Two weeks ago I reported on Jack Thompson's decision to back out of a wrongful death suit filed in Alabama. Thompson was part of a legal team that was trying to prove that Grand Theft Auto was directly responsible for 18 year-old Devin Moore's fatal shooting of three police officers in 2003. However, whether or not he could stay on that team became an issue because of Thompson's antics, which included the now infamous challenge to create a game where the protagonists murders game studio executives. Saying that "the other side wants to make me the issue," he decided that his clients would be best served if he withdraw from the case and turn it over to other members of the team.
Apparently that wasn't enough.
In a strange turn of events, Judge James Moore (no relation to the murderer) rejected Thompson's voluntary removal, only to kick him off the case and rescind Thompson's temporary license to practice law in Alabama (Thompson is a member of the Florida bar).
He reported Thompson's conduct to the Disciplinary Commission of the Alabama Bar, and issued a scathing 18-page beatdown. Writeth the judge:
"Mr. Thompson's actions before this Court suggest that he is unable to conduct himself in a manner befitting practice in this state."
The trial will move on, and the legal team representing the slain police offers shouldn't have been caught off guard, owing to Thompson's previous attempt to remove himself. As for Thompson, he shot back with his usual style:
"I have had the disturbing experience of appearing before the above jurist in a high-profile wrongful death action, Strickland v. Sony... In my opinion, Judge Moore has violated... the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics by his unfortunate, improper, and prejudicial acts in this case, at the expense of three bereaved Alabama families," he wrote.
He added, "Did this Court somehow, in the last three weeks, manage to repeal the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution?"
Thompson sees the entire fiasco as an unmitigated attempt to attack his character.
"Further, the Court presided over a wholly unethical and fraudulent assault upon the character of John B. Thompson by opposing counsel, Blank Rome," he wrote. "The Court was made aware of total fabrications by Blank Rome in this assault. Thompson responded by aggressively telling the truth in response to those lies. What did this Court do? It punished Thompson for aggressively telling the truth yet looked the other way when Blank Rome elegantly told those lies. This is utter judicial nonsense. The Court is supposed to get at the truth, not deny clients their counsel of choice based upon his predilections as to style.
"Since when is it unethical to belligerently tell the truth but highly ethical to stylishly prevaricate? This Court has entered an Order that rewards an entire law firm and its entertainment industry clients for taking self-righteous offense at the telling of the truth. Blank Rome started the food fight, and this Court ultimately took offense at the undersigned's efforts to shovel the effluent out of the Fayette County Courthouse."
As a Florida lawyer, Thompson's possible permanent disbarment from Alabama likely amounts to little more than shame, although any student of Thompson's agenda would be correct to point out that for those on his side, this amounts more to a martyrdom than a state execution.
Photography Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Finally! (Bastard had it coming)
There actually is some justice in this world.
WOOT!
"Let him beat you had too, what will I do now tell me, go crazy I will." -Yoda
"Oh get over yourself." Obi-wan
From how it should have ended Starwars IV
R.O.A wrote:ITS OVER ITS OVER YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYAYAYAYAYA THE WAR IS OVER THE WAR IS OVER
(sorry Matrix moment there, but YA!!)
Oh no, child, the war has just begun.
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
Admiral Valdemar wrote:They've been planning this thing for a dozen years, and these are just the first. They'll keep coming.
At least that long...for video games.
For the general thought, this is just the latest installment. Comics were attacked this way, and that was the most successful instituting the silly Comic Code Authority. Movies had the MPAA. Music got hit light and hard. Light that all they have are parental warnings, hard because radio specifically delete lyrics and mangle songs as such.
Video Games had their first attack with Lieberman and the whole instituting of game ratings. It's hitting more silly rant level because games are definitly being aimed at a the higher market of adults in both terms of price and availability, as well as the decline of the arcades for easy access.
So it becomes clearer to some that parents are being more and more ignorant and the blame is slowly being shifted as such, since gaming community is not a bunch of morons, regardless of what some detractors say.
MM /CF/WG/BOTM/JL/Original Warsie/ACPATHNTDWATGODW FOREVER!!
Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all
I just recently watched a CSI Miami last night (recorded God-knows how long ago) that blamed a crime spree on a violent computer game modeled after GTA. Apparently, the game was modeled after real locations and an exec of the company even encouraged the crime spree by distributing a bunch of guns to gamers.
Basically, the episode was a Jack Thompson-esque argument against gaming, complete with training kids to be killers. Either that, or it was feeding off the sensation.
The entire premise was fucked up. Forget the legal woes (in the form of wrongful death suits) the company just brought down upon itself, there's no evidence that playing violent computer games even predisposes one toward violent crime. Not only is there a lack of cause-and-effect, but there's no firm study even showing a correlation between violent game playing and criminality.
Yes, a certain fraction of gamers do become violent criminals, but guess what: a certain fraction of the general population also become violent criminals, some of whom never played a violent video game in their lives!
Darth Wong on Strollers vs. Assholes: "There were days when I wished that my stroller had weapons on it." wilfulton on Bible genetics: "If two screaming lunatics copulate in front of another screaming lunatic, the result will be yet another screaming lunatic. " SirNitram: "The nation of France is a theory, not a fact. It should therefore be approached with an open mind, and critically debated and considered."
Cornivore! | BAN-WATCH CANE: XVII | WWJDFAKB? - What Would Jesus Do... For a Klondike Bar? | Evil Bayesian Conspiracy
R.O.A wrote:ITS OVER ITS OVER YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYAYAYAYAYA THE WAR IS OVER THE WAR IS OVER
(sorry Matrix moment there, but YA!!)
Huh? What's over? The plaintiffs probably have a better chance of winning now that Thompson is off the case.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
R.O.A wrote:ITS OVER ITS OVER YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYAYAYAYAYA THE WAR IS OVER THE WAR IS OVER
(sorry Matrix moment there, but YA!!)
Huh? What's over? The plaintiffs probably have a better chance of winning now that Thompson is off the case.
They had a decent chance of winning even with the stupid cocksucker onboard. Considering the fact that juries are made up of "average" Americans, and that this trial is being held in Georgia I would be shocked if they sided for the defendant. It will be overturned on appeal in any case, assuming the Judge doesn't vacate the verdict.
We pissing our pants yet?
-Negan
You got your shittin' pants on? Because you’re about to Shit. Your. Pants!
-Negan
He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.
-George Bernard Shaw
You guys know why Thompson wanted out of the case, right? He suddenly realized that he'd end up on the stand having to testify under oath about his less-than-scrupulous threats and tactics.
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
I'm meltingggg
"
