The term prior restraint is used to describe administrative and judicial orders forbidding certain communications when issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur. Alexander v. United States. A criminal statute restricting speech based on its content also forbids certain communications in advance of the time that such communications are to occur. So what is the difference? A criminal statute is made by the legislature,

Failing to make the case that revenge porn falls into one of the categories of unprotected speech listed by the Supreme Court in its recent cases (notably Stevens and Alvarez), the State does some jailhouse lawyering. "Jailhouse lawyering" is bad legal analysis, usually involving taking some snippet of language out of context and loading it with great significance. There are some competent lawyers in prison law libraries,

Having failed to justify section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code as an obscenity statute, the State seeks hope elsewhere in the Supreme Court's enumeration of categories of historically unprotected speech. Aha! Speech incident to criminal conduct! Section 21.16(b) restricts only speech causing harm, and that's criminal conduct, right? Well, no. To be speech integral to criminal conduct, the speech has to be an integral part of

Failing to convince the court that section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code does not restrict speech, and failing to convince the court that section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code is not a content-based restriction, the State is in trouble. Recent Supreme Court authority—Stevens in 2010, Alvarez in 2012—has made clear that speech is protected from content-based restriction unless it falls into a category of historically

Our Mission: To receive, analyze and preserve physical and digital evidence while adhering to the highest standards of quality, objectivity and ethics. (Houston Forensic Science Center.) HFSC will redo the forensic analysis in the homicide case to ensure law enforcement and prosecutors have accurate, reliable information that will assist in their investigation. (KHOU, with annoying autoplay video.)

I have butted heads with Mike Fields, judge of Harris County Criminal Court at Law Number 14, more than once, and found him a worthy adversary. He is a big guy, imposing both physically and in personality, and he'll push you around if you let him. That rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But  if you push back, he will yield when you show him

Every year ((Starting in 2017.)) instead of making resolutions I choose a word of the year. The word of the year is a guiding principle, something to focus on to make my world better. Last year's word was "Attention." It was a huge success: by paying attention to attention I was able to eliminate many unrewarding demands on my attention—to stop paying attention to things that didn't give

Scott Greenfield has a post this morning that highlights a journalist's paraphrase, in an interview, of her subject's words. This has become a ubiquitous problem, in media, on social media, everywhere (which is why it’s ubiquitous). You say “it’s snowing,” and someone else responds, “so you’re saying it’s the worst blizzard ever?” Obviously not, but that puts you in the position of either responding by saying the

The Hearing Officers’ testimony that they do not “know” whether imposing secured money bail will have the effect of detention in any given case, e.g., Hearing Tr. 4-1:141, 4-2:16, and their testimony that they do not intend that secured money bail have that effect, is not credible. That's from U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal's April 2017 Memorandum and Opinion Setting Out Findings of Fact and Conclusions of

(Nobody ever taught me this in school, and perhaps nobody ever told you either: When a compound adjective follows the noun ("the statute is content based") it is not hyphenated; when it precedes the noun ("it is a content-based statute") it is (provided, of course, that the other rules of hyphenation apply).) Failing to convince the court that section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code does not