Criminal Law

Sun Article on Breastfeeding in Maryland

Dana Silver, M.D. in the Baltimore Sun, August 20, 2013:

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months and breast-feeding for at least a year or longer as long as mutually desired by mother and baby. The AAP also states: “The decision to breastfeed is … a basic and critical health decision regarding infant welfare.”

Despite the tremendous progress we have seen in Maryland and across the country, some still feel that breastfeeding in public is somehow “indecent.” Maryland law states: “A mother may breastfeed her child in any public or private location in which the mother and child are authorized to be. A person may not restrict or limit the right of a mother to breastfeed her child.” All 50 states and the District of Columbia have similar laws.

The code section to which Dr. Silver referred is section 20-801 of the Health-General article of the Code.

My general inclination towards legal micromanagement of commercial life is one of skepticism. But the compelling equities of feeding an infant, the health benefits to that child and the ability of nursing mothers to travel without having to pre-express, bottle, refrigerate and schlepp the nutrition for their infants trump the “weirded-out” feelings of an immature few who never got equally weirded out at the existence of much more revealing Ocean City (or Harborplace) beachwear. In my view, it’s the equivalent of allowing a “trespass” on private property for grounds of common-law necessity. Regardless of what I think, it’s the law in this State.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Criminal Law, Maryland - Local, 0 comments

Fleeing and eluding the police isn’t stupid because it’s illegal….

it’s illegal because it’s stupidly dangerous.

Baltimore Sun, January 22, 2013:

The incident occurred at about 6:25 a.m., when the sheriff’s deputy saw a Dodge Ram 1500 traveling at a high rate of speed in the Finksburg area.

The deputy tried to pull the car over, but the motorist failed to stop and continued at a high rate of speed onto Old Gamber Road, then turned right onto Old Westminster Pike, according to the sheriff’s office.

The car turned into the Jiffy Mart then continued, without yielding, onto Route 140, where it struck a Ford van that had been traveling eastbound, the sheriff’s report said.

Context. I used to live within a long walk of that Jiffy Mart and know those roads well (my parents still live in Finksburg). Route 91 is Gamber Road and Route 140 is Westminster Pike, also called Baltimore Boulevard, which dumps into I-795 a few miles southeast of the accident. Each of those roads has a roughly parallel narrow and old “Old Gamber Road” and “Old Westminster Pike” which meet in a semi-residential stop sign intersection about 1/8 mile S of the intersection of 91 and 140, which is a major thoroughfare intersection (and a somewhat dangerous one.)


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Where the young, and now dead, 29-year old reportedly entered 140 was at the mouth of the Jiffy Mart, which sits between high-traffic 140 and sleepy, essentially access road Old Westminster Pike. In darting from Old Westminster Pike onto Westminster Pike across the lot of the Jiffy Mart, the motorist apparently entered headlong into a very high traffic road with near-Interstate volumes headed southeast to Baltimore, Towson, Pikesville, I-795, etc. It may be the heaviest rush-hour traffic density corridor road in the Baltimore metro area not served by any public transit whatsoever, though the NW end of the Baltimore Metro is 9-10 miles down 140 and I-795.  Entering southeast onto 140 at a high rate of speed at an hour before sunrise in winter after a major federal holiday as reported to evade a law enforcement agent would be rather dangerous and, in this case, was apparently fatally so.

Thinking that you can outrace a police vehicle successfully is an extreme example of maurylogic and, if events were as reported, a fatal example.  Very sad to hear and am glad that the other motorist wasn’t injured more severely.  Please, if you get pursued by the police in Maryland, don’t play OJ or Bo and Luke Duke: pull over in a safe and orderly manner, stay calm and if necessary contact your attorney.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Criminal Law, Traffic, 0 comments

Driving While Drunk: A Brief How-Not-To Guide

This post is dedicated to my deceased friend and law school classmate Nancy Sara Yellin of blessed memory (1969-1997), whom a drunk driver killed with depraved indifference in South Florida, along with three of her family members in the same car.

There are a number of ways to prevent drunk driving; one can aim at the driving or at the drunkenness. Either way is entirely acceptable.

This week will be the 4th of July and it has been a hot, nasty mess in the mid-Atlantic in the midst of the recent storms. A lot of people will be getting exceptionally well-lit on the 4th to forget about the miserable experience of losing power, losing air conditioning and having everything be a sweat-drench, hideous mess. Regrettably, we will see many an avoidable tragedy and outrage in the next 48 hours, though that outrage, that tragedy, that grief that we don’t forget ever CAN be avoided.

The problem is that a lot of hot, sweaty, dehydrated drunks, rampant power outages, dead or malfunctioning traffic signals in the most densely populated parts of the state and strained emergency response services could make for a horrible, horrible 4th of July.

This Law Office handles alcohol motor vehicle charges as part of its routine practice but nothing would please me more than to see no DUI cases come to my desk from this Fourth of July. My children, family, friends and clients ride on these roads; Maryland is my home and I know no other. Please prevent tragedy in our beautiful, if currently sweaty and under-electrified, Free State. Please: sleep it off, catch a cab, get your sober friend to give you a lift. Watch a movie. Play drunk Pictionary or drunk Twister or drunk strip poker. If you must, fornicate. Just don’t drive.

If you want to get drunk, get your sleep-it-off place nailed down before you pour the first cold one. If you want to drive, keep it to bottled water or Diet Coke, or give yourself a massive amount of time after drinking to sober down all the way – ALL the way (think four+ hours or more). It will be very hot and dehydration is easier when you are drunk and hot and sweaty; your judgment of your sobriety may be severely impaired by the heat and dehydration. If you are a host, keep the drunks in your house and don’t let them leave and if they leave anyway, call 911 before they kill somebody. Lawyers and bail bondsmen are expensive but less so than funeral homes.

If you or your family member or friend or child should screw up (don’t screw up, but if you do) and need a lift to avoid driving drunk, call my office at 410-561-6061 (Baltimore) or 301-531-4355 (DC) or Tweet me at @BruceGodfrey; I will get the message. I will do everything I can to arrange a free lift home for you or drive you home myself to any destination within 60 miles of Baltimore or Washington if I cannot get it arranged otherwise. Just let me know.

I miss you, old friend.

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Criminal Law, Pro Bono Services, 0 comments

Joseph Amendola, Esquire, does NOT work in my law office

Why, oh why, does an attorney state the results of attorney-client work product and even attorney-client communications in front of a TV camera? Why tell Anderson Cooper whether a client communicated with you and what those communications were?

Who in the name of mighty Thor congratulates the prosecution for convicting his client of felonies? Criminal trials are not tennis matches; they aren’t about the lawyers. It’s professional to shake the hand of the opposing counsel at the conclusion of the proceedings, but don’t give your opponent that kind of laudatory treatment; the case is still active, sentencing awaits, the appeal period hasn’t lapsed, and even then it’s still a serious mistake.

Who chooses to broadcast to the universe that both the prosecution and the bench did exemplary jobs, grossly undercutting any future appeals on such issues?

Who hides behind the excuse of a lack of time when there’s six months to prepare and the case is the biggest case of the attorney’s career, as if he couldn’t afford an associate or two to pitch in? What, too many driving while suspended cases get in the way in March?

Even if these comments are somehow acceptable to the client, how does a client give informed consent to such injuries to the client’s legal position? How does this help a client at sentencing, motions to reconsider? Does the client have an available motion for a new trial or to set aside the verdict, or for a mistrial; if so, doesn’t this media foolishness damage or at least distract from that work?

We still have a duty to our clients not to damage their cases for our own camera-mugging benefits, even if clients give consent and even if that consent is fully (?) informed or even confirmed through an ethics consultation with an independent attorney (severely doubtful.) Even if they are charged with sexual offenses. Even if they are convicted of sexual offenses. ESPECIALLY in those cases.

How can an attorney claim to have valid appeal issues while ruining as appeal topics two of the major sources of appeal issues in a criminal cases: the conduct of the prosecution and the conduct of the bench!!! More generally, who benefits from these media events – Jerry Sandusky or perhaps Mr. Sandusky’s family, or whoever sells hot tubs and vacation packages to Joe Amendola? Joe’s taking of big Joe here, and not taking care of the client.

The media comments last night on CNN and elsewhere were clinics on how to violate one’s fiduciary duties to clients. I hope that every professional ethics professor in every US law school uses Joe Amendola as an example of what NOT to do. Every law student should see this mess. PA’s ethics rules are not identical to Maryland’s, but they are both modeled after the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct; they are about 90-95% similar or more.

But don’t believe me. Watch.

and more with Anderson Cooper (is laughing and asking “is she cute?” re: a media staffer the right comment after your client just got convicted of 45 felonies and misdemeanors?)

Posted by Bruce Godfrey in Criminal Law, Legal Ethics, 0 comments