An anonymous public-defender commentator to my last post wrote: So, long story short, I contact the local ACLU chapter to see if they were interested in an amicus brief or in helping me appeal the the U.S. Supreme Court. I was shocked to hear that the NCLU could not assist me as they believed that the due process rights of students to attend school trumped my client's

Over at Blonde Justice the Blonde has two posts (Sad Irony and More Sad Irony) about a DuPage County, Illinois prosecutor who killed herself and maimed another driver in a car crash. The prosecutor was driving a county car; her BAC was 0.25 at 3:45 in the afternoon. The "sad irony" is that the prosecutor had, in 1998, sent another woman to prison for 13 years for

The Second Circuit has struck a blow for puritanism (as defined by H.L. Mencken -- "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy") in Arbor Hill Concerned Citizens Neighborhood Association v. County of Albany. In that case the court considered the standard that should be used for approving lawyers' fees in a civil case in which the statute provided for the loser to pay the loser's

Every defender should have a hobby. It should ideally be something as far removed from the practice of law as possible -- something that takes the mind off the practice. I'm fascinated by the things that other people find fun. Here are some of the things that my fellow Houston defenders do: Fly airplanes; Jump out of airplanes; Golf; Surf; Climb mountains; Shoot guns; Ride motorcycles; Hunt;

Harris County intends to get a search warrant to draw blood from anyone who, having been arrested for DWI this (Memorial Day) weekend, refuses to provide a breath sample (Houston Chronicle). A judge will be on call to sign warrants and MADD will provide nurses to draw the blood. In the 1966 Supreme Court case of Schmerber v. California the Court approved a warrantless blood draw based

Ed Chernoff, who blogs beautifully but infrequently, writes here about "The Question" and an encounter with a dove. (It seems that nobody ever asks me "The Question" anymore. I don't know why that is; I may just be associating with more compassionate people than I used to.) Ed's cat Willie brought Ed a dove. Ed saved the bird. Then, writes Ed, "Willie watched it go, and then

In On Acting, by legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner, Meisner's assistant reads to his acting class an excerpt from Sigmund Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis: The artist has also an introverted disposition and has not far to go to become neurotic. He is one who is urged on by instinctual needs which are too clamorous; he longs to attain to honour, power, riches, fame, and the love of

I often use a scaled question or two near the end of jury selection, and find such questions to be very useful tools for getting potential jurors to rate themselves (essentially, though not explicitly). A scaled question is a question that calls for an answer on a continuum. For example, "On a scale of one to ten, with ten being most important and one being least important,

According to Anthony (a Mets fan), Your team doesn't always win. There are rules (but in baseball the team that goes first doesn't get to go last too). Every person has good days and bad days, and any one player's bad day can change the course of the whole event. Often a bad bounce can change the momentum of the entire event. Money, unfortunately, has a lot

Scott Greenfield writes about why hourly billing doesn't work for defenders: First, sometimes our clients are criminals, and hence a tad short of trustworthy. Second, our clients can be mercurial, and their desire to pay fluctuates with their impression of how the case is going. Third, "stuff" happens, so even the best intended clients may find themselves about to go on trial and suddenly lacking in the