Video and Banquet

No blogging yesterday because I was (a) being interviewed on-camera for 3 hours by a guy from Faces Media to create a few short videos for my website; and (b) preparing for and attending the Harris County Criminal Lawyers’ Association’s annual banquet, at which I was sworn in as president-elect, I gave the outgoing president [...]

Schrödinger’s Jury

Some of the most nerve-wracking times in my life — and, I think, in any trial lawyer’s life — are those moments between the jury’s signal that they have a verdict (here in Houston, two buzzes on the jury room buzzer) and the reading of the verdict. They’re almost surreal moments, in which I know [...]

How to End the Witchhunt

Lyndhurst, New Jersey (from the New Jersey Lawyer, the weekly newspaper of the New Jersey State Bar Association):
Lyndhurst is gathering feedback on a proposal to require background and fingerprint checks of all ice-cream truck and other food-on-wheels vendors as a way to protect children. ‘Most of the people who come to an ice-cream truck are [...]

Terrence MacCarthy and Milton Erickson

Here I mentioned “Yes Mode,” which is what master cross-examination teacher (and Chicago Federal Public Defender) Terry MacCarthy calls it when, on cross-examination, the lawyer asks only questions that he knows will lead to a “yes answer;” Terry would say that once a person is in “yes mode” it’s difficult for her to say [...]

“Faith-Based Science”

In the May 7, 2007 New Yorker’s Annals of Law column, Jeffrey Toobin writes about “The CSI Effect“, focusing on the hair and fiber analysis performed at the NYPD crime lab.
In what I consider the highlight of the column, Arizona State professor of law and psychology Michael J. Saks says:
There are really two kinds of [...]

HCCLA Merchandise

I designed these limited-edition window stickers.

4″ X 4″ on vinyl.
$5.00 each from HCCLA. (It’s for a worthy cause.)
Email sales at HCCLA dot org.

Prison Article

Andrew Papke, serving two consecutive 20-year sentences for intoxication manslaughter, has a very moving article, I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams, about the Texas prison and parole system, in the Texas Observer this week.

Quote of the Day

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Albert Einstein

Another Common Ethical Violation

Yesterday Gideon blogged here about trial lawyers trying to help the government defeat their (former) clients’ habeas claims. “Occasionally,” he writes,
I will try habeas corpus cases. Some of them will be challenges to pleas, enforcement of plea agreements and then the usual ineffective assistance claims. What really grinds my gears is the lack of co-operation [...]

State Constitutions

Last week Texas’s Waco Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Peña v. State holding that a defendant does not have to show bad faith to establish a due-course-of-law violation when the State destroys potentially exculpatory evidence. In doing so, the Waco Court (an intermediate appellate court with criminal and civil jurisdiction) applied the Texas [...]

« go back — keep looking »