776.032?Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force.— (1)?A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(14), who

Imagine that you are attacked. Someone punches you, knocks you to the ground, and starts banging your head against the ground. You are in fear for your life. You use deadly force to defend yourself. You call the police. The police interview you, and you tell them your story. A witness corroborates your story. The police take pictures of your injuries, take your fingerprints, swab your hands for

There is a leadership vacuum in the Harris County District Attorney's Office. At the top is the elected DA, Pat Lykos, and her immediate assistants, dictating office policy. Dictating policy is not leadership. At the bottom are the new assistant DAs—lawyers, generally 25-30 years old, who have joined the DA's Office in the last three years or who were young prosecutors under Lykos's predecessor, Chuck Rosenthal. They

Hi, I am sending this to all the defense attorneys in the Houston area. Do you know who David [rest of name redacted] on Main Street is? Well, I made this short video to show you why a lot of people in town think David [redacted] is the #1 defense attorney in Houston. Here is the video: [link] If you are thinking, why should I care who

Mike Anderson: Is a small amount of cocaine, heroin, of methamphetamine against—is possession of it against the law, as written in Austin? Pat Lykos: No. Murray Newman, who published the snippet with no context, says the answer "seems to be in direct contrast to Sec. 481.115 under the Controlled Substances Act." It is not. It's not the best answer, perhaps, but it's not wrong, and it may,

The business of the criminal courts never stops. When Harris County criminal-court judges want to take a day off, if they don't want to come back to a greater mess than they are leaving they have to get someone to sit in for them. If the time off is planned in advance (a vacation, say, or a judicial conference), a sitting judge can schedule fewer cases on

I wrote here about Houston lawyer John C. Osborne's travails with the State Bar of Texas. He's still serving a probated suspension until December 2013, but the Commission for Lawyer Discipline nonsuited the first disbarment petition. Now the Commission has filed a second disbarment petition (PDF) against Osborne, this time alleging that he overdrew his IOLTA account, the account in which he was supposed to be keeping

Defending People started five years ago today. In that five years, I've written some 700,000 words in 1,700+ posts and been told 643 times that people don't understand me. In commemoration of the day, the traditional fish-related video:

US News and World Report says of my alma mater, University of Houston Law Center: Students can get hands-on legal experience through the school’s clinics, which provide training in immigration law, criminal defense, and more. UH says: The Criminal Defense Clinic allows students actually represent defendants under the supervision of a practicing defense attorney. Misdemeanor and felony cases are handled from start to finish, including plea bargains,

Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee resolution on the PD's office, "the official Harris County Republican Party position on this issue" as of October 2009, announced by HCRP Chairman Jared Woodfill a few days ago: RESOLUTION SUPPORTING THE PRESENT HARRIS COUNTY PRIVATIZED INDIGENT DEFENSE SYSTEM WHEREAS, Harris County for years has had a privatized outsourced indigent defense system that is effective and cost efficient; and, WHEREAS, Harris