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Recent Blog Posts
Kevin McHenry of R.W. Lynch: Cluephone Ringing; It's For You
Kevin McHenry has called nine times to try to sell me something. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have my office number; he keeps calling directly to my answering service number.
Here's his first message:
3/14/08 11:47A"to"::MR. BENNETT"first;::KEVIN"last"::MCHENRY"phone"::800-333-0401 EX 1121"re": INFO ON PERSONAL INJURY CASES3/14/08 11:47A
Okay: I'm a criminal-defense lawyer. I don't want "info on personal injury cases", and nothing could possibly have given Mr. McHenry the idea that I did. So, exercising my prerogative in dealing with solicitors, I ignored the message.
His second call didn't mention personal injury cases. Just "please call me back." His third call was "PLEASE CALL ME RE: PERSONAL INJURY CASE." That's a familiar scam: I regularly get calls from people selling referral services like LegalMatch.com (services that violate the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct); they'll call the wrong number and leave messages like "calling about a new criminal case." Usually I can tell, even if they haven't given the game away in an earlier call like Mr. McHenry, that it's a marketing call (potential clients don't generally call from toll-free numbers), and ignore it.
Former Prosecutors III — A Specific Case
I've written before, here, here, and here, as well as here, about former prosecutors taking criminal cases. So when I read Rick Casey's column in this morning's Chronicle, Who I'll Hire if I'm Caught, in which he explained why he would hire Kelly Siegler to defend him against criminal charges - because "if she can convict an innocent man, she can keep me out of trouble" - I immediately thought of a title for my blog post on the subject (first the title, then the post): Rick Casey Goes to Prison.
Luke Gillman beat me to it, though, with Rick Casey is Going Away for a Long, Long Time:
I don't know what's more appalling about that statement – the Lykos-esque logic or the idyllic notion of courtroom reality it reveals – that defense attorney Kelly Siegler would receive the same kind of treatment she has enjoyed as a prosecutor and that in fact, the craft of prosecuting and defending are interchangeable if not the same.
Lanyard Nation
The last time I had an ID on a lanyard was the summer of 1988, when I was working at CIA's Office of Technical Services and had a green badge that had to be exposed at all times at work. For reasons that are perhaps obvious, I would remove the badge and lanyard when I departed Headquarters in the evening. Back then, ordinary everyday people didn't have to wear their ID at work; lanyards with badges became, for me, an emblem of authority.
Then I went to law school, and I wound up being more Martin Vail than Q. Some years later the people in charge of my usual stomping grounds, the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, issued ID badges to frequent courthouse visitors. Some lawyers refused to get the badges on the theory that they didn't need no steenkin' badges; they would rather wait in line with the People than apply to the Man for a badge. Not me, though. With a badge, I no longer had to remove my Luccheses to expose my socked feet to the possible carnal podophiliac yearnings of corpulent rentacops; instead I could flash my credentials, stomp right past security, stow my badge and go to the elevators. This was, of course, a good thing.
Josh Karton in Houston
Communicating With Juries with Josh Karton
Sponsored by TCDLA and HCCLA
May 8, 2008 – | Houston, Texas | Hyatt Regency | CDLP | TBD cle
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Overview "APPEARING, LIVE, IN THIS COURTROOM!"
WORKSHOPS IN COURTROOM COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES
Whether you are addressing the jurors or judge directly, or reaching them through dialogue with a witness, your power of persuasion in the courtroom depends upon your ability to communicate effectively - off the page, in person. Joshua Karton, president of Communication Arts for the Professional, specializes in how to apply the personal communication skills of theatre/film/television to the art of trial advocacy. What are the specific skills (not gimmicks, not tricks) of director, actor, playwright and screenwriter, that vault oral argument off the yellow pad and move the listeners to action? Twenty-five years of investigating this question culminated in Mr. Karton's preparation of Professor Katyal's winning argument to the US Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
America's Best Prosecutor?
Well we've obviously had this political mantra over the last 30 years about "getting tough on crime." And I think too often, buried in that mantra is the implication that there's no room for fair justice. We've stripped away protections for the accused. And as a result, I think many prosecutors went into a case with blinders on-like everyone was guilty. The more convictions you won, the better your chances to get re-elected or to move on to higher office. We're now seeing the fallout from that mentality. Hopefully, the problems we're now encountering will help it to change.
See Radley Balko's reason.com interview with Dallas County DA Craig Watkins.
Improvisational Blogging
I'm feeling uninspired. Here are some of the posts I've thought of in the last few months, titled, and then not written:
Josh Karton in Houston
The Commerce Clause
The Problem of the Working Poor
Lanyard Nation
Of Course It's Not an Individual Right!
Here's the deal: pick a title and suggest three or four words or phrases (PG or G rated, please) for me to use in the post. Write a comment. I'll write the post, incorporating the words or phrases, and you'll grade me.
Got it?
Proceed.
For a Public Defender's Office
(I write blog posts offline in Ecto. When I have a new idea for a post, I create a new post and title it, then set it aside until I feel like writing it. This one's been brewing for a while, so I wanted to get a couple of thoughts down in bits and bytes even though they're far from complete or even well-developed.)
Criminal defense, which does not involve the use or threatened use of deadly force, is not the sort of thing that governments are good at. But government, having created the need for criminal defense counsel for the indigent, is bound by fairness to ensure that the need is filled effectively and efficiently. That is, the government must to what it can to ensure that indigent counsel do a good job at as little cost to the public as possible.
There are many fair criticisms of public defenders' offices. Most of the problems with a public defender system, though, are intrinsic to the government's provision of indigent defense services, rather than to the form in which the government provides those services. In other words, the problems with a public defender's office do not make it worse than an ad hoc system in which judges appoint counsel per case, per day, or per week. A public defender's office could be more or less effective, more or less efficient than an ad hoc system. A public defender's office in Harris County will, I predict, prove both more effective and more efficient than the current ad hoc system.
Lykos Wins, in Case You Were Wondering
Pat Lykos, clearly the less-qualified candidate for Harris County District Attorney, has beaten Kelly Siegler, the champion of the Office's old guard, in the Republican primary. And so the Holmes-Rosenthal era ends: not with a bang but with a whimper.
We defense lawyers have reached no consensus on whether this will improve our lives or our clients. But Harris County's Assistant District Attorneys feel that this bodes ill for their futures, which seemed secure as recently as 15 weeks ago. So there will be heavy drinking among the prosecutors tonight, and hangovers in the morning. The mood, I'm sure, is somber. But do not despair: the Bradford campaign (bloghouston.net is the first hit when you search Google for "Clarence Bradford district attorney"; doesn't Bradford know about the web?) will be looking for volunteers.
Failing that, you'll all be welcomed as members of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers' Association.
Commissioners Approve PD Study
Today Harris County Commissioner's Court approved the creation by the County's Management Services Department of a study and recommendation on the feasibility of establishing a Public Defender's Office in Harris County.
If the study reveals that a PD's Office will provide a cost savings over the current ad hoc appointment system (Grits agrees with me that it will), the PD's Office is likely to start small, providing trial lawyers to two or three of Harris County's 22 felony courts (I've heard that Susan Brown of the 185th District Court and Marc Carter of the 228th District Court are interested).
On Today's Harris County Commissioners Court Agenda
From the agenda:
Request for discussion and possible action for Management Services to provide a study and recommendations on the feasibility of establishing a Public Defender Office in Harris County.
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