Penny Dean and Your Rights

McDonough v. Smith August 3, 2018

(United States Second Circuit) - Affirmed that a district attorney was not liable for malicious prosecution or fabrication of evidence. This lawsuit was brought by the former Democratic Commissioner of the Rensselaer County Board of Elections, who was acquitted in state court of forging absentee ballots in a local primary election. He contended that the district attorney who prosecuted the case had violated his civil rights. However, the Second Circuit held that the plaintiff's due process claim was time-barred and his malicious prosecution claim was precluded by absolute immunity. The panel therefore affirmed the dismissal of those claims.

Thankfully, a heroic citizen with a permit to legally carry a concealed handgun was able to save countless lives in Florida Saturday when he shot a gunman who opened fire on a back-to-school event attended by over 150 students at a park in Titusville, Florida.

Google is facing new scrutiny in the wake of revelations that it stores users’ location data even when "Location History" is turned off.

Last Friday, Google quietly edited its description of the practice on its own website—while continuing said practice—to clarify that "some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps."

Body-cam footage from an April traffic stop appears to show two Georgia cops using a coin-toss phone app to decide whether they'd arrest a driver for speeding in the rain. The officers, Courtney Brown and Kristee Wilson of the Roswell Police Department, wound up ignoring the results of the coin toss and following ordinary police procedure.

Pennsylvania State Police killed a man with a bulldozer over a 10-plant marijuana grow "operation" on state lands in Berks County.

The man's death was likely an accident, but it highlights how recklessly and foolishly police have perpetuated the drug war, even as Americans want to pull back.

On July 9 a state worker on a bulldozer was clearing out some brush to improve hunters' access to state lands. He saw a suspicious car off the road and called the cops. When law enforcement came out to investigate, the Reading Eagle reports, they found those 10 marijuana plants.

On Wednesday, Oregon’s Supreme Court refused to approve Initiative Petition 43 - a state ballot proposal for an assault weapon and high-capacity magazine ban - due to the initiative’s repeated use of vague and misleading language and outright false claims to describe the proposed law to voters. Furthermore, the court directed Oregon’s attorney general to revise the language of the initiative to comply with state laws requiring Oregonians to be accurately informed about the law’s key provisions at the ballot box.

The dash cam was mounted just below the police cruiser’s roof, in perfect position to capture the 26-year patrolman’s transformation from concerned father to authority-abusing police officer.

On that day in April, John Kovach’s 18-year-old daughter, Katlyn, was dating an 18-year-old her parents didn’t approve of named Makai Coleman.

Advocates of “commonsense gun safety” measures have been promoting two major objectives. One is universal background checks, about which the National Institute of Justice wrote “effectiveness depends on . . . requiring gun registration.” Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) just introduced a bill in Congress that would do just that – create a national registry of all firearm owners.

A woman shot her husband Thursday after he broke into her northwest Houston apartment and choked her, police said.

According to investigators, just after 5 p.m. the man, identified as Derek Martin, broke into his wife's apartment in the 12000 block of North Gessner and began choking her in front of their four children. Their 8-year-old daughter hit her father while their 5-year-old child got a gun, police said.

Martin's wife took the gun from the child and shot Martin in the arm, police said.

He was taken to a hospital and released.

Texas-based Slide Fire says the financial institution that processed transactions for its online store is holding “hostage” more than $1.6 million in an effort to force the gun accessory maker into a less favorable business agreement.