Ah, Halloween. Spooks and ghouls and mostly baseless worry about criminal activity involving poisoned candy. Regular readers may recall that I blogged previously about the lack of actual episodes of adulterated candy, and about the laws that would apply if any such incident should occur.
In other news:
Making a fake Ebola report is not a funny Halloween prank. In Raleigh, a man has been charged with misuse of the 911 system after allegedly claiming he was suffering from Ebola as a way of receiving faster ambulance service. WRAL has the story here.
Justice Ginsburg rules that the Supreme Court dog parody was funny. So ordered, according to this piece at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
Frighteningly difficult restitution questions answered. Check out this post at the Volokh Conspiracy for a discussion of this law-school-style restitution question: “I steal your $100 and use it to place a bet at a casino. I get lucky and win $100,000. Do I owe you the whole $100,000?”
New York Times keeps an eye on the government. The Gray Lady had a couple of interesting stories this week, including this one about the “mail covers” program, under which the government records the return addresses and other routing information on a target’s snail mail, and this one about the government’s use of forfeiture law to confiscate the assets of those who make frequent cash deposits of under $10,000 — and who may therefore be suspected of “structuring” their transactions to avoid bank reporting requirements.
Finally, Ferguson. Last but not least, events continue to unfold in Ferguson, Missouri. The police chief is under pressure to resign, but CNN reports that he wants to stay. Furthermore, the Washington Post reports here that the grand jury considering whether to charge the officer involved in the shooting has been presented with substantial evidence supporting the officer’s claim that the shooting resulted from a struggle for his gun, including testimony from multiple black eyewitnesses and some physical evidence.