The Arts
To Sleep, Perchance To…Murder?
Think of the oddest thing you’ve ever done in your sleep. Perhaps you’ve murmured. Babbled. Yelled. Maybe you’ve even sleepwalked.
But I bet you didn’t climb a 13-story crane like a teenage girl did in London in 2005, only to be found later curled up fast asleep on the crane by a passerby. And you probably didn’t jump out of a four-story building – found hours later still sleeping. Even a broken arm and leg didn’t wake up this 17-year-old boy from Demmin, Germany. And I know you never had “sleep sex” like the middle-aged married woman in Australia in 2004 who frequently left her home and had sex with random strangers. (I’m not sure this woman was really sleeping, actually, but her husband seemed to believe her).
Destructive and unpredictable behavior has been known to happen during an otherwise good night’s rest. Take homicidal somnambulism, for example, the medical term for committing or attempting to commit murder in one’s sleep.
A recent film, “Side Effects”, directed by Steven Soderbergh, centers on a woman who kills her husband while sleepwalking, in an apparent reaction to a medication she was prescribed by her psychiatrist.
Emily Taylor (played by Rooney Mara) and her husband Martin (played by Channing Tatum) are finally reunited after his four-year prison term for insider trading. But things are not the same as they were before his arrest. Whereas Emily is seen in flashbacks as playful and full of life, she is now listless and depressed. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Banks (played by Jude Law) prescribes Zoloft but when that doesn’t work, he proposes a new antidepressant, Ablixa (that only exists for the purposes of the film). Her life (and sex life) are clearly reinvigorated, and though she has some episodes of sleepwalking, it’s nothing that Dr. Banks is too concerned about.
Until Emily stabs her husband while in her sleep.
That people commit murder in their sleep – and then get away with it at trial – is discussed as fact in the film. Is that true? LASIS investigated and found: it sure is.
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Date 03/08/2013 |
Chief Justice Roberts and “The Oath”
Back in 2009, before I entered law school, I read “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court”, by Jeffrey Toobin. At the time, reading about the behind-the-scenes workings of the legal world’s most powerful individuals reinforced my interest in going to law school. So, when Mr. Toobin’s next book came out — “The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court” — I was eager to read it.
While I wouldn’t recommend “The Oath” with the same passion as I would “The Nine”, I believe it would interest anyone curious about Supreme Court politics. Mr. Toobin’s new work sheds light on many little-known facts surrounding the major decisions of the Roberts Court.
The book begins by focusing on two Harvard Law graduates: Chief Justice John Roberts and President Barrack Obama. In preparation for the oath of office ceremony in 2009, the Chief Justice’s administrative aides contacted the Obama administration to determine the precise words, the pace, and the intonations of the oath. But these communications never reached President Obama himself. Mr. Toobin writes that President Obama’s staffers “either never noticed the PDF, lost it, ignored it, or forgot about it.” As a result, when the time to administer the oath arrived, neither President Obama nor Chief Justice Roberts were on the same page and the oath was noticeably botched on national television.
A day later, the President’s legal advisors suggested that, “out of an abundance of caution,” the oath be administered again. The redo took place in the White House Map Room and proceeded smoothly. It is on this image, with President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts standing in front of the Map Room fireplace, that Mr. Toobin pauses to compare the two men. While they shared a common background — Harvard Law School and Law Review — and possess similar characteristics — “powerful intellect and considerable charm” — their respective life experiences led each of them to different beliefs about the Constitution and the Supreme Court. And these differences are surprising to those of us who think of Chief Justice Roberts as a conservative, and President Obama as an agent of change.
Mr. Toobin writes: “[I]n this crucial realm, the roles of the two men were the opposite of what was widely believed. It was John Roberts who was determined to use his position as chief justice as an apostle of change. He was the one who wanted to usher in a new understanding of the Constitution, with dramatic implications for both the law and the larger society. And it was Barack Obama who was determined to hold on to an older version of the meaning of the Constitution.”
“The Oath” proceeds to focus on the evolution of the Roberts Court beginning with Chief Justice Roberts’ first term when his talent for negotiation and compromise brought the percentage of unanimous decisions up from one-third to an astonishing 45 percent. Unfortunately, this “era of good feeling” was short lived. The rest of the book tells the story of the three major constitutional issues addressed by the Roberts Court: gun control, campaign finance, and the Affordable Care Act.
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Tags Chief Justice John Roberts, Citizens United, Jeffrey Toobin, President Barack Obama, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Oath |
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Date 03/01/2013 |
Sotomayor, Rosenbaum, and Three José’s
I’ve met my fair share of celebrities back home in Puerto Rico. It seems that you can’t fling a chancleta without hitting a politician, musician or actor on the island. So, I think I have had enough experiences to be able to say that I do not get star-struck. But, when I attended one of 92nd Street Y’s Talks events featuring a conversation between Thane Rosenbaum and Justice Sonia Sotomayor my anti-star-struck streak was over.
As she walked out onto the stage – after being introduced by Professor Rosenbaum to this packed Upper East Side theater, I saw a Puerto Rican woman calmly making her way to a chair on stage with a warm smile on her face. She sported a bright yet elegant turquoise top. And she seemed to me like any one of my aunts. For a moment, I felt like I was at a family Christmas gathering and that I could walk up to her, giver her a kiss on the cheek and (as we do with all of our elders) ask her for a blessing, bendición.
This very personal side to Justice Sotomayor seems to be what she hopes to share with anyone who would pick up her new book, “My Beloved World”. Appropriately available in both English and Spanish (Mi Mundo Adorado), her book is near the New York Times Best Sellers List in the non-fiction hardcover category. The New York Times’ review says that it seems Justice Sotomayor has “mastered the art of narrative.” I’m reading the book myself and so far, I wholeheartedly agree.
Justice Sotomayor’s stated mission is to bring hope to those who feel life’s circumstances are stacked against them. (Her speaking tour is undoubtedly working wonders for book sales, as well. But, I won’t go down that cynical road.) The fact is that this Supreme Court justice is different. All of a sudden this salsa-dancing, Spanish-speaking judge is giving a rock-star feel to the black robes and mahogany desks. She summed up her experience dancing salsa with Jorge Ramos (Univision’s Latin version of Anderson Cooper) by saying that he was atrevido. Not quite Felix Frankfurter’s style. Or any other justice’s, for that matter.
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Date 02/26/2013 |
Casey Anthony: Once in a Lifetime
O.J. Simpson. Dr. Jack Kevorkian. The Menendez brothers. Charles Manson. Defendants in famous murder trials, all. Of course, the list would not be complete without…
Voted the most disliked person in America in 2011, the year of her trial, Casey Anthony stood accused of murder in the first degree in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
Everyone thought she was guilty. We were convinced she was guilty. The jury on the other hand, was not. And since our legal system dictates that a person is innocent until proven guilty in court, Casey Anthony was, and is, a free woman.
And now the story has made it to our TV screens. “Prosecuting Casey Anthony” premiered on Saturday, January 19 on the Lifetime Network. The movie is based on prosecutor Jeff Ashton’s book “Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony,” and gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the prosecution team before and during Ms. Anthony’s murder trial.
From the beginning of the film we can see that Mr. Ashton (played by Rob Lowe) is a big deal. The lead attorney for the State of Florida, Linda Drane Burdick, (played by Elizabeth Mitchell) asked him to take the case as his last before retirement. Ms. Burdick may have been the lead chair officially, but it was pretty clear that it was Mr. Ashton who called the shots. As the movie made abundantly clear, this is a guy who “got the first conviction in the entire world based on DNA evidence.” If someone might not know that already, Mr. Ashton probably makes it abundantly clear to them. (Just a hunch; it seems the guy has quite the healthy ego).
To Mr. Ashton, the Casey Anthony case was perfect: He would win and serve justice. It was a case he couldn’t lose.
Until he did.
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Tags Casey Anthony, first degree murder, Jeff Ashton, Lifetime, Rob Lowe |
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Date 02/09/2013 |
Now Hiring: Smart and Ethical Hellhound
“He was known as the Hellhound of Wall Street,” said my lawyer friend.
I was catching up with an old coworker over coffee and we started talking about politics. We were both disappointed that there were no ongoing investigations to uncover the callous wrongdoings that brought about the Great Recession. Only those who unmistakably and monumentally dropped the ball, like Bernie Madoff and Raj Rajaratnam, faced criminal prosecutions.
And that was when my friend introduced me to Ferdinand Pecora.
In his book, “The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance”, published by Penguin Press in 2010, Michael Perino chronicles how one man, in only ten days of hearings before a congressional committee in Washington, brought Wall Street to its knees and forever impacted the U.S. financial markets. It is a story forgotten by many and that is why LASIS believes you should know about it.
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Tags Bernie Madoff, Charles Mitchell, Ferdinand Pecora, Hellhound of Wall Street, J.P. Morgan, Michael Perino, Raj Rajaratnam |
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Date 01/17/2013 |