This is a blog about the art and science of criminal defense trial lawyering, as well as anything else that I am interested in that I think is even remotely connected to criminal defense trial lawyering. I'm writing for other criminal defense lawyers, but non-lawyers are certainly welcome.
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Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Posted By Mark Bennett on March 18, 2010
Today begins my fourth year of writing Defending People. It all started on March 19, 2007 with Introduction. Since then I’ve written 1,325 posts and published over 6,000 comments. I’ve had about 429,065 unique visitors, and received enough positive feedback to keep me both blogging and humble.
Thank you for reading Defending People. Without you I’d be muttering to myself.
Posted By Mark Bennett on March 18, 2010
Someone using John Coby’s email address and a link to his blog tried to leave the following comment to this post:
Your article is a bit too long for a blog entry. I couldnt finish it.
I emailed Coby to ask if it was actually him leaving this moronic comment. He did not respond. Judging, however, from recent content on his blog, I suspect that this comment is reflective of his thought processes.
Coby wrote a post last Friday about Judge Larry Standley’s speech to Clear Springs High School students entitled Harris County Republican Judge Larry Standley Caught DWI. The punchline:
When asked for a comment Standley replied with slurred speech, incoherent rants, a rather graphic reference to someones mother, and passed gas while falling off his high horse.
Not that funny, but okay—about what we expect from a mindless political hack from either party.
The following Tuesday he acknowledged that It Wasn’t That Funny:
Our Courts need a huge dose of balance, but not at the expense of those who are concerned about making a difference instead of making a headline. A family will never understand how important our Judges are until they are in front of one that is willing to take the time to try to save their kid from a life of crime while upholding the law. From what [criminal defense lawyer and thinking Democrat David Jones] told me, Standley is one of these judges.
Fair enough. Mindless political hack screws up, attacks compassionate criminal court judge for no other reason than that he is a Republican, realizes that said judge is in fact one of the good guys, and apologizes. Good for him.
But not good enough. Yesterday, he posted Upon Further Review, I Apologize for my Apology. Because of some “disturbing” texts he got, he decided:
So, my apology was a bit premature. Standley has been on the bench for over 10 years. It wouldn’t hurt if we had some new blood in that seat. Let’s thank him for his service, and move on.
In 2008, expecting either a Republican or a Democratic sweep in the courthouse, I pulled for a Democratic sweep. (Surprisingly, we didn’t quite get it.) Even while pulling for a sweep, however, I noted that there were at least a couple of Republican candidates who should be judges.
The truth is that judges shouldn’t be elected in partisan elections. When you let the local parties choose the judges, you tend to get lousy judges (we did dodge a few bullets in the recent primaries—Wood, Law, and Oliver, to name three). That’s because most party hacks, like John Coby, don’t know diddly-squat about the criminal courthouse or what makes a good judge.
Let’s take Coby’s “disturbing” texts from the bottom up:
He sentenced a guy to yoga for abusing his wife!
That’s not really true. The prosecution and the defense agreed to put the defendant on probation; Judge Standley followed that recommendation. As long as they don’t conflict with the parties’ agreement, the judge can set conditions of probation. Judge Standley added a weekly yoga class as a condition of the defendant’s probation. He had the defendant do more than the parties had agreed, because he thought it might help the defendant remain calm in the face of his lack of control over others. This is not a reason to remove Judge Standley from the bench, it’s a reason to keep him. Even the defendant’s wife—the complainant in the case—thought it was a good idea.
This guys is an idiot!
That’s a self-referential text if I’ve ever seen one.
Either move your car or I will tow it.
I guess that’s an example of Coby’s self-proclaimed “wit.”
His own party has asked him to step down!
If Coby were a thinking man, the fact that the Republican Party apparatus doesn’t like a judge might be a factor in that judge’s favor. But no:
When the Harris County Republican Party asks one of their own members to step down they must have done something pretty damn bad, or they are not donating enough money to the party.
Okay . . . there is a disjunctive there. But are those the only two possibilities? Really? It couldn’t be that Jared Woodfill is simply an idiot who is looking for any distraction from his incompetent leadership of the Harris County Republican Party?
Where is my $50?
More “wit,” John?
He sent out emails with the words “Gay Nigger”
Guess what, John: you just posted a blog post with the same words. (And, oops, so did I, but I’m not throwing stones.) What’s that you say? Context is important? Okay: That email was more than three years ago, and is blown out of proportion every time it is dredged back up.
Have you googled this guy?
Well, that doesn’t turn up much negative other than the “gay niggers” email. On the “good, compassionate, creative judge” side of the equation along with the yoga condition of probation, however, it reveals Judge hopes serial killer’s words will scare prostitutes straight and, if you move on to page 2, this post about his plea colloquy with young defendants.
Coby got it right on Tuesday when he wrote that Judge Larry Standley is a judge who is “concerned about making a difference instead of making a headline.” Judge Standley is about the only judge in the courthouse who is “willing to take the time to try to save a kid from a life of crime while upholding the law.”
Unfortunately, as a mindless political hack Coby can’t bring himself to say something nice about a judge from the opposing party, even when that judge is the best in the courthouse.
Posted By Mark Bennett on March 18, 2010
I recently read Clotaire Rapaille’s The Culture Code. Rapaille is a marketing researcher who “is an internationally known expert in Archetype Discoveries,” which is a field of study that he invented. In The Culture Code Rapaille discusses some of the results of his research into “the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing—a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country—via the culture in which we are raised.” A Code, in Rapaille’s argot, is the archetype imprinted on members of a culture in connection with such a thing.
In America, for example, the Code for Jeep is HORSE. In France and Germany, the Code for Jeep is LIBERATOR. In America, the Code for America is DREAM; in France the Code for America is SPACE TRAVELER; in Germany the Code for America is JOHN WAYNE.
Marketing is effective when it takes into account the Code for the thing being marketed. When America stops behaving like John Wayne (as, for example, when it shoots first), Germans’ opinion of America falls. Jeeps with rectangular headlamps don’t sell like Jeeps with round HORSE-like headlamps. Restaurants that treat food as FUEL (America’s Code for food) sell more food.
Connection to trial lawyering: we are trying to convince the jury that our clients’ behavior was on-Code, and that the other guy’s was off-Code (the basis of the Reptile trial: defendants’ off-Code behavior).
(more…)
Posted By Mark Bennett on March 15, 2010
Three really smart creative empathetic lawyers—Joane Garcia-Colson, Mary Peckham, and Fredilyn Sison—are directing a four-day Trial Boot Camp in Palm Springs, California from May 13 to May 16, 2010. Tuition is $750. I know these women well from the Trial Lawyers College and psychodrama workshops, and I recommend their boot camp highly to women trial lawyers. (I would attend, but I am short on X chromosomes.)
Joane, Mary, and Fredi are great teachers. They are, as Trial Lawyers College (“TLC Inc.”) President Jude Basile admits, “splendid people and magnificent warriors.”
Most importantly, until the beginning of February, Mary and Fredi were part of the Trial Lawyers College staff (Norm Pattis, former staff himself, describes the way things work). Then Mary was simply not invited back to staff training. Fredi was explicitly told by Jude that she was being removed from staff because of her association with Joane and the Trial Boot Camp, which TLC Inc. saw as “competition” for TLC.
What greater praise for a lawyer training program than that Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyer’s College is trying to suppress it?
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Posted By Mark Bennett on March 14, 2010
Two blogs recently added to the blogroll:
Liberty and Justice for Y’all—Texas criminal law mostly-anonymous (except for front man B.W. Barnett) group blog. They are writing for a Texas-criminal-law-savvy audience so far, but they’re just getting warmed up.
Trial Theory—Trial practice group blog. TLC grads Bobby Frederick (of the South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog), Paul J. Smith (of the Life and Times of a Texas Country Trial Lawyer Blog), Karl Dickhaus (get Karl to tell you about his last two years), and apparently six or seven others.
Check them out and give them some comment love.
Jamie Spencer (of the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog) is also starting a group blog, Affirmative Links; with posts like January’s riveting “Hello world!” and last month’s compelling “Here is a second test post,” it’s a real page-turner.
(Greenfield asks “why Texas seems to remain that place where criminal law blawgs flourish, far more so than anywhere else in the country. More executions, more blawgs? More craziness, more blawgs? You would think that Maricopa County would have more blawgs per capita than anywhere else, if that was the case.”)
Posted By Mark Bennett on March 14, 2010
Clear Springs High School students’ responses to the folderol surrounding Judge Standley’s talk at their school last week (from Facebook):
Mickey Carr
These are some of my friend’s replies (from clear springs students) when I asked what had happened and from other friend’s status updates as well, I didn’t put their name up here, but once again I hope these offer a little comfort.“This whole thing is RIDICULOUS. he didn’t say it was “ok to do drugs as long as we didn’t get caught.” what he was really saying was he knows that he can’t stop us no matter what adults tell us not to do because we are bound to experiment because we are teenagers, but we must know the consequences and the severity of the damage we could cause.
i think a lot of people are just being immature about this whole thing. it just takes one person to blow shit out of proportion. you really think a JUDGE would say it’s “ok” to do drugs at an assembly for MADD?
come on now. jeez.”
“i think this whole thing is a misinterpretation. he wasn’t asking our favorite drugs or cigar flavors. a lot of his questions were rhetorical. its sad that not everyone understood that. and the drug screening was just a joke. if anything it couldn’t be mandatory because a parent’s consent would be needed, or it would be mandatory if that person was suspected of being on drugs. a lot of what was said has been twisted, no, mangled into something else.”
“Yeah, this whole thing is bs:
everyone needs to grow some balls b/c we hear worse things from people at school everyday. If you couldn’t handle that, then you can’t handle hs and college. Darn a judge for speaking the truth.”” I knw right, they r makin a big deal bout nuthin. n all dat bull bout him offendin ppl is stupid cause they hear da same crap @ skool!”
“I thought the whole thing is ridiculous myself: if he wasn’t a judge, but a
former druggie or somehing, all this shit wouldn’t have happened”“I think the judge thing is being blown out of porportion and ppl need to lay off im pretty sure he is suffering enough thanks to being put on t.v. After hearing both sides of the story i feel so bad for him he was only trying help us understand”
