Defending People

As I was leaving the Harris County Criminal “Justice” Center today after a couple of intense (but ultimately successful) struggles on behalf of clients, I had this thought:
How many people would give everything they have to know that they were going to walk out of this building at the end of the day?
Those of us [...]

Minion of the state
Imprisons fellow humans.
Is the clapping of one hand
Her Buddha-nature?

Technorati Tags: law, lawyers, poetry, prosecutors, Zen

Outside the Peachtree Street jail in Atlanta there are bronze plaques inscribed with poems written by inmates. Here is my favorite:
Inside the prison
There is a prison
Inside the person.

Technorati Tags: poetry

My explicit exploration of alternative trial technologies started, believe it or not, with “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists” (Neil Strauss). Jennifer bought it for my dad, and it was such a well-packaged book (black leatherette binding with red ribbon page marker, like a Bible) that I read through it. Reading it, [...]

H.L. Mencken wrote:
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

That’s a pretty good description of my mood when I have a trial going on: the Jolly Roger is flying from the mainmast and I’m knee-deep in gore. It’s not a bad feeling.
There’s [...]

A felony judge told me the other day that one of the factors she considers in deciding whether to give a person probation is whether the person can pay whatever restitution might be due to the complaining witness.
The Texas Constitution forbids imprisonment for debt. I pointed out to the judge that putting someone in prison [...]

Fellow Houston criminal defense lawyer (and president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association) Robb Fickman adds, in response to the bill offering psychological counseling to former jurors:
How about this: How about some counseling for the families and children of men and women who have been found innocent after years of wrongful incarcerated? Oh yeah [...]

There is a bill in Austin allowing the government to provide post-trial psychological counseling for jurors in certain types of cases. The bill provides for the “crime victim liaison” to arrange for the counseling, and allows the crime victim liaison to use a company that provides similar services to victims.
According to this Austin American-Statesman story [...]

Three examples of altered states of consciousness in the courtroom:

On cross-examination, a lawyer gets a federal agent into what Chicago federal defender cross-examination teacher Terry MacCarthy calls “Yes Mode,” nodding and saying “yes” to each question. When the lawyer gets to the difficult questions, the witness continues truthfully saying “yes” even though he would rather [...]

Methamphetamine is bad stuff. Really, really bad stuff. If the devil were to invent a drug to destroy mankind, it would be meth. That’s why I used to say that methamphetamine, out of all of the drugs in the world, should be illegal.
Phoenix criminal defense attorney Marc Victor makes a compelling argument that methamphetamine should [...]