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Recent Blog Posts
To My Republican Friends
Are you collectively really so brainwashed that you think it's okay to advocate "empowering" judges by taking sentencing power away from juries in felony cases belongs in the same document (the Texas GOP 2008 Platform... the image ought to be a live link) as "Preserving American Freedom" and "Limiting the Expanse of Government Power"?
I'm just askin'...
In Trial*
I'm in trial* on a white-collar criminal case. It is not an easy case, but sometimes we have to try the tough cases.
I've got to wonder why the prosecutor left on the jury two jurors who admitted that they couldn't consider the top end of the statutory punishment range (i.e. life in prison). Maybe he wants to give me a fighting chance?
Nice of him.
A good day in trial is pretty darn good. Unfortunately, good days in trial are often followed closely by bad days.
*That's "on trial" for all youse yankees and Chicagoans.
The Right Way to Give Up a Case
One thing I can say for Ollie the Cabdrivertising Attorney: unlike this lawyer, he relinquishes representation of a client to a new criminal-defense lawyer with perfect equanimity; he's got no problem at all being subbed out, and will even thank you for taking a case off his hands.
From the Houston Criminal Law News
A team of federal inspectors is checking out the Harris County Jail. Harbingers of adult supervision for the Harris County Criminal Justice System?
Widow charged 23 years after her husband's murder. She claimed at the time that an intruder had entered the house, tortured her, and shot him with her pistol. The dead guy's daughter contacted cold case investigators every year until they reopened the case. ("No ma'am, not quite cold enough for us yet"?) The widow's son is a cop; she worked for HPD. I'm betting there's much more of a story here.
Speaking of intruders, when we heard this story of an intruder stabbing a couple, killing her and wounding him, Jen's response was "yeah, right. I'll bet he killed her and cut himself." Cynical? Sure, but also apparently correct - he confessed.
Untitled 4
Blakely at Judgment Day says that the legal profession can be a dangerous one:
While many attorneys-especially those practicing criminal defense-have received threats from clients, more often than not it's just empty talk. I think many attorneys become numb to threatening phone messages and letters, primarily because everything has worked out fine in the past. Two stories over the last week, however, remind us to take these situations seriously.
I disagree with the "especially those practicing criminal defense" part. As criminal-defense lawyer, we deal with (often) bad people on their best behavior; family lawyers, by contrast, deal with good people on their worst behavior. I'd bet that family lawyers and personal injury lawyers get more threats from their clients (and from opposing parties) than criminal-defense lawyers. What do you say?
The Miami Motion to Substitute
Miami criminal-defense lawyer David Markus blogs about a fight between criminal-defense lawyers on the steps of the jail (H/T Arkansas criminal-defense lawyer John Wesley Hall's Law of Criminal Defense).
I think that might be a natural extension of lawyers treating clients as property.
(I wonder if I could take Ollie in a fight.)
Congratulations!
I'd like to congratulate the lawyers who prosecute, and the judges who sentence them, for the "choices" that they've made that put them at the top and my clients at the bottom.... and, for that matter, anyone else who is smugly self-righteous about his lot in life.
Not all of these will apply to all of you; take those that do.
Congratulations for choosing to be born white. I know that was a tough decision for you, as was choosing not to be born destitute.
Congratulations for choosing not to have a mother who drank heavily when she was pregnant with you, or one who smoked or who used hard drugs.
Congratulations for not being exposed to too much lead in your childhood.
Congratulations for choosing one or more nurturing parents who didn't abuse you or neglect you.
Take That, Fort Collins!
MSNBC says that Houston is the fourth best American city to live in. (H/T Tory Gattis's Houston Strategies blog, which I just happened upon. Tory is a Rice classmate of mine.) I'm mildly surprised.
I've long said that Houston is the Promised Land for criminal-defense lawyers (despite, or perhaps because of what U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee calls "the many misgivings surrounding the Harris County judicial system") but the things that make Houston right for me don't necessarily recommend it to the ordinary citizen.
New Harris County Criminal Law Blog
HCSO Blog (tagline: Only the smart people are frustrated).
[Edit: The anonymous author links to me because of my intelligence. I think I've got that right.]
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