Bob Collins
Ohio judges hand out sentences intended to shame the offender. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Crime and Justice
As surprising as the University of Minnesota men’s hockey team’s defensive “no-show” was at Saturday night’s NCAA championship game, anyone could see the Dinkytown arrests and damage coming from a mile away. And the post-“riot” quarterbacking has been even more predictable.
And this is in a city that lost a championship game. Read more →
If I shout at you while driving, ‘hey, there’s a cop up ahead and he’s running a speed trap,’ there’s no way that is a crime. If people can throw as much money as they want at candidates in the name of free speech, I certainly have the right to say what I want. At least, for now.
What if my headlights do the talking? Read more →
On his Facebook page,Brimfield Ohio police chief David Oliver said he was sending thoughts and prayers to the community, an innocuous enough post. But many of his readers used it to do what online readers often do: have the same argument they had yesterday and the day before. The used the event to further their own agenda — political and otherwise. Read more →
There never was any substantial evidence against Larson in the shooting of Cold Spring police officer Thomas Decker, but that didn’t stop police from naming him in a quick news conference after the shooting, nor stop news organizations from tossing aside the policy of not naming suspects until they’re actually charged with a crime.
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Journalists are often challenged to find just the right word for their news stories. Pity the poor reporter for Reuters; he could only come up with ‘dysfunctional’ to describe a justice system in which a 9-month-old baby can be charged with murder.
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With his wife, Amy, about to be sprung from prison months early for her criminal vehicular homicide conviction, former Viking Joe Senser is still refusing to accept what a jury determined only a little more than two years ago: His wife killed a man and then drove away without stopping. Read more →
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a New Mexico photographer who refused the job of photographing a same-sex commitment ceremony. You may recall in the Legislature’s debate about same-sex marriage, the mythical wedding photographer who would be forced to take pictures against her will was a common theme.
Elaine Huguenin is that photographer and her case is the first to reach the Supreme Court, which wanted nothing to do with it. It rejected the case without comment. Read more →
For the second time, the Minnesota Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of a St. Paul priest and ordered a new trial on charges he took advantage of a vulnerable woman he was counseling. Read more →
The Minnesota Timberwolves had a chance to make a statement Saturday when Dante Cunningham bailed himself out of jail and flew to Orlando to play for an undermanned team. The team is already out of the playoff picture and it might’ve elevated their status in town to let Cunningham watch from the bench, and maybe think about what it means to get yourself arrested for trying to strangle a woman in your home.
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The statistics show that people with a mental illness are far more likely to be the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of violence. And yet, here were again this week shining the spotlight on what role mental illness might have played in a crime.
But does the latest Fort Hood shooting paint an unfair picture of the link. NPR’s Shots blog thinks so. Read more →
Today’s Supreme Court decision that appears to open the floodgates of campaign contributions is rooted in this question: What is corruption? The word appears 124 times in today’s opinon.
In its ruling today, the Court said the limits are arbitrary because they set a point at which a campaign contribution is corruption. Read more →
A case in Delaware is raising an old philosophical debate: Is prison for punishing someone or getting them treatment?
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The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld a judgment against a payday lender that charged Minnesotans exorbitant interest rates as high as s 1,369 percent. Read more →
Baseball broadcaster Jerry Remy defends providing legal support for his son, who is charged with murder, and says doing so shouldn’t cost him his job. Read more →