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Recent Blog Posts
Loose Ends
Since I suspended regular blogging in favor of 928 repair, a couple of my old stories have needed updating.
In the case of Lesher v. Coyel, in which two lawyers were awarded $13 million by a jury for online libel, the trial judge threw out the verdict, granted a judgment for the defendants notwithstanding it, and ordered the plaintiffs to pay costs.
In the case of Oregon v. Naked American Hero, John Brennan was acquitted ("After standing stark naked for about five minutes, police tackled him to the ground and hauled him to jail, The Oregonian reports." Tackled by naked cops? Awkward!).
You may have missed it, but the story of the TSA priest was right in my wheelhouse.
No Hero
Longtime commenter Thomas Griffiths writes, in response to my efforts to represent, pro bono, the British guy charged with aiding his wife's suicide:
Honestly, I'm friggin baffled by one of my public heroes' actions. My right brain, says it's the right thing to do when a Real CDL learns of incompetence, while the left side says WTF? In the end my gut says, there are plenty other folks you and / or dream teams can visit with and offer assistance in their release and or post conviction issues.
I get this. There are many people sitting in jail represented by lousy lawyers such as Dionne Press. I'm reminded of the scene from an early season of Boston Legal in which Eugene, walking down a jail corridor, asks, "how many of you are innocent," raising whoops and cheers from all the cells. Some of them surely are. Many are not. Does it matter? And how is a lawyer to choose?
Winter is Coming
When an airline's pilots suffer from seizures, its flight attendants are sociopaths, its mechanics are drunks, and its flights are as likely to end in a fireball as in a smooth landing, conscientious airline employees have a duty to warn the public.
I just got back from the State Bar's Advanced Criminal Law Course in San Antonio, at which I spoke about jury selection. As well as speaking, I watched all of the other presentations. One speaker advised that we lawyers shouldn't say things that diminished public confidence in the criminal justice (hyphen deliberately omitted) system.
If the truth is that the criminal justice system is broken, that lawyers and judges are incompetent or corrupt, lawyers have an ethical obligation not to cover that up. (Yes, Scott, we've plowed this ground before. Indulge me.)
Recently, an out-of-town lawyer commented, in an email distributed to about forty criminal-defense lawyers, that Judge Ruben Guerrero is "a great judge." He had met Guerrero at a seminar.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about this British guy who has (as of today) been sitting in the Harris County Jail for more than three weeks, charged by complaint with the class C misdemeanor of aiding suicide.
The 351st District Court, where his case is pending, has no jurisdiction over a class C misdemeanor case. The maximum penalty for a class C misdmeanor is a $500 fine. The guy discharged that fine with his first ten days in jail.
The guy is represented by Dionne Press. I have dealt with this court-appointed lawyer before, and I anticipated that her client was going to receive substandard representation. It appeared that she had spent more time talking to the newspaper-and not doing her client any favors (actual quote: "It is very strange. Why the DA would choose to prosecute this, I don't know. I guess because [the decedent] was not elderly")-than researching the law applicable to the case.
There's No Pleasing Spammers
All these years I've been fighting comment spam by marking it as spam and calling out the responsible lawyers. That didn't make them very happy.
Now it appears that allowing their comment spam doesn't make them happy either.
They're Heartless, but at Least They're Incompetent
ยง 22.08. AIDING SUICIDE. (a) A person commits an offense if, with intent to promote or assist the commission of suicide by another, he aids or attempts to aid the other to commit or attempt to commit suicide. (b) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor unless the actor's conduct causes suicide or attempted suicide that results in serious bodily injury, in which event the offense is a state jail felony.
Texas Penal Code Section 22.08.
"Causing suicide" (or causing attempted suicide that results in SBI) is an element of the felony offense. It's something that the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to increase the punishment range. The state also has to plead it in order to charge a defendant with a felony.
If the state pleads that a person has, with intent to assist the commission of suicide by another, aided the other to commit suicide, but does not allege that the person's conduct caused the suciide, the state has charged that person with a class C misdemeanor-a fine-only offense, the equivalent of a traffic ticket.
What's an Onlya?
A couple of people have asked me, "what's an onlya"?
An onlya is any person whom a group has a reason to marginalize: "he's only a drug user," "he's only a kid," "she's only a judge."
Members of the group can treat the onlya worse than they would treat other group members.
We're all onlyas to someone.
Whether someone is an onlya depends on the group. Among drug users, a drug user is not an onlya.
So Felix Booker, Dr. Michael LaPaglia's first documented victim, might have been an onlya to LaPaglia because he had been arrested and was suspected of possessing drugs: only a criminal. He is an onlya to the courts because LaPaglia found drugs.
But Dr. LaPaglia's second documented victim, Antwan Gulley, isn't an onlya to the civil courts because LaPaglia didn't find drugs in his rectum.
It's not right, of course, for the civil justice system to treat Mr. Booker differently than Mr. Gulley: LaPaglia committed the same torts on both men. But there you go.
Indiana Steps Away from the Brink
About a year ago I wrote about the Indiana Supreme Court's sua sponte rewriting of Indiana's self-defense statute to deprive people of the right to use force to defend themselves against police officers committing crimes.
Yesterday Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law Senate Enrolled Act 1, which restored by statute that which the Indiana Supreme Court had taken away by judicial activism. In part:
(i) A person is justified in using reasonable force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to: (1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force; (2) prevent or terminate the public servant's unlawful entry of or attack on the person's dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle; or (3) prevent or terminate the public servant's unlawful trespass on or criminal interference with property lawfully in the person's possession, lawfully in possession of a member of the person's immediate family, or belonging to a person whose property the person has authority to protect.
Hate Speech AND Porn, Please
This-a blog post on Legal Schnauzer lauding Brett Kimberlin for his lawfare against Aaron Worthing-is simply stupid. Cheering people for taking advantage of an ignorant (and possibly senile) judge to shut down the free expression of people whose politics you disagree with is narrowminded and shortsighted. Even if you think your adversaries are more likely to engage in lawfare than people who agree with you? Especially then. If they're less fastidious to you, you hurt yourself by countenancing the tactics.
(For my money, though, right-wing nutjobs and left-wing nutjobs are equally likely to resort to lawfare against those with whom they disagree. A nutjob is a nutjob is a nutjob.)
This-a blog post on The Daily Kos lauding Brett Kimberlin for lawfare and SWATting-is a little more interesting. A blatant troll ("In 1994, after 13 years of unjust imprisonment, a wise Judge recognized Kimberlin for his Activism and released him on parole"), the post has suckered the credulous-Donald Douglas of American Power and some of these folks-into taking it seriously. Which just goes to show: we are capable of believing preposterous stuff if it fits into the stories we tell ourselves.
9 June 1954
Joseph Welch lambastes Senator Joseph McCarthy: "Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel.... your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me."
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