REPOST: N.Y. Task Force seeks laws to fight 21st-century crimes

The 'city that never sleeps' gets a lot busier as it seeks to update state laws to fight digital age crimes.  Bloomberg.com reports:

New York needs to update state laws dating from 1986 to better prosecute white-collar criminals, according to a special task force report released by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

Current laws predate the Internet, social media and e-commerce and can’t keep pace with increasingly sophisticated frauds, Vance said today at New York University’s Center for the Administration of Criminal Law. Proposals include expanding the definition of larceny to cover the theft of software and personal identifying information, and eliminating a requirement that schemes to defraud target more than one victim.

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“The Internet has become our 21st-century crime scene,” Vance said, noting that the most recent overhaul of New York’s penal code dates from the invention of Xerox Corp.’s first fax machine.

For example, old definitions of larceny don’t cover theft by duplication, a common means of stealing computer code, Vance said. The task force recommends expanding the definition of “computer material” to let prosecutors target hacking into another person’s private e-mail or webcam, and combat using computers to spy on unwitting victims.

Criminal law in New York State has been mostly unchanged since 1965, and the last notable alterations to white-collar crime enforcement were made in 1986, leaving fraud and corruption laws antiquated, Vance’s office has said.

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State Legislature

The task force, convened almost a year ago, includes district attorneys, academics and defense lawyers. Their recommendations will be presented to the governor and the state Legislature for consideration in the 2014 January session. Aside from cybercrime, today’s report targets four main areas: fraud, elder fraud, public corruption and procedural reforms.

Punishment guidelines for fraud should be graduated so that more serious schemes are tied to longer sentences, according to the report. Under current law, a criminal who attempts to defraud victims of $2 will be punished the same as someone who attempts to swindle them of $2,000.

Some of the changes would help combat what the Securities Investor Protection Corp. estimates is $10 billion to $40 billion a year in U.S. investment fraud.

Because New York is home to the third-largest elder population in the U.S., new laws should make it harder for criminals who get “technical consent” to take assets from elderly victims in poor physical or mental health, according to the report.

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‘Meaningfully Consent’

Prosecutors should be able to make a case that victims may have been unable to “meaningfully consent,” said Frank. A Sedita III, Erie County district attorney and the task force’s co-chairman.

Public corruption should be subject to stronger anti-bribery measures and a new law of “undisclosed self-dealing by public servants,” according to the task force. That would make it a crime for a public servant to have a secret interest in a government business above a certain threshold, such as owning property through a shell company that’s involved in public business.

Based in Houston, Texas, Craig Seldin is an attorney with a diverse practice that handles civil, business, and criminal cases.  He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, and was the recipient of the 2011 Wow Attorney of the Year Award.  Visit this Facebook page for more updates on his practice.

REPOST: Pledge of Allegiance challenged in Massachusetts Supreme Court

A family in Boston claims that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violate the state’s equal rights laws. Sophia Rosenbaum of NBC News explains more of the case in the report below:

A family in suburban Boston hopes to change the phrasing of the Pledge of Allegiance to remove two words they claim violate students' rights.

The family is challenging the pledge, which students recite daily in U.S. public schools, claiming the words "under God" violate the state's equal rights laws.

The plaintiffs, who have requested anonymity through their lawyers, are taking an unconventional approach to challenging the pledge. Past cases argued the words “under God” violated the Constitution’s separation of church and state.

Congress added “under God” to the pledge in 1954.

Image Source: www.nbcnews.com

This case, however, makes a different argument. 

David Niose, former president of the American Humanist Association, and the plaintiffs' representative, opened his arguments Wednesday saying the pledge’s use of “under God” violates the Equal Rights Amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution and is an issue of discrimination.

Niose said the pledge’s repetitiveness in the public school system is indoctrinating and alienating to atheists.  

“It validates believers as good patriots and it invalidates atheists as non-believers at best and unpatriotic at worst,” he said.

Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, intervened on behalf of a family in the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District, the defendant in the case, who would like to have their child continue reciting the pledge as it is presently written.

“Most people do not view reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as saying a prayer,” Rassbach said. “It would be terrible to enshrine in the law this kind of allergy to God that the plaintiffs have.”

Rassbach added that it has been illegal to force someone recite the pledge since 1943. The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette ruled that students could not be forced to salute the American flag or say the pledge in school. It was considered a huge victory for Jehovah’s Witnesses, who cannot salute or pledge to symbols, according to their religious beliefs.

Both Noise and Rassbach said a decision will likely come within six months. Since this case is an appeal, there is no testimony and the panel of seven Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court judges will decide the case based on court briefs.

Rassbach is worried that if the state Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the case would spur copycat lawsuits in other states with similar equal rights’ laws.

“If they succeed in their goals here,” he said, “they will attempt to replicate it elsewhere.”

Atty. Craig Seldin’s broad law practice includes civil cases, such as equal rights issues. Receive regular updates on law and other social issues from this Facebook page.

Out-of-court settlements: When going to court is too much trouble

When two parties have a case, the usual resolution to the conflict that led to it isn’t always a drawn-out trial in a court of law. At times, a long drawn-out legal battle would be a considerable effort on the part of the plaintiff and defendant, and they may -- if they choose to agree on certain terms -- settle the dispute out of court.

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Out-of-court settlements are agreements settled by parties of a pending lawsuit done to resolve the dispute without the supervision of a judicial entity. In these agreements, the dissenting parties usually agree to hold no more interventions from a judge or other supervising entity afterward. In some places, some resolution must be sought before a trial can even begin.

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These settlements are usually seen as an alternative to a costly litigation, providing the dissenting parties with the compensation that resolves both their issues without resorting to an arduous trial in the courts. This is doubly so if the plaintiffs are uncertain if their case would stand in a court of law; a case that isn’t valid stands to act only to waste their time in court.

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Settlements are also preferable to trials in cases where the parties would not get as much from their case in court, particularly if the costs of the trial do not justify the awards one might get from a trial.

For further details on out-of-court settlements, visit this webpage.

Lawyers, like Craig Seldin, are often sought out to help facilitate out-of-court settlements. Visit this website for more information.

The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, Reverend Gustav Briegleb, and the LA police’s moribund reputation in the ‘20s

It was the late ‘20s and the Los Angeles police department’s reputation was not in good light.

There were allegations of unfair treatment and police brutality, as publicly and blatantly decreed by Reverend Gustav Briegleb, a Presbyterian minister and radio evangelist who led the publication of many causes in the city in the ‘20s and ‘30s. One of the famous cases that shook LA police at that time was the series of abductions and murders of young boys in California, an event now popularly known as The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.

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In 1926, ranch owner Gordon Stewart Northcott sent his 13-year-old nephew Sanford Clark from his home in Canada to his farmstead in Wineville, California. Northcott physically and sexually abused Clark, which soon came to the attention of the former’s sister, Jessie, during the day she visited the ranch. At the night of her visit, she learned of the murders that had taken place at Northcott’s place, and immediately reported it to the American Embassy in Canada. At once, the news became known to the entire Los Angeles and entire America after the LA police came to gather evidences against Northcott, leading to his arrest. But this did not leave the LA police unscathed.

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Reverend Gustav Briegleb’s social activism was essential to the reformation of the LA police, following the futile attempts of the police department to find the missing son of a single mother named Christine Collins. Reverend Briegleb castigated the police department’s duplicitous acts to close the Collins case instantly and refusal to accept that it was related to the Wineville murders.

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After Northcott’s capture and execution, the LA police went to several reforms, in the hopes of finally creating a good name and gaining back the public’s trust.


Atty. Craig Seldin’s broad law practice includes civil rights-related cases. Learn more about his legal expertise here.

Unlike: The dark side of social media

The deaths of teenagers Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrie Pott has put the spotlight back again on social media just a few weeks after the Stubenville rape case judge warned teens to watch what they tweet.

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The suicides of Parsons and Pott, and the Stubenville case highlight how crimes linked to the use of social media sites have increased remarkably since 2008, when the phenomenon of social networking crime was comparatively minor. These days, however, social media has revealed its “dark side,” as perpetrators have used sites such as Facebook and Twitter to further torment their victims.

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Rebecca Campbell, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University wrote for CNN, “The ubiquity of cell phones with cameras and the power of the Internet make for faster, farther-reaching gossip, name-calling, character assassination, and ultimately, despair for the victim.” This became very clear in the cases of Parsons and Pott when evidence of their alleged sexual assault went viral, pushing the teens to end their own lives.

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The tragic deaths of Parsons and Pott have prompted calls for more stringent measures to curtail cyberbullying and other social media-related crimes. But since laws are not yet in place to protect young people from such acts, the best action for now is to educate the youth about the benign use of social media.

A member of the State Bar of Texas, Craig Seldin was voted Texas’ Wow Attorney of the Year for 2011. Learn more about his practice and areas of specialization here.

The rules of structural encroachment

This is the quandary: You have decided to rent a place near your new office because it was too far from your home. Now, two years have gone by, and you decided to go home, only to find out that somebody has invaded your place, or precisely, a part of your ownership. Your neighbor has just extended his backyard to yours.

This circumstance is called encroachment, or when another person builds a structure that meddles on your property, be it just an awning, or any physical structure for that matter.

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Like any other civil case, you can just ignore it. You can also settle it with the offender democratically. However, if things went irreparable through these two constitutional processes, you can always take it to court.

In court, you just have to prove that you own the property, which is legally called as “quiet title action,” and that your neighbor is without doubts using your land, which lawyers call an “ejectment action.”

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However, reducing litigation length can be done in two ways: through adverse possession and prescriptive easements. In order to win in a claim for adverse possession, you just have to prove that you own your land legally by presenting important documents—titles, deed of sale, tax records—that would establish your claim. Conversely, one of the most popular methods of prescriptive easements is by just easing your accusation to “claiming” instead of “possessing.” In this way, your neighbor would end up paying for the taxes that encompass the entire period of his intrusion, making him appear as a renter, not as an intruder.

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Atty. Craig Seldin’s broad law practice includes civil cases, such as different encroachment issues. This website provides additional information on Atty. Seldin’s practice.

Irreconcilable differences: A staple ground for divorce

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In a country that is administrated through a federal government, laws and their respective implementations may differ from one state to another—including the divorce law.

Nonetheless, though each has its own unique tenet about divorce, the states share a very strong probable cause to nullify a marriage: irreconcilable differences.

“Irreconcilable differences”—as ground for divorce—becomes valid when it is already impossible for a married couple to live together normally and harmoniously, or when a wedded male and a female can no longer agree with basic and fundamental issues involving the entire family or the marriage itself.


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The good thing about using “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for divorce is that there’s no such thing as “trifle” when it comes to determining its weight of validity. A simple difference in choosing what particular bed sheet color would be used for the week or disagreeing on each other’s political view or a plain annoyance on hearing the other party’s loud snorting when sleeping can be enough to nullify a marriage. Any matter, as long as it becomes a hindrance to a couple’s harmonious living, can be a solid cause and foundation to push for a marriage’s revocation.

At some point, both parties have to agree

Divorce, however, will not come to a conclusion if both parties would not agree that their marriage can’t be saved due to their differences in opinion. If this is the case, it would not arrive to its final stage, to irrevocability.


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Atty. Craig Seldin has several years of experience in handling divorce case. This website provides more information about his practice.