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NFL’s Donte’ Stallworth bonds out in DUI manslaughter charge


BY JENNIFER LEBOVICH

jlebovich@MiamiHerald.com

Holding his mother’s hand, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth walked out of a Miami-Dade County jail after noon Thursday after posting bond on a charge of DUI manslaughter.

”I just want to extend my condolences to the Reyes family. My prayers are with them,” Stallworth told reporters and a gaggle of cameras waiting outside the jail. “I have full confidence and faith in the legal process.”

The pro football player was then whisked away in a silver Lexus.

Earlier in the morning, Stallworth surrendered to authorities and made a brief appearance in front of Miami-Dade Judge Dennis Murphy before being led away in handcuffs for booking at the jail.

Dressed in a black suit and with his hair pulled back, Stallworth arrived at the courthouse early Thursday morning for a brief hearing related to the terms of his pretrial release.

He will be allowed to live in Florida and Ohio. But he must tell the court before traveling between the two places and must seek permission to travel elsewhere.

He also cannot drive and will have a curfew: midnight to 6 a.m.

An arraignment is set for April 23.

Blood tests revealed Stallworth had a blood alcohol level of .126 after the March 14 crash that killed Mario Reyes, 59.

His bond is $200,000 on the charge, a felony that carries a minimum of four years to a maximum of 15 years in prison.

”We are going to vigorously defend these accusations in a court of law,” Stallworth’s attorney, Christopher Lyons, said at a brief press conference in the courtroom hallway, standing next to Stallworth’s mother, Donna.

”Football is the last thing on his mind right now,” Lyons said. “His focus is on his family and the Reyes family.”

Miami Beach police said that prior to the crash, Stallworth had been drinking at club Liv at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach before leaving to go to a home in Miami, where he arrived about 6:15 a.m.

He was returning to Miami Beach about an hour later when he struck Reyes, who was crossing the MacArthur Causeway.

The arrest warrant said Stallworth was standing outside his car when officers arrived. According to police, Stallworth admitted he had been driving the car and said, “I hit the man lying in the road.”

Stallworth later told police at the Miami Beach police station that ”he had time to honk his horn and flash his headlights” to warn Reyes, who was not in a crosswalk.

The Browns have released a statement saying they were ”disappointed” by Stallworth’s actions and that the league commissioner was reviewing the situation.

He also will be subject to random drug and alcohol testing through the National Football League’s program for substance abuse.

 

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Cops Bust Stool Fool


Ohio man arrested for drunk driving on a homemade vehicle

MARCH 31–In a law enforcement first, Ohio cops this month arrested a man for drunk driving on a motorized bar stool. That’s right, a motorized bar stool, which can be seen below in a police evidence photo. According to cops, Kile Wygle, 28, crashed his bar stool near his Newark home earlier this month and called 911 due to his injuries. When an officer arrived and asked Wygle what happened, he answered, “I wrecked my bar stool.” According to a Newark Police Division report, a copy of which you’ll find here, Wygle’s homemade ride is powered by a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine. Wygle noted that the bar stool could hit nearly 40 miles per hour, but that he was only going 20 when he wiped out late in the afternoon on March 4 (a witness told police that he spotted someone driving a “strange motorized machine” before the crash). A plastered Wygle, who failed a series of field sobriety tests, was charged with DUI and driving with a suspended license, both misdemeanors. His bar stool was not impounded

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0331091stool1.html?link=rssfeed

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PC security forces face April 1 showdown with Conficker worm


SEATTLE — In the brief, tumultuous history of cybercrime, there has never been anything quite like the Conficker worm.

In the past few months, Conficker’s creators have infected at least 3 million Windows PCs worldwide with malicious software, and perhaps as many as 12 million. At this moment, the bad guys are locked in a high-stakes showdown with a posse of security groups led by Microsoft.

Conficker’s controllers have set a date for what amounts to a cyber-shootout at the OK Corral. Next Wednesday — April Fools’ Day — millions of infected PCs, called bots, will begin reporting for further instructions, presumably to begin spreading spam, stealing data or carrying out online scams. And there appears to be little the good guys can do to cut off such communications.

“We have not yet begun to feel the real impact of Conficker,” says Paul Henry, researcher at security firm Lumension. “We may soon be at the whim of those in control of what has emerged as a formidable army of infected machines.”

Vintage worm

Conficker requires no action on the part of the PC user to spread. It’s a throwback to self-replicating worms that scanned the Internet for PCs displaying known — and unpatched — Windows security holes.

Such worms largely disappeared after 2004, as Microsoft (MSFT) improved its process for identifying new holes and quickly issuing patches. But last September, Chinese hackers began selling a $37.80 program for tapping into a newly discovered Windows hole on some 800 million machines worldwide, according to SRI International, a non-profit research firm.

Microsoft took notice, and on Oct. 23, issued a rare emergency patch. Most home PC users in North America got patched quickly, via Windows Auto update. But many corporate and government users were lackadaisical about patching. In China and other nations where pirated copies of Windows are widely used, patches simply weren’t available. “Once the patch was out, no one paid attention,” says Don Jackson, senior researcher at SecureWorks. “They underestimated the risk.”

Precursors of Conficker began spreading on a limited basis, mostly in Asia. In early January, a full-featured version began seeking out unpatched PCs across the globe. The worm slithered onto any shared hard drives; it searched out nearby servers and issued hundreds of combinations of user IDs and passwords to break in; it copied itself onto any device plugged into a USB port, such as thumb drives, music players or digital cameras. When that infected device later got inserted into another work station, that machine became infected.

Conficker also took extraordinary measures to prevent each new bot from being disinfected by Microsoft or antivirus programs, or usurped by a rival botnet group. SRI found, for instance, that Conficker’s encryption algorithm came from MIT’s Ron Rivest, copied from a recently published research paper.

On Feb. 12, Microsoft put up a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the capture of Conficker’s creators. The software giant also formed an alliance of security groups, dubbed the Conficker Cabal, to battle the worm.

The Cabal focused on disrupting what was perhaps Conficker’s most unnerving feature. Eight times a day, each bot tried to connect with a list of 250 randomly generated Web addresses — each a potential rendezvous point to receive further instructions. Each day, this list of 250 rendezvous points changed.

To cut this off, the Cabal identified the Web addresses scheduled to turn up on the daily lists, and began registering any that weren’t already registered by someone else. The goal: to “pre-empt registration of those domains for potential criminal use,” says Christopher Budd, of Microsoft’s security response team.

Upgrade slips through

Yet, on March 6 and on March 17, the bad guys somehow slipped a malicious software upgrade to millions of infected PCs. The upgrade began organizing the bots into a vast peer-to-peer, or P2P, network, says SRI program manager Phillip Porras. P2P networks are powerful and flexible, because each PC can function as a command server. They’re commonly used to share videos and music and play complex online games.

The upgrade also included instructions for each bot to begin a daily routine on April 1 of checking in at 500 rendezvous points, randomly selected from a pool of 50,000 domain names. This trick will make it more difficult for the Cabal to preregister addresses, says Porras.

Joe Stewart, a senior researcher at SecureWorks, notes that the infected PCs are already capable of receiving directives from the controllers via the P2P network, “so the 50,000 domains aren’t really needed. They could even be a practical joke on the part of the authors.”

Botnets have emerged as the cybercrime world’s tool of choice to carry out scams. Josu Franco, Panda Security’s director of business development, surmises that Conficker’s controllers may be moving methodically to corner the market on botnets for hire. “This is free inventory for them,” says Franco.

The good guys’ defense boils down to vigilance. While the Cabal may not be able to stop the controllers from issuing directives, it remains poised to disrupt any criminal activity attempted by Conficker bots.

“There may be a second phase of the threat at some point in time,” acknowledges Microsoft’s Budd. “However, we believe, given the tremendous amount of attention this worm has received, industry and law enforcement efforts will be a deterrent to a large second wave of attacks.”

 

 

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Ignition Interlocks


As most of you know, MADD has focused on ignition interlock devices (IIDs) as the answer to the drunk driving problem in America.  The organization has even widely trumpted the device as the way to “literally wipe out drunk driving in the United States”.   

  
Greenwood, MS.  Jan. 25 – Mothers Against Drunk Driving has done much over the years to reduce the incidence of drunk driving and the terrible consequences that can come from it…

The group, though, has hit somewhat of a plateau. For at least a decade, the numbers have hardly budged. Somewhere around 13,000 people — give or take a few hundred — die every year in an alcohol-related crash in the United States.

When a well-intended advocacy group hits a wall, the danger is that it will go overboard with heavy-handed proposals. That is the case with MADD’s latest push to get judges to order all convicted DUI offenders, even first-timers, to outfit their cars with ignition interlock devices.

The devices aren’t foolproof, however. Despite the efforts of engineers to outwit the ways that a drunk driver might try to circumvent one, MADD’s own statistics put the devices’ effectiveness at 64 percent…

Yet, that seems to be MAAD’s big push this year. Only eight states mandate or allow judges to order ignition interlock devices for a first offender. MADD wants it be an option in every state. The advocacy group has gotten bills to that effect filed in legislatures all across the country, including Mississippi.

As dangerous as drunk driving can be, this remedy still rings of being overblown. It adds another layer of punishment to a crime that the courts are required to take seriously, thanks to mandatory minimum sentences that have been instituted over the years.

Mississippi, like most of the country, already has stern DUI laws on the books that are designed to dissuade those who get caught one time from repeating their mistake…

If, after serving that penalty, a driver gets a second DUI, he either is incapable of learning from his mistakes or he has a drinking problem. Either way, employing an ignition interlock device then becomes a reasonable response to protect the public from what appears to be a persistent threat to its safety.

MADD, though, sounds as if it wants to treat all DUI offenders as if they are repeat abusers. In fact, that’s part of its argument for the interlock ignition proposal. Citing a 13-year-old research study, it claims that on average a person will drive drunk 87 times before he is caught and convicted the first time.

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Recent Celebrity DUI Arrests Include Charles Barkley and Sam Shepherd


Recent Celebrity DUI Arrests Include Charles Barkley and Sam Shepherd

The year 2009 has just began, and already, there are already a couple of celebrity DUI arrests in the police record books. On New Year’s Eve, television commentator and former basketball star Charles Barkley was arrested in Arizona on suspicion of drunk driving after he ran a stop sign. He underwent field sobriety tests at the scene, but refused to take a breath test. Barkley was given a blood test at the police station and was cited for driving while being impaired.

On Saturday, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and movie star Sam Shephard was arrested for allegedly drunk driving and speeding in Illinois after leaving a bar. His blood-alcohol level was reportedly two times the legal limit. Shephard was released Sunday after posting bond.

Last Friday, television star Heather Locklear’s DUI case was dismissed after she entered a no-contest plea to a reckless driving misdemeanor charge. Locklear had been arrested and charged last September with misdemeanor driving under the influence of prescription drugs. Now, she must undergo probation for 3 years, take part in a 12-hour drug education program, and pay a $700 fine.

Barkley ‘disappointed’ after DUI arrest, The Boston Channel, January 5, 2009

Sam Shephard Arrested for DUI, Boston Herald, January 5, 2009

Locklear DUI case dismissed after plea deal, MSNBC, January 2, 2009

 

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Ice Cream Causes Positive Alcohol Test


Ice Cream Causes Positive Alcohol Test 

Frankston, Australia.  Jan. 20 – An Australian man challenged to prove his claim that ice cream gave him a blood alcohol reading demonstrated his defense in court.

The man, whose name was not given, had asked Frankston Magistrates’ Court to remove the breath testing alcohol interlock device from his car, the (Melbourne, Australia) Daily Sun reported Tuesday.

Prosecutors inquired why the machine had registered a “fail,” which prevents the car from starting, despite the man’s claims that he had not been drinking.

The man claimed the alcohol reading was the result of eating a Bubble O’ Bill ice cream treat and Magistrate Rod Crisp ordered a test to be performed to back up the claim. Police recorded the man’s blood alcohol content as 0.00 and performed the test a second time after he took a few bites of Bubble O’ Bill, yielding a 0.018 reading.

Crisp granted the man’s request to remove the breath testing device from his car.

Experts said consuming some foods or drinks before breath tests can cause a false positive reading. It is recommended that that test subjects wait at least 15 minutes in between eating and blowing into the machine.

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Why Do Police Refuse to Use Videotapes?


Some police agencies around the country use videotapes as part of their drunk driving cases. Most, however, do not…despite their low cost, ease of use and invaluable utility. A picture is worth a thousand words about driving patterns, physical symptoms of impairment, slureed speech, etc…

Why don’t they use them?  And why, when they do, do they so often get lost or erased? 

Local Attorney Says All D.U.I. Arrests Should Be Videotaped

KUTV News, Utah.  Oct. 23  - Many Utah police departments videotape suspected drunk drivers.  The Highway Patrol has most of the dashboard cameras in Utah.  Attorney Jason Schatz wants to see more videotaping for the sake of his clients.

 “It’s only fair to those people if the technology is available”, he says.  Schatz defends suspected drunk drivers and says often, police video is valuable evidence in court, challenging officers’ written reports.  

 “You look at the police report and you’d think this person was falling down drunk, then you see the tape and you say ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t look the way it was described on paper”. 

Schatz says he wants Utah to adopt mandatory videotaping like the State of South Carolina.  He hopes to find a local lawmaker who will take the issue to Capitol Hill.

Schatz has compiled videotapes shot during sobriety test of several clients.  Some of the tapes conflict with what the officer wrote down in the report.  Often Schatz says, cases are dropped when the jury or the prosecutor see the tape.
 
Sim Gill, chief prosecutor for Salt Lake City disagrees, saying videotape “does not make or break d.u.i. cases”.  Gil says he’s not opposed to mandatory taping of d.u.i. stops, but says he’d rather see state monies spent on what he considers “more pressing needs” like funding the domestic violence shelters, and providing medical help for mentally ill people who are in prison.
 
For more information, visit our website or call MIami DUI Attorney Jonathan Blecher.
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Alleged Breathalyzer Tampering Could Put DUI Cases At Risk


An FDLE Breath Test Instrument Inspector was fired for tampering with inspections of breath testing machines in use in Florida. Click on the link below to read about this breaking development.

http://www.nbc6.net/news/17725425/detail.html

Also, please visit our website to find out more about how we put this information to work for you when defending a DUI case. We are Miami Dui Attorneys who focus on this type of case.

 

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Driving while distracted can be deadly


Driving while distracted can be deadly
It’s suspected, but not known for sure yet, that that the engineer of a Los Angeles Metrolink commuter train may have been text messaging when the train ran a stop signal, crashing into an oncoming freight engine.

Read the full story below:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26727674/from/ET/

 

Driving While Distracted can be just as dangerous and Driving While Impaired. Call Jonathan Blecher, Esq. to discuss these issues.

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Heather Locklear Set Up??


Who’s Really at Fault in Locklear’s DUI?

Bystander Who Called 911 Is Celebrity Reporter Jill Ishkanian Who Took Photos of Arrest and Sold to TMZ for $27,500

Oct. 1, 2008 —

 

A celebrity news reporter called 911 to report that Heather Locklear appeared to be driving drunk, and then took photographs of the actress’ DUI arrest, the woman’s lawyer told ABCNews.com.

Jill Ishkanian, a former reporter and editor at Us Weekly magazine, called police Saturday night, saying Locklear appeared intoxicated, after what her lawyer, Nick Tepper, described as a chance encounter with Locklear in a Montecito, Calif., market.

Ishkanian then sold the photographs through an intermediary to the celebrity news site TMZ.com for $27,500, Tepper said in a written statement to ABCNews.com.

He denied that Ishkanian was following Locklear or that she set up the star to be arrested and photographed.

“There was no setup and there’s no moral ambiguity,” Tepper said, adding that there were other witnesses to the incident. “If you see someone driving impaired, you call the police and that’s what she did. The implication that somehow my client did something wrong is absurd and defamatory.”

In the statement to ABCNew.com, Tepper said, “The fact [Ishkanian] witnessed Ms. Locklear’s erratic driving and reported it to the police did not mean she was disqualified from reporting the story, which she, in fact, did. Like any intrepid reporter, she was ready — as always — for the story and reported it when news broke.”

Reached by phone tonight, Locklear’s attorney, Blair Berk, declined to comment about the latest development and any news about her client’s arrest.

The former “Dyansty” and “Melrose Place” star was arrested Saturday night in what appeared to be a standard celebrity mishap.

According to the California Highway Patrol, when officers responded to the scene, Locklear’s car was obstructing the traffic lane, and she “appeared to be disoriented.”

Officers arrested Locklear after performing a DUI test, the CHP said. “Although obvious impairment was exhibited during the tests, alcohol was ruled out as a factor,” the CHP said. Locklear was subsequently arrested on suspicion of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of a controlled substance.

TMZ reported that Ishkanian called paparazzi after making the 911 call. Earlier today, Tepper denied the TMZ report, saying that Ishkanian was not involved with the photographs, which are credited to KM Press.

When asked about court and business records obtained by ABCNews.com that appeared to show a connection between Ishkanian and KM Press, Tepper released a statement admitting that Ishkanian was the photographer.

Tepper said Ishkanian did not credit herself with taking the photographs because she is involved in a $55 million lawsuit against her former employers at Us Weekly, making her a “persona non grata in the industry.” He said his client was only performing “her civic duty” when she called 911.

Ishkanian, a former reporter and West Coast bureau chief for Us Weekly, left the magazine in 2005 and started Sunset Photo and News, a celebrity photo agency for whom she no longer works.

Ishkanian sued Us Weekly and its owner, Wenner Media, in 2007 for slander, breach of contract and infliction of emotional distress. She claimed that executives falsely told the FBI that Ishkanian hacked into the magazine’s e-mail accounts, prompting a raid on her home and office, in order to destroy her professional reputation. The case is still pending.

According to a sworn statement from Timothy Walsh, vice president of Wenner Media, an internal investigation found that after Ishkanian left the magazine, she allegedly accessed another Us Weekly reporter’s e-mail account and read confidential e-mails between the magazines reporters and editors.

Walsh claims that Ishkanian took the magazine’s list of celebrity home addresses and contact information and used information from company e-mails to send her own photographers out on stories.

The allegations are under investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, a law enforcement source told ABCNews.com. Ishkanian has not been charged.

Ishkanian denies improperly accessing the e-mails. “The FBI was told things that weren’t true,” Tepper said.

Monday, TMZ.com posted a gallery of photos chronicling Locklear being handcuffed and taken away by police. TMZ claims they got the photos from Marc Mann, owner of KM Press Group. According to TMZ, Mann claims Ishkanian called him after calling 911 Saturday night.

It remains to be seen what will happen with Locklear’s case. It’s currently being reviewed by the Santa Barbara District Attorneys Office, which will decide whether to file charges, probably within the next two to three weeks, after toxicology tests are completed.

Lt. Dane Lobb of the California Highway Patrol, the agency that arrested Locklear, would not confirm that Ishkanian called 911 but said that the caller also gave a written and recorded statement and that he had no reason to think that she was not telling the truth.

He said the caller’s motivations were irrelevant. “The facts are the facts,” he said. “I don’t recall asking ‘why are you calling us.’”

 

Celebrity Setups

In a town where catching the rich and famous at their most vulnerable can pay off big time, some say it is not uncommon for celebrity journalists and paparazzi to attempt to set up their subjects.

In April, Jane Doe (a pseudonym) filed a lawsuit against Splash News in Los Angeles County’s Superior Court alleging that two Splash photographers set up late actor Heath Ledger at a 2006 SAG after-party at the Chateau Marmont, first luring him with cocaine and then secretly videotaping him.

In the suit, Doe, who was working as a freelance reporter for People magazine at the time, claims that she and Darren Banks, a Splash News photographer, met Ledger on the grounds of the hotel and brought him, along with another Splash photographer, Eric Munn, to a room Doe had booked for the evening assignment. According to the suit, Munn offered Ledger cocaine and the actor already had some of his own. After that, Munn left the room.

From the balcony, Munn secretly recorded what was going on. Doe alleges she didn’t know that she was being videotaped. Once Ledger realized he was being set up and allegedly discovered he was being recorded, he demanded the tape be destroyed and all parties agreed.

But after Ledger’s death in January 2008, the tape was allegedly sold to”Entertainment Tonight” for $200,000. “Entertainment Tonight” and sister program “The Insider” heavily promoted the video in the days following Ledger’s death, but after being rebuked by the actors’ Hollywood friends, the TV shows ended up not airing the tape and issued an apology.

Doe seeks unspecified damages for fraud, distress and privacy violations. The case is still pending.

In November 2007, scandal-saddled pop star Britney Spears came under fire for allegedly running over a paparazzo’s foot while leaving the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. A video of Spears slowing driving her Mercedes SL65 as a photographer cried out in pain swept the Internet, seemingly providing proof of the incident.

But this past June, the LAPD decided not to charge Spears after determining that “the pictures and videos do not show the victim’s foot being hit,” according to a police report.

“[Spears] made a statement to the police indicating she had no recollection of the event and that she was not aware at the time that her car had come in contact with any one,” the report added.

 

Another example of how things are not always what they seem to be. We pride ourselves in thorough preparation of our cases, often uncovering details which can acquit our clients.

Contact Attorney Jonathan Blecher at 305.670.1800 and visit our website.

 

 

 

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