Day: November 27, 2004

Lawyer Who Defended Activist Faces More Legal Problems

Utah defense attorney Geoffrey Clark was back in the news this month after the lawyer was arrested in a drug sting — Clark allegedly offered his legal services in exchange for drugs.

Clark has a long history of accusation of unethical acts from suborning perjury to driving under the influence of marijuana. One of those cases saw Clark being acquitted of suborning perjury in a case involving an animal rights terrorist.

In 1997, Clark represented animal rights extremist Trev Poulson, then 19, who tried to burn down a fur store. A security guard at Montgomery Fur Company in West Haven, Utah, observed three people trying to light gasoline they had spread on and around the store.

Poulson’s accomplices in the attempted arson, Cameron Kraus and Bret Walton, both agreed to plead guilty to aggravate arson and received sentences of just 30 days in jail and 30 days of home confinement. Poulson rejected a plea bargain and went to trial. His girlfriend, Gretta Schin, testified that at the time Poulson was supposed to be trying to commit arson, he was in fact with her.

The jury didn’t believe any of it, and convicted Poulson. He was sentenced to two years in jail.

But shortly after his conviction, Poulson reached an agreement with prosecutors to testify against Clark. As a result, Poulson served only a few months in jail before his sentence was suspended and he was given 36 months probation.

At Clark’s 1999 perjury trial, Poulson testified that he wanted to take the same plea bargain deal offered to Kraus and Walton, but that Clark had a vendetta against the prosecutor and talked Poulson into going to trial.

Poulson testified that he and Schin conspired to have Schin falsely testify that the two were together at the time of the arson (both Poulson and Schin were granted immunity from prosecution on perjury charges before testifying). But Poulson’s testimony backfired against prosecutor’s in Clark’s case. Poulson testified that Clark had coached them on how to lie, but said he couldn’t remember if the idea to produce Schin as a false alibi witness was his or Clark’s.

The jury in Clark’s case, as in Poulson’s case, simply didn’t believe either Poulson or Schin. The jury foreman told the Associated Press that neither Poulson nor Schin were credible.

Clark was acquitted on all charges.

Sources:

Attorney acquitted on perjury charge. Associated Press, April 24, 1999.

Attorney’s former clients say they were told to lie. Associated Press, December 2, 1998.

‘Bad-boy’ lawyer has own legal woes. Stephen Hunt, The Salt Lake Tribune, November 26, 2004.

Ban on Shark Finning in Atlantic Signed

Over 60 nations this week signed an agreement to ban the killing of sharks for their fins in the Atlantic Ocean.

The ban was unanimously approved by members of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, including the United States. The United States has had a ban on shark finning in its territorial waters for more than a decade.

Sharks are killed for their fins which are used in soup. According to the Washington Post, a bowl of shark fin soup can garner upwards of $100 a bowl in Asia.

South Korea was one of the nations that originally balked at the ban, and the ban has a huge catch — any nation can opt out of the ban up over the next six months before it goes into effect.

An estimated 20 to 100 million sharks are killed annually worldwide.

Sources:

Atlantic ‘shark finning’ ban signed. Associated Press, November 22, 2004.

Measure protects Atlantic sharks. Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, November 26, 2004.

Animal Rights Activists Want Ohio University to Open Animal Care Review Committee Meetings

Ohio-based animal rights activists want Ohio University to open up its Institutional Laboratory Animal Care and Use Committee meetings, but the university has so far refused on the grounds that it is not required by law to do so and it does not want to set a precedent of opening meetings that it is not legally required to open.

Two groups, Ohio-based Protecting Our Earth’s Treasures and OU student group Athens Animal Rights Coalition, want the university to open the meetings.

Protecting the Earth’s Treasures’ Rob Russell told The Athens News that the meetings should be open because,

This is a federally mandated committee, at an Ohio public university.

Athens Animal Rights Coalition president Noelle Elbert told The Athens News,

They should be public. Other universities in Ohio have to go by the rules, and we don’t understand why OU doesn’t.

. . .

We’re concerned about the animals. Because what are they hiding, if they don’t want you to sit in on the meetings? . . . I pay to go to this school, so don’t I have a right to know what’s going on?

But Ohio University director of legal affairs, John Burns, noted that Elbert has been given copies of the minutes from all of the animal care committee meetings, as well as a tour of Ohio University’s animal facilities. “There has been a lot of information provided to her,” Burns told The Athens News.

Source:

Animal rights activists wonder what OU committee is hiding. Jim Phillips, The Athens News, November 24, 2004.

Mark Frauenfelder Lies to Himself to Feel Better

Boing! Boing! again confirms its need to avoiding cognitive dissonance (emphasis in the original),

Olli sez: “Just found this link to some really interesting anti-communist propaganda from the 1960’s. It’s a comic book that looks at what *COULD* happen to *YOU* if those evil commies get their hands on the USA. Endorsed by none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself!” Link (When I read it, I mentally swapped every instance of “communists” with “red-state republicans” and it was even more enjoyable — Mark)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:50:43 AM

Almost enough to have me hoping for more Xeni jardin pr0n posts.

NBC’s Idea of Journalism

Back in October, Tom Brokaw complained that bloggers and Internet sites were too focused on the fake documents that Dan Rather used to try to impugn George W. Bush. Apparently, we should have been following NBC’s lead and been digging up dirt on Prince Charles’ sex life,

The 83-minute video will be shown in two hour-long specials on NBC’s “Dateline” – on Monday and a week later on Dec. 6.

Thank goodness NBC isn’t devoting two one-hour programs to the volatile situation in the Ukraine or Darfour.

Source:

Di on Charles: lousy lover. Ellen Tumposky, New York Daily News, November 26, 2004.

Free Fiona

Free Fiona is a website put up by Fiona Apple fans trying to convince Sony/Epic to release Apple’s third album, “Extraodinary Machine.”

The album was finished in May 2003, but Sony/Epic won’t release it because they don’t think it will sell in the United States. A couple tracks from the album were leaked on the Internet over the summer and Epic’s probably right — the album won’t sell worth crap since it doesn’t fit into the dominant prefab modes of commercial music these days (maybe if they added a hip hop drum track over it — blah).

Can’t imagine how much it must suck to work on something like an album and then have the record company just send it to the vaults. Ugh.