Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar is an American attorney currently serving as a Senator for the state of Minnesota. Prior to her assuming this public office in 2007, Amy Klobuchar practiced both private and public law. In 1998, she became the first female county attorney to be elected in Hennepin County. Amy Klobuchar maintained this position from 1999 to 2007, when she assumed the office of Senator.

During her period as Hennepin County Attorney, Amy Klobuchar emphasized the prosecution of repeat offenders and violent criminals as a matter of particular importance to her office. As part of her efforts, Amy Klobuchar was instrumental in the creation of a community prosecution initiative. The first such program was established in Manhattan in 1985. The purpose of such a program is to establish stronger ties between citizens of the area in question and the prosecutors managing it.

Under the supervision of Amy Klobuchar, the community prosecution initiative established in Hennepin County consisted of three different divisions. One, located in the Third Police Precinct, provided a full-time prosecutor tasked with coordinating law enforcement with local police officials and consulting regularly with a community council on the needs and concerns of the area.

The second division of the community prosecution initiative established by Amy Klobuchar is located in the Fourth Police Precinct and is staffed by two full-time prosecutors concerned with juvenile crime. Another prosecutor in this office is concerned with adult crimes. Community initiatives allow community members to participate in the sentencing and rehabilitation process. The third division of the community prosecution initiative established by Amy Klobuchar is located in the city of Bloomington. Here, one full-time attorney is concerned with handling all juvenile crime cases which occur in the area.

In addition to her active work in prosecuting criminal offenses, Amy Klobuchar was a strong advocate for criminalizing driving while intoxicated as a felony level offense in the state of Minnesota. The appropriate litigation was passed, in large part thanks to her efforts.

Following her arrival to the Senate, Amy Klobuchar has been involved in a great deal of high-profile legislation. One bill which Amy Klobuchar co-authored along with two other Senators is known as the "Commercial Felony Streaming Act." This legislation, which is pending and has not yet been introduced to the Senate, concerns streaming copyrighted material on a computer from an unauthorized provider. Currently, this is only a misdemeanor offense.

However, under the terms of the legislation co-authored by Amy Klobuchar, would criminalize such activities at a felony level. In order to be charged with a felony violation, the defendant in question would have to have streamed material whose value was in excess of $2,500 or for which the licensing fees are in excess of $5,000. Furthermore, to be prosecuted the defendant in question would have to made use of this kind of illegal streaming video at least 10 times within the period of 180 days.

Bruce Bennett was an Arkansas politician best known for serving as the state Attorney General from 1957 to 1960, and then again from 1963 to 1966. During his first term as Attorney General, Bruce Bennett was associated with the passage of a series of bills he authored in 1958 with the specific purpose of making it impossible for the civil rights organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to operate in the state. Among other things, the bills authored by Bruce Bennett specifically forbid the NAACP from maintaining attorneys in the state and compelled the organization to give the state a complete list of its members. Similar laws passed by the state of Alabama were later deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the 1958 case of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People V. Alabama, effectively nullifying his legislative work.

After an unsuccessful run for state governor in 1960, Bruce Bennett returned to the office of the Attorney General in 1963. During this time, he was involved in the creation of the Arkansas Loan and Thrift company. The company was founded by businessman Ernest A. Bartlett Jr., who had come into possession of a building and loan charter whose terms outdated current state laws governing the regulation of savings and loans businesses. The draft for this company's charter was completed in the office of Bruce Bennett, who became a shareholder in the business.

Following the foundation of the company, advertising was successful in soliciting investments from churches and private citizens. The company promised a higher rate of return than could be legally granted by savings and loans institutions, investing the funds into unsafe products while earning roughly $4 million. During this time, the company attracted the attention of the state Savings and Loan Commission. To determine whether the company could be regulated and investigated, the state's savings and loan regulator, Clint Jones, sent Bruce Bennett a series of letter inquiring whether the company could be regulated as a savings and loan association, bank, or insurance company. Bruce Bennett replied in the negative to every query without disclosing his role in the company.

The Arkansas Loan and Thrift company declared bankruptcy in 1967, prompting a renewed investigation, this time from the Federal Savings and Loan Commission. Subsequent legal investigation revealed the role of Bruce Bennett in protecting the company from investigation and regulation. In 1969, he was indicted on charges including securities violations, postal fraud, and wire fraud. However, in the subsequent handling of the case, the presiding federal judge, who was a friend of Bruce Bennett's,  severed the case against him from that of other defendants being charged. Due to his throat cancer, Bruce Bennett was able to receive a number of continuances delaying the start of his trial. Bruce Bennett died in 1979 without ever having been prosecuted for his role in the Arkansas Loan and Thrift Company.

Jan Schlichtmann

Best known for his work on a lawsuit which served as the basis for a best-selling non-fiction book, attorney Jan Schlichtmann is a currently operating attorney best known for his work on the case Anderson v. Cryovac. Though he lost the case, the publicity attendant to the work resulted in more stringent Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

The case was instigated in the early 1980s, when Jan Schlichtmann met with representatives of the town of Woburn, Massachusetts. In 1979, the state's Department of Environmental Quality tested the town's water wells and determined that two out of eight had been contaminated by trichlorethylene, a chemical which had caused cancer in animals in laboratory tests. Trichlorethylene was found to be present in levels five times higher than safe, and the wells were immediately closed. A 1982 investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency traced the contamination to dumping performed at factory grounds used by two companies, the chemical plant of W.R. Grace and the John J. Riley Tannery

Following the closing of the wells, six children who all lived on the same block of Waltham were diagnosed with leukemia. Jan Schlichtmann and his partners agreed to represent the eight families in question in a lawsuit against the two companies. In part due to the arguments presented by lead defense counselor Jerome Facher, the presiding judge agreed to have the trial take place in two parts.

In the first part of the trial, Jan Schlichtmann and his partners were required to demonstrate that W.R. Grace and the John J. Riley Tannery were responsible for the contamination of the wells in question. After 79 days of trial, the jury returned a verdict of guilty regarding W.R. Grace but not for the John J. Riley Tannery. At this point, the trial continued to its second part, in which Jan Schlichtmann was required to demonstrate that the contamination was the direct cause of the development of leukemia.

At this point, Jan Schlichtmann and his partners had incurred a great deal of debt, in part because of the expenses necessitated to commission studies proving a link between trichlorethylene and leukemia development. Unable to proceed with the case fiscally, Jan Schlichtmann and his partners negotiated a $8 million settlement with W.R. Grace.

After the close of the trial, an in-house report produced by the Tannery emerged proving that the company knew that it had dumped waste chemicals in an illegal fashion, leading to contamination. Jan Schlichtmann therefore appealed the ruling regarding the tannery on the grounds that their attorney had knowingly suppressed this evidence. The case was eventually appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which agreed with Jan Schlichtmann and ordered the original presiding judge to reconsider the case.

Ultimately, the presiding judge agreed with the claim of withholding evidence. However, in his opinion the judge ruled that Jan Schlichtmann had launched a frivolous lawsuit when filing without this evidence and ruled against him.

Robert Torricelli

Robert Torricelli is a former Senator from New Jersey who only served a single term. He withdrew from the election race after allegations that he had accepted bribes from a businessman were made public.

Robert Torricelli was an elected member of the US House of Representatives from 1983 to 1997, serving as the representative of the 9th district of New Jersey. In 1996, he ran for the United States Senate and was elected. He began his term in January 1997 and served until January of 2003.

In the weeks prior to the election, a businessman named David Chang publicly stated allegations about bribing Robert Torricelli. Chang stated that he had sought the cooperation of the office of Robert Torricelli in helping him obtain payment from North Korea which he had sold to that nation. To that end, David Chang alleged that he had bribed Robert Torricelli with gifts such as Italian suits, a new Rolex watch, and a 52-inch television set. Though Robert Torricelli denied all the allegations, he decided to drop out of the race regardless.

David Chang's statements were made following his agreement with federal prosecutors to receive a reduced sentence for illegal campaign contributions within the state in return for testimony about corruption in the state's political system. However, prosecutor decided not to prosecute Robert Torricelli because Chang's testimony as a convicted felon would lack credibility, making it difficult to obtain a guilty verdict.

However, the state's Democratic Party had difficulty replacing Robert Torricelli's name on the ballot. State law stipulates that the names of candidates in an election cannot be changed any closer than 51 days after the election. However, Robert Torricelli exited from the race 35 days before the election. Therefore, legally Democrats were prohibited from replacing his name on the ballot with that of his replacement candidate, Frank Lautenberg.

Democrats argued before the State Supreme Court that despite the law, they should be allowed to replace Robert Torricelli's name in the public interest of the voters. Republicans argued before the Supreme Court that because the language of the legislation in question is clear and unambiguous, the Democratic request for an exception to the rules should not be argued. In its unanimous ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court stated that it had decided it was in the public interest to grant the Democratic status, allowing for the replacement of Robert Torricelli's name on all ballots.

Following the end of his political career, Robert Torricelli became a lobbyist. In 2010, he again attracted attention when it was reported that he had used funds which were raised in the course of his aborted Senate re-election race and donating them to the campaigns of other politicians. While these donations did not violate federal law, the contributions attracted media attention and were cited as evidence of the need to create new laws regarding the legal use of money raised during political campaigns.

Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky is a prominent legal scholar specializing in issues of constitutional law. Though he has acted as a lawyer in several capacities, Erwin Chemerinsky is better known for his public commentary on a number of prominent issues.

One of his prominent public moments came in 2000, when he was asked by the Los Angeles Police Department to analyze the results of a Board of Inquiry investigation into the so-called "Rampart Scandal." This refers to a series of incidents involving corrupt LAPD officers from 1997 to 2000. The first of these was the fatal March 1997 shooting of an off-duty LAPD officer, Kevin Gaines, by another undercover officer, Frank Lyga. Lyga claimed that Gaines had threatened him and he had acted in self-defense.

The next incident took place in November 1997, when a bank robbery was linked to police officer David Mack. In February 1998, officer Brian Hewitt allegedly beat a hand-cuffed gang member, resulting in internal injuries. Hewitt was a member of the CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) division, part of the Rampart department. In March 1998, another officer in this division, Rafael Perez, was linked with the disappearance of more than six pounds of cocaine confiscated as police evidence. In September 1999, Perez agreed to a plea bargain. Under the terms of this plea bargain, he spent nine months detailing his knowledge of corruption in the Rampart department, implicating approximately 70 of his fellow officers in misconduct.

In response to these revelations, police chief Bernard Parks convened a Board of Inquiry to investigate the Rampart unit. Their report was issued in March 2000 and blamed poor management practices. The CRASH unit was disbanded that same month.

In September 2000, Erwin Chemerinsky completed his independent analysis of the Board of Inquiry's report. This report concluded that their report had deliberately understated and underestimated problems of corruption within the LAPD force, failed to firmly state the problems of the police force's internal culture, did not adequately consider how to institute internal reforms, did not adequately address LAPD procedures for handling cases in which officers made use of excessive force, failed to adequately consider malfunctioning internal discipline procedures, and did acknowledge problems endemic to the entire criminal justice system of the city of Los Angeles. That same month, the United States Department of Justice was given the authority by the Los Angeles City Council to supervise reforms within the LAPD for the following five years.

Following the release of this analysis by Erwin Chemerinsky, another independent review panel issued their report in November 2000. This report supported his findings, noting that the LAPD compromised its own internal investigations of disciplinary violations and was viewed by the communities it patrolled as violent and unresponsive or actively hostile.

In 2009, Erwin Chemerinsky assumed the position of founding dean at the newly formed school of law at the University of California at Irvine.