First, the serious part: Nicholas Walker, a 33-year-old Miami man, was shot and killed while driving his car onto Interstate 95.

Now, for the slightly humorous part: Scott Simon, 24, was charged with first-degree murder in Walker’s death after he was accidentally recorded a phone call, via a butt-dial, saying he was going to follow Walker home and kill him. Police believe Simon coordinated the shooting but did not pull the trigger, according to the Miami Herald.

Finally, for a funny story about tapping keys with your tuchis: A 911 operator in California received a call with no one on the other end. Rather than hang up, the dispatcher stayed on the line and heard two men discussed wanting to do drugs and breaking into a car.

The dispatcher heard a window shatter and the two people saying they found prescription drugs.

Police arrested the men a little while later.

“Damn,” one of the suspects said upon learning a butt-dial led to their arrest.

Well said.

Earlier this month in this space, we noted how the bar exam results had been released. At the time, all that was available was a four-digit ID number.

Now, however, we have the full list of 462 names from the State Board of Law Examiners, which was also published in Tuesday’s paper.

Congratulations to Maryland’s newest lawyers!

Here’s another argument for cameras in the Supreme Court — it would make the judges more trustworthy.

That’s my conclusion after reading about Readers’ Digest’s list of the 100 most trusted Americans.

Among all members of the bench, Judge Judy had the highest score, of 51 percent. Next was Judge Joe Brown at 48 percent.

In between the two television judges was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who ranked 36th on the list, according to the ABA Journal. Justice Stephen G. Breyer was 43rd, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was 44th and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was 49th.

The rest of the justices: Sonia Sotomayor (53); Elena Kagan (62); Samuel A. Alito Jr. (60); Antonin Scalia (66); and Clarence Thomas (88).

Tom Hanks tops the list, with 65 percent of those surveyed finding him trustworthy, followed by Sandra Bullock and Denzel Washington.

If this blog post is the first time you learned that the results from February’s bar exam have been posted, I’m guessing you probably didn’t take the bar exam in February. Either way, here they are.

(This also gives me a chance to link to one of my favorite videos, “Law students reflect on the bar exam.”)

Congratulations to all who passed!

Madison Grimm, age 6, is the artist behind the painting of a canvasback duck you see here. Madison submitted it to the 2013 Federal Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest, and last month she became the youngest winner in the competition’s history.

But then questions were raised about the “painting’s authenticity” and poor Madison was disqualified.

Madison’s dad is a wildlife artist and her painting was based on an unpublished photo her father took. The Grimms’ hometown Argus (S.D.) Leader picks up the story:

She also used a technique called a graphite transfer, where an artist applies a pencil lead to a print of the photo to create an outline for a painting. Both are legal, and both are accepted and common among artists…

Madison’s dad hired a Washington, D.C., lawyer to help reinstate his daughter as the winner, according to the Leader. The legal questions abound — was Madison’s technique legal? Did she violate any copyright or fair use laws by using the photo as the basis of her painting? Could the duck file its own suit alleging his (or her) image was used for commercial purposes without her consent?

Alas, we’ll never know all of the answers — the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced it reinstated Madison and her painting as the winner after “careful consideration.”

So congratulations to Madison and thanks for inspiring me to try to find my inner-artist.

It’s just too bad I’m too old to take a quack at this contest.

Prospective lawyers await the Maryland bar exam in 2010. (File photo)

It was either John Muir or Katy Perry who once described California as a place where “the grass is really greener.” Now we can add to the list of Golden State superlatives: toughest bar exam.

The Witnesseth blog has complied rankings of the most difficult bar exams based in part on bar passage rates from 2010 to 2011.

Arkansas finished No. 2, with Washington state, Louisiana (and its Napoleonic Code) and Nevada rounding out the Top 5.

Maryland finished 10th, four spots behind Virginia, which has bar exam takers with the highest LSATs, according to Witnesseth. Washington, D.C., was omitted from the list because of a too small sample size.

The news comes as Illinois announced earlier this month it would raise the minimum passing grade for its bar exam by four points. Maybe that will help boost its 32nd ranking.

In what state did you take your toughest bar exam?

We’ve probably had enough off-the-court news from the NCAA this week to last us the rest of the year.

But here comes the University of Iowa with what could be the start of something that might be resolved with a coat of paint instead of firings.

For more than 25 years, visiting football teams have been getting dressed in a locker room that is painted pink. Now, two lawyers say the school could face a lawsuit under Title IX and Title VII rules that prohibit gender discrimination, according to The Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Legendary Hawkeyes coach Haden Fry had the locker room painted pink because it was a “passive” color and considered it a psychological ploy against opponents.

But the lawyers say most “understand the pink locker room as a taunt against the other team, calling them a bunch of ladies/girls/sissies/pansies/etc.,” according to The Gazette.

A university spokesman said the school is fully compliant with Title IX.

The lawyers say they are unaware of a legal challenge to pink locker rooms, but a federal judge in Arizona ruled that having male prisoners wear pink underwear was a form of punishment without legal footing.

(HT: Big Lede S

Happy Monday, Happy Holy Week and Happy Passover!

Here are some items to get your week of piety started.

– A look at the role of federalism in the upcoming Supreme Court arguments on same-sex marriage.

– In other Supreme Court news, the high court has agreed to hear another case involving affirmative action and college admissions.

– In case you missed it last week, “Mr. Burns” presided over the trial of “Bart Simpson.”

– Did you hear the one about the law school student who fell off a classroom chair and sued?  (HT: Above the Law)

– That laser pointer you use for your presentations might be illegal.

For the third consecutive year, Frank Gorman of Gorman & Williams graciously offered to write a few blog posts while in Las Vegas for last week’s annual Consumer Electronics Show. In his final post, he gives us his Top 10 gadgets from 2013 CES.

CES 2013 ended Friday. There was a lot to see and more buzz about new electronic technology than in other recent years. Here’s a list of the Top 10 technologies and/or gadgets that caught my attention.

1. Samsung’s Flexible Display

Samsung’s president showed off this prototype device during his keynote address. It was not on the exhibitor floor at 2013 CES. Instead of the rigid screen of your smartphone, imagine rolling up the screen like a dollar bill. In the future, you may be able to roll up your 65-inch flat screen like a rug and store it in the closet until the next use.

2. OLED TV

All the major electronics manufacturers at CES 2013 promoted OLED TV’s. (Here’s LG’s, for example.) OLED TVs were promoted last year, but today’s price puts OLED in the premium TV category, inhibiting consumer acceptance. OLED stands for “organic light emitting diode,” a solid state material that is also behind flexible screen displays. OLED technology is an improvement over liquid crystal displays (LCD) by producing higher contrasts, less energy consumption and thinner screens. A fixed but curved OLED TV screen was exhibited by Samsung. OLED is the next generation of screens.

3. Casio Lamp Free Projector (Short Throw)

This projector makes giving an audio/visual presentation a lot easier. You lose the lamp and the need for replacement lamps, can project a 60-inch image from only two-feet away and can connect wirelessly to a mobile device or laptop as well as hard connect through USB, HDMI, and RJ-45 ports.

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Samsung displayed a phone made of plastic that bends at 2013 CES in Las Vegas. (AP Photo)

For the third consecutive year, Frank Gorman of Gorman & Williams graciously offered to write a few blog posts while in Las Vegas for last week’s annual Consumer Electronics Show. Here, he writes about the trends to watch out for. On Tuesday, he’ll share his top ten gadgets of CES.

The thousands of products and services on display at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show can crowd out perspective, like so many trees that you cannot appreciate the forest.

But attending a keynote address or an informational program or two brings larger perspectives to what one sees at CES. I attended a Q&A with Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and the keynote address by Stephen Woo, president of Samsung, which ended with a surprise address by former President Bill Clinton.

Here some of the trends in consumer electronics shown by 2013 CES.

Everything on mobile devices

Manufacturers are convinced that consumers want their mobile devices to do everything. Today’s mobile devices are smartphones and tablets. As a result, manufacturers are committed to developing smartphones and tablets with ever-increasing capabilities.

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