Jan 5th, 2009
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. [...]
Jan 4th, 2009
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 [...]
Dec 31st, 2008
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 [...]
Dec 29th, 2008
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 [...]
Dec 27th, 2008
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.
Dec 26th, 2008
Don’t go to Marquette Law School.
According to David Papke, law professor at Marquette Law School,
We don’t want law school to be lawyer-training school. When we cave in to demands of that sort from the ABA and assorted study commissions, we actually invite alienation among law students and lawyers. Legal education should appreciate the depth of [...]
