Ohio

Friday Roundup

It’s 11:00 AM.  Do you know where your kids are at?  I got on the 8th District’s case yesterday for some decisions on allied offenses, but one they got indisputably right was Maple Heights v. Ephraim.  Thelma Ephraim’s 17-year-old son did various bad things one particular night, including fleeing from the police, resisting the attempts of the police to arrest him once they’d caught him, and having a loaded gun in the front pocket of his pants.  He was arrested and charged in juvenile court, but Thelma was arrested, too, and charged under the Maple Heights ordinance of “failing to supervise a minor,” which was defined as occuring when

the person is the parent, legal guardian, or person with legal responsibility for the safety and welfare of a child under 18 years of age, and the child has committed a status offense, unruly act or a delinquent act that would be a misdemeanor or felony of any degree if committed by an adult.

Note that the ordinance not only imposed strict liability — the parent need not have even been negligent — but vicarious liability as well:  it didn’t require that the offender have committed (or failed to commit) any act at all.  In a twist to the Biblical observation, the sins of the child were visited upon the parent.  The 8th District’s opinion does a thorough job of analyzing Ohio law (correctly concluding that if the law can be disposed of on those grounds, constitutional analysis is unnecessary), and properly determines that while Ohio law permits vicarious liability for corporations under certain circumstances, it doesn’t permit it for individuals.

Party of the first part.  Rachel Bird and Gideon Codding recently got married in California.  Well, actually, they didn’t.  The marriage license form had spaces for two names, one designated as Party A and the other as Party B.  Codding wrote “groom” next to “Party A” and “bride” next to “Party B,” and submitted the form.  A couple weeks after the ceremony, they got a letter from the County Clerk-Recorder stating that their license was not acceptable because it had been altered.  Seems that the “Party A” and “Party B” terms were mandated after the state supreme court ruled same sex-marriage legal.  Story here.  Interesting commentary here:

Let us not lose sight of the hypocrisy this couple and their theocrat enablers are exhibiting. The less rabid anti-gay bigots often insist that they have nothing against gay couples living together and replicating some aspects marriage through contracts, joint accounts, powers of attorney and so on. It?s only the symbolism that comes with the word ?marriage,? and not the coupling itself, to which they object. To them, marriage transcends licenses and court rulings and is only about solemnifying a religious status; the legal status is incidental. Well, fine: then let Bird and Codding enjoy their ?transcendental,? ?valid in the eyes of God? marriage without a license, the same way they expect gays to. Let them, on principle, forego the over 1,000 benefits that come with legally recognized marriage, the same way they expect gays to. Or is it possible that maybe, just maybe, legal recognition really does matter?

Demon Weed.  Last year, 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana in the United States. Of those, 97,583 were arrested for buying, selling, trafficking, or manufacture.  The remaining 775,138, or 89%, were arrested for possession.  Marijuana arrests now account for 47.4% of all arrests for drugs. 

This chart pretty much tells the story:

See you on Monday.

Full post as published by The Briefcase on September 19, 2008 (boomark / email).