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Recent Blog Posts
Pretrial Diversion for DWI
In Harris County, Texas, between January 1, 2009 and May 31, 2009:
3,166 DWI defendants pled guilty or no contest.
1 defendant pled not guilty to the judge and was convicted.
38 people pled not guilty to juries and were convicted.
22 people pled not guilty to juries and were acquitted by jury verdict.
6 people pled not guilty to juries and were acquitted by directed verdict.
646 cases were dismissed.
Of those who went to trial and pled [edit: not] guilty, 28 out of 67-42%-were acquitted. Of the 3,879 cases that were resolved, 674 were resolved with dismissals or acquittals.
I Wouldn't Hire Your Kine.
There's an interesting online discussion between late-Gen-X Adrian Dayton and Boomer Scott Greenfield. Adrian, in Get Out of My Face, says, "Generation Y wants their life to mean something. They want to handle work that is significant, and they certainly don't want to crank out the billable hours reviewing non-urgent documents on a Saturday afternoon just to line the pockets of the otherwise wealthy partners." Scott, in Get Off My Yard reply, says:
Contrary to Adrian's understanding, law firms do not exist to provide jobs for young lawyers. They exist to provide legal services to clients. They hire associates in order to perform some of the work needed to provide these services, subject to the overview and approval of the partners of the firm. In the course of billing out the services of the employees, the partners seek to recover not just the salaries paid to these fine young men and women, but the fixed and variablecosts associated with the provision of services."
This is the Guy that Texas Prosecutors Have Teaching them Ethics.
From this thread on the TDCAA forums (for which the hat tip goes to Dallas criminal-defense lawyer Robert Guest. Robert is having computer problems, so he gave me the lead):Lisa TannerMember
I, probably like everyone else on this board, get asked pretty regularlyby officers to weigh in on whether they can take a run at interviewinga suspect/defendant. And if the guy is known to be represented, thestandard answer is, of course, that he's absolutely off limits (unlesshe should happen to initiate the contact himself, but that's a whole‘nuther issue). Now, under Jackson, it seems that the standard answermust change.
But, here's where it seems to get tricky:
Disciplinary Rule 4.02 says that we cannot communicate or cause or encourage another to communicate with a person we know to be represented by counsel about the subject of that representation unless it is consented to by the representing lawyer or is "authorized by law"....
HCDP Judicial Candidates: Who Are These People?
The Harris County Democratic Party has announced its slate of candidates for criminal courts for the 2010 elections. First the District Court (felony) benches:
Darrell Jordan, opposing Debbie Mantooth-Stricklin (whose husband Don lost to Herb Ritchie last year) for the 180th District Court, is a lawyer with three years of experience in a general practice. I'm not sure which of these (aggressive!) guys is Darrell. [EDIT: Darrell is a member of HCCLA.]
Brandon Dudley, running against Jeanine Barr for the 182nd District Court, has five years of experience as Texas Senator Rodney Ellis's Chief of Staff / Legal Counsel. He may have other experience as well.
Press Release
From the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association:
The Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, Texas Criminal DefenseLawyers Association, and Fort Bend County Criminal Defense LawyersAssociation announce that they are beginning an immediate investigation intowhether members of the Harris County District Attorneys Office committedconstitutional violations of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, committed thecrime of official oppression, violated the special ethical dutiesapplicable to prosecutors, and-or violated the mandatory ethicalobligations applicable to all lawyers in making public comments during thecourse of a pending capital murder trial that appear to be calculated toinfluence the ongoing proceedings in material and detrimental ways that areunrelated to the issues at the trial, appear to be defamatory with respectto trial counsel, and serve no legitimate or valid purpose, butrather only increase the likelihood that the accused is denied afair trial. The remarks and their timing were inappropriate,improper, and subject to the sternest possible condemnation.
Legislating Policy from the Bench: Five Examples
Brian Tannebaum takes on the idea that judges shouldn't "legislate from the bench:"
That is what extreme conservatives say when they are asked what type of judge they want on the Supreme Court. They all answer in the negative, like a church choir – ‘we don't want a judge who ‘legislates from the bench." Ever notice that there is no follow-up question? This is because no one knows what that phrase means. No one.
If right-wingers were intellectually honest, they would say that "legislating from the bench" means thwarting the will of the people's democratically elected representatives in the legislative and executive branches. If a court is passive, it'll let the other branches of government do what they want; the outcome with a court that does not legislate from the bench is the same as it would be with no judicial review, or with no court at all. The test for real judicial activism is this: absent judicial review, would the result have been different? This definition and this test have the virtue of not being in the eye of the beholder. Whether the courts have allowed the other branches to do what they want is easy to determine.
Warren, What's Your Tribe?
"There is no comparison between the crimes and the sentence," saidSheik Fadhil al-Janabi, a Sunni tribal leader in Anbar Province. "Thatsoldier entered an Iraqi house, raped their underage daughter andburned her with her family, so this sentence is not enough, and it isinsulting for Iraqis' honor." (NYTimes.com)
When I read that Iraqi tribal leaders are upset and insulted that an American jury spared Steven D. Green's life for the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family in 2006, my first response was, "that's the way we roll in the USA. We don't kill people, or even imprison them, to restore others' honor."
But then I remembered that at one time a then-Harris County Prosecutor gave me cause to write this post.
People's basest instincts – retribution, to name one at play here – are the same the world over. That the American criminal justice system is better than many is not attributable to the character of our government officials, but rather to the principles that constrain them.
Liability for Court-Appointed Counsel
In Texas, a lawyer is responsible for her client until she is removed from the case by the judge. If something goes undone while the lawyer is responsible, she can be grieved and (in certain narrow circumstances) sued.
So when (for example) a defendant makes bail, appointed counsel remains legally on the hook until new counsel substitutes in or the judge signs an order removing the lawyer.I mention this because it appears from my review of cases in which indigent people made bail that the standard practice of Harris County's criminal judges when defendants make bail is to treat appointed counsel as though they're off the case (and won't be paid for any more work) but not put anything on the record.
If I took court-appointed cases in the county, I would find this objectionable: until there's a record of my removal, it's my case; if something needs to be done I have to do it; if I have to do it, I'm going to do it; and if I'm going to do it, I should be paid for it.
Mental Health First Aid Class
Sunshine Swallers, one of the Harris County's next generation of outstanding young criminal-defense lawyers (a true believer in the best sense), is working with Suzette Sova from the Harris County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority (MHMRA) to arrange a 12-hour Mental Health First Aid course.
The course looks like an excellent start for those of us who have to deal with mentally ill humans in our person, professional, or public lives (and if you think that doesn't cover you, it undoubtedly covers those who have to deal with you). It's available to everyone, and might be just the ticket to avoiding situations in which undertrained cops dispense 9mm crisis intervention.
Email Sunshine if you're interested.
Fred's Day in Court
Today I talked with a guy named Fred.
Fred had been appointed counsel (Mr. Lawrence) in January before bonding out, and had been appointed other counsel (Ms. Morris) in April, 10 weeks after bonding out.
Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Morris, along with Ms. Curley, handle virtually all of the indigent representation in the 624th District Court of Harris County, Texas, in which Fred is accused of murder. They share cases, so that if Morris is not in court when a particular appointed case is on the docket, Lawrence or Curley will handle it.
Judge Biggs, the judge of the 624th, is aggressively ignorant: he's more certain when he's dead wrong than I am when I'm absolutely right. His ignorance is breathtaking in its scope and depth, with a special concentration in the law. Coupled with his Vizziniesque intellect, his ignorance is a near-insurmountable obstacle to predictability. Like many ignorant people of little intelligence in positions of power, Judge Biggs is a bully.
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