A very short list of must-read books for the budding criminal-defense lawyer (just those that pop into my head right now) "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Harper Lee) "Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae" (Steven Pressfield)"Wilkes: His Life and Crimes" (Winston Schoonover [Charles Sevilla]) "The First Rumpole Omnibus (Rumpole)" (John Mortimer) "Being Peace" (Thich Nhat Hanh) "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of

Libertarian ex-prosecutor and anti-drugwar mouthpiece Robert Guest writes about Mothers Against Drunk Driving stealing our tax dollars. It seems that the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency has given MADD $400,000 to watch DWI court proceedings in New Mexico. Here's New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's press release about the "contract." In part: The court monitoring project will provide feedback to the state on the status and effectiveness of

I wrote here about the new Texas law permitting prosecutors to carry guns to court. An English magistrate picked up on the story here: The idea of knowingly allowing weapons to be taken into court is stupid enough; but by prosecutors? Most of the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] I deal with are people I would not trust to feed my goldfish, even if I had any goldfish.

The first of Adam Levin's questions that I'll tackle is, "What practical advice do you have for maintaining boundaries in your life?" As a criminal-defense lawyer who has gone from practicing out of an "executive suite" straight out of law school, to a series of fancy offices downtown, to an office in my house (an upward move each step of the way), I've given a lot of

I wrote back in April about Advice to a Young Criminal Trial Lawyer. Yesterday I got an email from Adam Levin of the Southern Criminal Law and Justice blog, asking for answers to specific questions that new criminal-defense lawyers might have. (Adam sent the email to nine other criminal defense bloggers as well; Jon Katz of Underdog has already posted his replies under the title, It's not

"How many cases have you won?" I hate the question, because for the answer to mean anything, the person asking and the person answering have to mean the same thing by "won," and that can rarely be ensured. If my client is acquitted, that's a "win," right? In most cases it would be. But what if, because we win one case, the government files a more serious

Scott Greenfield wrote yesterday about why we don't belong in biglaw: And then there was the bottom line. Regardless of all the things that we hold dear today, there was a baseline requirement that lawyers be gentlemen. Not hold the door open for ladies type of gentlemen, but boarding school type of gentlemen. Choate, Phillips Exeter, sort of thing. . . . . Criminal defense lawyers don't

I have a client, "Joe," who got shot three times by a DEA agent. DEA agents were following my client because they believed he had been involved in a drug transaction; he swapped paint with one of the agents, who shot him after the collision. Getting shot after a tussle with a DEA agent shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone; that's not what's notable about

I wrote here about a proposed bill to allow prosecutors to carry guns to court. Well, it passed. Effective June 15, 2007, prosecutors with concealed handgun licenses can take their guns to court. (Text of the bill.) I'm sure some RTKBA advocates are cheering this move, but having the government's flunkies better-armed than the people is the evil the Second Amendment was intended to ameliorate. Anyway, now

I'm glad we have Scot Henson (Grits for Breakfast) keeping an eye on those Texas prosecutors for us. Here he calls our attention to this thread on the TDCAA (Texas District and County Attorneys' Association) forum about a federal prosecutor agent trying to justify not telling the defense the fact that narcotics officers removed the license plate from an informant's car before the informant provided it to