Tomorrow—Tuesday—Harris County voters will choose Democratic and Republican candidates for District Attorney. The Democratic candidates are Zach Fertitta and Lloyd Oliver; the Republican contenders are Mike Anderson and incumbent Pat Lykos. I sat down to lunch with Fertitta and Anderson for short interviews. I didn't get to interview Lykos because she didn't respond to requests, and I didn't interview Oliver because I think his Reasonable Doubt interview

I wonder if this rings true for any of my friends in the Harris County District Attorney's Office: To begin with, Jackall finds that though the modern workplace is in many respects a bureaucracy, managers do not experience authority in an impersonal way. Rather, authority is embodied in the persons with whom one has working relationships up and down the hierarchy. One's career depends entirely on these

I'm in a continuing legal education program all day today, but if I weren't I would write more about Brett Kimberlin, the "Speedway Bomber" who terrorized the town of Speedway, Indiana and went to prison for it 30 years ago, and whose critics are subjected to harassment, including: complaining to the victim’s workplace, defaming the victim online, “Googlebombing” the victim, publishing the victim’s address online, filing phony

Here's how bonds work in Texas: D is arrested. Unless his case fits into a few narrow exceptions (capital murder, habitual felony, felony while on bond, deadly-weapon felony after felony conviction, or violent or sexual felony while on parole or probation) he is entitled to bail. High bail can't be used as an "instrument of oppression"; if a person is entitled to bail (and almost everyone is),

On Friday morning at 9am, please join me and other freedom fighters at METRO headquarters, 1900 Main Street, Second Floor, to continue the discussion with METRO about METRO police chief Victor Rodriguez's inviting TSA VIPR teams into our community.

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: