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Recent Blog Posts
Blog Against Theocracy 2008
New York Criminal Defense Lawyer Scott Greenfield, who reads more blogs than I do, tells us about BAT08, the Blog Against Theocracy 2008 Blogswarm. The idea is to spend this Easter weekend talking about the principle "that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government."
Regular readers know that I'm very interested in the role that religion plays, or should play, in government. Stay tuned.
A Pistol is What You Use...
... to fight your way to a real gun.
I got to hear a few snippets of the Heller arguments today on NPR. In the intro, the reporter described a handgun as "the easiest method of self-defense." I expect some ignorance of firearms from Eastern intellectuals like NPR reporters and most Supreme Court justices, but I also expect a guy like John G. Roberts, Jr. from the heavily-armed state of Indiana to know a little bit about firearms.
Chief Justice Roberts asked, "does it really make sense to say the best self-defense arm is a rifle, as opposed to a pistol?"
It's a silly question. For home defense, a rifle is not the best weapon. But neither is a pistol. The danger with either is that the projectile might go through (or past) an invader and through anything and everything else in your house, including your loved ones and pets, drywall and siding, winding up in the house next door or across the street.
The best home-defense weapon (bear in mind that we're talking about home defense, not concealed carry) is a 12-gauge shotgun. (There's some debate about whether the best home-defense load is birdshot or buckshot.) In the enclosed spaces of a home, shotgun pellets are going to do serious damage to anything they hit, but aren't going to keep going like a heavier and faster pistol or rifle bullet would.
Three Opinions
Kelly Siegler is behind 4-1 in the informal poll I've conducted down at the courthouse this week of people whose continued employment doesn't depend on Kelly Siegler's election.
• A former Harris County prosecutor (now a prosecutor elsewhere) who served in Judge Lykos's court would vote for Pat Lykos over Kelly Siegler, whom he describes as "nasty."
• A young defense lawyer is planning a fundraiser for Pat Lykos.
• A longtime Harris County district court judge would vote for Kelly Siegler over Pat Lykos, whom she describes as "cruel." A staunch Republican, this judge would vote for C.O. Bradford, even, over Pat Lykos.
• A longtime defense lawyer, who has a "Jeffersonian view of democracy" is pulling for a Democratic victory and general bloodletting down at the courthouse (to refresh the tree of liberty), but would choose Pat Lykos over Kelly Siegler.
• Another longtime defense lawyer, generally held in high esteem, is encouraging anyone who didn't vote in the Democratic primary to vote for Pat Lykos in the runoff.
Happy Birthday
Today is anonymous Connecticut public defender Gideon's birthday. Happy Birthday, Gideon.
On Gideon's birthday last year, I wrote this post. It was five days later that I really got up a full head of steam and started blogging. 581 posts, 108,155 page loads, 68,549 unique visitors, 21,852 returning visitors, and 1,541 comments (the first of which was quash's April 1, 2007 "welcome to the blawgosphere") later, here we are.
The Defense Investigator
In a comment to my "Who Are You" poll post, reader Sean Shopes writes:
While I checked the "non-lawyer, elsewhere" box I thought I'd chime in as a criminal defense professional – I am a defense investigator in San Francisco. I am curious about your thoughts regarding defense investigators (to include Public Defender Investigators as well as private investigators that do court-appointed and retained work) and their value to defense attorneys and defendants.
Good question.
A good investigator is invaluable in the defense of a criminal case. In many of my cases, the single smartest thing that I have done has been to hire the right investigator. My investigators (JJ Gradoni and Associates) have frequently made the difference to my clients between acquittal and conviction, or between dismissal and trial, or between probation and prison.
We start every case knowing only what government agents claim to have learned in their investigation. Their investigation is usually incomplete - often woefully so - and almost invariably biased. The usual police investigation is geared toward confirming hunches, rather than discovering the truth.
Ignorant or Arrogant?
There are many reasons people commit crimes: addiction, anger, avarice, arrogance, fear, ignorance, and disease, to name just a few. Typically more than one reason can be identified for the commission of a particular crime. Addiction and avarice, for example, or ignorance and fear.
Arrogance can cause crime if a person know that the rules apply to him but, for some reason, thinks they should not. Ignorance can contribute if the person doesn't know the rules, or doesn't know that they apply to him. Ignorance of the law is, axiomatically, no defense for anyone.
I wrote six weeks ago about a prosecutor filing documents with a trial court with fictitious certificates of service. Such filings violate Texas Penal Code Section 37.10(a)(1), which proscribes "knowingly mak[ing] a false entry in, or false alteration of, a governmental record."
The Values Poll
What do Defending People readers value most? I know I left out a bunch of possibilities (love, honor, respect, order...); please choose the best fit out of the four options I've given you.
[poll=2]
And by all means drop me a comment.
Share Your Opinion on the WoD
Via Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Robert Guest, the pro-War-on-Poor-People Drug Free America Foundation's poll on whether drug use is a victimless crime. As Robert notes, 2/3 of the poll's respondents agree or agree strongly.
I voted for "Strongly agree. What a user chooses to do themselves is no one's business." But three of the other choices - including "Disagree. Individual drug use affects society" had some appeal too. The question - whether drug use is "a victimless crime" is a stupid one.
I got a call this evening from an 18-year-old who'd been arrested recently. I correctly guessed in the first 15 seconds of the conversation that it was a marijuana case. He just seemed... slow. Children should not be smoking marijuana. It delays their emotional development - being 16 is hard enough when you're 16; it must be even harder when you stop smoking weed years later - and it makes them sound like the gears in their brains are gooey.
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