Internet jerk with million-plus fans starts 14-year stretch for bizarre dot-com armed robbery An internet frat boy has been sent down for 14 years in America for trying to steal a domain name. Rossi Lorathio Adams II, 26, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, built up a following of more than a million people by posting videos of drunk Iowa State University students on Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter, via the website doit4state.com …
In fairness, the lawyer should be doing the utmost to secure a not guilty verdict for the accused, and having failed in that task (due to the client being criminally stupid) should be working hard to assure all mitigating circumstances are factored into the judgement.
The lawyer's just doing the job, as anybody accused of a crime deserves.
His father might be wishing he is dead, if only to be spared the ignominy of sharing his name with this f*cknuckle.
Shame the defence gets to waste everyone's time and money with the appeal. The juror strike grounds seem pretty thin; I can't see a juror of any ethnicity giving this PoS a walk.
Even if one juror dissented with an 'Innocent" vote, he still would have been convicted. The only time all jurors have to agree is a murder case. There might be others but that's only crime I know for certain as I've done jury twice, once for an assault crime and once for a murder trial.
Whether majority verdicts are acceptable differs between jurisdictions, in terms of the charges to which a majority verdict could apply (e.g. not for capital crimes) or the composition of the majority (e.g. 11:1, 10:2, etc.).
It's easy to forget that trial-by-jury is not even the norm in global terms.
"When questioned by police after the robbery, Adams at first claimed he wasn’t at Target with them and knew nothing about the phones. He then changed his story and said he was there but didn’t know what was in the bag that Davis emerged from the store with. And then changed his story again and admitted he had in fact given Davis $100 to buy the two phones."
First of all, I had nothing to do with it! Second of all, someone else did it, I'm completely innocent. Third, okay I did do it but I did nothing wrong!
"Anyone called "Rossi Lorathio Adams II" deserves to be locked up."
I understand your sentiment, but surely it's Rossi Lorathio Adams I who should be locked up? That person's parents were idiots, sure, but RLA I grew up with that name and thought "My greatest gift to my son will be, yes, this name!"
Want to have a really good laugh? See how this site "defines" privacy. I had to check 3 times, then found that the only difference between T&Cs and Privacy Policy is... wait for it... the <title> </snort>
Also, you will be sent a reminder about subscriptions [NUMBER] days before the subscription is charged, and the agreement is subject to the laws of the State of [STATE].
To be pedantic, even the template is wrong - it is neither "the State of Massachusetts", nor "the State of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts". It is "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts". (Also Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, plus the District of Columbia.)
If you did it, what kind of "defence"? Judgement should be laying out the facts. The problem is, people disagree on what is fact, and that makes things rather... strange for lawyers. If you know they did it, I suppose you can defend them on the type of punishment. But seems some don't help their future lawyers, by committing heinously stupid crimes.
Defence lawyer serves a few purposes, regardless of the defendant's guilt/culpability:
1) Present the defendant's version of events;
2) Advise the defendant of their rights under law;
3) Inform the court of any mitigating circumstances, such as self-defence, duress, mental illness/instability;
4) Cross-examine any witnesses;
5) Keep the prosecution in check regarding points of law, questionable evidence, inadmissable testimonies etc.
6) Try to secure a sentence which is balanced within the law, rather than excessive punishment.
Probably several other points I've missed but you get the idea.
So even if the defendant did it and it's plainly obvious he/she did it, they're still entitled to a defence lawyer.
in seriousness, the adversarial court system for criminal trials is there to make SURE that the guilty person is the one getting punished, by giving as MUCH advantage to the accused as possible.
That's the argument, anyway, and without proper defense, the prosecution might as well be a 'Star Chamber' trial. (Or somethign that the US House of Reps does when run by the current bunch...)
"Defence lawyer serves a few purposes, regardless of the defendant's guilt/culpability:"
0) Advise defendant about pleading guilty.
Admittedly plea bargaining taints this but if a guilty verdict is inevitable the best mitigation might be to plead and be as apologetic as possible. Back in the day in Belfast one of the QCs, if such advice wasn't taken would simply sit there ensuring the defendant got a fair hearing by making sure the prosecution didn't step out of line* but asking few if any questions. His car reg number, BTW, was FIB 1.
* He once intervened to stop the prosecution, who'd called me, from cross-examining me trying to get me to say more than I was prepared to about a hair comparison.
I never rated hair comparison as generally useful and couldn't understand why the FBI were so keen on it - they were internationally renowned for their enthusiasm. I was pleased to see years afterwards that they eventually fell flat on their collective face over it. The FBI were wrong and I was right. Yay!!!
It is not for the lawyer to decide innocence or guilt, that is the job of the court. If the lawyer had to be convinced of innocence too, then an innocent person would have to convince a lawyer *and* the jury. It's hard enough to convince the jury.
One can still feel sorry for the lawyer though. I am sure he advised pleading guilty - but he has to mount the defence his client instructs.
Guess at that point Deyo felt he had nothing to lose, so what the hell it's worth a shot. And it paid off. Yeah it could easily have gone the other way, but maybe he wanted to go out fighting instead of just waiting to be murdered.
Yeah, he was actually complying, but the guy was still pistol whipping him and holding the gun right to his head.
Much like how it is with modern terrorists, it didn't appear that compliance was really all that safe of a course of action.
The plot as described doesn't really make any sense - I know "influencers" can be somewhat full of themselves and blind to reality.
But surely even the dumbest of the breed would realise that a) they would be the prime suspect and b) the domain name could easily be transferred back.
I suspect that the real plan was to force the victim to relinquish the domain name, then murder him, make it look like a routine home invasion robbery; hoping that the police would not discover that the last thing the victim did was to change a domain name.
I'm sure the police (and probably the judge) also realise that that is the only way it adds up and but couldn't prove it.
If the victim also realised that, then fighting back in those circumstances would be the best thing to do.
Prolonged contact with social media can loosen people's grip on reality as can mind-warping substances which could well have played a part in the decision making (for want of a better term).
And you'd be surprised at how inept criminals can be in real life. A colleague of mine ended his description of one incident with "...and these were professional bank robbers. It's hard to get good help these days.".
Yep. One fellow of my acquaintance, after being successfully on the lam with a number of outstanding warrants for several months, decided to drive off from a fueling station without paying. They got the license plate of his truck. He was pulled over by the police shortly afterward, identified, jailed, and soon found himself back in prison for an extended stay.
He had the cash on hand to pay for the gas (ill-gotten gains, of course, but it would have avoided this little problem). He just decided not to.
Smart criminals generally commit the sort of crimes that they're unlikely to be arrested for in the first place, such as online housing-rental scams.
You have built a lovely house of logic there, but you've built it on sand: you started from the premise that criminals only do things that make sense.
This is, as absolutely anyone involved in the criminal justice system in any capacity can tell you, very very much not true...
jira.domain.com, now offers something.jira.domain.com The Register 
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