• This is taking "do not publish" just a little too far.• "God called me to run for president" should be an automatic disqualifier. Also, you've been "brutalized" because you're a Christian? In America? Shut up. Furthermore, Sociopaths are exceedingly selfish, over demanding, manipulative and exploitive and none of them has any remorse or guilt feelings. Sociopaths tend to lie, cheat take advantage and exploit and they

Bryant Valdes to MWB, 1 April 2010: Mr. Bennett: I tried reaching you by phone and you were unavailable, so I decided to write you an email. I found your Law Firm on local.yahoo.com. I am with a company called Exclusive Attorneys. We are NOT a referral service. We chose your name because we are currently looking for just one reputable law firm that can handle all

After writing this post, it occurred to me that, using allowable living-expense numbers from the IRS, the courts could create a rule of thumb for deciding whether defendants can afford counsel.For a person with no dependents in Houston, the IRS Collection Financial Standards are:$428 housing$808 vehicle$60 out-of-pocket health care$534 clothes, hygiene, etc.So just as someone taking home $1,830 or less a month would have no money to

Preservation of evidentiary error in a Texas criminal trial in a nutshell:If a trial court hears objections to proffered evidence outside the jury’s presence and rules that the evidence is admissible, the objections are deemed to apply to the evidence when it is admitted before the jury without the necessity of repeating the objections. Tex. R. Evid. 103(a)(1); Geuder v. State , 115 S.W.3d 11, 13–14 (Tex.

If you're making ten dollars an hour and working full time you need to try to hire a lawyer. That was a Harris County Criminal Court at Law judge this morning, talking to a young man who was asking for court-appointed counsel. This—"ten dollars an hour and working full time"—and that he worked "for a contractor" is all the judge knew about the young man's financial situation,

Until recently, Texas Penal Code § 31.03 provided that theft is “a state jail felony if,” among other things, “the value of the property stolen is less than $20,000 and the property stolen is insulated or noninsulated tubing, rods, water gate stems, wire, or cable that consists of at least 50 percent: (i) aluminum; (ii) bronze; or (iii) copper.” But the new statute deletes the text from

The Founders' principle that all men are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable rights has, in its implementation, been limited to those men who are fortunate enough to find themselves within U.S. borders, or holding the magical status of "citizen." The Constitution doesn't apply to foreigners abroad, but it applies to citizens wherever they are. No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property,

Lawyer (and HCCLA member) Sesha Kalapatapu wrote a short essay—apropos of Brian Wice's op-ed criticizing a prosecutor's post-trial conduct and the prosecutor's response—which I thought was too good not to share (with Sesha's permission, of course):Nobody really knows what Brian “did” or “didn't do,” or what Nathan “did” or “didn't do” unless you were there. All we can rely on is the first person account statements that

I am well-acquainted with the Imp of the Perverse. The Imp and I are buds. We've lived together for a long time, and I give him free rein from time to time. At his urging, I'll egg on the lawyer who is posting drunk to the listserv, or I'll suggest to my brother, in a car full of relatives from our parents' generation, that the elephant on

These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers. "Leads" are what you buy from the guys who set up the "free month at the gym" boxes at Schlotzky's. "Leads" get cold-called by guys in boiler rooms. Any criminal-defense lawyer paying