I have not seen My Cousin Vinny.
You must! If Iām channel-surfing, I always stop to see Marisa Tomeiās expert testimony. One of the best courtroom scenes evah.
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That is essential.
As is the scene in which Marisa Tomei says āYeah, you blend.ā
My fellow Yankee expatriates have been quoting that one ever since the movie was released.
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Count me as another who has not seen Vinny. Iāll have to look for a way to get where I am. Iām intrigued!
I was involved in document review for the joint defense of a bank in Enron-related litigation. There were 90 million documents produced for the responsive period. As mentioned, tons of duplicates and a lot of email with long chains. Each new email in a chain produced a separate multipage document!
The other firm had their own building down in the Wall St. area. They had a vacant floor. That whole floor was set up with rented tables, computers, and printers. An army of contract attorneys printed, collated, numbered, and did first review for privilege, etc. It was honestly like an Orwellian nightmare walking into that space.
Then stuff worked its way up through the various teams to my firmās team which did final review. The cost of use of the entire floor of prime Manhattan real estate (even steeply discounted) plus rental equipment and contract attorneysā salaries exceeded USD 1 million/month. Then our time billed on top of that. The attorney who ran the whole thing practically lived there and the year I was involved he was on track to bill over 3000 hours that year. And you cannot bill all the hours you are there. He basically spent 12-15 hours/day 6-7 days a week in his makeshift office on that floor. It was madness!!
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My favorite quote is
āImagine youāre a deah. Youāre prancin through the fahrest, and you see a brook. You put ya little deah lips down to the cool, clear watah, and, BLAM! Ya brains are in pieces all over the fahrest floah. Now I ax ya. Would you give a shit what the son of a bitch who shotcha was wearin?ā
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I have so many questions about this.
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Iām behind a bit (trying to catch up but I lost the plot on the original thread awhile ago).
Do we actually think MB is trying to go for an insanity defense with this civil case? Or are they missing some vital evidence that this civil case then allows them to find? Or is it sheer probable doubt that they are going for, by exposing the degree of dysfunction that has happened, making MB a more sympathetic case to the jury?
When I read the civil complaint it reads like a terrible script for Jersey Shore and makes me happy that though Iāve experienced barn drama, it never got that bad.
Well if nothing else, it calls into question any testimony of events told by the cops. Who knew what happened? Lk? Who fabricates the most mundane aspects of her life? The BF? Who is her lackey in everything (see her most recent public description of how she plans to manipulate him on her personal page). M B? Who canāt, or isnāt saying. Or the cops, who not only werent there, but arguably are in cahoots with her version of things for weeks up to the event, and who can not say anything about the event itās self. It may read like a bad self published story, but the utter stupidity of it calls up reasonable doubt, if itās largely documented, which it looks like his description of their negligence, favoritism, laziness, and disregard for his well being and their own procedure is largely documented. There may even be other cases similar to his corroborating his assertion about these police. There may not be a whole lot of believable testimony left in any of these cases.
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Did LK and her BF get married? (No, it is not any of my business really, just curious.)
Recently calls him fiance, on her public page.
Spouses canāt be forced to testify about personal discussions - right? Or can they be called, deemed a hostile witness and be compelled to give yes/no answers or something?
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I think the insanity defense is for explaining why he canāt remember what happened and to expose the mind games/threats from LK.
It isnāt simply that he just wanted her off the property and so he shot her when she wouldnāt leaveā¦he was under psychological attack from her and had no way to get reliefā¦ā¦
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As pointed put, I donāt think the insanity defense is mentioned, just the explanation of why he canāt remember the event itās self being attributed to trauma. He may well say his defense is self defense. He may say his intention was defense against the dog. He may well say he never brought a gun to the fight at all. I donāt think we know his defense. Do we?
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I doubt he would testify truthfully about LK regardless of marital status.
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Not really. And my understanding of New Jersey law is that they do their best to make āself defenseā something that is almost an impossible legal burden to meet.
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So he was charged with first degree attempted murder. If this establishes instead that it was āin a fit of passionā, then that makes it more likely that itās attempted manslaughter. But they only charged him with first degree according to what Iāve read, which DOES require a full intent to kill with the mindset of doing so, so if they can establish that he either didnāt bring the gun OR that he was not in his right mind, then he thenā¦gets off? They canāt charge him with attempted manslaughter unless it was in the original complaint (to my understanding) and they canāt charge him with it later. Good move by his lawyers. (If I understand all of this correctly)
Okā¦so then LK has the weird civil suit that says guns are dangerous and shouldnāt have been around the barn, which I canāt imagine has any standing in the US at all but is probably some attempt at punishment because she must know that the first degree convictions may not stick.
And MBās suit about the police department may not amount to much, except to establish doubt.
Am I missing anything else?
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Really?
It seems to me that it is not rare that what someone is originally charged with is not what they are finally convicted of.
Does NJ have some special law?
No, but the suit has to name the charges against, and if attempted manslaughter isnāt listed, they have to amend the complaint or they canāt ask for it later. I have no idea if that is automatically a lesser included offense in NJ or not.
You canāt get relief you donāt ask forā¦
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Usually they will name the first complaint but must include the lesser charges (or amend, as LilRanger notes), which is why you see people indicted for like 14 different charges that all sound like the same thing. I thought, though I could be wrong, that most of the time the degree can change, but the ātypeā cannot. So, you could be convicted of 2nd degree if the charge was first degree, but you could not be convicted of attempted manslaughter which is a different type of complaint.
Then you canāt be charged again for the same crime because of the double jeopardy rules.
Itās a fascinating game of chess.
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I could be wrong, but isnāt that usually because they take a plea to a lesser offense?
