"It boggles the mind that neither side knew about this during trial," Ellis said. "Both sides in this case were spectacularly incompetent." (Chron.) That's Judge Mark Kent Ellis of the 351st District Court commenting, on the record, on the performance of "defense lawyer" Ronald Ray, Sr. and an as-yet-unidentified prosecutor. Not just incompetent but spectacularly incompetent. Both Ronald Ray, Sr. and the DA's Office had the same

A couple of people have emailed to ask me my opinion of this story: Crystal Cox, Oregon Blogger, Isn't a Journalist, Concludes U.S. Court--Imposes $2.5 Million Judgement on Her That's the headline from the Seattle Weekly blog. And while the two parts are true (ignoring the woeful parallelism), it implies a causal connection that does not exist. The $2.5 million was a judgment for Cox's defamation of

While not confirming some of the details, the TSA said a preliminary review shows officers followed the agency's procedures in both cases. Of course they did, you raging imbeciles. When Ms. Sherman and Ms. Zimmerman complained publicly about the humiliation you handed them when they were trying to go about their lawful business, they were not complaining that your employees ("officers"? don't make me laugh) didn't follow

Now that Congress has repealed the Fifth Amendment, can you please join me in recognizing that this country is on a rocket-sled to totalitarianism? Some senators think that indefinite detention without due process of Americans arrested in America was allowed before the passage of the NDAA (and that's just their interpretation of the law that they allow us to know about). Do you trust the government with

Murray Newman, in Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center: The Legality of D.I.V.E.R.T. writes: The 14th Court of Appeals ruled that the Defendant was not entitled to a different judge than Judge Harmon, because Judge Harmon was correctly following the law when he refused to participate in DIVERT's pre-trial diversion program. They pointed out that Judge Harmon was, in fact, following the law and considering

Retired Judge Don Burgess, formerly of the Beaumont Court of Appeals, has been appointed (order—PDF) by Olen Underwood, Presiding Judge of the Second Administrative Judicial Region of Texas, to hear the contempt cases against the two prosecutors and two court reporters whom Judge Susan Brown of the 185th District Court accused (frivolously, in my opinion) of contempt. Judge Burgess knows contempt law better than Judge Brown appears

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people

Matt Brown would have missed out. John Kindley would have baked bread for a living. When I was little, I wanted, thanks to Bravest of All, to be a firefighter.

Last Tuesday six police unions announced a vote of no confidence in Harris County DA Pat Lykos. Last Wednesday retired judge (some might say, former prosecutor who happened to wear a black robe for much of his prosecutorial career) Mike Anderson filed to run against Lykos. Is the timing mere coincidence, was Anderson's filing prompted by the union announcement, or was the union announcement timed to precede

Yesterday Harris County District Clerk Chris Daniel invited me to preview the District Clerk's new efiling system for pleadings in criminal cases, FREEfax. Today I saw the dog-and-pony show, and it's a well-thought-out system that will, if all goes as planned, be very helpful to criminal-defense lawyers and, by extension, to our clients (also, I suppose, to prosecutors). The FREEfax system has been up and running on