Results for “U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra”

suggesting that the Stanley decision wasn’t relevant to a movie theater. He told me about his grandmother who “once went to a movie entitled Sur Les Troits de Paris. She thought it was a travelogue. She didn’t after she got there of course…I heard about it.” I assured him tha...

I was reminded of the old Jewish joke about the man with the broken watch who goes into a storefront window and asks the man behind the counter to fix his watch. “I don’t fix watches. I perform circumcisions

the judges would not have to view the film. Judge Aldrich immediately interjected: “Are you trying to bribe us to decide the case so we don’t have to see the film?...I will admit that’s the best bribe I have ever been offered.”

the three judges issued a decision written by Judge Aldrich. He bought my argument totally. He began by accepting my assumption about the nature of the film:

I continued to press my principle in the court of public opinion and in a series of other obscenity cases over the next several decades. Ultimately my view would prevail

Carl Stork and Nathan J. Hagen—the co-presidents of the Quincy House Film Society—received telephone calls from the D.A.’s office directing them to be in Judge Charles R. Alberti’s courtroom at two o’clock for a hearing. Stork and Hagen tried to call me in my office. But I was...

I myself was charged with defamation—indeed criminal defamation—for exercising my own freedom of speech to criticize a judge for an opinion she wrote. This certainly made me appreciate our First Amendment. Here is the story:

which now might be 5-4 against us. And the large number of condemned inmates who faced execution on a theory similar to that which had lead the sentencing judge in Arizona to sentence the Tison brothers to die even though they had not killed the Lyons family or intended their de...

which had affirmed the original death sentence. This time the court unanimously reversed the trial judge

and the best issue on appeal—the safest and neatest—was the judge’s decision to allow Binion’s lawyer to testify that Binion had told him the day before his death that if he were found dead

as well as unidentified hairs under the fingernails of the victims. This new and suppressed evidence corroborates Stoeckley’s original account that she remembers being in the house and participating in the murders. Had the trial judge known about this corroboration

he would have quickly been acquitted. But this was Indiana. They had a trophy in Tyson. And they had a trial judge determined to prevent a new trial that would have embarrassed her and freed Tyson. The conviction was eventually affirmed on a two to two tie vote by the Indiana...

and the case was assigned by the senior partner to a well-known woman lawyer active in feminist causes. She found the story implausible – so much so that the lawyers decided to waive a jury trial and have the case decided by a judge

I believe that no felony is committed more frequently in this country than perjury and false statement crimes. Perjury during civil depositions and trials is so endemic that a respected appellate judge once observed that

but I was particularly appalled by the length of the sentence and the religiously discriminatory reason the judge gave for imposing it. I agreed therefore to brief and argue the sentencing issue on the appeal (a team of Texas lawyer had been retained long before to argue against...