Ranga’s Blog

[A] colossal red granite head of King Amenhotep III (circa 1390-1352 BC) was discovered in [a] funerary temple of the Kom El-Hettan area on Luxor’s West Bank. . . . [The] head[, which] is intact and measures 2[.]50m high[,] [] is a masterpiece of highly artistic quality, and shows a portrait of the king with very fine youthful sculptured features. . . . [It] belongs to a large statue representing the king standing, hands crossed over his chest and holding the royal insignia.

Source: Zahi Hawass, New Discovery at Kom El-Hettan (March 1, 2010); see also BBC News, Huge Head of Pharaoh Unearthed in Egypt (March 1, 2010).

“The Rhinodipterus specimen has a number of features that suggest it was air breathing, including a long mouth cavity and articulations of its cranial ribs, which are important in the living forms of lungfish air-gulping behaviour,” said Ms Clement from the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU. “Yet Rhinodipterus lived in the ocean, not in freshwater, which runs counter to the standard theory that fish evolved the ability to breath air once they moved to freshwater habitats.”

…

“[A] plunge in global oxygen levels would have been a strong selection pressure on lungfish and other animals, including the tetrapods – the fish-like ancestors of land animals,” explains Professor Long. “This makes us believe that breathing air arose twice at this early time in vertebrate evolution: once in lungfishes, and once in the fish lineage leading to land animals, and ultimately to us.”

Source: Australian National University News, Oxygen Plunge Led to Rise of Air Breathers (Feb. 10, 2010); see also Alice M. Clement and John A. Long, Air-Breathing Adaptation in a Marine Devonian Lungfish, Biology Letters (Feb. 10, 2010).

The Supreme Court just issued two decisions related to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 471 (1966):  Florida v. Powell, No. 08-1175, slip op. (Feb. 23, 2010) [PDF] and Maryland v. Shatzer, No. 08-680, slip op. (Feb. 24, 2010) [PDF].

The Ninth Circuit also issued a decision finding a violation of Miranda:  Doody v. Schriro, No. 06-17161, slip op. (Feb. 25, 2010) [PDF].  The majority found both a violation of Miranda and an involuntary confession.  Chief Judge Kozinski concurred as to the Miranda violation, but preferred to leave the trial court’s decision regarding the voluntariness of the defendant’s confession alone.

Source: Harry Bliss, Something Less Legal, Bliss (Feb. 23, 2010).

Source: Adventuring Company, The Showdown of a Couple of Centuries Ago (Feb. 27, 2010).

Source: Bill Amend, D&D Chess, FoxTrot (Feb. 5, 2010).

Some of his answers to the Times’ questions are quite humorous:

Were you close to George Bush?

No, I’ve never met him. I don’t know Cheney either. I have not gone hunting with him, which is probably a good thing for me.^[1]

Weren’t you invited to the White House Christmas party during your two years at the Department of Justice?

I don’t think so. That’s the way the government works. There’s the attorney general, then the deputy attorney general and then an associate attorney general. Then there’s the assistant attorney general, who was the head of my office.

So you’re saying you were just one notch above an intern, you and Monica Lewinsky?

She was much closer to the president than I ever was.

…

I see various groups are protesting a decision by a California government lawyer to teach a course with you that starts on Jan. 12, claiming he is legitimizing your unethical behavior.

At Berkeley, protesting is an everyday activity. I am used to it. I remind myself of West Berlin — West Berlin surrounded by East Germany during the Cold War.

Are you saying the citizens of Berkeley are Communists, reminiscent of those on the dark side of the Iron Curtain?

There are probably more Communists in Berkeley than any other town in America, but I think of them more as lovers of Birkenstocks than Marx.

[1] See Cheney v. District Court, 541 U.S. 913 (2004) [PDF].

Source: Deborah Solomon, Power of Attorney, New York Times (Dec. 29, 2009).

The Ohio Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not permit a warrantless search of an arrestee’s cell phone records if (1) the search is not needed to ensure the safety of the officers; and (2) exigent circumstances are not present:

We hold that the warrantless search of data within a cell phone seized incident to a lawful arrest is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment when the search is unnecessary for the safety of law-enforcement officers and there are no exigent circumstances.

The Court distinguished cell phones from closed containers and held that an arrestee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their cell phones because “[e]ven the more basic models of modern cell phones are capable of storing a wealth of digitized information wholly unlike any physical object found within a closed container.” Also, once the police take custody of an arrestee’s cell phone the Court ruled that “the state has satisfied its immediate interest in collecting and preserving evidence and can take preventive steps to ensure that the data found on the phone is neither lost nor erased” and “must then obtain a warrant before intruding into the phone’s contents.”

The decision is explicitly not based on any state law or state constitutional provision (”Smith has not raised a challenge based upon the Ohio Constitution”), thus no adequate and independent state law grounds that would prevent review by the Supreme Court are present. Since the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Finley, 477 F.3d 250 (5th Cir. 2007) [PDF], takes an opposite view, there is also a potential split of authority, which might make this issue ready for the Supreme Court’s review.

Source: State v. Smith, 117 Ohio St. 3d 447 (Ohio St. Dec. 15, 2009) [PDF].

The Supreme Court of Utah has ruled that reliable expert testimony regarding the reliability of eyewitness identification is admissible:

[I]n cases where eyewitnesses are identifying a stranger and one or more established factors affecting accuracy are present, the testimony of a qualified expert is both reliable and helpful, as required by rule 702. Such eyewitness expert testimony should therefore be routinely admitted, regardless of whether the trial judge decides to issue a cautionary instruction.

The decision was based on, among other things:

1. Empirical research regarding accuracy of eyewitness identification (”Decades of study … have established that eyewitnesses are prone to identifying the wrong person as the perpetrator of a crime”);
2. The effect of eyewitness identifications on juries (”there is little doubt that juries are generally unaware of [] deficiencies in human perception and memory and thus give great weight to eyewitness identifications”);
3. The ineffectiveness of cross-examination to address mistaken identifications (”Cross-examination will often expose a lie or half- truth, but may be far less effective when witnesses, although mistaken, believe that what they say is true.”); and
4. The ineffectiveness of jury instructions to educate the jury regarding the issues with eyewitness identifications (”[R]esearch … has shown that a cautionary instruction does little to help a jury spot a mistaken identification.”).

Source: State v. Clopten, No. 20080631, 2009 UT 84 (Dec. 18, 2009) [PDF].

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
“Some of my little friends say there is no exclusionary rule.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there an exclusionary rule?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be judges’ or policemen’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is an exclusionary rule. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no exclusionary rule. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in the exclusionary rule! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire people to watch in all the courts in American to catch the exclusionary rule, but even if they did not see the exclusionary rule, what would that prove? Nobody sees the exclusionary rule, but that is no sign that there is no exclusionary rule. The most real things in the world are those that neither judges nor police can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No exclusionary rule! Thank God! it lives, and it lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, it will continue to make glad the heart of civil libertarians.

Or will it, Virginia? for it is up to you, and me, and our brothers and sisters at the bar to keep the exclusionary rule alive so judges and police will respect the Fourth Amendment. Without an exclusionary rule, there will be no longer be a Fourth Amendment.

Source: FourthAmendment.com, Yes, Virginia, There is an Exclusionary Rule (Dec. 25, 2009); see also Francis Pharcellus Church, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, The Sun (Sept. 21, 1897).