New York criminal-defense lawyer Scott Greenfield asks of the criminal justice system, "is it too broken?" These are a few of the questions he asks: Are jurors capable of discerning truth from deception, or is this just a vanity of our support for trial by jury? . . . . Is there a fundamental flaw in our selection of judges, such that the people who want to

I need an SQL hacker to set up a searchable database on the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association website. Email me. (Gotta love that gmail spam protection!)

You can generally count on the government to rule in favor of the government.

Can anyone tell me why, when Virginia v. Moore is irrelevant to Texas state cases, Texas's Attorney General Greg Abbott wastes his time and taxpayers' money filing an amicus brief in that case?

Compare and contrast: The purpose of ACDLA primarily is educational, and ACDLA provides its members with a variety of educational opportunities related to protecting the individual rights guaranteed by the Texas and the United States Constitutions, preserving the citizenry's and court system's commitment to those rights, and promotion of competent and ethical representation of persons accused of crimes. and Our Mission Is to Assist, Support, and Protect

In Virginia v. Moore the Supreme Court held that evidence is admissible under the Fourth Amendment even though obtained in a search incident to an unlawful arrest that was on probable cause. In other words, if the state makes something a non-arrestable crime (in Virginia, driving with a suspended license) and the police break state law by arresting a person for it, the violation of state law

The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to side with Adam Reposa. From the April 17, 2008 Austin American-Statesman article about The Reposa Affair (H/T Bad Court Thingy for calling my attention to the highlighted bit that I missed): Saying that Austin defense lawyer Adam Reposa tarnished the dignity of the judicial process by making a lewd gesture in court last month, visiting

From the letters to the April 14, 2008 Houston Chronicle: Justice here isn't partisan I write in response to the letter written by Dana Lejune that was published in the Chronicle Thursday. (Please see "The way to get new judges.") I am particularly disturbed at the characterization that justice in our county is dispensed with partisan labels. There is no "Republican" justice any more than there is

Austin criminal-defense lawyer Keith Lauerman, on his sparse blog, gives his take on the winners and losers of last week's contempt hearing in which Adam Reposa got 90 days in jail for making masturbatory gestures toward a judge. Keith, who was there, explains how the County Attorney's Office, Mr. Reposa, and the Austin Bar were both winners and losers in that case. The Bar, in Keith's view,

The title of this post is, according to Terry MacCarthy (buy the cross-examination CDs!), the criminal-defense lawyer's credo. I had always thought of it as descriptive -- the way we are -- rather than prescriptive -- the way we should be. We should be prepared, shouldn't we? Yes and no. There are things we can prepare for, and things we can't. Before trying a case, the criminal-defense