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Recent Blog Posts
On Vacation
Defending People is taking a brief well-deserved break. I will not post much, and may not post at all, in the next seven days.
Offshore My Job? Not Bloody Likely!
Scott Greenfield is having a conversation (of sorts) with Rahul Jindal about legal outsourcing. Rahul, who is in Noida (a suburb of Delhi) is an advocate of LPO - variously, "Legal Process Outsourcing," "Legal Process Offshoring," or "Legal Services Offshoring."
Mention of Delhi drew my attention because that's one of my hometowns. Until I was 20 or so, the address at which I had lived at the longest stretch was on Jor Bagh Road in New Delhi. Back then India was a lot farther from the U.S. than it is now. There was no internet, telephone connections were spotty, and mail to or from the States took two weeks. Now
Drug Defense Brainstorming
How, without putting your client on the stand, might you counter the government's "nobody would trust another person with x dollars worth of drugs unless the other person knew he had the drugs" argument in a trial in which knowledge is at issue?
I'm looking for novel and useful approaches.
Failure to Testify
From McClung's Texas Pattern Jury Charges:
You are instructed that our law provides that the failure of the defendant to testify shall not be taken as a circumstance against him, and during your deliberations you must not allude to, comment on, or discuss the failure of the defendant to testify in this cause, nor will you refer to or discuss any matter not before you in evidence.
How is it even conceivable that we should allow a court, when talking to jurors, to describe a defendant's election not to testify - the exercise of one of the rights that we, as defenders, hold sacred - as a "failure"?
TSA = Thieves Shun Accountability
In our (if you help someone with a trial for long enough, it becomes your trial too) federal cocaine conspiracy trial, which involves eight kilograms of cocaine in a sealed Barbie dollhouse box in a suitcase at Houston's Intercontinental Airport, yesterday we learned that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) keeps no record of the suitcases it has opened and inspected unless it finds something. Nor are inspections videotaped.
So when you get one of those slips of paper in your suitcase saying "TSA wuz hear", TSA has no record that they were ever actually there. That might be some comfort to you.
Of course, if you open your suitcase and find the slip of paper saying "TSA wuz hear" where your Rolex used to be, you might be somewhat discomfited by the fact that TSA has no record of which inspector it was that had his hot little hands inside your suitcase, or even whether your suitcase was in fact inspected. (Do TSA inspectors steal? You bet they do. Lots.)
Juror Misconduct
Gideon brings us this atrocious story out of Illinois about a juror coming forward, 15 years after his jury duty, to testify in a postconviction proceeding that he and two other jurors had believed that the defendant was innocent of the armed robbery but after deliberating for over nine hours, had changed their votes to guilty under pressure from the other jurors. One can see how this testimony might have benefited the defendant in a postconviction proceeding. So of course But the judge shut it down, telling the juror that criminal charges could be filed against him for jury misconduct. The juror took the Fifth (the right thing for him to do in the absence of competent legal advice under these circumstances) and the postconviction proceeding was dismissed.
Is juror misconduct really a crime? And if it is, isn't there a statute of limitations? Is there an Illinois lawyer out there who can tell us whether this juror was really looking at potential criminal liability?
Maybe Not the Strongest Self-Defense Case
It's audio-video day here at Defending People. Here's a 9-1-1 tape from the City of Pasadena, a suburb of Houston in Harris County:
Note to self: If you have time, before shooting someone in the back, to explain to the police that you understand the recent changes in the law of self-defense, then it probably isn't really self-defense.
Police Surveillance of a sort
Criminal defense lawyer Randy England of Jefferson City, Missouri brings us this post about Brett Darrow, a 20-year-old St. Louis kid who drives around town wired for sound and light, deliberately antagonizing cops by refusing to play along with their attempts to pry into his personal life and intimidate him. The police conduct in the first video Randy links to might shock most middle-class white folk who think the cops are their friends, but it shouldn't. This is how lots of people will behave when you give them a gun and a badge and set them loose on the street. The police sergeant in that video was fired not because of what he did, but because he got caught doing it.
Darrow's civil disobedience is reminiscent of Texas lawyer Pat Barber's Just Say No to Searches campaign. Both of these guys are role models. If everyone knew their rights and exercised them, the police wouldn't think they have license to run roughshod over the constitution. If you're not rolling dirty, talking to the police and consenting to searches might be expedient, but that doesn't make it right.
Welcome Prosecutors
Defending People had a lot of traffic yesterday from Harris County computers; last night at the HCCLA Holiday Party a prosecutor asked me if I was really blogging during trial. From these two data I conclude that Harris County prosecutors are reading my blog from the office. Welcome, prosecutors! If you see any unnamed prosecutor in here whom you believe to be you, you're wrong. Anonymous prosecutors are at least partly fictionalized. If you think you recognize a case that you have against me in a blog post, likewise, you are incorrect. All open cases, and most closed cases, are at least partly fictionalized. Descriptions of named prosecutors, however, are entirely accurate.
I hope that you will comment (anonymously, if you like) when you read something that inspires or outrages you.
P.S. Should you really be reading Defending People from the office during work?
Flight to Nowhere
So... the Government puts on this witness, see? And this witness, she works for Air France, right? So the Government puts her on the witness stand in a federal jury trial, and asks her about airfares. They want to know what the lowest fare from Houston to Port Harcourt was in April 2007. So they've got this printout from the Air France computer showing the various fares available from Houston to Port Harcourt between April 1, 2007 and June 15, 2007. With me so far?
So the Government has this nice lady on the stand - lots of years' experience with Air France - and gets her to talk about the various fares on this printout - first class fares from Houston to Port Harcourt, economy class fares from Houston to Port Harcourt, fares with an advance purchase from Houston to Port Harcourt, fares without an advance purchase from Houston to Port Harcourt, fares with stays of various durations from Houston to Port Harcourt, all between April 1 and June 15, 2007. And the lowest fare for that trip - Houston to Port Harcourt - during that time period - April 1 through June 15, 2007 - was $1,536. Good enough. The point, I figure, is that the accused didn't choose the easiest, least expensive route from Houston to his hometown of Port Harcourt, or some such.
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