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Recent Blog Posts
Newbie Defense Lawyers
I'm enjoying hearing Harris County's newly minted criminal-defense lawyers, recent departures from the prosecutorial bar, talking about prosecutorial bullshit as though they're the first to discover a previously-unknown creature.
Linxmonster = Pwned
Dear Mr. Evans,
I was looking at websites under the keyword "linxmonster" and came across your site.... I see that you're ranked # 2 in Google, after one that describes you as a moron.
Bummer.
(You should have stopped emailing me when I asked you nicely or clicked on unsubscribe.)
How to Fix the System
Dallas criminal-defense lawyer Robert Guest highlights the randomness of the criminal laws passed by the Texas Legislature with the Texas criminal law generator.
Houston DUI lawyer Paul Kennedy and a friendly prosecutor have a modest proposal for reform of DWI laws.
I think Paul and the prosecutor might have hit on the beginning of a solution to the problem described by Robert:
Let those most familiar with the criminal justice system write the criminal law.What do Texas's legislators, most of whom are nominally lawyers, know about crime in Texas? Nothing, that's what.Who knows more about the criminal justice system than the lawyers who practice in it every day? Nobody, that's who.
So let the criminal defense bar and the prosecutorial bar each choose their 15 smartest people from across the state. Those 30 lawyers will go to a quiet place, and work their way through the Texas Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure, section by section, article by article. Any change that 20 of the 30 can agree on becomes law. If 20 of the 30 can't agree on any change, the law remains as the lege has written it.
To a Criminal Defense Lawyer Who Just Lost a Case
I'll tell you a little secret that most lawyers don't seem to realize: our losses make the best war stories; the cases you win are, but for the things that went wrong, not stories worth telling.
When you've lost a jury trial, I don't want to hear about how your client, your investigator, the judge, or anyone else's screwups led to the conviction.
I don't want to hear how it was a tough case. They're all tough cases. We've got a name for lawyers who try easy cases: "prosecutors". Our adversaries get to pick the cases we try, and they like to win.
Did you make mistakes? Sure you did. Nobody ever tries a perfect case and loses. Nobody ever tries a perfect case and wins, either - whether you find it or not, there's always a hair in the food. If you go on and on telling me about the bad facts, you're avoiding talking about the things you could have done better.
If you are at all self-aware, you can name a couple of such things. If you're going to talk about the trial, those are what I want you to tell me about. Not so that I can judge you, but so that I can learn from you. If you tell me the mistakes you made, I won't think less of you - to the contrary, I'll be impressed by your ability to see and acknowledge your errors - but I will be less likely to make the same mistakes myself.
Ghost-Town Marketing Morons: Linxmonster
Three virtually-identical emails from "Anthony Evans" and "Randy Miller" at linxmonster.com:
I was looking at websites under the keyword dui attorney [City] Texas and came across your site.... I see that you're ranked # [X] in Google. I'm not sure if you're aware of why you're ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is. There's no reason you can't have a top three ranking for this keyword based on your site structure and content. You have a very nice site.....Is it Ok to give you a call? If so, fire back a reply and we can talk or give me a call 800-543-4559linxmonster.com PO Box 700261 Oostburg WI 53070 800-543-4559This is an Advertisement. To remove yourself, Click Here
Each email named a different city - Memphis, Texas (500 miles from Houston); White City, Texas (600 miles from Houston); and Oxford, Texas (300 miles from Houston). After the first email I replied to Anthony Evans at linxmonster, pointing out the distance issue and requesting no further emails. The request was unsuccessful, and the removal link does not work.
Prosecutors Help People, But How Often?
Baby criminal-defense lawyer Murray Newman writes:
The thing I loved the most about being a prosecutor was helping victims of crime. There was a profound feeling of doing something important when meeting with the victim's family on a murder case, or the surviving members of an aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or assault and telling them you would do everything in your power on their cases.
I think prosecutors, current- and ex-, often romanticize the job. They tend to remember the capital murder and the robbery while forgetting the hundred crack pipes and five hundred DWIs that came before those (confirmation bias?). Yet there are clearly some cases in which the government, by getting and punishing the right guy, makes someone else's life better. For example, in an aggravated sexual assault case the victim might rationally feel safer with her assailant behind bars; in a theft case the victim might receive restitution if the thief is on probation.
Criminal Liability Under the CPSIA
Following Walter Olson's (Overlawyered) posts about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, I thought I'd check out the criminal penalties for violation of the CPSIA.
Contrast this:
Any person who knowingly and willfully violates section 2068 of this title after having received notice of noncompliance from the Commission shall be fined not more than $50,000 or be imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
(15 USC §2070 before its amendment by Section 217 of the CPSIA)
and this:
Violation of section 2068 of this title is punishable by- (1) imprisonment for not more than 5 years for a knowing and willful violation of that section; (2) a fine determined under section 3571 of title 18, United States Code; or (3) both.
(15 USC §2070 as amended by Section 217 of the CPSIA).
Ex-Judge Hanger
A couple of the Harris County felony court judges deselected by the voters in November have, as I noted before, hung out their shingles as would-be criminal-defense lawyers. They will, no doubt, advertise their ex-judgeness to the potential clients as a positive. And judicial experience could well be a positive in some cases.
One of these ex-judges, however (we'll call her "Ms. Hanger"), as recently as December was going out of her way to make the lives of people accused of crimes in her court miserable for misery's own sake. I have one particular client whose bail she increased tenfold for no good reason so that he would spend the holidays in jail; as soon as her replacement was on the bench bail came back to the value dictated by the judges' agreed bail schedule, and the accused was back with his family.
As president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, I welcome all new members of the criminal defense bar, no matter what their background. This is the official line.
Transcript of CharonQC's John Kane Interview
English law blogger CharonQC interviewed U.S. Senior District Court Judge John Kane of Colorado a couple of days ago. Judge Kane had some interesting things to say about the war on drugs (as well as about civil procedure); I linked to the interview here.
With the permission of CharonQC, I've commissioned a transcript of the podcast. I used iDictate to transcribe it, so it's not court-reporter quality, but it's usable (what do you want for less than $100?). Here's the PDF; the text follows:
Transcript of podcast interview by English legal blogger "CharonQC" of Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Kane of Colorado, Wednesday, January 28, 2009.
The speakers have reviewed this transcript only for gross errors. If the precise wording is important, please listen to the original recording online at http://tinyurl.com/CharonQC93.
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