Until recently, my faith in the criminal system, particularly the judicial system, was unwavering. But what some members of the prosecution team did nearly destroyed my faith. Their conduct had consequences for me that they will never realize and can never be reversed.-Sen. Ted Stevens.Impunity + Badges = Abuse.

By all rights, I should be in trial today. My client was arrested in his brother-in-law's house, which contained 12 kilos of cocaine in the attic, a pound of marijuana, and two guns. Mere presence is not a crime, but the Government claimed that he had made harmful admissions to agents.He maintained his innocence. I thought the client had a better-than-even chance of acquittal and a chance

A DUI checkpoint in California (audio, H/T Troy McKinney).A DUI stop in Texas (video from Dallas Morning News).Phoenix police raid the home of a blogger who has been critical of the department (Photography is Not a Crime, via Simple Justice).The Harris County DA's Office answers the age-old question, "what does it take to get a cop indicted for shooting someone in this town?"Radley Balko would -- not

This is the case on which I was deselected from the jury last week. Now I'm glad Caroline "Wonder Woman" Dozier decided to strike me; I wouldn't want to be remembered for having sent a guy to prison during my tenure as HCCLA President.The jury gave the defendant life in prison plus a $10,000 fine -- which is adding insult to injury, since Caroline told us in

HCCLA Reasonable Doubt, March 26, 2009. Hosts Todd Dupont and Neal Davis; Guest Harris County First Assistant District Attorney Jim Leitner. (I haven't watched it yet; tell me what you think.)

When I sat on a jury panel this week, one thing that jumped to my attention was the behavior of the accused. He, a non-English speaker wearing headphones to listen to the simultaneous translation of the proceedings, had his head down, chin against his chest, for -- as far as I could tell -- the entirety of the voir dire. I know that he was probably terrified,

Judges will start giving lawyers more time if lawyers start performing better voir dire.Lawyers will start performing better voir dire if judges start giving them more time.

In preparation for a trial in which the AUSA is being a very bad girl and not complying with her obligations to seek out and provide, under Brady, Giglio, and Kyles, exculpatory and impeachment material, I downloaded a copy of the DEA Agents' Manual here to review the section on informants for some cross-examination fun.Here's what, according to section 6612.22 (sort-of-OCRed PDF of that section), the DEA

If you're trying to get people to click on the link to "theprepaidlegalservice", why do you use "prepaid legal scam" as your name?