The British guy charged with aiding his wife's suicide and represented by Dionne Press (who tried to get the DA's Offfice to file charges against me or grieve me for offering to help him for free) has now been sitting in jail for 30 days. He is still charged with a class "C" (maximum $500 fine, dischargeable at $50 or $100 a day) misdemeanor. Today his case was

Something about Mark Draughn of WindyPundit: I recently had a problem in federal court: my client had been ordered to pay restitution for a bank robbery, and had been made jointly and severally liable with his five coactors. After getting out of prison, he wanted to work hard and improve himself. He paid off a sixth of  the restitution; his coactors paid off almost nothing. Under the

Crime and Federalism's tagline: "Because everything I was ever told is a lie." Scott Greenfield recently gave us a reminder of the truth of the proposition in TWA Flight 800 Remembered. Greenfield was one of the hundreds of witnesses who saw "what [he] thought to be a firework shoot from the water up toward the sky, curve and explode.  It was not an explosion in the sky,

Here's how this story ended in Canada: “It’s just a kid who made some bad choices. Criminal charges aren’t in the best interest for that kid,” Van Winkel told Now News, adding that police don’t believe the teen made a conscious decision to fight with the officers. And here's how it would have ended in Harris County: "The juvenile is charged with criminal mischief, public intoxication, disorderly

Let me sum up: Jim's client is Paul's client's mistress.  Chip's client is Paul's client's wife.  Jim's client hires a hitman to kill Chip's client. After she is arrested, Jim's Client claims that Paul's client was in on the scheme. The case against Paul's client is dropped after Jim's client, via letter from jail, tries to get Paul's client whacked. Jim's client pleads to twenty years in

This opinion piece in the NYT by John Monterosso and Barry Schwartz doesn't support the conclusions that the authors want us to reach: It is crucial that as a society, we learn how to think more clearly about causes and personal responsibility — not only for extraordinary actions like crime but also for ordinary ones, like maintaining exercise regimens, eating sensibly and saving for retirement [an exhortation "to

Other old business, from the archives… Kansas appellate PD "S" writes at Preaching to the Choir: I don't begrudge my colleagues in private practice from earning a living and charging a fair fee for their work. But it makes me angry to see clients forced to sell cars, homes, land, or whatever else they can to pay lawyers who then join country clubs and buy BMWs. Maybe

Since I suspended regular blogging in favor of 928 repair, a couple of my old stories have needed updating. In the case of Lesher v. Coyel, in which two lawyers were awarded $13 million by a jury for online libel, the trial judge threw out the verdict, granted a judgment for the defendants notwithstanding it, and ordered the plaintiffs to pay costs.  In the case of Oregon v.

Longtime commenter Thomas Griffiths writes, in response to my efforts to represent, pro bono, the British guy charged with aiding his wife's suicide: Honestly, I’m friggin baffled by one of my public heroes’ actions. My right brain, says it’s the right thing to do when a Real CDL learns of incompetence, while the left side says WTF? In the end my gut says, there are plenty other

When an airline's pilots suffer from seizures, its flight attendants are sociopaths, its mechanics are drunks, and its flights are as likely to end in a fireball as in a smooth landing, conscientious airline employees have a duty to warn the public. I just got back from the State Bar's Advanced Criminal Law Course in San Antonio, at which I spoke about jury selection. As well as