Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | July 16, 2008
John Wesley Hall brings to our attention a new article: Fred Zacharias, Fitting Lying to the Court into the Central Moral Tradition of Lawyering, 58 Case West. L. Rev. ___ (2008).
Professor Zacharias focuses on what he calls Professor Monroe H. Freedman’s “most interesting illustration” of circumstances in which zealous representation might “require a lawyer to [...]
Mark Bennett | June 18, 2008
Suppose that you were a prosecutor prosecuting a first-time DWI case, and that I was defending it.
Suppose further that the accused’s husband, an ex-cop, watched her performing the field sobriety tests at the scene, and would testify that she did fine. That the arresting officer claimed that his in-car video camera wasn’t working. That the [...]
Mark Bennett | April 17, 2008
HCCLA is putting on six hours of free ethics CLE — that’s two years’ worth — tomorrow from 9 to 2* in the lawyers’ ready room on the 7th floor of the Harris County criminal courthouse.
I’ll be speaking in the coveted “last speaker on Friday afternoon, long after everyone else has gone home” slot from [...]
Mark Bennett | March 25, 2008
PJ’s first comment here made me think of this, from Edward O. Wilson’s sociobiology book, On Human Nature:
Lawrence Kohlberg, an educational psychologist, has traced what he believes to be six sequential stages of ethical reasoning through which each person progresses as part of his normal mental development. The child moves from an unquestioning dependence on [...]
Mark Bennett | March 17, 2008
There are many reasons people commit crimes: addiction, anger, avarice, arrogance, fear, ignorance, and disease, to name just a few. Typically more than one reason can be identified for the commission of a particular crime. Addiction and avarice, for example, or ignorance and fear.
Arrogance can cause crime if a person know that the rules apply [...]
Mark Bennett | March 10, 2008
I wrote last year about the interplay of Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 1.05 and Texas Rule of Evidence 503, and their surprising cumulative effect on the attorney-client and work-product privileges in Texas. Now the Court of Criminal Appeals proposes amending Rule 503 to remove the “special rule of privilege in criminal cases”:
(2) Special [...]
Mark Bennett | March 8, 2008
A man has gotta have a code to live by. (So does a woman.)
I think most lawyers don’t have one.
What’s yours?
Mark Bennett | January 29, 2008
Today (January 29th) I got a fax from the prosecutor on a misdemeanor case. The fax contained:
A Motion to Disclose Experts; and
An order granting that motion.
The motion carried a certificate of service claiming that the motion had been served on me on the day the motion was filed or before. It had not been served [...]
Mark Bennett | January 15, 2008
The Houston Chronicle has an interesting column today by Lisa Falkenberg, in which she suggests that when Kelly Siegler described the 45,000 members of Houston’s Lakewood Church as “screwballs and nuts” she might not have been being entirely candid with the court.
The context: Kelly was trying a capital murder case. The defense made a Batson [...]
Mark Bennett | January 4, 2008
Gideon wrote today about the cost of jury trial, noting that many citizens-accused with retained counsel can’t afford to pay for a jury trial. He asked,
Who can do something to avoid this? Should clients always assume they will go to trial and hire only attorneys they can afford? Should attorneys not charge a subsequent trial [...]
