It's no secret that the groom and I will never be friends. Since he was a baby prosecutor I've had grave ethical concerns about him. I've named him a couple of times in this blog. But the groom being fair game doesn't make the bride fair game. Someone sent me a link to a story about the groom's wedding proposal, in which he had faked his own

Along with Heather Barbieri of Plano and Kerri Anderson Donica of Corsicana, I'm course-directing the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Associations' voir dire seminar in Dallas September 8–9, 2016. Here's a draft description of the seminar for TCDLA's marketing: This two-day intensive seminar — a combination of lectures, discussions, and demonstrations of voir dire strategies and tools — is a must for the criminal-defense lawyer who tries cases.

Apropos of this post, I learned some interesting things at the courthouse. Rumor is that the judge put Sam up to commenting on my blog — believable, since Sam isn't the type to comment on blogs. Unfortunately the judge doesn't seem to have told Sam the truth about her private sanction so he's left denying something that I can prove to be true. I also learned that

The Houston personal-injury firm of Brown and Musslewhite was ripping off Houston criminal-defense badass JoAnne Musick's blog posts. So she did what any self-respecting lawyer/writer would do in that situation: she gave the firm a polite telephone call to ask confidentially that they remove the offending comment— Just kidding. JoAnne did what any self-respecting lawyer/writer would do in that situation: she called Brown & Musslewhite out publicly

Speaking of kindnesses… She was never my favorite judge. She was fair in trial, which is more than I can say for most of our local bench, but she was irascible in the runup to trial; it didn't seem personal, but she was not "patient, dignified and courteous," as required by the Texas Canons of Judicial Conduct. Still, when the Harris County district court judge tragically lost

Suppose that you are a civil lawyer representing a business or government entity in Texas, and your client is served with a subpoena in a criminal case. The subpoena is returnable "instanter," and asks that your client produce certain documents along with a business-records affidavit. What do you do?If you are Shannon Kackley of Austin's Denton Navarro et al., you look up the Texas criminal subpoena statutes,

This week a district court (felony) judge in Waco held Section 33.07 of the Texas Penal Code unconstitutional: Sec. 33.07. ONLINE IMPERSONATION. (a) A person commits an offense if the person, without obtaining the other person's consent and with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten any person, uses the name or persona of another person to: (1) create a web page on a commercial social

About 15 seconds of my 20-minute argument in the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday (watch it) involved everyday incidents of teenagers being sexually aroused by adults, or adults being sexually aroused by children. I talked about my own experiences as a sexually aroused teen, which was true and amusing, and also about something that is true and important: the unwanted sexual attention paid to teen girls by

My argument in the Supreme Court of Georgia had me reflecting on three categories of conservatism: the social, the political, and the judicial. In Georgia, we were dealing with a law that forbade an adult communicating certain content (including descriptions of nudity) to a child online with the intent to arouse or satisfy the sexual desire of the adult or the child. While socially conservative libertarians can

Chris was charged in Texas with Online Solicitation of a Minor under Section 33.021(b) of the Texas Penal Code. He hadn't tried to solicit anyone, but he had allegedly communicated sexually explicit words to a minor with the intent to sexually arouse or gratify himself or the minor. Jack was charged in Georgia with Obscene Internet Contact with a Child under Georgia Code 16-12-100.2(e). He hadn't had