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Oscar Pistorius, the South African track star known as the “Blade Runner,” has been found guilty of culpable homicide in the shooting death of his girlfriend. Following a six-month trial, the former Olympic athlete was convicted of culpable homicide – the South African equivalent of manslaughter – for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year, reports USA Today. Pistorius was also convicted on a weapons charge related to firing a handgun in a restaurant only weeks before Steenkamp’s death....

Defendant’s conviction for attempted unpremeditated murder and related firearm offenses is affirmed where: 1) trial court did not err in a failure to give an instruction not supported by the evidence on what was asserted to be a lesser included offense; 2) there is no infirmity in the wording of CALCRIM Nos. 105 and 226, and they were properly given in the case; and 3) CALCRIM No. 600 correctly states the law....

Conviction of defendant for murder and rape of several women and other crimes, and sentence to death are affirmed where: 1) there is no prejudice in the trial court’s decision not to investigate further and to retain a juror; 2) defendant’s Miranda claims lack merit and the trial court did not err in admitting his statements at trial; 3) defendant failed to demonstrate prejudice with respect to instructional error as to the issues of consent; 4) defendant’s claim of prosecutorial misconduct during closing arguments is rejected; 5) defendant’s cumulative error claim is rejected; 6) given that none of the errors affected the guilt phase, defendant fails to show, under any standard, how these same errors could have affected the penalty phase; 7) defendant’s claim with respect to victim impact evidence is rejected; 8) trial court’s evidentiary rulings on adjustment potential were narrow; 9) any error with respect to prosecutorial misconduct at the penalty phase was harmless; 10) defendant’s claim that the special circumstance allegations as applied is unconstitutional is without merit; and 11) defendant’s constitutional challenges to California’s death penalty law are rejected as the statute adequately narrows the class of death-eligible offenders....

The California Court of Appeal for the Second District decided a breach of contract case, a workers’ compensation case, an issue of an employer’s negligent hiring and retention, and a father’s petition in dependency proceedings. In Diaz v. Carcamo, No. B211127, the court faced a challenge by an employer of one of its drivers involved in an automobile accident arguing that the trial court erred in allowing plaintiff to proceed on theories of negligent hiring and retention of the driver when it had already conceded vicarious liability....

When assembling an in-house team of lawyers, can you recruit from your competitors? Or, better yet, since you’re not going to let anyone tell you what to do, should you? Recruiting in-house lawyers is not as simple as recruiting other employees from your competitors. Fortunately, non-compete clauses and other covenants that restrict employment for attorneys are not likely to be upheld. However, those pesky professional duties and obligations for lawyers can really get in the way and make an in-house attorney recruited from a competitor more than just nearly useless....

You know the expression that when you are in the public eye, you live in a fishbowl? Well, sometimes that fishbowl may be a wineglass. U.S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi may feel that way now. Recently unsealed transcripts show she was having trouble on the bench, but an old news video shows that her problems may have started years ago at the bar. Minaldi was removed from a case for a series of mistakes in a criminal case, according to news reports....

In 2011, the FDA approved three abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) submitted by Identi Pharmaceuticals for generic versions of Hill Dermaceuticals’ products. Hill sued the FDA, arguing that the FDA’s approval of Identi’s products was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. The district court granted summary judgment to the FDA. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision, finding that the “basic tenets of administrative law” have a greater impact in an appeal than Hill’s arguments hyperbolic references to the “immutable laws of science....

When it comes to the holidays, it seems that more and more employers are taking a relaxed approach to employees that do a little (or a lot) of online shopping at work. While online shopping on company time used to be so taboo that you had try to hide your screen when the boss walked by, now those sweet holiday shopping deals are like officially sanctioned hot office gossip. Times have changed since online shopping first debuted....

Lawyers aren’t generally known for our soft hearts and boundless sense of appreciation for others, but if there’s one person who can crack our jaded, Scotch-soaked exterior, it’s Mom. When it comes to signs of affection, a card is fine, a phone call is better, a bouquet of roses does quite nicely. But if you’re really looking for something special, consider these three tips to help express your Mother’s Day appreciation:...

To say that this is a family feud would be characterizing the facts mildly. Top litigator Nicholas Gravante of the firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner has sued his mother, Elinor Gravante, for $15,000 and injunctive relief stemming from what he alleges are defamatory remarks about him and his firm. And if you think the name Gravante sounds familiar, it’s because Gravante, Sr. represented the Gambino and Lucchese crime families. To make things more interesting, Gravante’s sisters have joined their brother against their mother in a separate suit concerning high value property in Connecticut....

High-profile attorneys charge premium rates for their services, but it may be hard to top this: One of the nation’s most prominent lawyers bills clients at the rate of $1,800 an hour, The Wall Street Journal reports. That breaks down to $180 for every tenth of an hour billed – that’s, $30 a minute, or 50 cents per second. Who is setting such a high bar for an attorney’s legal fees?...

A request to be unblocked by two Twitter users who got blocked by @realDonaldTrump, President Donald Trump’s verified, personal (?) Twitter account, is making waves through the internet. Users @joepabike and @AynRandPaulRyan have claimed that the block violates their First Amendment rights to participate in a public forum. Basically, they are claiming that a public forum is being held and they are denied entry for an illegal reason. More specifically, it would be like a public official banning you from a town hall meeting being held at a privately owned location because you publicly criticized or even insulted that official....

A veteran Miami-Dade police officer made her bed, so to speak, and is now lying in it, after she allegedly misused her marked patrol car to transport two mattresses. Officer Sandra Lyles, a 32-year veteran of the force, is set to retire Monday, the Associated Press reports. Meantime, Lyles has been relieved of duty – with pay – while an internal investigation gets underway. Alert citizens spotted Lyles loading two mattresses atop her police cruiser at a Big Lots store, and then driving away....

Squirrel Attack! Run for your lives! When this blogger heard that a vicious squirrel was attacking residents in Bennington, Vermont, she had sudden visions of a full-fledged zombie squirrel attack wherein the evil critters battled it out for the pea-sized (or seed-sized) brain of Charlie Sheen. Yeah. As for the disappointingly zombie-less squirrel attacks, the squirrel was grey, the victims were human, and everyone should blame the local college students....

Is cramming for the LSAT going to be a thing of the past for undergraduates aspiring to get into law school? While that may seem like an applicant’s dream scenario, it just may become a reality. The American Bar Association is considering a proposal to drop the LSAT requirement for admission into accredited law schools, the ABA Journal reports. As of now, accredited law schools are required to ask applicants for results of a “valid and reliable admission test....

A woman was arrested after she allegedly made her displeasure with police known by smearing bacon and pork sausage on a Massachusetts police station window. Lindsey McNamara allegedly approached the police station in the Boston suburb of Framingham carrying a box of what appeared to be Dunkin’ Donuts, reports United Press International. The woman told the officer at the dispatch window that she was there to “feed the pigs” before revealing the contents of her box: raw pork products....

He knows police procedure. He’s not intimidated by the darker side of humanity. He has an intimate familiarity with the criminal defense now too. And he has name recognition. Ex-NYPD Officer Gilberto Valle was once convicted of conspiring to murder (as in, to cook and eat) his wife; the conviction was later overturned, as the judge felt Valle was simply writing about his fantasies online. Valle was however, convicted of illegally accessing a police database, a minor crime that carried less than a year in jail and likely wouldn’t be an automatic bar to the bar....

It’s been a heckuva summer for the San Francisco 49ers. Young players have unexpectedly retired over head trauma fears and to just “take a year or so” off football. They released troubled linebacker Aldon Smith after yet another arrest. Not even the grass at their brand new stadium is cooperating. And now come some of the most disturbing allegations yet: that current linebacker Ahmad Brooks and former defensive end Ray McDonald sexually assaulted the same woman in separate incidents at McDonald’s home last December....

Is Barry Bonds guilty? Of what? That has been the hot question Wednesday after the jury came back with news of a verdict After starting deliberations on Friday, the jury of 4 men and 8 women convicted Barry Bonds of obstruction of justice. They deadlocked on related charges of perjury. That means there could be a second Barry Bonds trial if the prosecutors want to retry him. We here at Tarnished Twenty, along with the rest of the media, spent a chunk of time positing different outcomes, arguments and strategies relating to Bonds’ perjury charges, but little attention was given to the fourth count of obstruction of justice....

Greyhound Therapy. It’s an evocative, sarcastic colloquialism used to describe the practice of dumping your mental health patients on busses or trains, with one-way tickets, in hopes that they’ll become some other city/state/county’s problem. The practice, which was prevalent in the 1970s due to deinstitutionalization, is generally frowned upon by the mental health community, as the patients often lack resources in the destination community, and the communities themselves often have more people in need than they can handle....