On the Record

Back in September, I wrote about the University of Baltimore bringing back its long-forgotten alma mater. At the time, the only evidence of the song was a piece of paper from 1958 that included the alma mater and Auld Lang Syne.

The school’s archivists theorized the alma mater was sung as part of graduation programs, but were hoping alumni would come forward with additional information.

Bill Clift (Class of 1951) responded to inquiries with an answer. He checked his Reporter yearbook from 1951 and found two copies of the program from his senior banquet held in June of that year. The alma mater is part of the program, along with Auld Lang Syne. An insert with the program contained the words to both songs.

Both documents are now part of the university archives. So the only question that remains concerns the alma mater’s origins.

Incidentally, the university has also recently digitized all of its Reporter yearbooks, which were published between 1928 and 1975. The yearbooks were started by the first graduating law class.

Harvard will offer a course on The Wire next year. From The Harvard Crimson:

“‘The Wire’ has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study” Sociology Professor William J. Wilson said.

African American studies chair Professor Evelyn B. Higginbotham said that there would be a new course in which Wilson will use “The Wire” as a case study for poverty in America.

What do you think about this class? I know there are some who would criticize it as a semester of watching TV, but I disagree. If I were still in college, I would jump at the chance to take a class like this. A show like The Wire is just begging for classroom-based context and analysis. The study of pop culture definitely has a place in academia–though you won’t see me arguing for a course on Jon & Kate any time soon.

HT: Double X.

I walked past what used to be the Court Towers Deli today in Towson and saw something I haven’t seen in 19 months: people eating.

The Perring Place Express Deli was doing a dry run during breakfast, its second dress rehearsal in a week. The deli, as I’ve chronicled here before, was originally supposed to open by the end of September.

I popped in as the maroon-shirted staffers were preparing to close, so I have no report on the food. (Sources indicated it was tasty, however.) A lady behind the counter said the restaurant could open officially on Monday, although the inflection of her voice seemed to indicate it was more of a prediction than a statement of fact.

I guess we’ll all find out next week.

In my story Monday about Baltimore County Circuit Court, I mentioned that foreclosure filings have inundated clerks’ offices at courthouses around the state, and that Prince George’s County has led the state in foreclosures for at least two years.

Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain foreclosure statistics from the clerk’s office in Prince George’s County by my deadline. But I received the data yesterday, and it’s startling.

In 2006, the clerk’s office received 4,148 filings. (That’s more than Baltimore County has ever received.)

In 2007, the clerk’s office in Prince George’s received 7,019 foreclosure filings.

In 2008, the clerk’s office received 8,237 filings.

This year, through Sept. 30, the clerk’s office has received 9,389 filings - and they are projecting 12,000 for the entire calendar.

Obviously, on an individual and family level the increase in foreclosure filings is bad news. But what does it say about the economy as a whole? Are we flushing out all of the toxic mortgages on the road to recovery? Or has news of the recession’s demise been greatly exaggerated?

Back in 2007, I wrote about the fascinating case of a Mississippi convicted killer and the Ober Kaler lawyers who were helping with his post-conviction appeals.

At first, Alan Michael Rubenstein claimed to have stumbled on the decomposing bodies of his stepson, stepson’s wife and their 4-year-old daughter. But he was later convicted of killing the family himself in order to collect the insurance money on his step-granddaughter. In my story, the Ober team said there were a number of irregularities in Rubenstein’s trial:

The Ober Kaler team says the evidence was not as clear as prosecutors made it out to be. They say there were major problems with a forensic expert’s testimony at trial. They say Rubenstein may not have done it, and will try to persuade Mississippi courts to order a new trial.

“My theory is that jurors wanted to convict somebody of this very horrible crime, especially when there’s a little girl and the pictures are gruesome,” [former Ober partner Ray] Shepard said. “I believe Mr. Rubenstein may, in fact, be innocent.”

The team has a tough battle ahead. The highest court in Mississippi has already soundly rejected most of Rubenstein’s direct appeal claims, and the prosecutors who handled Rubenstein’s case at the trial level say there is no doubt he is the killer.

“He’s a con man and a shyster,” said Dunn Lampton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, who handled the case when he was district attorney of Pike County, Miss. “He’s just an unbelievably evil human being.”

Rubenstein was originally sentenced to death, but the Mississippi Supreme Court vacated that sentence in 2006.

I just discovered that last month, Rubenstein was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole, which will run concurrently with his two other life sentences.

Happy Monday!

• The Sun’s doing a little exchange program, prompted by The Wire, where their crime reporter goes to London and The Independent’s crime reporter comes here. Check out the blog set up for the project.
• A moving billboard driving around D.C. on Friday accused DLA Piper of having “blood on [its] hands.”
• How do you handle a depressed client?
• A Kansas lawyer is in hot water for helping a reporter get into a women’s prison to write about illegal sex there. HT: The Crime Report.
• Is there ever a good reason to file 5,415 pages of briefing material and exhibits for a single summary judgment motion?

The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved the nomination of Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Keenan for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Keenan must still be approved by the full Senate — just like U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis, who was approved by the committee for a 4th Circuit seat back on June 4.

Sen. Ben Cardin’s frustration over the delay in getting a vote on Davis surfaced on Tuesday, when the Senate approved West Virginia’s Irene C. Berger as a federal judge in that state.

According to the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, Cardin complained that some Republican senators had placed anonymous holds on nominees.

“This is a deliberate effort to try to slow the pace,” he said. “I really think this is wrong, and people should know about this.”

The ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., denied that Senate Republicans were “slow walking” Obama’s nominees.

“I’m not going to remain silent while the record is distorted,” Sessions said.

Fifty-five years of marriage is darned impressive.

So if Ed and Harriet Neufeld of Aspen Hill have found a fun date activity that gets them out of the house together, more power to them.

That said, their hobby is a little… weird.

As the Gazette tells us, the Neufelds, who are retired, go to the Montgomery County Circuit Court weekly to watch cases. “It’s better than television, I’ll tell you that much,” Ed Neufeld told the newspaper.

Really?

The Neufelds must either a) have a really low threshold for what’s entertaining or b) be particularly adept at picking exciting cases to watch. Newspaper reporters tend to cover only the most high-profile court cases, and even those are sometimes incredibly dull. (I imagine that the proceedings at which the sketch above was made, on the other hand, were fascinating.)

HT: ABA Journal.

Legendary comedian Soupy Sales died last week at the age of 83. Sales is perhaps best known as the master of the pie-in-the-face and estimated he had been hit more than 19,000 times, according to his obituary in The Washington Post.

You might say Sales could be considered an authority on pie throwing with all of his experience. And he almost was, according to this nugget from The Post’s obit:

He became something of an expert on the messy staple of slapstick comedy and once testified at a Navy court-martial on behalf of a sailor accused of throwing a pie in an officer’s face. The military court was not amused, and the sailor was convicted.

No word if the sailor turned to the pie-throwing experts from Dewey, Cheatum & Howe on appeal.

If your kid’s teacher makes disparaging comments about religion, is it a First Amendment Establishment Clause violation?

The 9th Circuit will consider that question. The WSJ Law Blog writes:

The teacher, James Corbett of Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo (which graduated former Los Angeles Raider Todd Marinovich) referred to Creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” during a 2007 lecture. Corbett made a host of other controversial statements as well. One of his students, Chad Farnan, sued Corbett and the school district, alleging a violation of his First Amendment Rights.

In May, a federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif., James Selna, granted summary judgment, partly in favor of Farnan and partly in favor of the defendants. Click here for the opinion. Specifically, Judge James Selna ruled that the “superstitious nonsense” comment violated Farnan’s rights, but ruled that nearly two dozen statements did not. Both sides appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

What do you think? Was the teacher out of line? Constitutionally? Professionally?