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,

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel

Law student Laura McWilliams, blogging at Really? Law? (go ahead and add it to your feedreader now—done?—great), writes here and here about the thought process that has her leaning toward an eventual job prosecuting people. From the first post: In an idealist vision, (let’s just go with it; there’s nothing wrong with a little idealism) the prosecution and the defense are both working for the same thing.

It doesn't matter who asks them—defense lawyers, prosecutors, cops—or whom they are asked—witnesses, the jurors themselves, defendants—jurors don't like trick questions. Getting caught asking a trick question lessens the questioner's credibility. Here's a trick question that cops sometimes ask people suspected of DWI: "On a scale of zero to ten, how intoxicated would you say you are?" They think they're being clever—anyone who says anything other than

(In lieu of the more complete trial journal that I should have been keeping for the last eight weekdays.) 0530: Get up. Prepare for trial. 0620: Breakfast, shower, shave, get dressed, etc. 0725: Leave for courthouse. 0800: Arrive in courtroom. Meditate. 0830: Trial begins. 0930: 1-hour break for court to handle court business. Small snack—half an energy bar and some water. 1030 Trial resumes. 1130 2-hour break

Some numbers, perhaps of interest to nobody but me: Panel average -0.15 Struck for cause average 0 Struck by defense average -0.02 Jurors sworn average -0.20 Struck by State average -0.69 Numbers are a measure of authoritarianism/egalitarianism based on scaled answers to eight questions, chosen unscientifically—according to how interesting they were to me. Lower numbers are more egalitarian, high numbers more authoritarian. The maximum and minimum possible