Federal criminal-defense lawyers know that the questioning performed by judges in federal criminal cases is, in most cases, worthless at best and devastating at worst. They ask closed-ended questions, lead and use stupid lawyer stuff and otherwise impede the lawyers' efforts to get the jurors' true feelings. Anne Reed's Deliberations post today is about a Seventh Circuit opinion suggesting that "the better practice is for the district

Estimates from the "Epidemiology" chapter of the "Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury" (American Psychiatric Association) (Amazon): Medically attended brain injury cases in the U.S. per year (hospital admissions + prehospital deaths): 336,000. Of these, 154,000 are "mild," 92,400 are moderate, and 61,600 are severe. 100% of the patients suffering mild TBI are discharged alive. 93% of the moderately brain-injured patients are discharged alive. 42% of the severely

Fellow Texas criminal-defense lawyer Jamie Spencer of the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer blog is hosting this week's Blawg Review. Next week’s theme will be criminal defense, and more specifically, the amendments in the Bill of Rights that most effect criminal defendants. But you civil lawyer Blawg Review regulars, don’t despair. Trust me, I’ll work you in too. See the Submission Guidelines and submit your favorite post for

Many thanks to Capital Defense Weekly for calling me the "best new legal blogger of 2007," and to Deliberations for not disagreeing. This is high praise indeed from either of these blogs. Thanks also to the State Bar of Texas for forgetting about me and keeping me listed under "Featured this Week" for five (or is it six?) consecutive weeks. There are worse things in life than

In the beginning, there were the print media. Criminal defense lawyers who wanted to tell potential clients about their practices would pay for space in the yellow pages, or send letters out to arrestees, or buy ads in weekly newspapers (in Houston, for example, the Greensheet and Houston Press). Space was costly, so ads were terse and attention-getting. Then came the internet, and static webpages. Criminal defense

New York Criminal Defense Lawyer Scott Greenfield writes about lawyer advertising: Before I finally succumbed to creating my own website, I googled to see what others had done. It was, to be kind, shocking. The first half dozen lawyer websites I stumbled across were worse than patently offensive; they were flagrantly false and deceptive. It appeared that the best substitute for competency is the willingness to openly

Scott Henson (Grits For Breakfast) has written extensively about snitching; he steered me toward his posts on the subject in his comments to my post on the Abandonment of American Ideals. I especially appreciated his post, "Don't Snitch, Jack", in which he gave considerable thought to why "don't snitch" is part of the American culture: At another level, though, the scene with Jack and Maggie tells me

An understanding of traumatic brain injury is, as I've said before, important to criminal-defense lawyers. It is important for the sake of the accused, who are more likely to get a raw deal if their lawyers don't understand how it is that a bang on the head could lead to "criminal" conduct. It is also important to creating a better understanding of the broader ramifications of our

(I promised, on reading SHG's 231 Years and Still Trying, to write about the nature of freedom, the power of fear, and the abandonment of American Ideals. This is the first post in the series, though it covers the third topic.)When I was growing up, my dad worked for the CIA. I was curious about the Cold War, and learned at a young age what it was

Blonde Justice had a post yesterday, On Patriotism, in which she wrote about a group of protesters who protest at soldiers' funerals. Their cause is irrelevant, and -- following the Blonde's example -- I won't dignify them by naming the group. But their story is an excellent illustration of the difference between "legal" and "right." These protesters' acts are legal, but wrong. They have a First Amendment