Greenfield wrote about some of the travails of Kansas City lawyer Carlos Romious. But if we are to view Romious' behavior as an indication that this is a seriously unstable individual, then what is he doing practicing law in this condition? Rather than being held in contempt, he should be held for a psych evaluation. While the WSJ categorized this story under "lawyers behaving badly," I think

Because one of my readers might not have seen it yet: (H/T Chandler criminal defense lawyer Matt Brown.)

I wanted to defend Christine O’Donnell.I read reports of the Delaware Senatorial candidate’s debate against Chris Coons, in which she questioned whether the U.S. Constitution demands separation of church and state, mindful of Mike’s (Crime and Federalism) suggestion that power elites control public perception of candidates, like O’Donnell, who were not born into the right social class.The derisive reaction (see, e.g., Political Ticker, Huffington Post) to O’Donnell’s

. . . to vote for the blind. There are great Republican candidates for Harris County criminal benches in next month’s elections: Vanessa Velasquez, Marc Carter, Mike McSpadden, Larry Standley. A straight-ticket sweep either way would be about equally bad, but an honest man familiar with the Harris County courthouse could, with a straight face, call for Republican voters to vote straight-ticket to keep these incumbents in

Robert S. Bennett . . . has a problem. The Houston consumer lawyer (who . . . “does some criminal work”—records show him as counsel of record on a grand total of nine federal criminal cases in the Southern District of Texas, and no state criminal cases in Harris County) took on representation of R. Allen Stanford in March, after Stanford had been represented by “lawyers with

I recently had an opportunity to cross-examine a heroin-addict witness who claimed that he had watched my client inject another person with heroin, and then had injected himself. The State's theory was delivery by injection. The witness denied having participated in the alleged delivery—a crucial point because of Texas's Accomplice-Witness Rule. My client hadn't injected the girl, but lack of corroboration would get us to the same

[A] good-faith, case-by-case, consequential ethics approach should be used that balances the greatest good for the greatest number without trampling unduly on individual rights and each citizen’s constitutionally protected liberty interests.Sreenivasan, Frances, and Weinberger, Normative Versus Consequential Ethics in Sexually Violent Predator Laws: An Ethics Conundrum for Psychiatry, J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 38:3:386-391 (2010) (via Karen Franklin, In the News: Forensic Psychology, Criminology, and Psychology-Law; via

Lawyer Danny Lampley got himself jailed by Judge Talmadge Littlejohn for not saying the Pledge of Allegiance in a Mississippi courtroom (NMissCommentor via The Agitator).There, but for an accident of geography, go I—I've shared my feelings about loyalty oaths before.

The Houston Chronicle went out of its way to praise Pat Lykos for "promising to investigate the suicide of a young boy whose parents claim he was the victim of intense bullying at his school"; the newspaper ignores the opportunity cost of fulfilling this publicity-happy promise. Huh, what? asks the Chronicle's editorial board. Opportunity cost?This DA's Office is not playing with unlimited resources. It is cutting corners

In his interview with David Jennings (see my commentary, in five parts, here, here, here, here, and here), Chris Daniel says something downright interesting:There are certain judges who will remain nameless, who have files in their office solely because they’re afraid to send them to imaging because they know that if they send it to imaging, it will be online and it will ruin whoever’s file that