Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | July 31, 2009
Rule 1 of my Simple Rules for Better Jury Selection is the Nike Rule: Just do it.
It’s not a very sexy rule, so I won’t lead off with it when I’m speaking in Waco in September (I’ll probably put it at the end for the few faithful who stick around); I’ll give you Rule 2 [...]
Mark Bennett | July 30, 2009
Prosecutors, do you want to learn about the new DIVERT program that your office adopted without consulting with you?
Defense lawyers, do you want to learn about the ethics of ex parte agreements with judges about minimum sentences in DWI cases?
Incumbent judges,* do you want to find out who is going to support your [...]
Mark Bennett | July 29, 2009
It’s against my nature to continue letting Houston DWI lawyer Paul Kennedy pick the low-lying fruit of the Harris County DA’s new DIVERT (the acronym, as I understand it, stands for “maybe this will make the voters love us”) DWI diversion program.
This program is prosecutor Roger Bridgwater’s baby. I believe Roger’s heart is in the [...]
Mark Bennett | July 26, 2009
If I read The Volokh Conspiracy, I would’ve seen and (again) blogged about this back in February:
U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III in Burlington handed down an opinion sort-of-reversing Magistrate Judge Jerome J. Niedermeier’s order quashing a grand jury subpoena for:
all documents, whether in electronic or paper form, reflecting any passwords used or [...]
Mark Bennett | July 25, 2009
An evolving list:
Rule Zero
The Nike Rule.
The First Blind Date Rule.
The Shrek Rule.
The 90/10 Rule.
MacCarthy’s Bar Rule.
Improv Rule I.
Improv Rule II.
The Shrink Rule.
The Beer Pong Rule.
The Marathon Rule.
The Playing Doctor Rule.
The Field Trip Rule.
The Undertow Rule.
The Atticus Finch Rule.
The Bat Rule.
The Herd Rule.
More detail in posts to come.
[If you have ideas for better names for some [...]
Mark Bennett | July 24, 2009
I’ve made a small change to improve accessibility for the vision-impaired. Notice the pulldown menu labeled “Theme Switcher”. The default theme is Wasteland; you can pick one of the other themes, some of which (WhitePress [though there's a comment display bug at the moment], possibly WordPress Classic) are more accessible.
Enjoy.
Mark Bennett | July 24, 2009
Anonymous Harris County prosecutor / blogger “Arthur Seaton” at Saturday Night and Monday Morning? Wuss.
The anonymous Harris County prosecutor / blogger at Life After Esq.? Wuss.
Harris County prosecutor Jeremy Gordon, blogging under his own name at The Minority Report? Definitely not a wuss.
The first two cratered their blogs in the last week—because of blowback from [...]
Mark Bennett | July 17, 2009
A must-read, especially for people think that baby prosecutors are magically endowed with wisdom to make decisions affecting other people’s futures: the new blogger on the Harris County criminal law block, Life after Esq., is reporting from “baby prosecutors school” in Austin.
With plenty of breathless prose about partying, and palpable sexual tension between Ms. Esq. [...]
Mark Bennett | July 17, 2009
Some chucklehead sent me comment spam, using the same phrase, “Cleveland Internet Marketing Consultant” as his author name and in the text of his comment. (Here’s an idea: a Wordpress Plugin that automatically marks as spam any comment with the same n-or-more word phrase in both the comment and author fields.)Look at the URL he’s [...]
Mark Bennett | July 17, 2009
We lawyers are a pretty messed-up bunch—more emotionally and psychologically messed-up than the mean. We suffer from higher incidences of alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression than the general population. The lawyer whose career is his whole life, who defines himself in terms of his prowess as a lawyer, is in for disappointment and trouble. Because [...]
