I wake up and start getting costumed for first court appearance with new client (he's accused of assaulting a cop). The telephone rings. A fellow criminal-defense lawyer and member of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers' Association (of which I'm president-elect) has shown up late for court and gotten himself jailed for contempt. I add him to my calendar, send an email to the association's listserv, and print

Gideon has started a lively discussion on the Most Evil Legal Principles. Harmless error seems to be in the lead. Check it out. Technorati Tags: blawgs

Young Shawn Matlock, Ft. Worth criminal-defense lawyer, writes here about his "conservative" (in American politics, code for "in favor of big government unless it gores my ox") political views. Not to pick on Shawn, but here are some highlights of his goodnatured post: Do I think, in general, Bennett’s person convicted of trafficking 400 grams of cocaine should be punished with a mandatory minimum. Yes. Are there

Young Shawn Matlock, Dallas criminal-defense lawyer, writes here and here about his politics -- "conservative Republican" -- and his beliefs: I am as "Law-and-Order" as anyone. I have no problem with mandatory minimums and I don't get worked up by the Sentencing Guidelines. I'm not anti-death penalty. I don't think drug offenders should get a chance at taxpayer-funded rehabilitation.While I avoid partisan politics here, my regular readers

Ken Lammers (CrimLaw) recounts how a defendant made his prosecutorial job easier by telling the jury an implausible account of his innocence. Ken quotes the First Corollary to Bennett's Chainsaw, but doesn't refer to it by name.

Reading Malum in Se's excellent blog about life as a public defender on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi reminded me of a book recommendation that I've been meaning to make here. I've written before on the power of fear (here and here as well as elsewhere). Our adversaries use fear as a weapon against our clients; it is with the power of fear that they try to

The U.S. Congress, in its (ahem) wisdom, has specified the purposes of punishment in federal criminal cases: (A) to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense; (B) to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct; (C) to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant; and (D) to provide the defendant with needed educational

Here I mentioned Jeffrey Rosen's The Brain on the Stand. Quoted in Rosen's article (and elsewhere) was Stephen J. Morse, professor of law and psychiatry (but not, as he is sometimes described, a psychiatrist) at the University of Pennsylvania. Morse is the go-to pundit for the proposition that, neuroscience be damned, people are still "responsible" for their actions. I will read what Morse has written and said

Scott Greenfield in his post, Mental Impairment as a Mitigating Factor, writes, "To the simple-minded, there is no spectrum of disability. It's all or nothing." I've written before about traumatic brain injury and criminal defense. Scott's post discussed bipolar disorder and low intelligence as mitigating factors. At some point, a mitigating factor must become so extreme that it negates moral responsibility. The law is simpleminded. In the

I wrote here about the Practical Blawgosphere -- the group of blogs producing original content useful to the practice of law. I am starting a list of blawgs in the Practical Blawgosphere. Here are the rough criteria: 1. Blog; 2. Recently updated; 3. Focused on knowledge or ideas 3a. clearly useable in the practice of law; or 3b. potentially useable in the practice of law, along with