In Washington last week, US District Judge Richard W. Roberts sentenced Michael Dwayne Logan of Baltimore to 21 months in prison for using a camcorder in a theater to tape two movies. Logan was caught last November in a DC theater using a high definition camcorder to tape Disney’s Enchanted; he had recorded about 50 minutes of the film when he was arrested. A forensic investigation connected him to a pirated copy of 28 Weeks Later that DC police had obtained earlier in the year. Logan pleaded guilty to two counts of Unauthorized Recording of Motion Pictures in a Motion Picture Exhibition Facility (Ars Technica, DOJ).
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Those who argue that Roger Clemens set himself up for a perjury charge by agreeing to testify under oath before a Congressional Committee do not know his lawyer, Rusty Hardin, very well. To put it simply, Hardin is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country. I can guarantee you that Hardin warned Clemens, in excruciating detail, about the potential criminal exposure the pitching great faced if Clemens testified before Congress and there was ANY truth to Brian McNamee’s charges. I am struck by the self-confidence evident in the Clemens camp, even in the face of the box of “evidence” disclosed on Thursday by McNamee’s lawyers and their contemptible revelation on Friday that McNamee injected Clemens’ wife with a human growth hormone. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the latest details here.
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, of reason.tv and Reason magazine respectively, take aim at congressional interference in Major League Baseball’s performance-enhancing drug controversy. The essay is here from yesterday’s Washington Post.
Meanwhile, at Yahoo! Sports, Jonathan Littman highlights the IRS’s aggressive use of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, a federal felony statute, to prosecute professional athletes for lying to government agents. Littman’s piece, here, cites my long-standing criticism of Section 1001. My original findlaw.com article on the dangers of talking to government agents, even in an informal setting, is here.