Technicalities

The closing scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho:

What makes that scene particularly creepy for me is the last fraction of a second of the shot of Norman Bates’s face. Just before dissolving to the shot of the car being pulled out of the lake, Hitchcock superimposed an image of a skull over Norman’s face. I don’t [...]

New Blog Worth Reading

New Mexico prosecutor Kirk Chavez has started blogging about New Mexico law at Issues and Holdings.

Welcome Prosecutors!

So far today I’ve had 116 visitors from this post on the Texas District and County Attorneys’ Association forum, where the administrator, Shannon Edmonds, posted a link to my Motion to Change the Facts.
A couple of visitors to that forum commented — not on the motion (well, there were secondary and grudging admissions that that [...]

An Unused Resource for Veterans with TBI

Houston’s TIRR (The Institution for Rehabilitation and Research) is the fourth-highest rated rehabilitation hospital in the U.S. (No VA hospital even made the top 25.) So why is it that TIRR’s Project Victory, designed to help veterans with traumatic brain injuries “reintegrate into family, school, work and community life” with “a three-year, $3 million budget, [...]

Defining Reasonable Doubt

From 1991 (Geesa) to 2000 (Paulson), criminal juries in Texas were given this definition of “beyond a reasonable doubt:
It is not required that the prosecution prove guilt beyond all possible doubt; it is required that the prosecution’s proof excludes all “reasonable doubt” concerning the defendant’s guilt.
A “reasonable doubt” is a doubt based on reason and [...]

Motion to Change the Facts

Sometimes it’s all you’ve got. [PDF]

What Else Cops Know

I showed here that the cops know not to talk to the cops when they — or their buddies — are being investigated. In his new Frisco DWI Lawyer & Attorney blog and weblog, Hunter Biederman points out that the cops also know not to take field sobriety tests when they’re stopped for DWI.

More Advice to the Young Criminal Defense Trial Lawyer — Part 4. Politics and the Bar

“How important is it to be involved in local politics or the local bar?”
Politics? Unimportant. Do it if that’s what interests you.
The local bar, generally? It probably depends. Here in Houston, with 14,000+ lawyers, it’s unimportant. I have never belonged to the Houston Bar Association, and probably never will. But I’m not a joiner. If [...]

More Advice to the Young Criminal Defense Lawyer — Part 3. Volunteer, Low Bono, and Pro Bono

The third of Adam Levin’s questions that young criminal defense lawyers might have:
“Do you perform volunteer, pro bono, or low bono work? Why or why not?”
While defending people in the criminal courts, even for pay, is for the public good (so that we don’t need as many karma offsets as others). As a criminal defense [...]

More Legal First Aid

I’ve edited the Legal First Aid — DWI edition sheet a little bit, and added two more:
Legal First Aid — Search Warrant Edition (”The police are at the door with a search warrant. What do I do?”); and
Legal First Aid — Arrest Edition (”I’m being arrested. What do I do?”).
As always, I welcome your comments. [...]

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