Penny Dean and Your Rights

A retired Los Angeles County judge called police late Wednesday night, saying there were people with guns in his home, police said. But when LAPD officers showed up, he fired at them and began a standoff that led to his arrest, police said.

The judge's shots didn't hit anyone, but they came dangerously close, said Los Angeles police Officer Liliana Preciado.

"Thankfully he was a bad shot," she said.

James Bascue, 75, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

<img src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/06/10/us/11BAILWEB1/11BAILWEB1-artic... align="right" width="320">For those who cannot afford to post bail, even a short stay in jail can quickly unravel lives and families. Criminal defendants are overwhelmingly poor, many living paycheck to paycheck, and detention can cause job losses and evictions.

<img src="http://www.forensicmag.com/sites/forensicmag.com/files/sextoyML.JPG" align="right">One Michigan medical marijuana patient claims that law enforcement officers “took everything” from her in a drug raid last year, including TVs and her vibrator, and is speaking out against the Michigan civil asset forfeiture law that made it possible.

The <a href="http://patriotpost.us/posts/35649">Patriot Post</a> reports that "New Jersey’s lengthy process to get a handgun could have contributed to the death of a Berlin Township hairdresser. Carol Browne was found in her driveway last week, dead of multiple stab wounds. She had placed a restraining order on her former boyfriend, Michael Eitel, who was indicted for aggravated assault with bodily injury in 2006, convicted of a weapons offense in 2008 and was sentenced to five years.

A barrage of police gunfire, 19 rounds in all, struck four mobile homes, two cars and a tree — everything it seemed, except the intended target: a fellow officer on the ground screaming, "I'm a cop!"

The last entry in a case of mistaken identity and misplaced firepower was issued in an Internal Affairs report this week, with the officer who was fired upon being reprimanded.

U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch of Denver has ordered the plaintiffs and lawyers who sued Sportsman’s Guide and Lucky Gunner LLC for selling supplies to alleged Aurora movie-theater shooter James Holmes, to pay the companies’ legal fees in the family’s unsuccessful civil suit against the firearms firms. Click <a href="http://nssf.org/share/PDF/Order_of_Dismissal_Phillips_v_Lucky_Gunner.pdf... to download</a> a copy of the suit.

The Washington Post published a story so horrifying this weekend that it would stop your breath: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Tuesday that the Constitution forbids police from holding a suspect without probable cause, even for fewer than 10 extra minutes.

Writing on behalf of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared that the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure prevent police from extending an otherwise completed traffic stop to allow for a drug-sniffing dog to arrive.

<img src="http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/bb79dacb77291963fca57b185cfbad62d93fff50... align="right" width="150"> We're hearing for the first time the 911 recording of the moments when a west Phoenix woman, huddled in her bathroom, confronted and shot a man charged with breaking into her home.

<img src="http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/slagered... align="right" width="240">On Tuesday, South Carolina police officer Michael Thomas Slager was charged with first-degree murder for the shooting death of Walter Scott. Charges against South Carolina police officers for shooting someone are extremely rare.