WBAL-TV 11 News reported Tuesday that Baltimore Sun reporter Tricia Bishop passed out during the trial of the Werdesheim brothers this morning and that one of the defendants went to her aid.

Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, Orthodox Jewish and white, are accused of beating a black teen in an Baltimore neighborhood while Eliyahu was patrolling for an Orthodox Jewish watch group.

WBAL reporter Lowell Melser tweeted that Avi jumped out of his seat to administer aid when Bishop passed out. Bishop was OK when she was led out of the Mitchell Courthouse by emergency workers, according to Melser.

The trial has been going on since last week and has been drawing national attention due to its similarities to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, where a black teen was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch patrolman.

There was a brief story (ha!) in The Annapolis Capital that caught my attention. Seems a burglar took cash, phones and “more than $650 in high-end bras and panties from a woman’s unlocked apartment Monday,” according to Annapolis police.

The woman had left her apartment unlocked for 10 minutes while taking her daughter to the school bus stop, according to police. When she returned, she “found that a pile of laundry was missing, including $650 worth of Victoria’s Secret bras and panties.”

I’m no expert on women’s underwear, but $650 seems like a lot of money to spend on undergarments. I could probably buy a 20-year supply of underwear for myself for the same amount (or, even better, a 40-year supply if you turn each pair inside-out).

My fiance, who is more well-versed in women’s underwear, said the dollar amount is high, especially since Victoria’s Secret often offers deals.

That’s good news for the robbery victim, who now has a chance to restock her drawers, which I guess is a cotton lining of sorts to all of this.

If you have a great, big pile of law school debt, Sen. Dick Durbin wants to hear from you.

The Illinois Democrat is collecting stories from real students in his push to pass legislation, called the Know Before You Owe Act of 2012, that will protect students from being tricked into taking high-interest loans from private lenders. Durbin’s bill would require students to receive counseling from schools on signing up for loans and their federal loan eligibility.

But The National Law Journal reports that Durbin has not heard from many law students telling their tales of woe.

According to the American Bar Association, last year law school graduates had between $66,000 and $100,000 in student loan debt. So where are all these law students deep in debt and why so silent?

Other law school students, however, were not so silent in Florida last month. There, two of them helped apprehend an escaped criminal at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

The students were leaving the campus rec center when they spotted a man hiding his hands (and handcuffs) under his shirt. The two called university police. The man, who faced domestic battery and grand theft auto charges, had escaped Gainesville police while switching police cars earlier in the day. Police had been hunting for the man for most of the day and sent out an alert to the university.

The two students received $250 each as a reward. Maybe they can put it toward their loan debt.

A Maine lawyer is convinced a former client is a serial killer and is now trying to link him to a series of murders.

Eric B. Cote represented Rory Holland from 2008 to 2009 in a real estate partition action. After Cote and Holland went their separate ways, Holland was convicted of killing brothers Derek and Gage Greene later in 2009.

Afterwards, Cote extensively investigated Holland and dug up old missing persons records trying to connect them to Holland. He is even convinced that one person has been wrongly convicted of a crime Holland committed.

For those of you who have seen “The Lincoln Lawyer” (anyone?) starring the one and only Matthew McConaughey — possibly the most unconvincing lawyer of all time — you know that Cote’s story is almost a scene straight out of the movie.

Just like Cote, McConaughey is representing a client who turns out to be a serial killer and is actually responsible for the murder one of McConaughey’s former clients went to prison for. (Although most of the movie is lots of action and chases and shooting and McConaughey making confused faces as his lawyer character unravels the truth.)

A few weeks ago, a judge said Cote had become “obsessed with the background and history of Mr. Holland.” Cote was then reprimanded by the court for using confidential information he had gained from Holland while representing him in later actions against Holland. (Cote had represented the Greene brothers’ mother, Tammy Cole, in an unlawful death action against Holland.)

While that doesn’t have the same glossy, adrenaline-pumped Hollywood ending, at least Cote seems to have a blemish-free record, with no disciplinary action against him in his 35 years of practicing law.

The same can maybe not be said for McConaughey’s acting track record.

They are calling him a “legal Rambo” and “a Wild West divorce attorney gone rogue.”

A New Mexico lawyer was sentenced to 30 days in prison for breaking into the home of his client’s ex-husband,the Alamogordo Daily News reports. Video surveillance shows the lawyer, Raymond T. Van Arnam, kicking in the rear door of the ex-husband’s home, a move more reminiscent of Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible” than in “A Few Good Men.”

Van Arnam was representing Melissa Stonecipher, who was pregnant at the time, in divorce proceedings from Anthony Stonecipher. Van Arnam and his client decided to break into her ex-husband’s home to retrieve baby furniture and accessories. Little did they know that Anthony Stonecipher had rigged his house with surveillance cameras.

Video surveillance shows Van Arnam letting associates into Anthony Stonecipher’s house and carrying out the items. The video also shows Van Arnum hugging his client for about 30 seconds.

“I was personally angry with what he was doing to my client,” Van Arnam told ABC News. “He was bullying her and dominating her.”

Van Arnam will have to serve 334 days of probation after he gets out of jail and will pay$2,732 in court costs and $5,000 in restitution to Anthony Stonecipher. He will also complete 100 days of community service.

Melissa Stonecipher did not escape unscathed. She pleaded guilty to criminal damage to property of a household member and was was placed under 364 days of supervised probation.

Designer knock-offs might be bad for business, but blatant designer knock-offs are always good for a laugh. A Rolax watch? A Pollo shirt? There’s more funny there than you can fit into a Louis Veeton bag.

Which brings us to a story from Georgia about counterfeit Air Jordans, the iconic Nike brand. An officer pulled over a car and noticed the smell of marijuana. A search of the car yielded 78 boxes of Air Jordans.

Except the serial number on the tongues of the shoes didn’t match the one on the box. And the Nike logos peeled off.

And because Michael Jordan’s hand had six fingers.

The two women in the car have been charged “for having forged or counterfeited goods,” according to a local news report.

No word if the women will attempt the “Antonio Alfonseca” defense.

The FBI has released audio excerpts from phone conversations between former Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson and his wife, Leslie Johnson.

Jack Johnson

Have you forgotten about the Johnsons already? Perhaps these partial transcripts will “refresh your recollection” as to why these conversations — and this story — made national news almost exactly a year ago.

Here’s s a partial transcript from the first clip.

Leslie Johnson: “What do you want me to do with this money? They are banging! What do you want me to…”

Jack Johnson: “Put it… put it in your panties and walk out of the house.”

LJ: “No! But I mean all this cash, Jack! I got the one from down…”

JJ: “Put it in your panties, Leslie.”

LJ: “Oh my god. Okay.”

Click here to listen to the first clip (mp3)

And here’s a partial transcript from the second clip:

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve received a phone call once or twice from an interview subject asking to omit a background detail from a story.

Whether the detail remains or gets cut often depends on how it relates to the story as a whole. But, in general, a story about someone involved in criminal proceedings includes some reference to his or her criminal record, even if it is only to say there is no record.

Which brings us to a Massachusetts courtroom Wednesday, where Joanna Snyder appeared for a scheduling hearing in a drug case. Snyder asked the judge to order a Salem News reporter to stop writing about her.

It seems the stories would include “details about Snyder’s long criminal history,” details “that upset her and her 19-year-old daughter, who recently had a baby.”

The judge told Snyder people upset with a newspaper story usually write a letter to the editor.

“I have no authority to control the press,” the judge said.

News of the court hearing was reported in the Salem News by Julie Manganis — the same Julie Manganis who wrote the other stories about Snyder. And somehow I don’t think Wednesday’s story on Snyder will be Manganis’ last.

(HT: Romenesko)

Thomas Maettig says Millersville con man Bill Hillar’s U.S. Army Special Forces impersonation scheme wasn’t necessarily as sophisticated as one would expect, given that he fooled at least 24 organizations — including the FBI — over a period of 12 years.

Hillar, whose real military experience consisted of eight years in the Coast Guard Reserves, was sentenced to 21 months in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to wire fraud for using fake credentials to make $170,000 teaching counter-terrorism and human trafficking courses to colleges, universities and law enforcement agencies including the FBI and DEA.

He got away with it until a real special forces veteran obtained Hillar’s military records and outed him online in October 2010.

But Maettig, who took Hillar’s one-credit counter-terrorism course at the Monterey Institute for International Studies in 2007, said there were warning signs long before that.

“Red flags — yes, many,” Maettig wrote in an email from Nigeria, where he now works for a German non-profit. ”His course was absolutely devoid of content. He spent hours requesting our expectations and ideas about what we would like to discuss in the following 1.5 days and didn’t get back to it at all. He wasted time. He had us conduct a pointless self-assessment test and spent hours talking about his personal experience. Basically, the class had no content and no structure.”

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Enjoy today’s sunshine while you can… looks like Maryland’s going to have a doozy of a weather week. And, if you’re technologically inclined, head outside and catch up on these legal links.

• Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher had the name, address and photo of the guy who burgled his home, after the guy posted pictures of himself on Fisher’s son’s Facebook page, wearing Fisher’s new winter coat, natch. It took police a lot longer to nab the guy, because, in the their words, burglaries just aren’t taken seriously. Even more surprising to Fisher was that it’s rare for thieves to do serious time.
• The first FOIA suit seeking photos of Osama bin Laden after his capture and death has been filed.]
• Catching up with Hogan Lovells one year after the merger that created the super-sized firm.
• Your case will be heard in The Daily Record Courtroom #2. Not likely.
• On the job bullying.
• The former management company of reality TV star Bethenny Frankel (left) wants the $12 million it says she owes the company for helping her develop her Skinnygirl Cocktail brand, which she just sold for a cool $120 million.
• Do the hopes and dreams of non-legal majors come down to this reality in today’s job market?