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TN July 2005 Bar Exam Question 12

The Case: Uncle Rico has been charged with the crime of theft. Specifically, Uncle Rico stands accused of stealing a handful of tater tots from his nephew, Napoleon. The first witness for the prosecution is Pedro, student body president. The following is a transcript from the direct examination by the prosecutor at trial:

Q (Prosecutor): Tell me everything you remember about October 20.

A (Pedro): Well, a lot of stuff. That’s the day Napoleon’s tater tots were stolen, you know.

 

Q: Now, the school served tater tots for lunch day, right?

A: Now that you mention it, I think they did. Hot, steamy tater tots. Mmmmm.

 

Q: And isn’t it true that you saw Uncle Rico with a handful of tater tots later that afternoon?

A: Yes, I did.

 

Q: (Showing the witness a small fried item) I am showing you one of the tater tots recovered from Uncle Rico’s house. Is this one of Napoleon’s tots?

A: I guess. It looks like it to me.

 

Q: I know there was a lot of confusion that day. Did you talk with anyone about what had happened?

A: Well yeah, you see, I was giving my election speech at the time, so I didn’t see anything. But Deb told me the next day that Uncle Rico had reached into Napoleon’s pocket and taken some of the tots.

 

Q: What did Napoleon say at the time, if anything?

A: Well, I was there when Napoleon discovered that his pocket was empty. He cried, man. He yelled out, "Omigosh, my tots are gone!" And then he cried.

 

Q: Now, in your experience, has Uncle Rico done this sort of stuff in the past?

A: Yeah. Once, he shot a llama with a BB gun. He’s a pretty bad dude. Stealing tots, that’s nothing for Rico. He’s done a lot worse, I tell you.

 

Q: To your knowledge, has Uncle Rico ever been convicted of a crime?

A: Yeah. He spent time in jail for theft about 12 years ago. French fries, I think it was. Yeah. He stole some french fries. Got caught.

Question: You are Uncle Rico’s defense attorney. With respect to the evidentiary issues presented in the above line of questioning, please identify each objection that should be raised and explain in detail your legal arguments in support of each such objection.

Fast mapping

Since we’ve seen a lot of new people and done a lot of new things in the past few weeks, Lindsay’s vocabulary has virtually exploded. She says a couple new words a day, and I can’t keep up with all the new words that she knows. Her recall is good too. She learned the word “boat” last night in the bathtub while playing with her toy boats, and this morning she saw a picture of Noah’s Ark and correctly identified it as a boat. The little tub toys really didn’t look much like the illustrated ark, but she understood what a boat did — it floats, and sometimes people or things go in the boat. I thought that was actually pretty perceptive.

I’m also interested to see what names she uses for things or animals she doesn’t already know. This morning she was watching an animal video, and she thought for a moment and then made a guess at some of the exotic animals. She called the otters “kitties,” which makes some sense because of their whiskers. She called a water buffalo a cow. More interestingly, she called a lizard a turtle. I thought this was interesting because the shape of the lizard is really quite different from a turtle, but she already identifies that the lizard and the turtle are related. I’m not sure she quite understands the concept of reptile, but she’s on her way.

Language is such a fluid thing, so I’m continually entertained and impressed with how fast she picks up the words. Her retention is really improving. Speech and language are part of what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal world. The ability to learn and immediately retain words is sometimes known as “fast mapping,” and it’s fun to see it in action with Lindsay. I recently learned of and read an article in Science Magazine about a few dogs who have been found to have this same fast mapping ability. Of the hundreds of dogs they have examined, scientists have only found two dogs with this ability. Both are border collies, a breed which has been bred over hundreds of years to understand and obey a variety of words and signals as part of their animal herding duties. So while only the most intelligent and carefully bred dogs have this ability, any old two-year-old can fast map thousands of words. People are very clever animals, and our little animal is fun to watch. If anyone else likes nerdy stuff like this, the Science article is here and the radio article where I first heard about it is here.

Excuses, excuses

Whenever someone says something happened or didn’t happen "due to unforeseen circumstances," it is almost invariably a lie. The circumstances surrounding the error or omission were almost always foreseeable, usually long before the deadline. The "unforeseen circumstances" is just a cover, a verbal shield to obscure the fact that someone (often the speaker) screwed up.

Case in point: the grades for my last semester of law school are past due, but we still haven’t received them. By my memory, this is the third time grades have been late in the last two years. I got an email today from the registrar telling everyone that grades would be late. We all knew this, of course, because they were due to be released two days ago. The registrar cited "unforeseen circumstances" for the delay. This is, of course, utter nonsense. Not only were the circumstances foreseeable, they were almost probable. Certain professors are notorious in their failure to comply with a deadline. In fact, if you asked the students, they would probably give you a list of the professors who were most likely to deliver grades late, and that list would probably be fairly accurate.

Additionally, the registrar’s office has never been known for its superb organization or punctuality. There was a spat a year ago when the then-registrar failed to end a exam on time. This can be a big deal, since most law school essay exams are structured so that you have less time than you want to write. An extra ten minutes can make a significant difference. The registrar’s office also has a long history of schedule conflicts, registration errors, and various other administrative errors.

Given the serial tardiness of some professors and the track record of the registrar, it was almost inevitable that the grades would be released late. That whole "unforeseen circumstances" bit is bollocks. What I’d really like to see is an up-front admission of responsibility, followed by specific identification of the offending parties. Something like, "We didn’t really get around to telling you this until after the deadline because we’re disorganized, but we though you should know that Professors Doe, Wossname, and Fulano turned in grades late. For your convenience, their email addresses, office numbers, and home addresses have been attached below."

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The most dangerous thing

Americans, on a whole, are a rather paranoid bunch. At least, that is the case if the television is to be believed.* Marketing campaigns and advertisements warn of the dangers of a multiplicity of ills, dangers, diseases, syndromes, and phenomenons. But if you think about it, the most dangerous thing you do is get in your car and drive somewhere. Sharing the road with your fellow drivers is by far more dangerous than terrorist attacks, serial murderers, global warming, or any other thing people usually afraid of. When you are on the road, you are only as safe as the skill level of the drivers around you. And I think you’ll agree with me that it isn’t a very comforting thought.

Case in point: last Saturday I was giving some friends a ride somewhere, and we took the I-440 beltloop. We came up over a rise, and had to hit our breaks hard because traffic was stopped. The left-hand lane was closed ahead for construction, and traffic was backed up in the right-hand lane. To make matters worse, the left-hand lane was blocked by an accident. It was clear that someone had come over the rise in the road and not stopped in time. No one seemed to be hurt, but it had just happened and the drivers were just getting out of their cars to look at the damage. The accident happened right by an exit, and most of the traffic was getting off the exit in the far-right exit lane.

As I sat there in the line of traffic, looking to see if the people in the accident were okay, I noticed that the red car in my rear view mirror was approaching very fast in the left-hand. In fact, the driver apparently hadn’t even seen the stopped traffic or the accident, because the car wasn’t even slowing down yet. Then I saw it hit the breaks, but it was too late. With the accident in the left-hand lane and steady traffic in the exit lane, I realized that the car had no where to turn. My lane was moving forward, but very slowly. I didn’t like the idea of getting hit from behind, so I hit the gas and pulled off almost onto the grass by the exit. The car came to a skidding halt right where my car had been, narrowly missing both me and the accident. A somewhat shell-shocked looking girl in her 20’s sat in the driver’s seat with her hands tightly gripping the steering wheel.

Since I was practically off the road at that point, I cut across and took the exit. I didn’t feel like sitting a place where one accident had already happened and a second had nearly occurred. We took back roads the rest of the way.

Photo credit: Ben McLeod
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* I used to watch the Garfield and Friends cartoon show on Saturday mornings when I was growing up. The TV show was usually funnier than the actual comic strip in the newspapers, and featured some very salient social satire. One of my favorite segments was a mock television show Garfield hosted called If They Say It on Television, It Must Be True. Garfield would then give a few fun facts and explanations. Some of the facts I remember are, “There is no state of Wyoming; the word means ‘no state here’,” and “All fire hydrants are prefabricated and filled with water in Walla Walla, Washington, and then bolted to the city streets.”

This Day in History: Martin Luther King, Jr. is Assassinated

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was visiting the city in support of black sanitation workers who were striking in order to receive equal pay. Dr. King was shot at 6:01 pm while standing on the second story balcony of the Loraine Motel, where he frequently stayed.

There are several interesting events surrounding Dr. King’s assassination. The first was his speech the night before he died, which is now frequently referred to as the “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech. (Click on the player below to listen to the last minute of the speech.) In it, Dr. King spoke about how he did not expect to live to see the equality he sought, but that his followers would see that day. These last words of his last public address proved to be prophetic.

Later that evening, Robert Kennedy spoke to a crown in Indianapolis, Indiana. Many in the crowd had not yet heard of Dr. King’s death. (Click on the player to the right to hear the first portion of that speech.) Kennedy’s brief remarks on Dr. King’s legacy and how people could chose to react also proved prophetic. In more than 100 cities the news of Dr. King’s murder sparked riots, some lasting for days.

I find both of the above audio excerpts fascinating. Dr. Martin Luther King was an impressive man. He wasn’t a perfect person by any means; I have long been unimpressed by the fact that much of his doctoral dissertation was plagiarized, and his teachings of non-violence were essentially those of a greater historic figure, Mahatma Gandhi. But if you listen to his last public words, you realize that he was convinced that he would not outlive the Civil Rights movement. But that never stopped him from speaking or marching or protesting. That in itself is worthy of admiration. Dr. King is now a historic figure, with his own American holiday and his place in the American conscience. He even gets referenced in pop culture songs and movies. (Click on the player below to hear an example.) What I like about the speech excerpts is that you get a glimpse of Dr. King as a person. Beneath it all, he was just one man. And a brave one at that.

Luciano Pavarotti: 1935-2007

Luciano Pavarotti died yesterday of pancreatic cancer. He was 71. He leaves behind him an image almost larger than life, as one of the best-known icons of modern opera. Born in Modena, Italy, Pavarotti had enormous natural range that set him apart early as one of the great singers of his generation. But he is best known for his raw charisma and personality that transformed him into an international pop icon.

Pavarotti was never a world-class musician — he just had a world-class voice. He was infamously stubborn about learning new music and never displayed the musicality of other performers, such as his fellow tenor Plácido Domingo. But Pavarotti’s charm and wit superseded his musical imperfections, drawing huge crowds and earning lucrative performance contracts. His amazing range and natural command of the Italian language made his performances wonderful to listen to. He also performed with a startling array of pop music performers, from James Brown to Bono to the Spice Girls. Pavarotti is also famous for his Three Tenors project with Domingo and José Carreras. Many opera buffs saw these and other pop performances as musically sub-standard, but they introduced new audiences to the world of opera.

I have a special place in my heart for Luciano Pavarotti. He isn’t my favorite performer, and he doesn’t even have the best voice. But it was a Pavarotti performance that first got me interested in Italian opera. My dad frequently listened to classical music when I was young, and since he played the trombone, he listened to a lot of German opera. It wasn’t until college, during a introductory humanities class, that I heard much Italian opera. The professor showed a video of Pavarotti performing “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s magnificent Turandot during a live Three Tenors concert at the Roman Baths. By the time of that performance in 1990, Pavarotti had lost some of his range and had gained a lot of weight. However, his pure passion and emotion and energy got me interested in opera, and to this day, Puccini is my favorite composer. Even if that concert wasn’t the best musical performance, it still played a part in my discovery of some fantastic music.

No description of Pavarotti would be complete without the sound of his voice, so here’s a recording of Pavarotti’s solo at that 1990 Three Tenors concert. You can also find the video on YouTube.

Overheard in court, part I

An actual quote from a man trying to convince a judge that he didn’t deserve a restraining order:

I didn’t threaten [my ex-girlfriend], I said “When you have the baby, I hope you die.”

The judge granted the restraining order.

Elton John and the Chipmunks

This morning I was listening to some music streaming from my online storage, and I got a funny surprise. For some reason my copy of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” plays at double speed, making it sound like it’s a cover tune by Alvin and the Chipmunks. I posted a copy of it below so you can hear how it sounds — I think it’s hilarious.

Getting their money’s worth

Maybe the L.A. Galaxy is getting its money’s worth out of David Beckham after all. After being sidelined and enduring the taunting of fans, Beckham started his first game for the Galaxy in high fashion. He had one goal off a free kick in a classic Beckham moment, and also an assist to Landon Donovan. Check out the video of Beckham’s free kick here and Donovan’s goal here.

This photo of the kick is funny to me for two reasons. First, Beckham’s awkward leg position shows how he puts the spin on the ball that makes it hook around and find the corner of the net — the infamous “bend” that everyone talks about. It’s a cool trick, but it looks wonky when you freeze the frame. The second thing that makes me laugh is the defender in the middle, the one with the bandaged hand. Unlike the other fellows, who are leaping and trying to block the kick, the bandaged guy is just standing there. He looks like he’s coughing, or perhaps hiding a burp. “Sorry, guys, I had pizza with anchovies for lunch.”

Via all-encompassingly.