Norm Pattis is annoyed with a proposal to change a rule of the courthouse:

Here's prima facie proof that Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Chase Rogers has lost her mind: She wants to permit folks to bring camera phones into the courthouse.

What is she thinking? The courts are a human zoo. We don't need more distractions in the halls of justice. Not to mention the fact that the marshalls already appear to have trouble enough maintaining any sense of decorum.

I think Norm's the one who's crazy, and I left a comment on his blog saying so, but I decided to say it here as well.

It's almost impossible to get a mobile phone these days without a camera in it, so the rule against camera phones amounts to a rule against all mobile phones. It puts us out of touch with our friends, family, and coworkers for the whole time we're at the courthouse.

Maybe lawyers like Norm regard this as just one more incovenience, or maybe they're careful to choose courthouse-compatible phones, after all, they're there to do an important job.

But most of us who visit the courthouse don't do so on a regular basis, and little that happens in the courthouse is a defining part of our lives, as it is for lawyers and a few of their clients. We're there for traffic tickets, or civil nonsense, or jury duty. Why the heck should we suffer this inconvenience?

For that matter, while I can understand not photographing the proceedings or the jurors, for the other 80% of the time we're there, the court has no business preventing us from taking pictures.  It's public property.

In a way, Norm agrees with this, but doesn't think it's important:

In fairness, the chief is only calling for permission to have the camera phones brought into the courthouse. It would be impermissible to use them in the courtroom during an acutal proceeding. But that really is an invitation to disaster: another rule to enforce in a forum that is already wild enough for my tastes...

This is another gesture on the part of the chief to inspire public confidence in the courts. She's created something called the Public Services and Trust Commission. If she really wants public trust to improve, she should let judges spend their time moving cases along, and not policing the galleries to make sure no one is shooting a prohibited picture.

That puzzles me. Why would the judge be looking out for photographers? Don't Connecticut courtooms have deputies?

Hunting for photographers may be extra work for the court staff, but so what? Is it right to inconvenience hundreds of thousands of citizens to make the jobs of public servants easier?

I have a compromise plan: Relax the rules against chewing gum, wearing hats, and reading magazines in court and use the time saved to watch out for people taking pictures. Or would that be too wild and crazy?

I'm working at one of my clients' offices all day today. It's "Disco Friday," meaning everyone is supposed to dress in Disco-esque clothing. I'm not partaking. I don't have the music in me.

Actually, unless I see somebody in Tony Manero's white suit, I have no idea what dressing like Disco means. The last time I worked in an office, it was an engineering environment that was almost all guys. We all dressed about how you'd expect. My client is a human-resources-type company with a lot of women. I look at them, and they seem to be dressed a little bit flashy, but I can't tell if that's Disco, or if they just dress that way.

They have other days like "Ugly Shirt Friday" and "Fuzzy Bunny Slipper Day" which got me thinking: If I ran a company---the Windypundit Media Empire---what sort of special days could I have for my employees?

A few ideas:

• Three Hour Lunch Tuesday
• Redesign The Website For No Reason Day
• Bring Your Guns To Work Monday
• Multiplayer Halo Tournament Day
• Leave At Noon Friday

Any other suggestions?

This last Saturday, my dad was scheduled to go home after two months in the hospital, and my wife and I were gearing up to handle it.

The end of his last hospital stay, a year ago, things had gotten ugly. After being stuck in a hospital room for six weeks, he just wanted to leave. Unfortunately, the hospital staff bungled his discharge and they had to keep him there an extra week until they straightened everything out. That was enough to turn him into an angry son of a bitch. When it was time to take him home, he was pissed as hell and very demanding.

This stay was even longer---in part because it was extended two weeks when he caught a hospital infection---so my wife and I were preparing for a long and tiring day.

When we got to his room, the staff were just preparing to shave him and wash his hair. I went down to the pharmacy to pick up his discharge medicines, and by the time I got back he was ready to go. We took him downstairs and loaded him in the car, tucked in under a hospital blanket to keep him warm.

We drove dad home in silence, and he just stared out at the new world outside the hospital. It was a beautiful Spring day. The trees were filled with new leaves, the grass was all lush and green, the lilacs were in bloom. Somehow I hadn't noticed this happening while I was visiting him every day in the hospital.

He had to struggle to make it up the stairs into the apartment, but once he got inside, he grabbed his walker and made his way to the bedroom. Despite the disturbing episodes of delerium in the hospital, now that he was home he had very little trouble remembering how his world worked. We helped him out of his street clothes and into bed. In a few minutes, he was napping comfortably.

It couldn't have gone better.

Based on my vast legal experience---reading crime novels and surfing the legal blogosphere---I have occasionally come up with a few radical ideas for criminal justice reform. As with my previous effort, this idea is probably unworkable, unconstitutional, and a sure election loss for any politician who proposes them. But what's a blog for?

When a cop wants to search your private belongings, he basically has two options. If he can meet certain legal requirements, he can order you to submit to a search. But if he's just fishing on a hunch, the only way he can do his search is if you give him permission.

Now suppose there's a bus stopped at a station, and while the driver is off dealing with paperwork, two police officers board it and take up stations at each exit. A third cop boards and starts interrogating the passengers, asking to search their belongings. If he finds bags of cocaine, can they be used in court?

In the real life case on which this is based, admissibility of the drug evidence turned on whether the defendants gave the cops permission to search.

The defense lawyers argued that the search was invalid because the defendants didn't think they could refuse what appeared to be an order from a cop. The court disagreed and admitted the evidence.

(To my way of thinking, when a guy carrying enough drugs to earn felony federal prison time submits to a police search, it's pretty obvious he didn't think he had a choice. But I'm not a lawyer, so I don't understand these things.)

The defense appealed and won in the circuit court, which ruled that passengers wouldn't feel free to refuse a police request under such circumstances, therefore it was a coerced search and the evidence was illegal.

Now the government appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in a 6-3 decision that the the search was legal:

...we conclude that the police did not seize respondents when they boarded the bus and began questioning passengers. The officers gave the passengers no reason to believe that they were required to answer the officers' questions. When Officer Lang approached respondents, he did not brandish a weapon or make any intimidating movements. He left the aisle free so that respondents could exit. He spoke to passengers one by one and in a polite, quiet voice. Nothing he said would suggest to a reasonable person that he or she was barred from leaving the bus or otherwise terminating the encounter...

This sets up a reasonable person standard: A search is consensual if a reasonable person would have believed he could refuse the police request.

Think about that for a minute. This case was argued all the way to the Supreme Court, with a reversal at every step up the ladder. Three of the Supreme Court judges disagreed with it. That's about a dozen judges who considered the question, and almost half of them reached what turns out to be the wrong answer.

Yet according to the decision, any reasonable bus rider should have been able to understand what was happening.

Results like this are why the reasonable person standard is sometimes derisively called the reasonable Supreme Court Justice standard: If Justice Scalia was riding that bus, he would have known what to do, so the court may conclude that everyone else could have figured it out as well.

It seems to me that there's a fundamental flaw with how the courts make decisions about trial motions. The general rule is that the jury is responsible for deciding the facts of the case---whether the defendant did the things for which he stands accused---but matters of law---such as what evidence can be presented to the jury---are decided by the judge.

I'm reasonably sure that makes sense. But when the legal principle behind a motion involves making a judgment about what a reasonable person would conclude under a specific set of circumstances...doesn't that sound like the court is making a finding of fact? Shouldn't the question be decided by a jury?

For a more concrete example, consider the situation where the police enter a house and find evidence of a crime. At trial, the defense tries to suppress the evidence because the police entered without a warrant. The prosecutor says they didn't need a warrant because the owner let them in. The owner denies giving permission.

That's a he-said/he-said situation, and it's currently up to the judge to decide whether to believe the police or the defendant. But isn't deciding credibility exactly the sort of thing we use juries for all the time? Shouldn't the question of who to believe be presented to a jury?

Obviously, it can't be the same jury that would hear the evidence if it's allowed. We need a special jury to decide facts for motions. Perhaps the judge could convene a special motion jury.

To save time and money, the jury could be smaller than the main jury, or the selection process could be streamlined, or maybe the jury could be reusable, like a grand jury, answering questions for several trials. Maybe its verdicts shouldn't have to be unanimous to avoid long deliberations.

It would still be a lot of work, and it would be a huge change in the way trials are conducted, but I just can't see a reason why findings of fact in the course of deciding a motion shouldn't require a jury.

From the U.K. comes a new law that its backers claim will ban violent pornography:

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated.

The victim's mother has been campaigning for a law that would ban even the mere possession or viewing of such images, essentially treating some forms of adult pornography as if it involved children.

Then there's the question of just how the law defines the banned material:

"Obviously anything that leads to violence against women has to be taken very seriously," says Baroness Miller. "But you have to be very careful about the definition of 'extreme pornography' and they have not nearly been careful enough."

She has suggested the new act adopt the legal test set out in the OPA, which bans images which "tend to deprave and corrupt".

But the government has sought to broaden the definition and the bill includes phrases such as "an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life".

When asked about how this law will affect people who enjoy a little kinky sex, Mrs Longhurst responds in true nanny form:

There is no reason for this stuff. I can't see why people need to see it.

That's the creed of every petty legislative tyrant in the world: I don't need it, and I don't understand it, so we ought to ban it for my enjoyment.

And make no mistake, this is all about Mrs Longhurst's enjoyment. She can invoke her poor dead daughter all she wants, but her daughter will be just as dead after this law has passed. This law is about making Mrs Longhurst feel good about herself. It makes her feel like she did something to honor her daughter.

While I'd be happy to see her recover control over her life after this terrible tragedy, she has no business hurting other people in the process. This law will subject people with private sexual quirks to intrusive and humiliating investigations. They may even end up in jail.

Next time Mrs Longhurst responds to criticism by playing the dead daughter card, she's likely to be surprised when her critics respond with the cards for their imprisoned spouses, brothers, parents, and children.

(Hat tip: Reason.)

In prostitution, everybody involved gets something they want. It's a victimless crime. That doesn't stop cops and prosecutors from going after it anyway.

From the AP wire:

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - A woman convicted two weeks ago of being the "D.C. Madam" hanged herself Thursday, apparently making good on her vow never to go to prison for running a high-end Washington prostitution ring. The body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found in a shed near her mother's home about 20 miles northwest of Tampa.

That's not even the first one:

One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial.

So, two women driven to suicide when prosecuted for a victimless crime. Way to go, dickheads.

One of my new favorite sites is Photoshop Disasters, which features actual commercial photoshop work that is bad or stupid.

Check out, for example, this ad for Elizabeth Arden lipstick, where they've gone to the trouble to hire Catherine Zeta-Jones, and then photoshopped away all her actual facial features. Or how about this impossibly thin babe? Or this jaw-dropping horror? Or OH MY GOD! HER LEGS! HER LEGS!

Some of the best stuff is for movie posters and DVD covers. Once movie production is finished, there's no way to get the cast back together---in costume and makeup---to photograph promotional pieces, so the promotional art has to be assembled in Photoshop from existing images. The result is often quite hideous, with actors pulled in from different scenes with different lighting, heads pasted onto bodies, faces pasted onto heads, and arms and legs slid around to impossible locations.