Browning Law News Blog

Earlier today, a Manhattan jury convicted Jeffrey Epstein's gal pal Ghislaine Maxwell of five of six federal felony counts:  1. sex trafficking of a minor; 2. transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity; 3. conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity; 4. conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts; 5. conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. The evidence against Maxwell was overwhelming, although only four victims testified. Many times in cases such as this, the public armchair-quarterbacks what the defense attorneys for Maxwell did, and ask themselves whether they should have taken a different approach. I don't engage in that.  Any criminal defense attorney starts his job sifting through a mountain of facts, and it is his job to determine which facts tend to prove the client "not guilty."  That's all he can do.   And Maxwell was the person to ultimately decide whe...

Jussie Smollet, former child actor in "Mighty Ducks" and more recently one of many stars in the popular Fox series "Empire," was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct, a class 4 felony in the State of Illinois, on Thursday, December 9, 2021.  He had filed five false police reports, hence the five counts upon which he was convicted. The counts were all similar, all based upon interviews by police detectives.   What many people forget is that these incidents happened in the heat of a  presidential campaign, February 14, 2019.  Initially, after gaining a lot of publicity for himself, no charges were brought, even as evidence that Mr. Smollett faked the whole incident and had caused the Chicago police to chase ghosts for weeks, claiming he was attacked by Trump supporters who hated him because he was black and gay.    It was an attempt by Mr. Smollett to rally support for himself by slandering a presidential candidate, and for a time it appeared n...

 Former President Donald Trump responded to the onset of the coronavirus by initiating "Operation Warp Speed," a series of moves designed to produce one or more vaccines available to the general public in record time.  Personally, although I lauded the intent of these initiatives, I had grave doubts as to the safety and effectiveness of such a vaccine.  Although there are many safe vaccines on the market, there has never been a safe and effective vaccine produced in less than 3 1/2 years.  My fears were not lessened by the granting of immunity to the vaccine makers for deaths or adverse consequences experienced by those receiving the vaccines, or by assurances by the CDC that earlier this year when deaths associated with those taking the vaccines exceeded 10,000, taking the vaccine was a safer choice than not taking the vaccine. Since the rollout of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, studies have been done on the vaccines with disappointing resu...

Every law student studies Constitutional Law in his first year.  Due process, the Commerce Clause, the relationship between the federal government and the individual states, the Bill of Rights, all these and more are covered, and all have more or less a thread of consistency that ties each branch of Constitutional Law in a series of cases which build upon each other as time passes.  We call these consistent threads "precedent."  That is, once a thing is finally decided, so it shall be the law of the land until some thunderbolt from heaven declares the precedent was, for some reason, a crock of h****s***.   The Dred Scott decision comes to mind, as does the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson that upheld racial segregation as a perfectly acceptable practice, because "separate but equal" treatment of the races was just ok with the Court.  Both of these cases were decided as precedent and the law of the land and to be set in stone until later, more enlightened Su...