I've been saying it on the internet for 10 years in my Million-Dolar Legal Advice: don't talk to the police.

In case you missed it -- last Thursday's Reasonable Doubt with Steven Halpert, Todd Dupont, and me.

Blonde Justice wrote yesterday about dealing with a none-too-bright prosecutor:So, I continued, "Look, she's been through a lot, but she's getting her life straightened out. She's seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist..."At which point the prosecutor interrupted, "Wait."Wait? Maybe she's starting to get it?"Wait," she continued, "You expect me to believe there's a difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist? You're just trying to pull the wool

It turns out that Gerry Spence was not the first blogger to blog from the Trial Lawyers College on his ranch in Dubois, Wyoming. Idaho criminal-defense lawyer Chuck Peterson has that distinction (with another LexBlog blog); he wrote on July 15th that TLC Will Change Your Life. Please welcome Chuck to the practical blawgosphere.Now c'mon now Remy!

In a criminal case in Texas, the accused has five decisions to make: Whether to plead guilty or not guilty; Whether to try the case to judge or jury; Whether to ask (in the event of conviction) for probation; Whether to testify or not; and Whether to have judge or jury (in the event of conviction) assess punishment. The criminal-defense lawyer's job with regard to these five

I like to read about fields other than law (improvisational theatre, comedy, chaos studies, interrogation, acting, survival, hypnosis, the Tao, NLP, aikido, etc.) that I think might be relevant to the practice of criminal trial law. I'm always looking for more suggestions -- for example, when Western Justice wrote about Statement Analysis, I ordered the book (which I'm reading now).Please take a few moments to leave a

. . . but it turns out that I'm just normally infovorous. USC professor Irving Biederman writes:Gaze at something that leads to a novel interpretation . . . and that will spur higher levels of associative activity in opioid-dense areas. We are thus thrilled when new insights tap into what we have previously learned. We seek ways to feed our opioid desires; we are willing to endure

A civilian blogger, Mark Pilgrim, blogs about his experience with a criminal jury trial: Everything is slanted towards the defense. Big stuff, little stuff, process stuff, everything. We learned later (during sentencing) that the defendant in our case had several prior convictions, but the DA wasn’t allowed to bring them up during the trial. Witnesses were always being cut off in mid-sentence, but the defendant was given

Dear Legal Marketing Guru, I have left government service, and am starting my private criminal law practice as a hired-gun prosecutrix. I have already started creating my brand ("Prosecutor for Hire") and negging the competition. I have been hired to try a capital case in Wharton County as a special prosecutor. What should I do next? -Paladina, Houston, Texas Dear Paladina, You're probably going to catch some

I wrote back in May about Kelly Siegler's future as a Hired-Gun Prosecutor (motto: "I get paid to make people afraid!"). "How to get the business?" I asked, "Word of mouth and the internet, of course."Then in June she posted to the Women in Crime Ink blog with the tagline "Prosecutor for Hire." The businesspeople among us recognized this as a first step toward creating a brand.Now