Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | July 5, 2008
This post, “about how Chicago police were noting that the 10% increase in homicide this year compared over last is possibly attributable to the lack of aggressive policing, due to increased police misconduct lawsuits”, on Chicago criminal defense lawyer Rob Deters’s 26th St. Bar Association blog, brought to mind this Simple Justice post, about former [...]
Mark Bennett | May 21, 2008
In November there are seven incumbent “Republican” felony court judges up for reelection in Harris County. I put the party affiliation in quotes because (A) judges should not be elected in partisan elections; and (B) the best of these judges don’t act as though their party affiliation has anything to do with their judging.
All of [...]
Mark Bennett | April 26, 2008
New York criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield asks of the criminal justice system, “is it too broken?“
These are a few of the questions he asks:
Are jurors capable of discerning truth from deception, or is this just a vanity of our support for trial by jury?
. . . .
Is there a fundamental flaw in our selection [...]
Mark Bennett | April 23, 2008
From the letters to the April 14, 2008 Houston Chronicle:
Justice here isn’t partisan
I write in response to the letter written by Dana Lejune that was published in the Chronicle Thursday. (Please see “The way to get new judges.”) I am particularly disturbed at the characterization that justice in our county is dispensed with partisan labels. [...]
Mark Bennett | February 22, 2008
The Harris County Republican primary, with its fight among Jim Leitner, Kelly Siegler, Doug Perry, and Pat Lykos is very interesting. Conventional wisdom is that Pat Lykos, who may very well be the absolute worst candidate for the position (sharing Doug Perry’s lack of trial experience but not his niceness nor honesty), has the nomination [...]
Mark Bennett | February 2, 2008
The Harris County District Judges are trying to avoid answering my Rule 12 open-records request.
I need an expert on Microsoft Exchange Server. Specifically, I need someone to tell me (a) how difficult it would be to restore the server contents as of a specific date and search for emails from 22 individual mailboxes; (b) whether [...]
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 25, 2008
In Open Records 102- Attorney General Edition Robert Guest republishes a FAQ from the Texas Attorney General about the Texas Public Information Act. The AG notes, correctly that “records of the judiciary do not fall under the Public Information Act.”
For Open Records Week last week I sent public information requests to all of Harris County’s [...]
Mark Bennett | October 16, 2007
Death penalty enthusiasts are chortling about Judge Sharon Keller’s action in closing the courthouse doors to Mr. Richard. A common theme among their responses is “blame the lawyers.” One [anonymous] sample, in comments to my first post on the subject:
Why didn’t the lawyers who needed to file do so BEFORE the court closed????? That is [...]
