One of the distinguishing characteristics of the creative childlike mind is the ability not to suppress the ideas that are unpopular or unsuccessful. Eminent First Amendment lawyer Jon Katz brings us this tale of an Illinois high school student who is being prosecuted for following his teacher's instructions to "Write whatever comes into your mind; Do not judge or censor what you are writing.” (His teacher was

When I told a friend who's a judge about this blog, he (knowing my antigovernment leanings) asked "does it have a bunch of radical stuff on it?" Well, it doesn't, but since he promised to check in I thought I'd post a little radical antigovernment story. This is for the judges and prosecutors. (Our elected district attorney ran for that office while wearing a wristband asking "WWJD?"

Anne Reed brings us this post, which clearly fits into the "science" part of The Art and Science of Criminal Defense Trial Lawyering. Researchers in psychology discovered, by using an MRI tracking the brain activity of subjects reading text on a screen, that the brain spontaneously divides read text into discrete "events" in the same places that we would consciously do so (here is the article). It

I blogged here about former prosecutors' inherent qualifications as defenders. Manhattan criminal-defense lawyer Scott H. Greenfield gives us his take on the subject here. "Many of our best were once on the dark side," he says, but they're not our best because they were on the dark side. A highlight: Young ADAs (assistant district attorney) are amazed at their good fortune in court. They win argument after

I just happened upon my friend Jim Jenkins's Florida Criminal Law blog. Jim is a Pensacola criminal-defense lawyer, and a friend of mine from the Trial Lawyers College (TLC). I hadn't heard from Jim in a long time, and I'm glad to see that he's blogging. Other TLC lawyers with criminal-defense blogs are Jon Katz, with his Underdog blog, and Norm Pattis, with his Crime and Federalism

Today Miami criminal-defense lawyer Brian Tannebaum brings us this judge's verdict in a possession of marijuana case in Palm Beach County. After a bench trial in which the accused represented himself the judge found the accused, in Brian's words, "not-guilty-really-really-not-guilty." The only evidence against the accused was that he was driving in a car that smelled of marijuana and contained less than 20 grams of marijuana. Here

Anne Reed over at Deliberations has picked up on my posts about the jurors who can't judge, and taken the research a lot farther here. Anne points out the potential clash between the Batson cases (which bar the exclusion of jurors because of race and sex, and which can arguably be extended to bar the exclusion of jurors because of religion) on the one hand, and Witherspoon

I blogged here about the exclusion from jury service of people who hold religious beliefs that prevent them from judging other people. I thought of it as a First Amendment problem and an Equal Protection problem under the U.S. Constitution. I haven't given much thought to the Federal implications beyond Batson, Powers, and J.E.B., but it appears that there may be an even stronger argument under the

We, as criminal-defense lawyers, are forced to deal with some of the lowest people on earth, people who have no sense of right and wrong, people who will lie in court to get what they want, people who do not care who gets hurt in the process. It is our job - our sworn duty - as criminal-defense lawyers, to protect our clients from those people.- Cynthia

In almost every criminal jury selection I've seen, there has been at least one juror who has said that she is unable, because of religious beliefs, to judge other people. Almost universally and without further inquiry, the lawyers have not allowed these people to serve as jurors. That the defense lawyers (who probably want such people on their juries) don't try very hard to keep them has