Canadian kid loses $150,000 to Nigerian 419 email scammers.If you're not looking to receive something for nothing, you're not likely to fall prey to a swindler. The greedier you are, the more likely you are to be scammed out of your money. Swindlers are looking to get something for nothing. As a result, conmen are among the easiest people to con. (I find that fact, and the

For those of you who think that all Harris County criminal law-related blogs are dry and humorless like this one and Murray Newman's, here's a little treat: Saturday Night and Monday Morning.

Momentum is building in Texas to reduce possession of less than a gram of cocaine from a state jail felony (six months to two years in state jail, day-for-day) to a class A misdemeanor (up to a year in county jail, with time off for good conduct); 16 of 22 Harris County felony court judges publicly support the reform (Brian Rogers in the Chronicle) --"The ‘War on

Check out Vrij et al., Outsmarting the Liars: The Benefit of Asking Unanticipated Questions (PDF), from Law and Human Behavior (June 2008). Vrij notes that If investigators interview individual suspects once (with no factual information about the case), they tend to rely more on noverbal cues than verbal cues to detect deceit. However, when investigators have access to multiple statements from different persons they change tactics. In

Here's People v. Doolin, a California Supreme Court case in which the convicted defendant complained that he hadn't received effective representation because there was a conflict of interest between his lawyer and him. The lawyer had an arrangement (standard at that time) with the county under which he estimated the amount of expert and investigative expenses, he got paid that much for those expenses, and he got

The Texas District and County Attorneys Association (TDCAA) has been so kind as to commission Texas legislative updates for us. Thanks, TDCAA.Some highlights:House Bill 169, allowing police to set up checkpoints (ihre Papieren, bitte!).House Bill 164, creating an affirmative defense for the medical use of marijuana.House Bill 170, creating a presumption, if a person's BAC is over .08 within 90 minutes of arrest, that his BAC was

If you're not already on Twitter, here's a good reason to dip your toe into the twitterstream: jury consultant Dennis Elias (twitter name @JuryVox) tweets frequent links to the latest jury research. For example:The Crime Victim's Right to Confer with Prosecutors.Reflections on why we de-humanize our fellow humans. Implications for jury trial.Advice on judging personality from the dawn of written history.I didn't even have to be selective;

Heath and Deborah Campbell, the asshats who named their kids "Adolf Hitler Campbell", "JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell", and "Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell", have to go to court to try to get their kids back after the three children were snatched by New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services. The local chief of police "didn't know why the children were taken but said his department received no

If you are a college graduate, a college student, or a high school student, and you want to work for someone else, do not under any circumstances plan to go to law school. Instead read Temporary Attorney. Law schools are cranking out lawyers without any regard to how many legal jobs there are, and many lawyers are caught doing dead-end contract document review for $35 an hour."$35