I've known Sparta Townson for years, since she was Sparta Komissarova with Martindale-Hubbell / Lawyers.com (in unholy alliance at the time with LexisNexis). I may have done a little business with her for a little while, and then stopped. There were no hard feelings, but she was a salesperson, and she wasn't selling anything I needed. Then Sparta left Martindale-Hubbell (some say she was fired; she says

Yesterday when HCCLA went to Houston's City Hall, we learned (because the Mayor told us) that the City of Houston is working on separating the crime lab from the Houston Police Department.This was a surprise to me; it's excellent news.

Texas’s highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, has held, in Stearnes v. Clinton, that a rule barring defense counsel from talking to some witnesses without the prosecutor’s presence “is not only in conflict with principles of fair play, but in direct conflict with defense counsel’s responsibility to seek out and interview potential witnesses.”Murray Newman got the scoop: a memorandum originating from the HPD Chief’s Command/Legal

It’s not that he loves his job:I could have been a contender instead of what I am, a document review attorney. (Twitter.)Nor that he enjoys it:What’s new in the contract attorney world? I hope you guys/ladies having a better time of it than me. (Twitter.)It’s not just that it’s fulfilling:The only reward for being the fastest doc reviewer is quicker unemployment for all involved. (Twitter.)Nor that quality

"Watch this, Mark. I'm going to lie to the judge just to show you that I can." That's not exactly what she said. This morning The Snake was seeking a delay of the trial (set next Monday) of a case in which she's prosecuting a client of mine. This was her second motion for a continuance, but it didn't even come close to complying with the law

I am sorely tempted today to write about The Clown and The Snake—the incompetent, biased judge and the lying prosecutor—and use their names, creating a permanent googleable record. There would be good in it. The voters should know about The Clown, and if he knew that his hijinks might be published, it's not unimaginable that he would back off a bit. As for naming The Snake, I

After twelve days of trial and deliberation, the jury found my client guilty of tampering with physical evidence. Now, ordinarily I figure that going and talking to a jury after a trial is a good way to get lied to, but here we had what I felt was a full and fair exchange of views. And I was left with the definite impression that I had simply

But I also recognize that my life experience is different from that of most African-Americans. And that experience allows me both the luxury of seeing people without the lens of race, but also (sometimes) to fail to imagine how people of other backgrounds might interpret my words. That's Kathleen Parker, in her column published in Saturday's Chronicle. It sometimes amazes me when educated white people claim with

"Common sense" has nothing to do with it. The words do not appear in a Texas criminal jury charge. The existence of jury trials is not common sense. The presumption of innocence is not common sense. Requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not common sense. If any of these concepts were common sense, everyone would have adopted them. Every civilized country on  Earth would have had

Read the Declaration of Independence (I republish it here every year). The founders were not always patriots. They began as traitors, risking everything to sever their ties with the government that was supposed to keep them safe but that broke that promise and stole their freedom. America didn't become independent in the first week of July of 1776. The founders didn't, with a stroke of the pen,