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 year¹ 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

Here is section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code: A person commits an offense if: (1) without the effective consent of the depicted person, the person intentionally discloses visual material depicting another person with the person's intimate parts exposed or engaged in sexual conduct; (2) the visual material was obtained by the person or created under circumstances in which the depicted person had a reasonable expectation that

Revenge porn is not speech. Revenge porn criminalization is not a content-based restriction. Revenge porn is obscenity. Revenge porn is integral to criminal conduct. Revenge porn is "essentially intolerable invasions of privacy," a recognized category of historically unprotected speech. Revenge porn falls into some hitherto unrecognized category of historically unprotected speech. Revenge porn criminalization is directed at secondary effects of revenge porn. Revenge porn should be treated

The third pending revenge-porn-unconstitutionality appeal in Texas is Ex parte Jones, in the Twelfth Court of Appeals in lovely Tyler, Texas. Again, we lost in the trial court and so got to go first in the Court of Appeals: ((In a case in which review is de novo, I have decided that winning in the trial court gains us little, and loses us the opportunity to frame

We lost in the trial court, so we got to go first in the Waco Court of Appeals: [pdf-embedder url="https://blog.bennettandbennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ellis-10th-Court-Brief-Final.pdf" title="Ellis 10th Court Brief Final"] The State filed a nothing brief: [pdf-embedder url="https://blog.bennettandbennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ellis-States-Brief.pdf" title="Ellis State's Brief"] Mr. Ellis replied: [pdf-embedder url="https://blog.bennettandbennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ellis-Reply-Brief.pdf" title="Ellis Reply Brief"] At argument (unfortunately not recorded) the State made some arguments that it hadn't made in its brief. The court asked for amicus briefs

The First Court of Appeals in Houston will be hearing oral argument February 13th in the case of State v. Mora. This is the State's appeal from a trial court judgment holding section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code (Unlawful Disclosure or Promotion of Intimate Visual Material) unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The State's scattered brief: [pdf-embedder url="https://blog.bennettandbennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BRF-STA-FLD-110717.pdf" title="BRF STA FLD 110717"] Mr. Mora's elegant brief: [pdf-embedder