 14, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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What Is This Picture? God Only Knows!
posted by Eric Muller
Without googling, or clicking the link in this sentence, see if you can identify this picture that’s in today’s news. (No, it is not the line for the seniors’ early-bird special at the Village Inn.)
June 14, 2006 at 11:37 am
Posted in: Weird
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“An Inconvenient Truth” (and its inauspicious start)
posted by Eric Muller
While at the beach this weekend, I read Al Gore’s new book “An Inconvenient Truth.” It’s sobering and effective. I recommend it highly.
Be advised, though, that the book is not just about global warming. It’s also very much about Al Gore. He intersperses his scientific material, diagrams, photographs, and big-font explanations with family snapshots and small-font autobiography. Coming from a lifelong politician, this material really can be seen as nothing other than campaign literature.
I myself didn’t mind the personal stuff too much, because I admire much of what Gore has done with his life, and I learned some things about his family that I didn’t know. But I do think it would have been smarter for him to leave this material out; including it just makes the job of those who wish to discredit the science he’s advancing that much easier.
I’ll confess, though, to one moment of eye-rolling. And it came early — in the very first column on the very first page. Gore alludes to his son’s near-fatal accident in 1989, and then says this: “[D]uring that traumatic period … I made at least two enduring changes. I vowed always to put my family first, and I also vowed to make the climate crisis the top priority of my professional life.”
I recognize that “putting one’s family first” can mean lots of different things to lots of different families. But I’ll go out on a limb and say that one thing “putting your family first” just can’t mean is being President of the United States.
This opening passage of the book rang false to me — a politician’s platitude. Not a good start for a book about truth.
June 13, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Posted in: Articles and Books
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Name That Hero!
posted by Eric Muller
Many thanks to the fine folks at Concurring Opinions for the chance to blog a bit over here! I’ll do my best not to dirty up the place too much.
I’m not authorized to do this, but I’ll offer a full refund of the Concurring Opinions subscription price to the first commenter who can name the hero I’m pictured with below. (To avoid confusion, that’s me on the right.)
June 13, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Posted in: Uncategorized
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