The position of most adherents of the death penalty is that there are enough procedural safeguards built into the system that nobody has ever been executed for a crime he did not commit, and that the probability that someone factually innocent could be executed is so small that it does not merit chucking the penalty altogether. It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does

Armed rentacop Tyler John Duhon is accused of sexually assaulting a woman after arresting her for possessing a marijuana cigarette at Houston's downtown Greyhound bus station. (PDF of criminal complaint.) From the criminal complaint, it appears that Duhon's defense is that the woman consented to have sex with him.  Usually "she consented" would be a tough defense for the state to overcome.  But a "sexual assault…is without the consent

Credulous fabulist Craig Malisow, never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, continues to publish fiction in the Houston Press on my friend Shawn Roberts. When his first short story on the subject was published last year, I wrote a letter to the Houston Press, which the Press didn't deign to publish. It follows: To the editors: I was representing Shawn

One of these things is not like all the others: A. Wilmington criminal-defense lawyer Eugene Maurer accuses the complainant in an assault case of using the incident to seek attention. B. Menlo Park family lawyer Jack D. Berghouse sues the school that punished his client for cheating because "the school’s policies regarding punishment for cheating are vague and contradictory and shouldn’t be enforced." C. Chicago criminal-defense lawyer

In which Todd Dupont, Franklin Bynum and I discuss METRO VIPRgate and have way too much fun:

When we spoke to the METRO board of directors last week, it struck me that some of the things that I consider common knowledge might not be. Chairman Gilbert Garcia asked me for links to my blog posts on the subject of the meeting, by which I think he meant TSA and its VIPR teams. I'm not the best resource for either, but I can point the

Reports are that yesterday (30 April 2012) at about 3pm three uniformed METRO police officers accosted about a dozen passengers getting off the #219 bus from downtown to the West Road Park and Ride and asked for ID. What does this have to do with METRO's mission? Not a thing. METRO should be encouraging ridership, not discouraging it by demanding riders' papers. (The comparison is inescapable: requiring

[Update: A federal statute, 28 USC §1442, allows removal to federal court of any civil or criminal case against: The United States or any agency thereof or any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or of any agency thereof, in an official or individual capacity, for or relating to any act under color of such office or on account of any

At the METRO Board meeting yesterday, we met some non-lawyer members of the community who shared our concerns about the creeping police state. The best comments to the METRO Board were, in my view, not made by the lawyers but by these free thinkers. Amberia Smith: Derrick Broze: (When the METRO chairman, Gilbert Garcia, was clearly trying to cut us off, Derrick got up and insisted that

I wrote: METRO says they went where the crime is, but if they had spent eight hours running drug dogs through Park-and-Ride buses they probably would have made as many weed cases, more cocaine cases, and some gun cases for good measure. But affluent white folk ride Park-and-Ride buses. Affluent white folk don't do their prostitution business on the bus, affluent white folk don't plead guilty at