What does the law say about a police officer’s obligations when stopping and questioning someone for possible criminal conduct? What does a police officer have to consider before making the stop? Does racial bias enter the equation? Are citizens required to comply? How is it that sometimes these stops end with violence, sometimes a shooting? Listen to our conversation with ...
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In a guest column published on March 25, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner cautioned against attacks on the judiciary because they undermine confidence in the courts. In his guest column the following week, Chairman of the Ohio Republican Party Bob Paduchik criticized Brunner being a thin-skinned politician. Can both perspectives be right?
Brunner’s guest column followed on the heels of House Republican Bill Seitz and two other House ...
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My law partner, John Gonzales (“Gonzo”), and I (Jack D’Aurora) have been producing a podcast for about two years. We’ve changed our image—our marketing folks call this “rebranding”— from “Lawyer Up Columbus” to “JUSTUS with Jack & Gonzo” to better reflect what our show is all about—social justice.
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Roy Pompa faces a civil judgment for $114,250,00 for having sexually abused Amanda Brandt 34 times when she was a middle schooler.
The abuse came during sleepovers at Pompa’s house when Amanda was a guest of Pompa’s daughter.
Pompa is serving a life sentence for child rape, and he’s now being represented before the Ohio Supreme Court by a high profile, business litigation firm, Zeiger Tigges & Little, which in and of ...
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If you don’t know what critical race theory (CRT) is, don’t feel bad. Neither do the folks in charge of K-12 education in Ohio.
Let’s go back to July 2020 when the Ohio State Board of Education passed “a resolution to condemn racism.” Acknowledging disparities in the education system for students of color and whites, the board required all Department of Education employees and contractors to undergo implicit bias training.
But ...
Continue Reading →There’s something wrong in America: we’ve come to accept as unavoidable a staggering number of gun deaths annually.
State legislatures, either stymied by the thought of judicial review or fearful of political fallout, are doing nothing, and Republican dominated legislatures promote gun proliferation. Ohio’s General Assembly wants to do away with permits for concealed carry.
Ponder this: in the last two decades 15,000 military members and civilian contractors died in the Continue Reading →
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Columbus suffers from a lack of housing, and especially affordable housing, a problem that hits low income neighborhoods the hardest. Those same neighborhoods also lack resources–think
libraries, YMCAs and community centers. How do we engage the residents of those communities to consolidate their voices to gain access to more resources, and how we ...
If you haven’t noticed, we’re being overrun by socialists. Fortunately, they’re easy to recognize. They’re the ones supporting President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill, which Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., tells us is nothing but “big government socialism.” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, calls the bill an “accelerator to socialism.”
There’s lots of talk about how the bill will lead to the nation’s demise but little talk about what’s in the bill.
What’s ...
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The majority of Americans who are behind bars are not serving a sentence; they’re awaiting trial. Many of these people were arrested for minor drug possession or driving with a suspended license and couldn’t afford bail. Micah Derry of Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy that seeks to minimize social injustices, talks with us about people spending an ...
Ohio State University Associate Professor Joni Acuff talks with us about what critical race theory actually is—as opposed to how it’s described by its critics—and gives examples of racial inequality being imbedded in society. The three of us discuss legislative efforts to ban critical race theory. Legislators say they want students to be presented with the facts and ...
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