Here’s a fantastic article and video about the White House honeybees. Yet a blurb last year about a White House bee swarm prompted one commenter to accuse Michelle Obama of breaking a D.C. ordinance stating that hives can’t be kept within 500 feet of a residence (although “enclosed properties” are exempt—does the White House fence count?). Hobbyist beekeeping is legal in some cities, including Denver, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco, but not in most, including Providence—and that’s a shame.

This photo is of my thumb as I hold up a frame full of bees in my Rhode Island backyard. I intended to document the bees’ progress, but I might also be documenting myself breaking the law. more »

The story of Betty Anne Waters, Roger Williams University School of Law ‘98, just had to be a movie. Hilary Swank snagged the lead and heads an amazing cast in the upcoming movie ‘Conviction’. Ms. Waters is featured in the Summer 2010 Amicus, the magazine of the RWU School of Law. (The school is rightfully proud of this illustrious alumna, and must be pretty excited about this movie). According to IMDB the original choice to play the lead was Naomi Watts (I might have gone with Amy Ryan) and the filming was done in Ann Arbor (waaa).

The February issue of Rhode Island Monthly covered this incredible story. Betty’s brother Kenneth had been convicted in Massachusetts of a murder that occurred in 1980. Convinced of his innocence, she set her course.

Though she dropped out of high school as a teen, her crusade sent her back to the classroom, first at Community College of Rhode Island, then Rhode Island College, then Roger Williams University School of Law. She’s now a brand-new lawyer, with her brother as her only client.

What tenacity. That’s one helluva sister. I will not spoil the ending; Betty Anne Waters now works with the Innocence Project. The film is scheduled to be released this fall — should be quite an event around these parts.

Often referred to by defendants (without irony) as “getting violated” the old hair-trigger violation threshold of the Rhode Island criminal justice system is now a thing of the past. According to R.I.’s Future, as of last Saturday a law sponsored in the Senate by Senators Perry, Levesque, Miller, Metts, and Sosnoski, and in the House by District Two rep, and Dose contributor David Segal,

. . . now requires the dismissal of any probation violation or violation of a suspended sentence that is based on a new criminal charge for which the defendant is not convicted within a reasonable period of time, or is acquitted or dismissed.

This has been a long battle and the parties involved should be proud of their hard work. The legislation had previously been vetoed twice by Governor Carcieri, who seems to be consistently on the wrong side of everything. Matt Jerzyk does a great job explaining the changes in the law over at R.I.’s Future. This new law corrects a gravely unjust regime — we are all better for it. And don’t forget the above names come election time. . . Dave worked real hard on this one.

I did not see this coming. The editorial board of The Providence Journal has come out in favor of ending our government’s futile war on drugs by legalizing, regulating and taxing all illicit drugs and placing addiction in the public health realm where it belongs. The title of the piece “Silver or lead?” refers to the ‘choice’ given to Mexican officials by the violent drug cartels. The recent murders in Ciudad Juarez of a U.S. consulate official and her husband have brought to our attention the unbelievable death toll the drug war is exacting right across the border. Juarez, a city of 1.5 million people, had over 2600 murders — last year. The editorial takes Obama to task for his recent offer of $1.4 billion in aid to Mexico and Central America to help fight the drug lords, characterized as “money down the drain”.

The time has come to end this war, and recognize reality. It is impossible to stop an illicit business that creates fortunes in poor countries.

This is an excellent piece which should persuade any people who, for whatever reason, have yet to see the light on this issue.

The Senate commission chaired by Senator Joshua Miller (D-Cranston) has recommended the decriminalization of an ounce or less of marijuana. According to the ProJo, the panel

. . .voted Tuesday to approve the contents of a 24-page final report that concludes that “marijuana law reform” would save Rhode Island a substantial amount of money by avoiding “costly arrests [and] incarcerations due to simple possession of marijuana.”

So a fiscal meltdown will finally bring about what decades of government data and reasoned arguments (from liberals and conservatives) could not. Okay, I’ll take it.

Opposing panel member Central Falls Police Chief Joseph Moran trotted out that long-discredited malarkey about ’sending the wrong message’ calling marijuana “a dangerous drug”. Children get their ‘messages’ from their parents not the general assembly or the police chiefs of America. Former hall monitor and current Attorney General Patrick Lynch also opposes decriminalization (anyone hoping for Carcieri Redux will be interested in this man’s gubernatorial platform). What world do these people live in? Or what decade? It’s as if they were frightened as children by an episode of Dragnet, and have read or heard absolutely nothing on the topic ever since.

So let me take this opportunity to wish a Happy St. Patrick’s Day to Mister Lynch and Mister Moran. Feel free to hoist a pint or two of ‘the right message’.

With the General Assembly’s likely overturn of the Domestic Partners Funeral Arrangements bill’s veto by Gov. Carcieri only days away, NOM-RI’s Christopher Plante has issued an entreaty not to overturn the veto — arguing, among other things, that adequate provision already exists under Rhode Island law. To wit:

The right of any person, without regard to sexual preference or relationship to the decedent, to serve as a designated funeral-planning agent is already expressly guaranteed by Rhode Island Law 5-33.1-4. That statute only requires a simple notarized form naming an agent.

Mr. Plante is partly correct and partly not. He is incorrect in that “that statute” in fact describes escrow accounts relating to funeral service contracts. The statute outlining the form of designation is in fact 5-33.3-4.

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‘Daylight Saving Time’ ends at 2am. Set clocks back one hour. According to National Geographic News the point of DST was to make more hours of light during the evening.

The drive behind the switch was “to adjust daylight hours to when most people are awake and about,” Mosley said.

Daylight saving time decreases the amount of daylight in the morning hours, so that more daylight is available during the evening.

Not everyone benefits from the daylight saving time change, Mosley conceded. Farmers and others who rise before dawn may have to operate in the dark a while longer before daybreak.

. . . often causing udder confusion.

A federal jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum of Providence to pay $675,000 to four record labels for illegally downloading and sharing music files online. That works out to roughly $22,500 per song which Tenenbaum considers quite reasonable.  According to HuffPo,

Tenenbaum said he was thankful that the case wasn’t in the millions and contrasted the significance of his fine with the maximum.

“That to me sends a message of ‘We considered your side with some legitimacy,’” he said. “$4.5 million would have been, ‘We don’t buy it at all.’”

State representatives David Segal and Edith Ajello have written a thoughtful piece in today’s Providence Journal laying out their reasons for voting against H5044, which would criminalize all prostitution (including that which occurs indoors). They lay out the realities that might actually cause this proposed legislation to weaken efforts to prosecute the traffickers while sending victims of trafficking to prison. Segal and Ajello support separate legislation, citing the director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Section of the Civil Rights Division, Robert Moosy who has noted. . .

. . . that trafficking victims usually fear law enforcement precisely because they worry they will be prosecuted for prostitution. The proposed law would legitimate and deepen this fear, and lessen the likelihood that women would approach the authorities.

In May the Providence Journal covered the general assembly’s fight over the controversial bill, identifying state and local police departments as supporters while,

Opponents of the bill generally fall into two categories: those such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes what it views as an intrusion into peoples’ privacy, and those such as members of Brown University Students Against Human Trafficking, who say that criminalizing indoor prostitution will mean prosecuting prostitutes, who they view as victims.

Providence Journal columnist Edward Fitzpatrick has used a situation facing Representative David Segal to illustrate problems resulting from the recent speech-in-debate ruling by the state Supreme Court.  Always erring on the side of caution, Segal has sought a ruling from the Ethics Commission regarding his connections with FairVote, and has not as yet received any guidance.

In any case, Segal said, “We are in an awkward situation. A part-time legislature requires people to have incomes outside the legislature. By and large, people want to do the right thing, but reasonable people have different conceptions of what the right thing is. And it’s valuable to have an entity that can draw a bold line.”

Hoping to rectify the ambiguity, Segal has introduced a joint resolution calling for a vote on a constitutional amendment. Read Fitzpatrick’s column here.

On April 26th, a sex worker from North Providence was held at knifepoint and robbed while escorting at the apartment of a Providence man.  The woman went to the police–something she’s legally allowed to do, for now anyway–and it turns out the guy’s got a rap sheet a mile long with a history of pointing weapons at women.

In reporting on the story, Amanda Milkovits of the Providence Journal decided to print the woman’s name and mention the fact that she’s an attorney practicing in Massachusetts. According to the article:

In an interview with The Journal, [the woman] vehemently objected to having her name published and said that to avoid publicity she was going to tell the police she made up the attack. The publicity “will ruin my entire life,” she said.

The article also mentioned that the Attorney General’s office specifically requested that the woman’s name not be published.  Nevertheless, Milkovits thought it necessary to publish her name, anyway.  I e-mailed the Journal this morning to ask why this would be necessary, mentioning that the reporting of these details might also dissuade future assault victims from coming forward.  Here’s the reply I got:

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According to The LA Times, California Governor Schwarzenegger suggested in a recent press conference that it might be time to revisit the whole marijuana issue.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says California should study other nations’ experiences in legalizing and taxing marijuana, although he is not supporting the idea.

He says it’s time to debate proposals such as a bill introduced in the Legislature earlier this year that would treat marijuana like alcohol. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, says taxing marijuana at $50 per ounce would bring more than $1 billion a year to the state.

By all accounts marijuana is ‘legal’ in California anyway — their particular system of dispensaries and qualifying conditions being pretty loosey-goosey. (This is not to reflect in any way on the recent sincere efforts in the Rhode Island legislature to establish ‘compassion centers’, although I am personally in favor of total legalization.) At any rate, at least Arnold is talking about it.

While going through the Rhode Island section of this morning’s Projo I noticed something that made me do a double take. On page B-4 in the upper right hand corner sat an article, “Marijuana Centers Bill Headed For House Vote“, which addressed the upcoming vote in the Rhode Island House of Representatives on the creation of medical marijuana dispensaries or “comfort centers”. The measure has already passed in the Senate.

Ironically, in the bottom left corner of the same page, sits the headline “Police Seize 1,500 Pounds of Marijuana“. A truck out of Texas was stopped and searched by state police in Scituate, who confiscated fifteen hundred pounds of pot (with the help of a drug dog named Axel).

The juxtaposition of these two stories on the same page is a perfect illustration of America’s love/hate relationship with pot.

Way worse than blocking intersections: drunk driving. And it sickened me to read this in the ProJo of David Hazard, who killed a mother of six:

[Scituate Deputy Police Chief Stephen Lang] said Hazard had eight previous arrests and had had his license suspended six times. He also was convicted in 2008 of refusing to take a chemical breath test for alcohol, Lang said.

And he was merrily working off the effects of alcohol and prescription meds behind the wheel?

I’ll never forget October 28, 2005, when Melanie’s Law (the one thing good thing Romney supported) passed in MA. Under it, Hazard would have had a lifetime license suspension on his third arrest (not that I’m naive enough to think that people don’t drive on suspended licenses, but still), and his vehicle would have been seized.

If ever Rhode Island wants to show up our neighbor to the north, how’s about a drunk driving law that includes mandatory jail time for a multiple offense?

Residents of the Wayland, Fox Point and College Hill areas should head down to the RISD auditorium tonight and get to know the neighborhood police. Meet District 9 Commander Lieutenant John Ryan and join in a discussion of how you can become more involved in the community police process. I’m assuming the subject of graffiti will come up.  (It always seems to be about clean-up, I’d like to see a sting operation.)  For more info, contact the district 9 substation at 248 Brook Street, 410.243.6990.

7pm, Thursday, RISD Auditorium, 7 Canal Street (Water Place Park Walkway)

If there’s not enough legalese in your life, you should check out Matt’s new blog, Closing Arguments, which he intends to be more academic and less political than his earlier offering, RIFuture. We wish him the best in his new endeavor.