Nov 6th, 2007
We got a jury picked on the self-defense case. I got to go dead last, after a) the judge; b) the prosecutor; and c) counsel for my codefendant. We started at about 11, and I got up to talk with the panel at about 3:30.
I was tired.
The panel was tired.
The law is muddled.
It was not [...]
Nov 5th, 2007
I’m in trial today, picking a jury in Houston on the case that was last set for trial on October 1st. (I’m actually sitting in the courtroom during the lunch break between the judge’s voir dire and the State’s.
My client and his brother are accused of murder; they thought they were about to be victims [...]
Nov 4th, 2007
One commentator to Scott Greenfield’s recent post, The Battle Lines are Drawn, wrote:
If you are worrying about harm to others you are in the wrong line of work. Your sole duty is a duty of zealous advocacy to the client. We don’t have a duty to do justice. Harming others is part of the job [...]
Nov 2nd, 2007
Our friend Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice blog is nominated for Best Law Blog in the 2007 weblog awards. He’s competing against much more general blogs with broader readership. Go vote for Scott and SJ; you can do so once every 24 hours. A vote for Simple Justice is. . . a vote for Simple Justice.
Norm Pattis writes about lawyers who won’t help people snitch (hat tip to Scott Greenfield); he draws an analogy to the practice of medicine:
I would not consider myself well served by my doctor if he were to announce that a life-saving treatment was available, but that he would not prescribe it because, well, it offends [...]
Nov 1st, 2007
So you chose a narrow field of inquiry on which to cross-examine the State’s expert, and you gathered a list of journal articles that might relate to the narrow field of inquiry. What next?
Find a good medical library. Any medical school should have a a library that has most of the publications we’ll be looking [...]
The Center for American and International Law in Plano, Texas is presenting a cross-examination and impeachment seminar for the criminal defense bar December 13-14, 2007. Terry MacCarthy is the lead speaker.
I recommend this seminar highly. Most of us could use more cross-examination training, and Terry is one of the best teachers. I would plan to [...]
New York Criminal Lawyer Scott Greenfield, always on the ball, brings us news out of Texas:
In Collin County (criminal defense lawyers’ Thunderdome), criminal defense lawyer Chris Hoover, faced with a judge who refused to recuse himself or to refer the recusal motion to the presiding judge (as required by statute), deliberately refused to participate in [...]
I haven’t posted in a few days because I went from having family in town and celebrating my son’s fourth birthday, to preparing for a resisting arrest trial, to installing Leopard. What better way to get back into the flow than another exploration of the Tao? Here’s Chapter 4; as usual, I’m using the Mitchell [...]