Guy James Gray and  his client didn't talk for six weeks before trial:When asked, "How can you defend a guy when you're not communicating with him?", Gray replies:I filed a motion asking to get off the case. The judge didn't want a delay, and he made me try it, and I tried it.So having asked to get off the case, you've got no further duty to do

This is going to remind many of you of David Martin's conduct in the Cameron Willingham case, but this isn't normal for Texas criminal-defense lawyers. Really. I promise. After Matt Baker got sentenced to 65 years in prison for the murder of his wife: Baker’s Kerrville-based attorneys, Guy James Gray and Harold Danford, said they respect the jury’s verdict. They tried to withdraw from Baker’s case less

The American Society of Trial Consultants has published my Sixteen Simple Rules for Better Jury Selection in its online newsletter, The Jury Expert, along with responses from several jury consultants.Read the rules and responses here.

Try this: Stand up. Raise one foot off the ground. Now shift your weight forward. Don't set your raised foot down. What happens? You fall down. But if you do the same thing and set the raised foot down  to stop your fall, you take a step. Raise the other foot off the ground, shift your weight forward, and set your raised foot down to catch you.

I've said before that I would choose a lawyer who sometimes loses over one who always wins. But today I was reminded how much losing a criminal trial sucks.The case: a "DWI-first no test no accident" in the argot. That is, a driving while intoxicated case, which was my client's first, and in which she had no accident and did not blow in the breathalyzer. (She did

A yearly Defending People tradition.

The receptionist was okay with me perusing their wardrobe, but the public defender herself came up and asked me who was going to get the clothes. Not just a public defender, but the public defender, the county official in charge of the office. She told me she would not let my client wear one of her office’s shirts because he “dissed” one of her lawyers. I got

Here is The Question: Why do you defend people who you know to be factually guilty? The question is often phrased as "How . . ." or "How can you sleep at night when you . . ." but those demand smartass answers like "very well" or "on a pillowcase full of hundred-dollar bills." Typically, the laypeople (in which group I include civil lawyers and prosecutors) asking

In Phoenix, a federal grand jury is reportedly looking into accusations that Arpaio has abused his law enforcement power with criminal investigations of critics and political foes (Nick Martin, Heat City).The nutjob semiliterate pseuodpatriot supporters of Sheriff Joe will no doubt see this as more evidence of a vast (Mexican?) conspiracy—when you believe in a conspiracy, everything is evidence of the conspiracy.

Mitchell Sassower is doing it. Marc J. Chase is doing it. Myron Kahn is doing it. Many others are doing it too, but those three are at the top of the list.What are they doing?They're funding FindLaw's crappy little rip-off (all above links are nofollow) of the name of Eric Turkewitz's excellent New York Personal Injury Law Blog.I started writing this post back before Christmas, but I