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Recent Blog Posts
Why Someone Has to Go to Prison for Waterboarding
Suppose that your boss has a lawyer, and you go to that lawyer for advice. You want to do something on behalf of your boss, and you want to make sure you're not going to get in trouble with the law for it. The lawyer - either because he's a lousy lawyer or because he has an agenda that leads him to want you to do that thing for the boss - gives you an incorrect written opinion that your conduct would not be illegal. Based on the lawyer's erroneous advice, you do what you wanted to do all along, breaking the law 266 times. (Suppose also that the particular law you have violated does not require proof of willfulness.)
A) Can you be prosecuted for your violations of the law? B) Can the lawyer be prosecuted for giving you bad advice?
The answer to (A) is an unqualified "yes." Your criminal liability does not depend on whether you knew you were breaking the law. That you were acting in good-faith reliance on legal advice is not, in this situation, a legal defense.
New Ideas at HCDAO? Unwelcome!
Harris County Assistant District Attorney George Weissfisch, hours after giving notice, sent the following email to Pat Lykos, CCing all employees:
This is part one of a six email series of my suggestions to improve the office.THE OVERWORKED #3s PROBLEMWe have never been able to fill the felony courts with #4s.Weissfisch solution: We make a new hire's first stop in the office the #4 felony position. They then go to #3 in misdemeanor. Rather than throw new hires right into trial with no experience we start them out as 4s in felony. Their job is mostly to handle rip calls and any other to do (which should be limited under the no more to dos system- coming soon) #4 can sit 2nd chair with the number 3 or sometimes with the number 2. The advantages of this system is that all new prosecutors get their initial training from a district court chief rather than a felony 3 (misd chief). Second they get their feet wet on how to try a case before they have to try cases solo. Third they get a better perspective before going to misdemeanor (in terms of the seriousness of cases and how to interact with the defense bar and ethics) The burden on the felony #3 is alleviated and some #3s may even be able to take some of the #2's trials. The rotation should be for no more than 6 months. There should be no #4s in misdemeanor and the rotation after #4 in felony would be exactly as it is now.Under this system the next 22 people that we hire would fill the 22 district courts with #4s. If we add paralegals one day then it's even better because the #4 won't have to do as much of the grunt work and can learn more before misdemeanor.STAY TUNED FOR HOW TO REWORK INTAKE
Dispatch from Rock Bottom
One of the employees of R.W. Lynch whom I was a little bit tough on here filed a complaint against me with the State Bar of Texas. The State Bar dismissed the complaint.
In her cover letter, our complainant claimed that I misquoted her, and that in 2 1/2 months at R.W. Lynch she never left a message stating that she was the injured party.
No, she didn't exactly say that. She said that she was calling about a new case, that it was an injury that she was involved in:
Which are the words I attributed to her. Twice. And which R.W. Lynch ex-employee InTheKnow identifies as R.W. Lynch company training: lie your way past secretaries to get to the attorney.
I've been taken to task for blogging about the complainant and other dishonest telemarketers who are "just trying to feed their families." Our complainant echoed that in her cover letter:
The Defending People Contest Contest
Jones McClure was kind enough to send me several copies of O'Connor's Texas Criminal Codes Plus 2008-2009, edited by Mac Secrest, and O'Connor's Texas Crimes and Consequences, edited by Todd Dupont (of Reasonable Doubt fame) to give away as Defending People schwag.
Mac's codebook is my briefcase reference of choice: Texas's Code of Criminal Procedure, Penal Code, Rules of Evidence, Rules of Appellate Procedure, and controlled substances law (as well as some other stuff) in one place with annotations. It doesn't have the Texas Constitution or the Transportation Code, two other resources that would be helpful day-to-day, but it's the best I've found.
I haven't used Todd's book, but it looks handy as well.
So I want to have a contest to give away these books, but I'm not feeling inspired. So suggest a contest in comments; if I use it, I'll send you a copy of the book of your choice.
Shame on You, Jeff Bezos.
I was prepared to love my Kindle 2. I can buy books cheap from Amazon, upload my own content, and read it "as easily in bright sunlight as in my living room."
Here's how the Kindle 2 screen looks in shade. It's okay, but I would wish for a much higher contrast between the grey "white" of the screen and the grey "black" of the screen:
I called Kindle support, hoping for a fix or a replacement, and their response was, "Yep, that's the way the e-Ink works. Yes, they're all like that." In other words, "deal with it."
The Kindle 2's screen is refreshed each time it changes - for example, when you change pages. So if you want to read your Kindle 2 "in bright sunlight" you'll have to move your Kindle 2 into the shade to move to the next page if you want to have any hope of reading it.
So no, the Kindle 2 can most definitely not "be read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room." That Amazon says so is a boldfaced lie. A fraud.
TLC Alumni Blogs
When I made my list yesterday of Trial Lawyers College alumni blogs:
I left off Collin County, Texas criminal-defense lawyer Tony Vitz, who recently started blogging, and Connecticut trial lawyer Norm Pattis, who has been blogging on and off forever, as well as Wyoming trial lawyer Gerry Spence and Seattle plaintiffs' lawyer Paul Luvera.
New Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
Houston criminal defense / civil rights lawyer Eric J. Davis has a new blog, Sustained!. Eric is an outstanding lawyer and a good friend. (He's also a graduate of the Trial Lawyers College, as are Paul Smith, Jon Katz, David Tarrell, Chuck Peterson, Remy Orozco, Ed Stapleton, and someone else I'm unfortunately forgetting at the moment.)
Please welcome Eric to the blawgosphere.
Last Week's Reasonable Doubt
Here's the April 9, 2009 episode of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Asoication's Reasonable Doubt television show. Hosts Houston criminal-defense lawyers Todd Dupont and Neal Davis interview HCCLA past-president Pat McCann.
Quanell X on Reasonable Doubt
An oldie but a goodie, Houston criminal-defense lawyers Todd Dupont and Tate Williams interview Quanell X on the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association's Reasonable Doubt television show last October.
Revisiting the Problem of the Working Poor
Andrea Marsh of the Texas Fair Defense Project comments:
I think you're letting the judges who won't appoint counsel to indigent bail defendants off too easily. These judges are violating the law, whether they straight out deny an application based on bond status (CCP 26.04(m)) or hold applications for counsel while repeatedly resetting cases in order to pressure defendants to hire lawyers (CCP 1.051). A defendant who can only afford a $100 fee for a lawyer who will do no more than lend false legitimacy to a guilty plea is indigent in 6th Amendment terms. We get calls from Harris County bail defendants who don't even have that much money but still can't get a court-appointed lawyer. Court staff often won't even give them an application for counsel. I know it's bad for business (at least that part of the business that depends on low-fee pleas) but I wish there was more outrage from the defense bar on this issue. I know HCCLA made some efforts in this area before, but this post just seems to accept that bad status quo.
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