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A Brooklyn teacher invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when asked by city school investigators about his relationship with a female student, records show.

David Lado, who taught physics at Medgar Evers Preparatory School in Crown Heights, engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a female student, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools alleges.

The SCI began a probe after a school official reported receiving an anonymous complaint in an email on June 23, 2019, that Lado, 29, was engaged in sexual activities with a student.

In the presence of her father, the girl denied having a sexual relationship with Lado, saying she spoke with him only during school hours.

The girl also claimed her younger sister, who was mentioned in the anonymous email, denied telling anyone about the allegation. But the father would not let investigators question the sister, the report says.

SCI subpoenaed Google to determine who sent the anonymous email. The records show the account was opened on June 23, the date of the anonymous message. Possibly for the sole purpose of sending the email, the report stated. The person who opened the account did not provide a name or address.

SCI subpoenaed phone records showing that Lado and the girl were in phone contact 129 times. Lado placed 38 calls to her, she called him 88 times, and three text messages were exchanged. The calls were between May 1 and July 1 in 2019, continuing amid the investigation.

Through his lawyer, Lado declined to be interviewed by SCI,invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the SCI states.

The SCI sent Chancellor Richard Carranza its findings on July 9 eight days after the Department of Education fired Lado for letting his state teaching license expire.

Because Lado was already terminated, the DOE could not file misconduct charges against him, a DOE spokeswoman said.

But Lado, who had taught at Medgar Evers since September 2015, is ineligible to work for city schools again, officials said.

This extremely disturbing alleged conduct has absolutely no place in our schools, said DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson.

According to his LinkedIn page, Lado is currently an MBA candidate at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College. He could not be reached for comment.

Original post:
NYC teacher suspected of sexual relationship with student invokes Fifth Amendment - New York Post

Section 446 of the California Code of Civil Procedure concerns the verification of pleadings. Subdivision (a) provides that an answer to a complaint generally must be verified in either of two following circumstances:

The first exception does seemingly applies to any party, including a party that is not an a natural person. In a recent case, however, the state argued that the exception did not apply to corporations because corporations have no privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Braswell v. United States, 487 U.S. 99 (1988).

The Court of Appeal, however, rejected the state's argument:

"Section 446, subdivision (a) does not refer to a 'person' being compelled to be a witness against themselves. Instead it refers to a 'party' who might be subjected to a criminal prosecution. How the word person has been interpreted in the context of the constitutional privilege is immaterial."

Paul Blanco's Good Car Company Auto Group v. Superior Court,Cal. Ct. App. Case No. A159623 (Oct. 20, 2020). The Court made it clear that it was not extending the privilege against self-incrimination to corporations and that corporations will likely have to provide responses under oath in discovery.

View post:
Court Holds That Corporation Need Not Verify Its Answer - JD Supra

Famed sports bettor Billy Walters, who was convicted of insider trading back in 2017, contends that the federal government illegally leaked information to the media.

Walters says that FBI agents leaked stories about him, and purposefully inflated the scope of the investigation, to push him to reveal more over a wiretap, Walters lawsuit filed Thursday in New York alleges.

Hes seeking a declaratory judgment confirming that his fifth amendment rights were violated by the defendants, including David Chaves, an agent in the New York FBI field office, and Preet Bharara, who served as US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York for eight years.

[Track all of your bets by downloading The Action Network App.]

Walters also wants a trial to discover compensatory damages for how his image was destroyed, as well as the recouping of associated attorney fees.

In 2017, Walters was found guilty of an insider trading scheme, netting more than $43 million on tips concerning the status of milk maker Dean Foods. Walters frequently golfed with Dean Foods CEO Tom Davis, who pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigation. The longtime Las Vegas resident received a five-year prison sentence and a $10 million fine.

The story was well covered by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the beneficiaries of the leaks, thanks to inclusion of Walters friend, pro golfer Phil Mickelson, who the government alleged made $931,000 on a tip from Walters to buy Dean Foods stock.

Mickelson then allegedly used that to pay Walters back for a gambing debt. In 2016, Mickelson paid the $931,000 back to the Securities & Exchange Commission, plus $105,000 interest.

Mickelsons name was mentioned at Walters trial more than 100 times, but Mickelson pleaded the fifth and never testified.

Walters has been a legendary name in betting lore. He moved from Kentucky to Las Vegas in 1980 after being convicted on bookmaking charges.

He did almost no media for more than 30 years, until he agreed to do an extensive piece with 60 Minutes in January 2011.

On the show, Walters said he had never had a losing year in 30 years of sports betting. Correspondent Lara Croft talked of his $20 million jet and his seven homes.

In 2014, Walters sold one of those homes for $13 million and another his 10,000 square foot mansion near San Diego went on the market for $26.9 million last month. Walters has been living there since late April when he was released from a Florida prison due to Covid-19.

While Walter went to jail, and has to serve until Jan. 2022, Chaves, the lawsuit said, retired in 2017 without any consequences for his alleged actions.

See more here:
Rovell: Billy Walters Files Lawsuit Alleging Federal Agents Leaked Stories to the Media - The Action Network

This morning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit,inNorth American Butterfly Association v. Wolf,revived the North American Butterfly Association's Fifth Amendment Due Process claim against the Department of Homeland Security for intruding upon a wildlife sanctuary along the U.S.-Mexico border. Dismissal of the NABA's other claims, however, was affirmed.

Judge Pillard wrote for the court's majority, joined by Judge Tatel. Judge Millett dissented. Judge Pillard's majority summarized the case as follows:

The National Butterfly Center, a 100-acre wildlife sanctuary and botanical garden owned by the nonprofit North American Butterfly Association, lies along the border between the United States and Mexico. Butterfly Center staff discovered in 2017 that a segment of the wall the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to build on the border with Mexico would run through the Center's premises. After DHS confirmed that plan and asserted control over parts of the Center, the Butterfly Association sued.

The Association contends that DHS' presence on and use of parts of its property to prepare for and carry out construction of a border wall violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution and two environmental statutes. The district court dismissed all claims, concluding the Association stated no viable constitutional claim and that section 102(c)(2)(A) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-208, Div. C, 110 Stat. 3009, 3009-546, as amended (IIRIRA) (codified at 8 U.S.C. 1103), strips jurisdiction over the statutory claims because the DHS Secretary waived application of environmental laws with respect to the construction of roads and physical barriers to be built at the Center. See N. Am. Butterfly Ass'n v. Nielsen, 368 F. Supp. 3d 1, 4 (D.D.C. 2019). We affirm dismissal of the Butterfly Association's statutory and Fourth Amendment claims but reverse dismissal of the Fifth Amendment claim and remand for further proceedingsconsistent with this opinion.

The broad waiver provisions of the IIRIRA clearly grant the DHS Secretary the authority to waive statutory obstacles to wall construction, so those aspects of the ruling are quite straightforward (assuming, of course, that there is no non-delegation problem with the breadth of the authority delegated to DHS with that provision). The NABA tried to get around the IIRIRA, but to no avail.

The IIRIRA does not, and could not, waive the Department's constitutional obligations. On the constitutional claims, the panel majority concluded the NABA "failed to state a Fourth Amendment claim of unreasonable seizure of property it acknowledges to be 'open fields,'" but did state "a procedural due process claim under the Fifth Amendment."

Here is a portion of Judge Pillard's discussion of the NABA's claim:

A procedural due process violation under the Fifth Amendment occurs when a government official deprives a person of property without appropriate procedural protectionsprotections that include, at minimum, the basic requirements of notice and an opportunity to be heard. . . .

The Butterfly Association alleges that CBP has asserted control over the National Butterfly Center by entering, maintaining a regular presence on, and taking charge of areas of the Center without notice to or consent from the Association. . . . The complaint alleges that CBP installed sensors at the Center to detect above ground activity, widened private roadways within the property, cut down trees, and threatened to destroy the Association's private gates and locks without warning. . . . Those property deprivations are unexcused, the complaint alleges, by any citation on DHS' part to a "lawful basis for their intrusion and destruction of" the Butterfly Center or any effort by DHS to "acquire an interest" in property admittedly not its own through any legally recognized "steps for doing so." . . .

The due process claim survives because the government has not established that its statutory authority to enter private property to patrol the border licenses all of the alleged intrusions at the Center. For example, DHS has not argued that the contractors it allegedly employed to widen a private road at the Center . . . are "immigration officers" entitled "to exercise the power to patrol the border conferred by [8 U.S.C. 1357(a)(3)]" by entering private property, 8 C.F.R. 287.5(b). Nor has it established that widening private roadways, installing sensors, or regularly stationing CBP agents on Center property . . . all fall within the statutory authorization for "patrolling the border," 8 C.F.R. 287.1(c), or justify entry onto private property under section 1357(a)(3). . . .

With allegations that government officials and contractors have entered the National Butterfly Center to alter private roadways and install sensors, and that CBP has maintained an enduring presence at the Center in connection with planned border-security infrastructure, the Butterfly Association plausibly pleads a deprivation of property without due process. At the pleading stage, we of course express no view as to whether DHS agents in fact behaved as the Butterfly Association has alleged or whether the Association's Fifth Amendment procedural due process claim will ultimately prevail.

Judge Millett dissented on the grounds that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. Her dissent begins:

Cliffhangers may make for good storytelling, but they are no good for establishing appellate jurisdiction. Because the district court dismissed the complaint in part without prejudice and with express leave to amend and to seek emergency injunctive relief, and then did nothing more to conclude the case, we lack jurisdiction over this appeal.

The majority opinion offers a thoughtful theory of jurisdiction. The problem is that the Supreme Court has already answered this same jurisdictional question the opposite way. That decision binds this court. And the Supreme Court's disposition should come as no surprise. Statutory text, structure, and established principles of appellate jurisdiction foreclose our review because the district court's dismissal of the complaint was by its plain terms not final when entered by the court. The mere passage of time, without more, could not by itself make the judgment final. Neither could the litigants, through their actions or inaction, step into the shoes of the district court and singlehandedly cause the entry of a final judgment in the case. Without jurisdiction, we lack the power to address the merits. For that reason, I respectfully dissent.

One final editorial comment. In environmental policy debates it is common to present environmental conservation and the protection of private property rights as if they are in opposition to each other. Yet as this case shows, the constitutional protection of private property can also protect environmentally sensitive placesin this case, a wildlife refugefrom government excess. This is a point Ilya and I explored in our paper on the environmental consequences of unrestrained eminent domain authority, and I've examined in the context of species conservation and uncompensated takings.

Continue reading here:
Due Process for Butterflies in the D.C. Circuit - Reason

I walked into the house and set my things from school and work on my bed. I went into the kitchen and spoke with Grandpa and Autumn for a few moments. Then, I turned towards my place at the table and saw the envelope that was addressed to me. I looked at it. In the left-hand return address, I saw the Absentee Ballot Office. It had finally come!

I sat down at the table, took out my Cross pen, and slowly opened the envelope. This was the moment I had been waiting for. I remembered reading about President Lincoln in Team of Rivals and how he had sent out absentee ballots to members of the military during the Civil War. I thought of our founding mothers and fathers what they had to go through so that we might be free. I remembered working in the U.S. Capitol, walking those sacred halls, taking part in our government. As I sat down to vote for the first time for the office of President of the United States, I couldnt help but feel proud. I was finally having my voice counted. I was voting.

I filled in the little bubbles next to the candidates that I supported. I read the ballot measures, understood what they were saying and cast my vote. I looked at the judges and knew who I wanted to see retained and who I did not. I was informed.

We all know how divisive and nasty this election cycle has been. We all saw that first presidential debate, the whole world saw it. I have also seen the last four years.

I have learned about the spying of the Trump campaign and the impeachment proceedings. I have seen Speaker Pelosi declare the creation of a Commission on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. I have seen the riots across the country. I have heard the chants. But, through it all, I have been able to look through the smoke and the smog to see the everyday American.

It was not on the news when we made a music video singing Lean on Me or we had the Lip-Syncing Challenge. It was not on the news when we came together as a community to support the seniors who graduated by holding a parade with Cordova on the sidewalks to support us. It didnt make the news when our churches prayed for our people and for our country. No, the America I know is not on the news every night. We are the America I know, and this gives me great hope.

William Deaton is a graduate of Cordova Jr./Sr. High School and is leader of the Cordova Precinct of the Republican Party.

The rest is here:
Commentary: First time voting offers hope - The cordova Times