Higher Ed Law Prof Blog

Of Zealous Prosecutors and Trial by Internet

In “Syriana,” last year’s hit movie about oil, power, corruption and terrorism, a powerful lawyer (Christopher Plummer) tells a once-idealistic CIA operative (George Clooney), “Here in Washington, you’re innocent until investigated.” Two administrators at a central New Jersey college discovered this truth applies beyond our nation’s capital, when they were indicted this summer for hazing (a felony) in the wake of an alcohol –related death on their campus. Although the charges were dismissed six weeks later on the motion of the county prosecutor, a writer in the Trenton Times aptly observed, “The Internet can keep reputations damaged forever, even when persons are acquitted…. Today, an estimated nearly 30 billion Web pages exist, according to boutell.com (www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/sizeofweb.html).” On the Internet, you are innocent until blogged.
In some cases, even doing the hard-time and ostensibly paying your debt to society isn’t enough to let you get on with your life. Consider William Barnes, aged 71. Some 40 years ago he shot a Philadelphia police officer. Barnes was convicted of attempted murder for the November 27, 1966 shooting, which occurred when rookie cop Walter T. Barclay interrupted Barnes’s burglary of a beauty shop. Barclay was left a paraplegic. He died on August 19th of an infection at age 64. The Bucks County medical examiner ruled Barclay’s death a homicide, concluding there was a causal connection between the ’66 gunshot wound and ’07 fatal illness. Philadelphia DA Lynn Abraham has charged Barnes, who was paroled from prison in 2005 and now works in a supermarket, with murder.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of this bizarre prosecution, Barnes too is already being tried on the Internet.
For instance, a blogger on WordPress.com, one of the net’s most popular blog sites, asks, “So, what do you think? Should he be prosecuted for a crime he has already spent time in prison for?” One respondent opines, “No he served his time and paid his debt to society. I think the double jeopardy rule should apply hear. The fact that this man passed away 40 yrs later, then it shouldn’t be a murder charge. I think murder is when the person dies at the time of the crime or soon after.”
But another blogger retorts, “No no no…. he did die on that tragic day in 1966…he lost everything, his career, chance to get married and have children, and all the things you and I take for granted including being able to WALK!!!! Double jeopardy does not apply here. William Barnes got to serve a few years for attempted murder and seemed to go on enjoying life with no remorse based on his comments to a newspaper although he was in and out of prison even up to now at age 71!! 71 - an age Mr. Barclay didn’t reach. He lived to be 64 years of age of which 41 years were spent in hell. Barnes needs to face justice in our court system. If he is not tried in court, he will have to face the ultimate Judge - God.”
Clearly the Internet jury is still out on Mr. Barnes. Whatever the final cyberspace consensus, he is now permanently enshrined as one of the latest virtual villains of the world-wide web.
Andy Warhol, the avant-garde artist, predicted “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” The advent of reality TV, MySpace.com, Face Book, video-phones, and blog sites has extrapolated Warhol’s prognostication beyond the sixties icon’s wildest fantasies. Some hapless folks, targeted (rightly or wrongly) by zealous prosecutors, are in the words of the Trenton Times “Indicted forever.”
--- Jim Castagnera

Senator Ted Kennedy joins the student-loan battle

Washington Post

Texas A&M Cited by CDC for Bio-Safety Violations

Missing microbes and poor safety practices were among a dozen violations cited by the Centers for Disease Control, leading to the resignation of the university's top bio-safety officer.Houston Chronicle story

A thought for the day:

The role of American higher education is to secure the future of the American middle class and by implication the American Democracy. The role of public policy should be to make this possible.

--- Jim Castagnera

Indicted Forever

An editorial from the Times of Trenton by Richard Lavinthal.
The Times of Trenton, September 4, 2007

Future of legal scholarship in the Blogosphere?

That's what someone at The Legal Times thinks:
Legal Times article
Three things I like about Law Prof Blogs:

1. Timeliness: almost everything I write (books, columns, blogs) is time sensitive.

2. Practical: We publish stuff other lawyers and academics can use.

3. Accessible: We aren't tucked away on a dusty shelf; we are available to the world.

Counter-terrorism is big business at universities

Poison toothpaste and dog food from China… salmonella in eggs, botulism in beef, PCBs and mercury in fish… mad cow disease, anthrax… the list of threats to our food is as long as the Klumps’ grocery order. Was a time when farmers drove their trucks through my hometown of Jim Thorpe, hawking their fresh-picked produce. Lancaster’s Amish and South Jersey’s fruit and tomato growers still bring some fine foods to our farmers’ markets. But the hard fact is that we are eating seafood from Southeast Asia, fruit from Mexico and Chile, beef from Australia. Seventy-seven percent of Americans polled believe a terrorist attack on our global food chain is likely.
Tom Kennedy, director of the Food and Agribusiness MBA at Delaware Valley College, fears these folks may be dead right. “The system is very porous,” he says. Consequently, “Food security has now become food defense.”
Kennedy, a lanky, gray-haired Irishman, first became involved in “food defense” at St. Joseph’s University in Philly, where he was a principal investigator on a $ 1.8 million Food and Drug Administration grant awarded under the 2002 Bioterrorism Act. The goal of the grant was to educate executives up and down the food chain, as well as first-responders, who might have to deal with an attack on our food supply.
How vulnerable are we (mostly overweight) Americans? Explains Kennedy, “With profit margins razor thin, the food industry operates on a just-in-time delivery model. This means there’s only a three-day food inventory in most parts of the country. Here on the east coast we have the greatest population densities and largest port facilities.
“Just imagine an anthrax attack on the food center in the port of Philadelphia. Do you remember when a little bit of anthrax shut down the Hamilton, New Jersey, post office for years?” he asks.
So… when Tom Kennedy moved from St. Joe’s to Del Val College in Bucks County three years ago, he brought along his commitment to protecting the American public from agro-terrorism. “After Nine-Eleven, I wondered what an ordinary guy like me could do. I’ve since found out there is a lot.”
Del Val College is unique among the hundreds of colleges and universities here in eastern Pennsylvania. Some 1600 undergraduates, plus a couple of hundred grad students, study everything from horticulture (which makes for a gorgeous campus) to dairy farming. The 600-acre campus just south of Doylestown includes the corn fields where Director M. Night Shyamalan filmed “Signs.”
Kennedy continues to work with colleagues at St. Joe’s, developing what he calls “table-top exercises.” Food industry personnel and first-responders are brought together and presented with a food product, a contaminant, and a scenario, then work to solve the situation. Last time, the threat was to the dairy industry. Tom trekked the 65 participants through Del Val’s dairy barns to give them the feel of the business. “Some of the Philadelphia police had never been on a farm,” he chuckled.
Recently, he went international, taking on a study of Philly’s port facilities, partially funded by sources in Australia. He won’t say how much the Aussies have kicked in… “That’s proprietary.”
Tom wishes ruefully that information on U.S. food inspection and security practices were equally proprietary. “We’re a democracy,” he explains. “Under the Freedom of Information Act, anybody can get a lot of helpful information, if food is the target.” He adds that, “We can’t build walls around our farms.” I look out the window of his car, as we tour the Del Val campus, and note the cattle munching grass right along the highway… point taken.
Del Val’s own farmers’ market on Lower State Road does a land-office business. “People more and more want to get food grown close to home when they can,” observes Kennedy.
After Tom dropped me back at the market, I thought about all I’d just seen and heard. I went inside, grabbed a cart and loaded up on fresh peppers, lettuce, and corn. No, it wasn’t even a three-day inventory, so here’s hoping folks like Tom Kennedy keep the cornucopia safely overflowing.
Jim Castagnera of Havertown is the Associate Provost/Associate Counsel at Rider University and a 2007-08 Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Read more in September's Greentree Gazette: September Greentree Gazette

What the world needs now is academic activism

What I thought about the role of higher education five years ago and still think today... despite the Cuomo subpoenas, the hazing indictments, the binge-drinking deaths, and the VTU massacre.Download What_the_World_Needs.pdf