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Recent Blog Posts
Jury Trial Today
I went down to JP Court on the beach in Galveston County this morning, not really expecting to have to try a case. So of course there were 24 potential jurors waiting in the courtroom when I strolled in (I was 20 minutes late because I didn't factor the ferry ride into my travel time), and my client's was the only case on the docket.
It took 35 minutes to pick a jury of six and try the case, and about three more minutes to get a verdict. That was the shortest jury trial I've had, and probably the shortest I will ever have.
No More Contact With KHOU
Please don't contact KHOU about whether the debate should be televised. They get it, and they're starting to get overloaded with emails. They can't broadcast it live on their main channel, and they're already considering broadcasting it live or with a tape delay on their secondary digital cable, which is the best, I think, that we can hope for.
Please pass word to your friends.
Don't Encourage KHOU
My dad sent an email to KHOU asking that the station broadcast the February 19th DA candidate debate on television (instead of just on the web as planned):
I understand that KHOU will be broadcasting the 19 February debate of the Harris County District Attorney candidates on your website but not on the air.
This is an appeal that you also broadcast the debate live on the air. The choice of a new District Attorney for Harris County this year is one of the most important issues for your audience and will affect the lives of many in the county for years to come. This is an opportunity for you to provide a meaningful public service. Thank you, Clark Bennett
In response, he got this:
Thanks for your e-mail.
The Harris County District Attorney Debate will be aired live on 11 News' Web site www.khou.com the night of Feb. 19. The debate will also be available on demand on KHOU.com starting that night as well.
Todd, Pat and Me on the TeeVee
(Pay no attention to the goofy-looking static frame. Google picks this automatically to make the uploader look as ridiculous as possible.)
Ceci n'est pas une subpoena.
Texas lawyers:
One of these (pdf):
is hand-delivered to a witness in a criminal case. Does she have to turn up in Judge Harris's court (other courts use similar documents) at 8:45 on Monday morning, or can she legally ignore it?
Why or why not?
Extra credit for persuasive incorrect answers.
Double credit for correct answers in verse.
My Six Words
Smith Magazine is collecting people's six-word memoirs.
Everyone has a story. That's the tag on the masthead of SMITH, our online magazine. Yet until we asked the world to send us six-word memoirs, even we had no idea how true it was.
We took a page from Ernest Hemingway. According to legend, he was challenged to write a novel in only six words and came up with "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." We posed the same challenge online, but we asked for true-life stories - in just half a dozen well-chosen words.
To launch the challenge, we posted examples from names we figured most readers would know, such as "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert ("Me see world! Me write stories!"; she naturally e-mailed hers in from an airport runway in Indonesia) and celebrity chef Mario Batali (he sent seven, each enlightening but none as pitch-perfect as "Brought it to a boil, often").
More than 15,000 (and counting) submissions later, we are continually struck by what proves possible in just six words.
See the Republican DA Candidates! Live! All Nude!
The Pachyderm Club of Downtown Houston is hosting the four Republican DA candidates tomorrow, February 7, 2008, at noon upstairs at the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Houston (901 Commerce Street). Entry fee is $8 at the door.
It's Tuesday, and Pat Lykos is Still Lame
On the heels of Kelly Siegler's realization that it was time for Chuck Rosenthal to resign (which itself followed only a month after Jim Leitner's call for Chuck to resign), DA candidate Pat Lykos has discovered that it's time for a change at the DA's office.
Now, if you're running on Kelly's "let the entrenched leadership of the Office correct its own problems" platform, and your goal is to convince the voters ultimately that Chuck Rosenthal was the whole problem all along, then it might make sense for you to take some time to make the momentous discovery that Chuck Rosenthal isn't the best guy to be running the Office right now.
But if you're running as an outsider, claiming to be the right one to fix a government agency that everyone outside the office can see is broken, should you really (never mind the ludicrous self-righteous posing) be the last serious candidate to realize that, whoever should be running the Office right now, it's not Chuck?
The Question of Compassion
AHCL thinks that she and I are coming at the question of compassion from different starting points.
AHCL writes:
You know, I think the reason that I disagree with Marky Mark and some of the other posters on a lot of the issues is because we begin on different starting points when we make our arguments.While I start off talking about how the community needs good, talented and aggressive prosecutors on cases, I'm envisioning the ax-murderer and the baby raper.When they start talking about mercy, compassion and a lack of arrogance in prosecution, they are envisioning the poor schlub who is walking down the middle of the street where a sidewalk is provided and the police find a crack pipe on him.
It's true that we're coming at the question from different starting points, but I think the divide is much wider than she recognizes.
First, the vast majority of people being prosecuted are more like the poor schlub than the "ax-murderer and the baby raper". Sometimes people do really bad things; these really bad things make for good press, and scares the voting public into electing "tough-on-crime" judges and compassionless prosecutors and spending lots of money on law enforcement, but the great bulk of that money is then spent investigating and prosecuting (a) malum prohibidum offenses; and (b) piddly malum in se offenses.
Chuck is Going... Going...
I asked here, "Is the fix in? Did Kelly get word that Chuck's resignation is in the cards?"
It appears that, indeed, the fix is in. Reports indicate that Chuck Rosenthal's chief investigator (and right-hand man) John Ray Harrison was packing up Chuck's office on Friday.
Business as usual, then, at the Harris County DA's Office: Chuck, after getting his ass kicked on the stand in federal court, decides on Friday to resign, and tells Kelly so that on Monday she can call for his resignation and appear to have influenced his decision.
I surmise, for reasons I discussed here, that a deal has been cut for Governor Perry to appoint a non-candidate caretaker DA for the interim.
The prosecutors' desired endgame: Kelly gets elected, claims that there was nothing wrong with the Office that Chuck's resignation didn't fix, and everybody but Mr. Harrison and Ms. Stevens gets to keep his or her job.
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