Blame Brain Drain?

[Co-written by Jennifer Bennett.]
The Bombay Metropolitan Magistrate Court Bar Association has adopted a resolution barring its members from representing Mohammed Ajmal Kasab (Law and Other Things blog), the sole surviving November 26th attacker.
Lawyers often feel pressure not to represent people associated with unpopular causes. I remember that Doug Tinker (RIP Doug) initially declined to represent [...]

1. Anti-Social Behavior Orders (ASBOs)
From the Home Office’s website:

Anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) are court orders which [sic] forbid specific threatening or intimidating actions.
An ASBO can ban a person from:

threatening, intimidating or disruptive actions

spending time with a particular group of friends

visiting certain areas

ASBOs are in effect for a minimum of two years, and can be longer. [...]

Bad Lawyer. No Cookie.

Paraphrased actual letter from lawyer to first-time DUI client:
Dear X,
You have told me that you can’t afford to pay me to try your case. This forces me to ask the judge to allow me to withdraw from your case. Three bad things might happen as a result.
First, the judge might revoke your bond and take [...]

Ethos

Murray Newman laments what he expects to be the loss of prosecutorial discretion in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office under the Lykos / Leitner regime.
Murray misses the old days. Ah, those glorious Rosenthal / Siegler days, when prosecutors had discretion — discretion enough to run amok. . . when 29-year-old misdemeanor chiefs with no [...]

I went to visit a client at the “IAH Adult Detention Facility” (which I thought was a private jail) in Livingston, Texas today and was greeted by a sign at the front desk with a globe logo and the legend, “Community Education Centers”:

Apparently my client isn’t incarcerated; he’s just being educated.
(Because someone will inevitably find [...]

HPD and Video Redux

HPD Officer Paul Lassalle comments on this long-ago post about his communications with Harris County Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam (who will likely be at the coronation on Thursday) concerning whether HPD has to actually use the videotaping equipment that the statute requires them to have and maintain.
When a man with a gun and a [...]

Houston criminal defense lawyer Sharon Levine has passed away.
Sharon was a great and caring warrior for each of her clients, but the case for which she’ll always be remembered in the Houston criminal defense community was a piddly little class B misdemeanor evading arrest case of little interest to anyone but her and her [...]

RIP

The following blogs on my blogroll bit the dust in 2008:

Bad Court Thingy
Curia Advisari Vult
da blog
HCSO Blog
Norm Pattis’s blog

They made my blogroll because they had something interesting to say, or an interesting way to say something.
I miss them.

For those Harris County ADAs who want, very anonymously, to express their feelings about being ordered to Pat Lykos’s coronation ceremony on January 1, Miami criminal defense lawyer Brian Tannebaum has posted a poll.