This morning the Court of Criminal Appeals denied the State's Motion for Rehearing (PDF) in my case invalidating Section 33.021(b) of the Texas Penal Code. The court pointedly ignored the Attorney General's effort to intervene, and found that Section 402.010 of the Texas Government Code was also unconstitutional, in violation of the Separation of Powers provision of the Texas Constitution. In related news, I'm pretty sure this

Six and a half years ago Scott Greenfield wrote The Fallacy of True Believers, about the danger of true believers: But Bill [Kunstler] was a scary guy.  Bill was a true believer in the cause, not that I was ever quite clear what the cause was because abject liberalism is an ever changing line.  Bill existed for the cause, not the client.  If the cause demanded that

A few days ago, I wrote a post, Great Cicero's Ghost. It was part of a discussion of legal ethics, causes, and conflicts of interest, arising from this post by Charles Thomas (which in turn arose from this post by Scott Greenfield). The discussion continued with Max Kennerly's "thoughts" ("there’s no requirement for the utmost zeal in representation, so we know that there’s no absolute duty to

Thanks to the Houston Chronicle, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative activist Mary Anne Franks got to bring her special brand of authoritarianism to my neck of the woods: Franks dismissed claims by some groups, like American Civil Liberties Union, that criminal penalties for posting the photos infringes on behavior protected by the First Amendment. "This isn't protected speech, at least under any theory I can think of," she

Arizona HB2515: AN ACT AMENDING TITLE 13, CHAPTER 14, ARIZONA REVISED STATUTES, BY ADDING SECTION 13?1425; RELATING TO sexual offenses. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona: Section 1.  Title 13, chapter 14, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 13-1425, to read: 13-1425.  Unlawful distribution of images; state of nudity; classification; definition A.  It is unlawful to knowingly disclose, display, distribute,

Max Kennerly asks: Is A Lawyer Ever Required To Present An Argument They Don’t Believe? The answer to the question is, to any true Scotsman criminal-defense lawyer, "absolutely." We don't decide whether our clients go to trial, and we don't pick the facts. If the second-simplest explanation that accounts for all of the government's admissible evidence is unbelievable even to us, then (unless trial psychosis helps us

Launch Next, the lawyer has to actually start jury selection. It is important for the trial to get off to a good start, and for this reason few lawyers rely purely on improvisation at this early stage. Most have a few phrases they have learned to trust, or an introductory framework they have polished over time. These tried-and-tested opening lines help the lawyer to sound proficient, experienced

Three questions a criminal-defense lawyer should ask herself when considering action in aid of the defense in a criminal case: Is the action effective?; Is the action legal?; and Is the action ethical? The first inquiry  is not, "will the action succeed." but "do the chances that it will make things better outweigh the chances that it will make things worse?" Because this is a very complex

I tried to help the kid. Truly I did. I reached out to him through a mutual friend and told him, "you can salvage this. Apologize." Things got worse for him. I emailed him directly, asked him to call me. I spent an hour on the phone with him. "You can salvage this. Apologize. I understand that you feel unfairly treated. That's a war that you're not

I took all of Carl Ceder's writings—blog comments and emails—from here, here, and here, and used them as the input to Dr. Nerve's Markov Page. You might be able to distinguish the result from Carl's actual writing. Agreed, please see my practice occurs in yours. Spend time at your content from my perspective. Frankly, I would think it seemed everyone else for each, which I am only