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The eponymous defendant in the landmark 4th Amendment case, United States v. Jones, has entered a guilty plea, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He’s had a long path to this sentence:

Jones stood trial three times. His first trial ended in a mistrial in 2007. He was found guilty at the second trial and received a life sentence, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated that conviction after finding the government violated his Fourth Amendment rights through the warrantless use of a Global Positioning System tracking device.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, meaning prosecutors couldn’t use the GPS data at trial. The government had used the information to link Jones to a drug house in Maryland. During the course of the investigation, the authorities never saw Jones personally handle any drugs.

Following a third trial earlier this year, in which Jones represented himself, the jury split and Huvelle declared a mistrial. The government announced shortly after that it planned to seek a fourth trial.

An interesting property dispute is brewing on West Addison Street in Chicago. The owner of the Cubs wants to renovate the century-old stadium, and install advertisements in the outfield. These ads would help fund the renovations, and avoid having to dip into tax-payer dollars. But an association of property owners across the street, who sell roof-top tickets during games, oppose this construction–and they have some sort of contract guaranteeing access to that view.

The owner of the Cubs is frustrated with the opposition to these changes, and has threatened to move to team out to O’Hare.

This bit in particular stuck out:

Ricketts presented an architectural rendering of the video screen during his speech to the City Club of Chicago and insisted it would have minimal if any impact on the views. He said without such signage, the team was losing out on $20 million a year in ad revenue — essential for helping fund extensive renovations without dipping into taxpayer funds.

“All we really need is to be able to run our business like a business and not a museum,” Ricketts told the audience.

All too often in land-use disputes, businesses are expected to think first about aesthetics, and profit second. Let’s see  how this plays out.

During the Medicaid arguments in NFIB v. Sebelius, Justice Scalia famously analogized the Medicaid expansion to the Jack Benny bit: a mugger makes a demand: “Your money or your life!” Benny pauses. The mugger asks, what’s the holdup. Benny replies, I’m thinking about it!

It turns out, some people in NYC are not taking the choice between their money and their life so lightly.

The first armed robbery attempt was in October, on a residential Bronx block near an elevated train stop. The victim fought back. He was shot in the leg.

The next came a month later and roughly a mile away. Once again, the victim resisted and was shot.

After the third robbery attempt, in February, two distinct patterns became apparent. The police suspected a single group was to blame, a group that cruised in cars and attacked lone men at night. But a more unusual pattern was seen among the three victims: when faced with a gun and a straightforward proposition — your money or your life — they had opted to take their chances with their lives.

“Being held at gunpoint, for some people, is not that scary,” said Brian Melford, 21, a Bronx youth activist and student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Around here, people think they’re strong. They just say, ‘I’m not going to give it up.’ ”

In other words, their money is worth their life! Or more precisely, when not much money is to be had, it is worth fighting back:

Criminologists have for decades studied the responses of victims to violent crime. Robberies in particular became a topic of scholarly research in the 1980s and 1990s, as random street crime spread through urban areas, with those studies mostly confirming the obvious: if you resist a robber, you are more likely to get hurt or, possibly, killed.

“From any perspective of rationality, the thing to do with a robber is to cooperate politely,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist at Berkeley Law School. But, he added, both robbers and recalcitrant victims have never been the most rational actors.

“You don’t have much money on you; it’s nuts for the victim to refuse,” he said. “Here’s the second layer of nuts: You’ve got a rational robber. If the victim refuses, why doesn’t he just find somebody else?”

Though, YOLO:

Others expressed shock that anyone would think to tangle with an armed robber in defense of a little bit of pocket lucre.

“You only live once,” said Omar Dailey, 35, while cutting the hair of a local tailor at a Bronxwood Avenue barbershop near the site of one of the shootings. “I’m giving up everything. What you want?”

Last week, a judge in New York dismissed a suit against which, in the words of the Times, was “aimed at stifling New York City’s plans to allow taxi riders to hail yellow cabs using smartphone apps.” This ruling has paved the way for Uber to enter the New York City Market.

On Tuesday night, a company called Uber, which entered the yellow taxi-hailing market last year before being rebuffed by the city, said that its service was available, one week after a lawsuit challenging the use of such apps was dismissed. The city announced on Friday that Uber’s was so far the first and only app to be approved.

Uber has been opposed by livery and black car operators, “who argued that the program would violate the city’s longstanding ban on prearranged rides in yellow taxis.”

In New York, only yellow taxis–with medallions, can pick up fares from the street. Black cars can only be dispatched by phone. But uber provides a new dynamic. You can request a car, electronically, to pick you up wherever you are. No need to hail an expensive taxi. Just uber it!

I previously blogged about the barriers to entry for disruptive technologies here.

Update: One day later, a judge issues an injunction halting Uber.

Margaret Hagan, a 3L at Stanford Law School, and creator of the Open Law Lab, has put together some of the coolest legal infographics I’ve ever seen.

For example, here is a cool flowchart explaining the hearsay rule:

Here is a diagram of nuisance law:

The rules of Civil Procedure:

Margaret’s approach to visualizing the law is very, very interesting. Check out more of her work here. These flow charts help to explain the law in ways that really appeal to today’s generation. Today, students are such visual learners. Engaging, captivating graphics are very effective to learn.