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

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about this British guy who has (as of today) been sitting in the Harris County Jail for more than three weeks, charged by complaint with the class C misdemeanor of aiding suicide. The 351st District Court, where his case is pending, has no jurisdiction over a class C misdemeanor case. The maximum penalty for a class C misdmeanor is a $500

All these years I've been fighting comment spam by marking it as spam and calling out the responsible lawyers. That didn't make them very happy. Now it appears that  allowing their comment spam doesn't make them happy either.

§ 22.08. AIDING SUICIDE. (a) A person commits an offense if, with intent to promote or assist the commission of suicide by another, he aids or attempts to aid the other to commit or attempt to commit suicide. (b) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor unless the actor's conduct causes suicide or attempted suicide that results in serious bodily injury, in which event the

A couple of people have asked me, "what's an onlya"? An onlya is any person whom a group has a reason to marginalize: "he's only a drug user," "he's only a kid," "she's only a judge." Members of the group can treat the onlya worse than they would treat other group members. We're all onlyas to someone. Whether someone is an onlya depends on the group. Among

About a year ago I wrote about the Indiana Supreme Court's sua sponte rewriting of Indiana's self-defense statute to deprive people of the right to use force to defend themselves against police officers committing crimes. Yesterday Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law Senate Enrolled Act 1, which restored by statute that which the Indiana Supreme Court had taken away by judicial activism. In part: (i) A

This—a blog post on Legal Schnauzer lauding Brett Kimberlin for his lawfare against Aaron Worthing—is simply stupid. Cheering people for taking advantage of an ignorant (and possibly senile) judge to shut down the free expression of people whose politics you disagree with is narrowminded and shortsighted. Even if you think your adversaries are more likely to engage in lawfare than people who agree with you? Especially then.

Joseph Welch lambastes Senator Joseph McCarthy: "Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel…. your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me."

In February I wrote two posts about Dr. Emmette Flynn, the San Angelo, Texas surgeon who performed a nonconsensual (and medically unnecessary, though medical necessity wouldn't justify a procedure against the competent client's wishes) proctoscopy on an arrestee at the behest of the police who brought the arrestee to the hospital along with a search warrant that order the police to present the accused, Mr. Gray, to