Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | November 30, 2009
Personal injury lawyer Paul Luvera has written about Applying Reptile Concepts in Trial—describing how plaintiffs’ lawyers should appeal to jurors’ reptile brains.
The reptile brain is the core of the human brain, sitting right at the top of the spine surrounded by the later-developing dog brain and ape brain. The reptile brain is a survival engine, [...]
Mark Bennett | November 13, 2009
From the State’s Motion to Recuse Judge Helm from all family violence cases:
Due process requires recusal when “there is a serious risk of actual bias—based on objective and reasonable perceptions.”
and
This bias should not be allowed to interfere with the State’s due process rights in a manner that infects “the integrity of the trial process.”
Problem: The [...]
Mark Bennett | October 6, 2009
As I’ve grown older and more insightful (and, Jen would say, crankier), I’ve realized that competence is very important to me, and incompetence annoys me.
General competence—being able to deal with whatever adventures life might hand you—is a certain virtue in my world. I had a next-door neighbor for the last few years, Jack, who had [...]
Mark Bennett | September 28, 2009
My friend Josh Reiss and I were at Rice together, and now he’s a prosecutor at the Harris County DA’s Office. The love of Josh’s life, his wife Anh, is fighting a blood cancer called Myelodysplastic Syndrome, and needs a bone marrow stem cell transplant. The following is a guest post from Josh:
There are times [...]
Mark Bennett | September 14, 2009
One of my readers complains that the front page of Defending People doesn’t show the latest posts. I suspect that the problem is that Greenfield needs to clear the cache on his ZX-81, but let’s humor him. Please go to http://BennettAndBennett.com/blog, and if the first post is from before September 14, 2009, email me a [...]
Mark Bennett | September 5, 2009
New Chron.commons blog post.
Mark Bennett | September 3, 2009
If you’re going to fake your suicide to avoid prison, it’s better not to write the note in the past tense.
Mark Bennett | September 1, 2009
The Pat Lykos DA’s Office has, in the last eight months, shown a marked tendency to act without calm deliberation. See the whale policy, the no-probation-for-illegal immigrants policy, the premature announcement of DIVERT, Pat Lykos calling two of her prosecutors “incompetent”, and just about every story on Murray’s blog.
I wrote here about the Office’s [...]
Mark Bennett | August 31, 2009
In Beer Pong,
The ball is always in play. If the ball hits the floor, ceiling, wall or even leaves the room it can still be, and should be, hit back in the direction of the table.
So it is in jury selection, except that “the ball” is the conversation and “the table” is the case. [...]
