legal

While still in high school, I began working at Oakland Center Hospital, at a small hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, as a jack-of-all-trades handyman.  My employment also included some medical photography. It was there that I developed an interest in medicine and medical research.  The medical director, Dr. Bernard F. Gariepy, spent much time with me discussing medicine, science, and related matters. He was someone that I looked up to as a father. I also learned a great deal about law, an interest still with me today.

Methodism began in 18th-century Britain by Anglican priest John Wesley (1703–1791). A group of students, including John and Charles Wesley plus George Whitefield, met at Oxford University to methodically study the Bible and practice living a moral and holy life. To more effectively take the gospel to the common people, John Wesley adopted what were then unconventional practices, including open-air preaching. He also formed small classes in which his followers were inculcated with intensive moral accountability in their personal lives.

Much has been in the news about the crime problem. Having worked inside the walls of the largest walled prison in America, I have given a lot of thought about crime. One problem is, many inmates are unredeemable. Murderers sometimes murder other inmates and robbers sometimes rob other inmates.

The now-infamous Scopes ‘Evolution’ Trial took place in Dayton, Tennessee, to challenge the law that prohibited teaching human evolution as fact in public schools. The trial occurred in the summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.  Apart from Jesus’s trial before Pilate, the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ is probably the best-known legal confrontation in history. The law was supported by famous Christian attorney William Jennings Bryan and opposed by the famous agnostic ACLU attorney Clarence Darrow.

If you attended public government schools like I did, you learned the Inquisition involved sadistic priests who brutally interrogated people accused of religious heresy. As the interrogation progressed, it was claimed, a ratchet mechanism was used to slowly increase the strain on the prisoner's shoulders, hips, knees, and elbows, causing excruciating pain. After victims were tortured, they were then burned at the stake for rejecting some minor doctrinal point.

Among the more interesting cases for which I served as an expert witness were “Last Will & Testament” or Will cases. Most of the cases I was involved with involved a deceased that lacked a properly filed Will. This is a common situation. About half of all persons who die in America do not have a Will. Glancing at the obituary pages provides one reason why: no small number of persons unexpectedly die when they are below their average-life expectancy.

Donald Trump’s so-called falsifying-business-records trial brought my mind back to when I was actively testifying in court as an expert witness. In Trump's case, it was blatantly obvious that the judge did what he could, ethically or unethically, to find Trump guilty. With few exceptions, most of the prosecutor’s objections to the defense team’s testimony were overruled by the judge. In contrast, most of the objections to the prosecutor's witnesses testimony were sustained.

A jury on May 30^th, 2024, found former president Donald J. Trump guilty in a case in which he was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal an alleged $130,000 non-disclosure payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that the payment to Daniels was used to cover up, or commit another crime, namely a conspiracy to promote or prevent an election by “unlawful means.” I have attempted to understand the reasoning here, but am lost.

The sticker was written in response to a petition signed by 2,300 parents over a new biology textbook written by Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine. The text selection was to conform to proposed school board changes that required strengthening the teaching of evolution. In an attempt to defuse the protest, the decision was made to attach to each new textbook a sticker containing a statement written by the school district's legal counsel. The sticker read:

In the over 200 court cases in which I was a consultant, my experiences were mixed; some very good, some shocking. In one case, the National Education Association evaluated and concluded due process was not followed when a Bowling Green State University professor was terminated for illegal reasons, namely his religion, what they called fundamentalist Christianity. This professor was one of the most productive in his department.