In principle…[a statutory]… interpretation which leads to “distinctions that are arbitrary and irrational” leading to a “strange result” which would shock “common sense” would be dismissed.
While the yet to be indicted corrupt of Jefferson Parish do lunch at Galatoire’s and Antoine’s, USA Letten has his site set on none other than Ashton O’Dwyer – and that, Slabbed readers, is the absurd result of the USA’s statutory constipation.
In the 31-page hyperbole known as the Appellant’s Brief, the our Government claims the district court erred in “holding the charged threat could not be a true threat ‘as a matter of law'”.
On June 24, 2010, the district court issued its written conclusion that the charged threat was “not a threat, conditional or otherwise, rather it was a cry for help seeking money to pay for…prescription medicine.” USCA5 1214. The district court reviewed the sequence of e-mails contained in the government’s Rule 404(b) motion and held that O’Dwyer “did not threaten bodily harm,” and that whereas ” [p]hrases taken out of context could suggest a threat…reading the sentences as a whole, no threat as a matter of law was made.”
Also on June 24, 2010, the district court denied the government’s reconsideration motion and request for oral argument, USCA5 1219, and ordered that “[t]he indictment against the defendant is hereby dismissed with prejudice”…On July 23,2010, the government noticed its appeal.
Naturally, Ashton fought back, filing a cross-appeal – and that led to yet another absurd result, this one produced by the Fifth Circuit: Continue reading “The “absurd result” of statutory constipation – USA Letten files Appeal on Judgment of Dismissal in USA v O’Dwyer”