A North Carolina judge made the national news recently because of the sentence she imposed on a young woman who pled guilty to being drunk and disruptive and to resisting an officer. Halifax County Chief District Court Judge Brenda Branch gave 21-year-old Tonie Marie King a suspended sentence and ordered her to write a two-page essay entitled How a Lady Should Behave in Public. Judge Branch suggested principles like “you don’t go out drinking and fighting and yelling” and “you show people respect and you’ll earn respect.” The sentence drew widespread attention, as illustrated by this Los Angeles Times story. (It also attracted some criticism, like this blog post by law professor Jonathan Turley.) One interesting aspect of the story concerns Judge Branch’s background, with which I was not familiar. The Times reports that “[s]he worked 20 years as a paper mill mechanic, wearing a hard hat and steel-toed boots, before earning undergraduate and law degrees in night school.” Impressive. In other news: Follow-up on license plate readers. Those interested in yesterday’s post about license plate readers may enjoy this Ars Technica article about one citizen’s efforts to learn which law enforcement agencies had recorded his plate, when, where, and how often. Zimmerman, federal charges, and double jeopardy. Those interested in the possibility of federal charges against George Zimmerman, which I discussed here, may be interested in this post at the Volokh Conspiracy, noting that in the nation’s early days, there was no “separate sovereigns” exception to the rule against double [...]
Faculty Coordinators
