(Reuters) More than a decade after California set a national trend toward longer sentences for habitual criminals with its three-strikes law, crime in the Golden State is down, prison costs are up - and voters are poised to soften the hardline stance.

A California ballot measure that would let some nonviolent offenders out of jail faster is the most high-profile example of what Adam Gelb, a criminal justice expert at the Pew Center, calls "a sea change across the country in attitudes on crime and punishment."

Judge Eugene Hyman joins a panel discussion on the topic in this podcast from NPR affiliate KALW in San Francisco.

Hyman says "There needs to be checks and balances...some kind of oversight in these cases."

The honorable Judge Eugene Hyman has received numerous awards and recognition for his work with families and children and has appeared on numerous television news shows. For more information, visit www.judgehyman.com. He is also a featured commentator on The Family Law Channel and The Legal Broadcast Network.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) came down with a decision recently that tossed out Costco's social media policy, which stated that an employee could not go on any social media sites and damage the reputation of the company or damage the reputation of its employees or management of the company.  

This decision equated to preventing workers from discussing conditions at the workplace which has been a long-standing principal in employment law, says attorney Wendi Lazar of Outten and Golden, LLP, an employment law firm in New York, adding that these are "associational rights" that workers have, akin to "water cooler" discussions.  Freedom of expression and other associational freedoms are what we hold so true in our constitution, Lazar says.

On the other hand, other decisions have come down recently that draw a fine, yet definitive line that any social comments are not okay.  Most recently, says Lazar, there was a decision made by the NLRB holding an administrative law judge to a decision, where he found an employee at a BMW dealership that showed terrible pictures of an accident on Facebook that involved the dealership in a negative way.  The NLRB said that this was not okay and that it was not protected speech, adds Lazar.Source: www.outtenandgolden.com

Over 50% of recruiters and human resource professionals are looking at social media data to assess someone's hirability, according to Lazar, and being aware of that is important, she adds.  Employers can get into deep trouble if they use information found on a social media site not to hire an employee.  If a hiring decision is based on any protected civil rights, such as if the person is part of a certain ethnicity or race or is disabled, it could be terrible liability for the employer, says Lazar.

Lazar says that an ancillary issue is at the workplace.  If someone is terminated because an employer had access to a social media site where the employee was associated with a particular ethnic or religious group, there is increased civil liability for the employer.

When advising employees who come in when filing a suit, Lazar tells them to be very cautious while on Facebook and to check their privacy settings and that no third parties have any access.  She also tells them to be very conservative while communicating on Facebook.  Additionally, when advising younger people who are entering the job market, Lazar recommends they be very careful what they do on Facebook and other social media sites.

For more information about Wendi Lazar and Outten and Golden, LLP in New York, click here.  She is a contributor on the Employment Law Channel, hosted by The Legal Broadcast Network.

The Innocence Project is a group that monitors prosecutorial misconduct and in doing so, indentifies people who may have been wrongfully convicted and works to exonerate them.  It is at the appellate level, not the trial level, that judges are more likely to declare mistrials for what is perceived as misconduct, says retired Superior Court Judge Eugene Hyman of Santa Clara, California.

Appellate judges are looking for evidence to support the conviction and are reticent to reverse the decision of the jury, says Hyman.  Even when an appellate court reverses a decision, at least in California, it doesn't automatically mean that the appellate court is going to send the decision to the state bar for consideration of disciplinary action against the district attorney, notes Hyman.Source: calocals.com

Hyman says that the most common prosecutorial misconduct is inappropriate argument, where the D.A. by argument suggests that the defendant had enough time to explain and chose not to.  However, that would be in violation of the defendant's 5th Amendment right not to testify, adds Hyman.

Another example of misconduct is when the D.A. doesn't disclose the defendant's complete criminal record with regard to the crime or having a situation where certain reports aren't released if the reports are favorable to the defendant.

Having an internal affairs department, Hyman says, would bring something to the attention of the court before the appellate court would issue a decision.  This group could assist a prosecutor by giving ethical advice and help them before the fact and help a defendant in terms of how a case was prosecuted, says Hyman.

Honorable Judge Eugene Hyman has received numerous awards and recognition for his work with families and children and has appeared on numerous television news shows. For more information, visit www.judgehyman.com. He is also a featured commentator on The Family Law Channel and The Legal Broadcast Network.

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On the upcoming November 3 California election ballot is to soften sentences for non-violent crimes in the 3 Strike Act, such as drug possession.  With a history of violent crimes, the third strike is an easy decision but a problem arises when someone picks up a couple of strike offenses that aren't violent, says retired Superior Court Judge of Santa Clara, California Eugene Hyman.

One of the initial problems, says Hyman, is figuring out what some of the crimes are that are classified as non-violent.  For example, in California, threatening someone by saying "I'm going to kill you," qualifies as a third strike offense.  Petty theft, as another example, is a robbery if force or fear is used and robbery, in California, whether or not the person is armed is not only a straight offense but now it is a strike felony, according to Hyman.Source: article.wn.com

If the prosecutor has charged a crime under the 3 strikes, the defense has a couple of options to bring a motion at the time of sentencing to strike a strike, says Hyman.  The person may be treated as a second strike person rather than a third strike person and then their prison sentence is usually doubled because they're ineligible for probation, Hyman adds.

Hyman notes that the prosecutor, as a member of the executive branch, has a great deal of authority and discretion on how they charge crimes and they're not required to pledge every strike offense that's out there.

With the third strike law, there's no "wash out period," says Hyman, so if you pick up a couple of strikable offenses twenty years ago and then you pick up an offense today, those strike offenses are eligible for consideration, even if they were picked up as juveniles.

An additional problem, Hyman notes, is that case law, at least in California, is very strict from a judge's discretion perspective in terms of what kinds of factors must be present before a judge can strike a strike.  "When you add all of this up, the prosecutor is the one that's driving the facts of the situation," says Hyman.

Regarding a pre-disposition to alcohol or drug addiction, that is not going to be recognized as an excuse in terms of perpetrating a crime, Hyman says and violent crimes, no matter how sad the person's childhood was, doesn't factor in because violence is taken very seriously.

One of the things a judge is powerless to do when sentencing a person to state prison is to demand substance abuse intervention at the correctional facility.  In Judge Hyman's opinion, if you're sending someone away without any substance intervention, then you're setting them up to come out and perpetrate more crimes and come back to prison.

Supporters of the reform act say it can save around $70 million dollars but Hyman says that if some of the savings aren't going to be put back in in terms of substance abuse intervention, which is relatively inexpensive, then they're really not going to be saving any money because these people are going to be coming back and back into the prison system.

One of the good things about realignment, which is when more people are sent to serve time in county jail, is the county jail does a better job of substance abuse intervention than the state prison and these people do turn around, Hyman says.  He adds that there also needs to be accountability when people get out, whether it's from the county jail or parole system, that if they don't go to meetings or test clean, that there needs to be quick intervention.

"The public is told that the programs don't work and that these people need to be locked up for a long time, which is really an injustice in terms of identifying the problem," says Hyman.

Honorable Judge Eugene Hyman has received numerous awards and recognition for his work with families and children and has appeared on numerous television news shows. For more information, visit www.judgehyman.com. He is also a featured commentator on The Family Law Channel and The Legal Broadcast Network.  For more information on the 3 Strike Reform Act, click here for an article in the Huffington Post.

Employment law is a big umbrella and within that, there are many different practice areas in the Outten and Golden, LLP law firm in New York.  Representing only employees or the plaintiff's side, they have the Executive and Professional Practice Group, dealing with offer letters and contracts, the Financial Services Practice Group, dealing with bonus claims and arbitration, the Wage and Hour Practice Group, dealing with a lot of class action, and the Discrimination and Retaliation Practice Group, to name just a few.

When one talks about employment law, Tammy Marzigliano, partner at Outten and Golden, LLP, says it's not really "pigeon-holed" like real estate.  Instead, it is pretty diversified so in times when the economy is not doing well, they're not impacted like other firms or specialities.Source: www.outtenandgolden.com

Outten and Golden, LLP is seeing more severance agreement claims because of all of the layoffs, due to the recession, says Marzigliano, who thinks that employers definitely try to cut corners when things are bad and this impacts wages that they're paying people and they don't want to pay out bonuses, creating an uptick in bonus claims.

The big thing, Marzigliano says, is how the recession impacts their area of law.  "While there's a lot more cases, there's also a lot more fighting," she says, explaining that when the economy is doing well, employers are more willing to settle cases and have conversations and when there is a recession, they're more likely to fight it.

The approach at Outten and Golden, LLP remains the same, regardless of the economy, says Marzigliano but points out that a big part of their practice is advising clients and helping them navigate through their employment matter.  Now they are seeing that more during the recession as employees are confused and don't know what their rights are.

Marzigliano stresses that an employee should always be really careful before they sign anything and have someone review it, whether it's an employment contract or severance agreement.  When someone signs a severance agreement, they're waving their rights and they may have more viable rights.  The challenge, says Marzigliano, is that when you're dealing with a recession, people don't want to spend the money to have it reviewed.

Marzigliano thinks the hot trend right now is the Whistle Blower Retaliation Group, specifically the Dodd Frank Act, section 922, which was passed in 2010.  There are two pieces, she says, that are of particular importance when it relates to employment law - the whistle blower bounty and the anti-retaliation piece.  The whistle blower, who may not necessarily be an employee, would get a large percentage of any recovery.  The anti-retaliation piece, which Marzigliano believes is pretty robust, is to incentivize people to speak out and the law will protect them and give them significant damages that were not otherwise available.

"This is an exciting time," says Marzigliano, as she sees this playing out more and more.

Tammy Marzigliano is is a partner at Outten & Golden LLP, representing employees in litigation and negotiation in all areas of employment law.  For more information on her, click here.  She spoke with the Employment Law Channel, part of The Legal Broadcast Network, providing online, on-demand legal video content.

In what might be the largest case involving crime lab test tampering, it will be catastrophic in terms of the results, says retired Superior Court Judge of Santa Clara, California, Eugene Hyman.  He believes that the motivating factor for this Massachusetts Crime Lab analyst to falsify thousands of tests was just being recognized and appreciated for the volume of work that she produced.Source: www.vimeo.com

"It becomes a nightmare in terms of going through all of the records to determine if she was the analyst," says Hyman.  After identifying the population, Judge Hyman believes that the state will have to notify every defendant in every case that this lab analyst touched and as a defendant, they would most likely want to contest their conviction as a result of this.  Each case is going to have to be examined and in Hyman's experience from drug cases, is that in a lot of them it's not going to matter because there's other facts, statements, witnesses and other analysts testing different samples.  There could be different counts where different analysts were assigned and Hyman believes very few defendants are actually going to leave as a result of this.

Source: rsc.orgThat being said, Hyman points out the huge potential for civil liability, as one has to say to the state that there needs to be a system of review with regards to their analysts.  "Not having an appropriate system where a person can do this for years and not get caught is a violation of duty and depending upon if the convictions get reversed, there might be economic consequences," Hyman says.  He believes that it is going to be more expensive to figure this all out than it will potentially be in terms of damages.

Hyman believes the analyst might be facing criminal charges, under both state and federal law.  Under state law, she is interfering with justice and under federal law, it is a violation of a person's civil rights in terms of falsifying data.  For every test she falsified, that is a count and there are a lot of counts, so she is going to be looking at quite a bit of jail time, Hyman adds.

Honorable Judge Eugene Hyman has received numerous awards and recognition for his work with families and children and has appeared on numerous television news shows. For more information, visit www.judgehyman.com. He is also a featured commentator on The Family Law Channel and The Legal Broadcast Network.

A terror organization is fundamentally a business, just like drug cartels or organized crime. The belief that terrorists are just bunch of violent fanatics is true for a lot of the low-level terrorists. For the ring leaders it’s mostly an act, part of the way they impress their donors and the populations under their control. On a day-to-day level, every terror group is first of all a financial organization, expending the bulk of its efforts to raise, invest, allocate, and transfer money. 

Attorney Darshan-Leitner is the director of the Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Organization, a worldwide network of lawyers who seek to go after the terrorist money trail.

Leitner says..."If you stop the money – you can stop the flow of the terrorism."


The common token of how cheap bombs are, as proof that the amounts of money needed to fund terrorism are very small, implicates that funding is only a secondary issue in fighting terror, since the terrorists will always be able to afford their homemade rockets and bombs. This reflects a radical misunderstanding of how terrorism works.

Global terror is very big, very organized, and able to hide behind the obscurities of international law, the protective veil of rogue states, and the support of whole parts of the world where their acts were seen as righteous and godly. The terrorists, it often seemed, are too dedicated to their cause, too cut off from the world of Western courts and judgments, and their attacks too much a low-budget affair, to be really hindered by lawsuits. 

According to The Israeli Security Services (Shin Bet), the standard profile of a suicide bomber, for instance, is not someone suffering from mental illness. Rather, he’s gone through a long process of conditioning, with terror funding playing a decisive role at every turn: From his foreign-funded elementary school, where he was taught to idolize the shaheed, the martyr who kills as many civilians as possible on his road to Heaven; to youth programs, sports camps, and health clinics—all of which bought his loyalty to the cause and convinced him that the terrorists treat their people far better than official government institutions—to massive internal PR efforts, like posters and trading cards promoting past suicide bombers. Finally, after he’s been filled with visions of martyrdom from his childhood, he is offered the chance of a lifetime: He can both become a shaheed and solve his family’s financial woes for the rest of their lives by blowing himself up. Therefore, while an explosive vest or car bomb might not cost all that much, the creation of a suicide bomber is a long and expensive process.

Money makes terrorism go round—and dealing with money takes up the largest part the terror leaders’ time and energy. Yet, since this is their most important pre-occupation, it’s also their greatest vulnerability. The vast majority of terror funds are held, transferred, and switched into usable currencies (dollars and euros) either through established money changers or international banks—both of which have long been under the watchful eyes of law enforcement agencies around the world in their efforts to fight drug trafficking and organized crime. If these were to be brought under heel, a large part of the machinery of terrorism would grind to a halt. 

It was not so long ago that the idea of fighting terrorists through lawsuits was seen by most Westerners as ridiculous, like trying to put out a brushfire by spitting on it. Global terror is enormous, very organized, and able to hide behind the obscurities of international law, the protective veil of rogue states, and the support of whole parts of the world where their acts were seen as righteous and godly. The terrorists, it often seemed, were too dedicated to their cause, too cut off from the world of Western courts and judgments, and their attacks too much a low-budget affair, to be really hindered by lawsuits. 

But things have changed over the last decade, and now one regularly hear about massive court judgments against states like Iran and North Korea, about big banks like Lloyd’s and Barclay’s shutting down accounts of suspicious charities because of “exposure” to “liability”, about terror organization not being able to use the banking system any more. Fearing lawsuits, terror sponsors like Iran have pulled billions of dollars out of the US and Europe, and are having a much harder time finding banks willing to convert their money into dollars and euros—hard currencies the terrorists desperately need to build their bases and buy their weapons. Boxed out by the banks, terrorists have had to resort to ever more risky methods of transferring ever smaller amounts of cash—such as in suitcases or through underground tunnels. Yet even then, terrorists have often found their money corralled by Western courts. After decades of building their networks around the world, terror financing has today swung into heavy retreat, in large part due to a sweeping dragnet of ever-more-creative creative international lawsuits.

Lindsay Lohan has found herself in trouble again.  This time, the scene was set in New York City and she was the star in her very own hit and run accident.  After hitting an employee of a restaurant on the driveway shared by the restaurant and her residence and leaving the scene, the question of her probation comes up and whether or not she is in violation of her probation.Source: www.philly.com

When you’re on formal probation, there is no official mechanism to get you back in front of the court when you’re in violation and historically, nothing happens unless the person picks up a new offense while on court probation, according to retired Superior Court Judge of Santa Clara, California Eugene Hyman.

To be convicted of a hit and run, a person needs to have reasonably known they were involved in an accident and according to the press Judge Hyman has read, Lohan claims she didn’t know she hit someone.  In terms of violation of probation, the standard of proof is a preponderance of more than 51%.  Judge Hyman says that it is very common when a case is more difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt standard to bring it in as a violation of probation because it is heard in front of judge, not a jury, thereby lowering the burden of proof.

Judge Hyman does not believe that a judge in California will get “excited” about this case, based on what he’s read in the press, especially when no drugs or alcohol have been involved.

Honorable Judge Eugene Hyman has received numerous awards and recognition for his work with families and children and has appeared on numerous television news shows. For more information, visit www.judgehyman.com. He is also a featured commentator on The Family Law Channel and The Legal Broadcast Network.