The Center for Public Integrity, Harmful Error project details the state of prosecutorial misconduct through scholarly analysis and case studies. They’ve compiled a FREE national searchable database, drawn from appellate court decisions, in which the defense alleged prosecutorial misconduct. A search can be conducted by state, defendant name, and prosecutor name. A search limited by California returned about 100 citations; Alabama cases returned twice as many. California cases don’t seem to have the prosecutor listed but other states do. Be sure to read their methodology. Here’s a result example:

Details for case: People v. Gaines
DEFENDANT:Gaines, Maurice
State:CA
Jurisdiction:Solano County
Case:People v. Gaines
Citation:54 Cal.App.4th 821
Date Issued:4/28/1997
Was the misconduct ruled harmless error or prejudicial conduct: Prejudicial Conduct
If the court did not address the prosecutorial misconduct or ruled it harmless error, does a dissenting or concurring judge believe the misconduct was more serious than the majority did: Not Applicable

The New Year brings some changes to accessing birth records of adoptees. New Hampshire will allow adult adoptees to obtain copies of their original birth certificates with the names of their biological parents. Read the article

The New Jersey Senate has passed a more restrictive “open access” bill that opens records for adult adoptees born from the point the law goes into effect. Records would be opened for adoptees born and adopted in the past, only if a birth parent does not file an objection to disclosure during a one-year time frame following implementation of the change in law. The passage of the bill in the Assembly is pending. Read the article

The reality game show, not to be upstaged by living reality, is diving into the adoption arena with FOX TV’s, Who’s Your Daddy? Opinions registered by adoption activists fall into different camps. Read the article PI Steven Weisz does the locates. He runs a company that specializes in locating separated friends and family.

This is not just another lurid tale of mentally ill woman-kills-self-with-gun-purchased-at-WalMart. Shayla Stewart, a diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic, killed herself last year with a weapon purchased at…(you know where). But here’s the thoughtful, intriguing issue related to privacy, law enforcement records and gun ownership.

Stewart purchased a gun at WalMart, and her meds, a prescription for which she had on file at the WalMart pharmacy. The store did not check it’s pharmacy database, before selling the gun, because that’s a medical record, which they are barred by law from accessing for other purposes. The FBI check didn’t capture the medical history, when they did the gun check, because many states don’t report it. Isn’t privacy fun!

As long as we’re going to allow guns to be sold like candy, should the sellers have a duty to screen the mental health history of the purchaser–much as bartenders assess the intoxication level of their patrons before selling them a drink? Read an article.

According to this law.com article, 25% of workers compensation surveillance video ends up supporting the plaintiff. And that’s out of 10-15 percent of cases that are videotaped.

In the cited case, the defendant videotaped the plaintiff, who really was injured. The defense declined to use the tape but the plaintiff attorney impeached the defense witness with it. Ouch! Does it make sense to observe first, then videotape, if the evidence supports the defense? I guess insurance companies don’t want to pay for the extra work. They’d probably rather roll the dice and get dinged at trial…

This horse identification program identifies and records information on individual horses, including color photos, microchip data and maintains that information in a database, which can be accessed for a fee.

Identity database, equine investigation

Fear is fomenting across the land. The people, faced with the uncertain danger of their personal identifiers used by unauthorized others, are rising up, demanding that the personal become, well, personal. Or, at least only the purview of the government. What happens when the proceedings of government are closed, the relationships of the wealthy to politicians are kept under seal? Ask the Governor of California, who issued a vote of approval to shuttering public records, signing into law AB 782, which allows redaction of divorce records with one party’s request.

The Los Angeles Times recounts one recent tale, demonstrating just how the wealthy need protection…

Billionaire investor Ronald Burkle has persuaded the courts to shield from
public view, at least temporarily, dozens of documents in his divorce file,
arguing that a new state law requires trial and appellate judges to seal the
records.

At a hearing Tuesday in Superior Court in Long Beach, Burkle’s
lawyers argued that the law, signed in June by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger,
requires sealing records that disclose financial assets in divorce cases on
request of one of the parties.

Divorce Case Raises Questions on Records Law
Ronald Burkle cites measure that permits sealing of documents. Media lawyers call it unconstitutional. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-burkle23dec23,1,2420407.story?coll=la-news-state

States across the land are finagling to restrict access to government records, even in New Jersey! The Open Public Records Act was implemented in 2002, requires government agencies to release records or pay for the legal fees accumulated in attempting to gain access. The AG’s office is plotting for ways to restrict release of public records, with the catch-all exception, ambiguously called “homeland security”.

Critics charge open public records law is being gutted
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/state/ny-bc-nj–openrecords1226dec26,0,7999042.story?coll=ny-region-apnewjersey [Free subscription required]

Cops, as private citizens, are fed up with bad drivers, and are telling us (for a fee) who’s been naughty. Tattle, and find who’s been tattled on, and get the satisfaction of knowing that the errant (or accused errant) driver, will receive a letter informing her (is it more commonly a him?) that they’ve been seen weaving, tailgating or speeding! Read all about it

This free bankruptcy database indexes large publicly owned companies that have filed for bankruptcy. Lynn M. LoPucki developed this tool for journalists.

WebBRD is the most powerful business bankruptcy research tool on the web. WebBRD enables you to design and instantly execute an empirical study of large, public company bankruptcy cases in seconds — in the most complete, accurate data
available anywhere.

WebBRD is a byproduct of my empirical research on large, public company bankruptcies. Over a period of almost twenty years, I have collected the data from those studies — more than 140 fields of data on each of more than 860 cases — in the Bankruptcy Research Database.

The Santa Cruz County Recorder is joining Monterey, California in withholding, from the public, access to the original documents, which are scanned into a digital format before they are sent back to the submitter. The title companies are steamed up because of their historical access to recorded documents as they come in the door. Some claim that certain information is not recorded. Read the article

Is this a significant turn of events, a better approach to securing original documents, reflective of a trend to diminish access to public records, or none of the above?

You’re invited to add comments (just select the comments link at the bottom of this message).

Archival news and film footage, along with stock film (bad weather…), service. Search across all sources by keywords and get a synopsis of the content of each document.

Vanderbilt University claims to house the largest collection of National network news.

blinkx.tv, still in beta test, indexes radio and television broadcasts, searchable through a keyword index.

Many magazines and newspaper articles are archived on the internet. Time Magazine introduced its searchable database, which extends back to 1923. The free search only returns an annotation of the article but, then you can go to a major library (of which you are, of course, a card holder) index and often obtain the whole article. First try entering the title, in quotes, in an internet search. This will sometimes return a site that is distributing the article for free.

U.S. newspaper archives, on the internet, are organized by state, then publication, with inclusion dates and costs, if any, courtesy of the Special Libraries Association.

media, database