The Houston Chronicle has not been kind to Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Sharon Keller in recent days. After yesterday's editorial calling for her ouster the Chronicle published an article today entitled "Views divided on judge in dispute over executed man". Well, yes. Sort of. The Chronicle dug up exactly one person willing to say something halfway-nice about Judge Keller: former presiding judge Mike McCormick, who said

Death penalty enthusiasts are chortling about Judge Sharon Keller's action in closing the courthouse doors to Mr. Richard. A common theme among their responses is "blame the lawyers." One [anonymous] sample, in comments to my first post on the subject: Why didn't the lawyers who needed to file do so BEFORE the court closed????? That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. She closed on

When an old client came to me this afternoon with the story of how a former acquaintance of his had turned up demanding $15,000 not to disclose some years-ago alleged malfeasance to the government, I gave him my best legal advice: whether you have a guilty conscience or not, whether the threat of exposure is real or not, never pay a blackmailer a dime. I know it's

In a comment to a recent post about Mao and Sun Tzu, Oklahoma criminal-defense lawyer Glen Graham wrote: While the "Art of War" provides some theories, the Tao, has other theories, and still, there are a multitude of others.I'm not sure Glen is quite right. It is true that we can learn from Sun Tzu, or Mao, or Lao Tse or, for that matter, Sanford Meisner, Thich

I met with a potential client today in the jail; she had spoken with another lawyer about her case. That lawyer is a guy for whom I have great respect. He's a real lawyer who tries cases. I've never before heard any suggestion that he is anything other than utterly ethical. But this potential client explained to me that she was more comfortable with me than with

As I said yesterday, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers' Association will be filing a complaint against Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Sharon Keller for barring the courthouse doors to Michael Richard's lawyers, preventing them from getting a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. If you would like to file a complaint of your own against Judge Keller, a form that you can use is

Fax subpoenas for MySpace records in criminal cases to: Custodian of Records MySpace.com (310) 969-7394 310.356.3485 [as of 14 April 2009] Include the name and user I.D. number of the account holder. Technorati Tags: investigation, MySpace, subpoenas

The three most prolific foreign blawgs that I read regularly -- GeekLawyer, BabyBarista, and Ruthie's Law -- have convinced me that British blawgers are, to put it gently, odd. Ruthie speaks of herself in the third person, with lots and lots of italicized words. BabyBarista, if half of his tales are to be believed, is a ruthless Machiavellian strategist (is that redundant?), jockeying for position in chambers.

Simon Myerson at Pupillage and How to Get It is talking about BVCs (Bar vocational courses) and whether they are worth a damn (at least, that's my understanding of what he's talking about, but we are two blogs divided by a common language). I hope that some day I will understand the British way of training and raising trial lawyers, because I'm sure there are some lessons

When Sharon Keller barred the courthouse doors to lawyers for Michael Richard, she killed Mr. Richard as surely as if she had put a bullet into his head on the courthouse steps (thanks to Robb Fickman for that vivid image). There can be very little doubt that, had Keller not acted as she had, Mr. Richard would be alive today. If you're like me, your response to