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Cell phone privacy is at risk: depending on your carrier, almost anyone may be able to find out about any phone call you make.

For more, go to: CBS news story/video

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Connecticut's highest court ruled that Michael Skakel, a member of the extended Kennedy clan, was properly tried, convicted and sentenced for the 1975 murder of a 15-year-old neighbor with whom he was infatuated.

The justices laid some blame upon Skakel's defense lawyer Michael Sherman, a high-profile attorney and frequent guest legal analyst on Court TV and other cable news networks. Among other things, the court wrote that Sherman failed to object at trial to the prosecution's use in closing argument of an audio-visual montage featuring Martha' Moxley's image in conjunction with an excerpt from a tape recording in which Skakel told a book writer about how he had allegedly masturbated in a tree above the spot where Moxley's body was later found.

Viewing the matter on the merits, the appeals court rejected out of hand Skakel's complaints about what the defense described as the prosecution's "movie":

"The state engaged in appropriate and effective advocacy by using trial exhibits to highlight certain evidence and inferences. See Manuet, T.A.,Trial Techniques (Little, Brown 4th Ed. 1996) p. 369 ("Successful courtroom techniques maximize the use of exhibits and other demonstrative aids . . . . Closing arguments should use. . . those exhibits admitted in evidence that corroborate and highlight the main points of [the] argument."); Lubet, S., Modern Trial Advocacy (Nat'l Inst. for Trial Advocacy, 1997) p. 493 ("[V]isual aids can be extremely valuable during final argument. Counsel is generally free to use any exhibit that has been admitted in evidence and also to create visual displays solely for the purpose of final argument.")...

"The state's display of Martha alive, and then of her body at the crime scene while playing this passage was not a blatant appeal to "passion" as defendant suggests. The state appropriately displayed the crime scene pictures to define the defendant's panic. The changing frame from the picture of Martha alive to the crime scene photos underscored what he knew at that point, and Mrs. Moxley did not.

"Just as the state should not be deprived of its most valuable evidence unless there is a compelling reason to do so, the state should not be prohibited from making its best arguments. The state's use of audio and photographic exhibits during argument was a matter of effective advocacy. The state did not, as defendant claims, distort the evidence in any respect. By placing certain exhibits next to defendant's words, or by displaying two related exhibits simultaneously, the state was making explicit the inferences it was asking the jury to draw. This is the job of an advocate... [Belli, M.M., Modern Trials (2d Ed. 1982), Vol. 5, Section 70.18 ("To increase learning, appeal to as many of the five senses as you can")]."

For additional analysis of the closing audio-visual montage, go here.

See also: Brian Carney and Neal Feigenson, "Visual Persuasion in the Michael Skakel Trial: Enhancing Advocacy through Interactive Media Presentations."

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Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants are charged with directing a mass murder in the Iraqi village of Dujail in 1982. They are appearing before a special tribunal of five Iraqi judges in Baghdad. Hussein and his subordinates face the death penalty if convicted.

=>Visit Court TV:Saddam says he won't return to court

=>Visit Court TV: Woman describes torture

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Former President Hussein is apparently adopting 'guerilla theater' tactics inside the courtroom. It is an approach not uncommon in political trials, such as the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and other defendants in the so-called Chicago Seven Trial in 1969.

The Chicago Seven defendants were protesters against the Vietnam War who were arrested on their way to a planned anti-war demonstration in Chicago. They were charged with various crimes, including intending and conspiring to cross state lines to incite a riot.

During the trial, Hoffman and Rubin staged compelling publicity stunts in court, such as dressing in judicial robes and responding irreverently to the prosecutor's questions and the judge's reprimands.

These theatrical gestures, like Saddam Hussein's sporting a dishdasha in court (in lieu of Western dress) with a copy of the Koran in hand, not only aim to draw the attention of mass media. They also seek to highlight the political nature of the trial. By shining a spotlight on the trial process itself, the defendants' 'trial within a trial' seeks to produce a chaotic or 'circus-like' atmosphere inside the courtroom. The objective is to erode the legitimacy of the legal proceeding.

(On February 18, 1970, all of the defendants in the Chicago Seven trial were found not guilty on the conspiracy charges. Five defendants were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot. Two years later, however, these convictions were reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.)

For more on the Chicago Seven Trial, see Pnina Lahav's "Theater in the Courtroom."

For additional images from the Hussein trial visit here.

Update (3/17/06):

Judge reprimands Saddam Hussein for speech, then closes courtroom

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Saddam Hussein, testifying for the first time in his trial, called on Iraqis to stop killing each other and instead fight U.S. troops. The judge angrily reprimanded him for making a political speech and ordered the public to leave the courtroom.

In a shouting match, chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman told Saddam, "You used to be a head of state. You are a defendant now."

Saddam, dressed in a black suit and wearing large reading glasses, repeatedly brushed off the judge's demands that he address the charges against him -- the killing of 148 Shiites and the imprisonment and torture of others during a crackdown in the 1980s.

Instead, he read from a prepared text, addressing the "great Iraqi people" -- a phrase he often used in his presidential speeches -- and said he was "pained" by the recent wave of Sunni-Shiite violence.

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Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog

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See also: Findlaw's "Legal News and Commentary" - Special coverage of the war on terrorism

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Trial and terror: The Islamic Society of Boston is claiming that a media conspiracy has unfairly linked them to terrorists in an effort to halt plans for a new mosque in Roxbury, MA. The Society has filed libel suits against two Boston news outlets, the Boston Herald and Channel 25.

Both sides claim to be fighting for core First Amendment freedoms.

For more, see: The Boston Phoenix

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Concerning the questionable legality of the arrest and prolonged custody of suspected terrorist and U.S. citizen, Jose Padillo, Robert A. Levy, of the Cato Institute, writes: "When Americans are taken into custody, they have the right to retain an attorney. Congress must first set the rules. Then an impartial judge, not the president, should make the ultimate decision as to whether the arrest and imprisonment comport with the Constitution."

For more, see "Jose Padilla: No Charges and No Trial, Just Jail"

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You can find clearly written overviews of upcoming Supreme Court cases at: Cornell's Legal Information Institute.

The Institute is now offering free details on high-profile cases before they are argued at the nation's highest court. The reviews are written by Cornell law students for the lay public. The goal is to help non-lawyers grasp the issues at stake and why they are important.
The Institute also offers free public access to a vast collection of U.S. laws, court decisions and related legal materials.
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For reliable legal news in general see:

law.com and

law.com/index

See also Peter Suber's comprehensive "Legal News Sources."

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"Judge Judy Assigned To Saddam Trial:" go to The Spoof.com

Judge Judy to take charge of Iraqi legal system

BAGHDAD (AP) Under shelter of darkness and multi-layered tiers of heavily armed security, a newly appointed American judicial figure was wisked into an interior chamber of the Central Baghdad Court Building early this morning. At the crack of dawn today, in their boldest legal move yet, frustrated U.S. Administration officials took a drastic step against deteriorating perceptions of fairness in the case against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein This most recent escalation of American influence comes with President Bush's surprise call on the popular American day-time judge, Judge Judy, to take over the chair in Saddam'sCrimes Against Humanity trial in Iraq...

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Behind the Michael Jackson indictment: visit The Smoking Gun

On the "circus-like" atmosphere that attended the Jackson trial: visit here.

The presence of cameras inside the courtroom has sparked much debate. For more on this subject visit npr's "Justice Talking."

See also CSPAN's "Television and the Judicial System."

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The MacDonald's coffee cup case and the tort reform movement:

The New York Law Journal

November 23, 2004, Tuesday

LAWYER'S BOOKSHELF;
Distorting the Law: Politics, Media and the Litigation Crisis
Reviewed by Richard K. Sherwin

[Richard K. Sherwin is the author of "When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line Between Law and Popular Culture" and professor of law at New York Law School.]

"I do believe the lawsuits -- I don't believe, I know -- that the lawsuits are causing health care costs to rise in America. That's why I'm such a strong believer in medical liability reform." -- George W. Bush

"John Edwards and I support tort reform. We both believe that, as lawyers." -- John Kerry.

Everyone seems to support tort reform these days. But do people really know what they are buying into? If John Kerry and other members of his party had read William Haltom's and Michael McCann's new book one wonders whether they would have been so quick to hop onto the tort reform bandwagon. Did they realize how this popular brand of "common sense" was constructed, and what went into it? Did they realize that once you adopt a particular way of talking about things you inherit a whole belief system?

"Distorting the Law" provides readers with an understanding of why, when John Kerry endorsed tort reform, he unwittingly joined battle in the culture wars -- and for the wrong camp. Based on extensive interviews and an analysis of nearly two decades of news reporting in the mass media, the authors demonstrate how routine coverage of tort litigation sensationalizes carefully targeted cases -- and in the process exploits popular negative stereotypes about lawyers, perpetuates myths about the so-called "litigation crisis," and disseminates legal folktales that effectively shifts blame from corporations to "irresponsible" victims. The book vividly illustrates how legal lore coursing through the mass media frames the way most people speak and think about tort reform.

As Haltom and McCann make clear, the tort reform movement wasn't born overnight. It took decades of concerted and patient planning. From the 1970s on, lobbyists, policymakers, intellectuals and journalists worked together to manufacture a new form of legal lore. These "populist tort reformers" drilled down deep and came up with a fine-grained common sense belief system that could be embedded in and disseminated by popular tort stories. These were mythic tales, parables really, with iconic characters and vivid details. For example, have you heard the one about the psychic who lost her powers after a CAT scan and sued for damages? How about the guy who sued after having grown addicted to milk? Or what about the elderly woman who won a $2.9 million jury verdict against McDonald's after she spilled a cup of hot coffee in her lap?

These popular [and grossly distorted] law stories could be tag lines in a Jay Leno comedy monologue. In fact, most of them have been. And that's the point. Told from a certain angle, these anecdotal tales are funny, and pathetic, but they pack a powerful moral punch. It's what they've been designed to do. They warn us about [1] slackers, self-professed victims, who insist on blaming others for their own faults; [2] greedy and unscrupulous lawyers who play the system for cash; and [3] hapless jurors who get hoodwinked in the process. These carefully chosen narratives reveal the plague of lawyers in our midst and the litigation explosion that they've unleashed.

Of course, social scientists over the years have marshaled empirical data showing there is no litigation explosion. As Marc Galanter has recently written, in most forums "the absolute number of trials has undergone a sharp decline." According to Haltom and McCann, it's a familiar scenario. The experts trot out their statistical findings and expect that "the truth shall set us free." The problem is, no one seems to be listening -- certainly not the public.

Why not? Part of the reason, as Berkeley linguist George Lakoff explains, is that "Frames trump facts." The words we hear and use, like the images we see, make sense in reference to particular frames [including images, metaphors, and anecdotes]. When Johnny Cochran tells jurors to "keep your eyes on the prize" he is cuing up images from the popular civil rights documentary by that name. Likewise, when prospective voters are shown a "menacing" image of Willie Horton or a pack of wolves, they are being cued to experience fear in connection with domestic security concerns. To comprehend or be moved by a fact, it has to fit the frame.

What, then, is the ordinary common sense frame for tort reform? In a brilliant analysis, Haltom and McCann show that it's the same frame that dominates the conservative social policy agenda championed by President Bush and the Republican Party. At its core lies an ethos of personal responsibility, self-discipline and self-reliance. As Governor Bush admonished in his State of the State Address in 1995: "Discipline, strong values, and strict rules go hand-in-hand with our love for our children ... [We] must build community-based boot camps and detention centers ... Texas must lower to 14 the age at which the most violent juveniles can be tried as adults." Lakoff calls this the "Strict Father" frame. And it's this frame that the tort reformers have tapped into.

Backed by conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and using sophisticated marketing and publicity techniques through organizations like the American Tort Reform Association, tort reformers have exploited popular scripts lifted from the culture wars play book. The moral of their stories is clear: lawyers are undermining the core ethos of personal responsibility and self-reliance by fostering frivolous "litigation lotteries" which promise undeserved windfalls.

Haltom and McCann have made a real contribution by helping us to see the connection between tort reform and the deeper cultural movement of which it is a part. Some of this, of course, is hardly new. Public relations and the engineering of consent have been with us since the early twentieth century. For example, in 1922, Walter Lippmann wrote: "A leader or an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is the master of the current situation." Over the years, spin techniques have gotten better -- the beneficiary of numerous insights garnered from social psychology, cognitive anthropology, and linguistics. In addition, the scene of spin has shifted from arenas focused exclusively upon the spoken and printed word. Advocates must now adapt their message to new forms of communication technology, most notably the ubiquitous electronic screen.

"Distorting the Law" offers an unparalleled introduction to the social construction of meaning in the tort reform domain. Its lucid and highly informative analysis invites lawyers to rethink the role and nature of persuasion in the age of mass media. It will not do simply to rail against the media for colluding with the distortions propagated by pop tort reformers, as if the absence of a countervailing frame, with an equally compelling core ethos supported by equally vivid images and anecdotes, were not also to blame. Mass culture is not about to go away. It is incumbent upon advocates to understand its various logics, counter its distortions as best they can, and harness its unprecedented power to communicate preferred values and interests.

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For more on the MacDonald's coffee cup case in particular, and the tort reform movement in general, see:

The Tort Reform Finder

See also PBS's The Journal - Editorial Report

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