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Recent Blog Posts
Baby Prosecutor Bingo
So I was in Harris County Criminal Court at Law Number 14 this morning waiting for the judge to return from a long break when I saw this (PDF) on the state's table for young prosecutors.
This explains some of the objections you hear prosecutors making: they're choosing at random.
I was amused.
Then I noticed that there were three columns of eight objections each, and I was highly amused.
3*8 = 24 = 5^2-1.
Why Greenfield Will Return
When I saw that Scott Greenfield had said, "so long and thanks for all the fish," I asked on Twitter, "Any truth to the rumor that this is part of @ScottGreenfield's settlement with Rakofsky?" I was being flippant, naturally, but I've realized that there is a germ of truth in the question. Not that he would sell out, but that with Greenfield not filing three or four new blog posts every day, the world is a little safer and more comfortable for legal charlatans and frauds.
Now people like discredited self-styled ethics expert Jack Marshall can write stupid things such as...
Whether they are preventing the culture from rejecting drug use because enforcement is expensive, or because they have a relative or friend in prison for drug-dealing; whether they are calling for legalization because they are libertarians and academics or Ron Paul, or because they are public officials who see a new revenue source; whether they are longing for the halcyon days of Haight-Ashbury and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, or just like getting stoned, these are the people that killed Whitney Houston, as surely as if they had shot her between the eyes.
Dr. Emmette Flynn: Scoping Gray's Anatomy
[Dr. Emmette] Flynn stated that he did not ask for Gray's consent for the proctoscopic exam and that at the time he made the decision, he had not reviewed the search warrant or Gray's medical history. For Gray's proctoscopic exam, two sedatives (Versed and Etomidate) were administered to Gray intravenously. Though the doctors later testified at the suppression hearing that the risks associated with the sedatives were low, Gray was placed on a number of monitors to measure Gray's cardiovascular status during the examination. The sedatives carry with them a risk of respiratory depression or arrest. Proctoscopy also has associated risks, including pain and potential anal bleeding or perforation. Flynn admitted that proctoscopic exams are usually not conducted on uncooperative patients. At the time that the doctors decided to perform the proctoscopic exam, there were other less intrusive means available to try to recover the suspected drugs, including a cathartic or an enema-neither of which would have involved sedation.
You Got the Wrong Guy, Mister.
When Anonymous stole criminal-defense firm Puckett and Faraj's email communications, it claimed that the theft (and defacement of the firm's website) was "part of our ongoing efforts to expose the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of US imperialism," contrasting Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich's reduced charges with Bradley Manning's prosecution.
Haytham Faraj, of Puckett & Faraj, commented on Anonymous's theft:
Anonymous hacked into my business email account and stole over 3 gigs of email communications. Ironically, I am a supporter of Anonymous' declared mission of exposing corruption, injustice, hypocrisy and governments acting in secret. I also supported Wikileaks. I volunteered to defend Bradley Manning and did a 30 minute interview on BBC TV about him. Anonymous will not find a smoking gun in the Haditha emails. In fact they will discover that which I stated all along. Wuterich did not shoot or kill women and children. He was entitled to a defense like everyone else in a free society. By putting my emails in the public sphere Anonymous did not violate my privacy. There is nothing in those emails about me. It violated the privacy rights of hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people who were entitled to their privacy by publishing their personal email and telephone information, to disclosing private and personal information that clients share with lawyers believing that the information will remain private and confidential. I am upset by Anonymous' thoughtless acts.
From Frying Pan to Fire?
What I did does not remotely approach the level of what I would consider an investigation. It was a cursory review of information that exists in the public domain. Any 14 year old with a smart-phone could access more information than I did. Ultimately, we learned more from Mark Bennett's blog post than I discovered from my inquiry.
That's Harris County District Attorney's Office Chief Investigator Don McWilliams, explaining what he did to learn about the 185th District Court Grand Jurors investigating the DA's Office in connection with the BAT van fiasco. (PDF)
I agree with McWIlliams and Lykos that what he did regarding Trisha Pollard, the grand jury forewoman, wasn't an investigation. What I did wasn't an investigation, and I found more than McWIlliams did about her.
But Ted Oberg, who has been harrying this story for Channel 13, suggests that McWilliams may have done a great deal more than I did:
Sadistic Harris County Jailers. And the Streisand Effect.
It started with a couple of sentences on Houston criminal-defense firm Stradley Chernoff & Alford's website:
The jail personnel, especially in Harris County, seem to take a perverse pleasure in making the jail visit as unpleasant as possible. Their actions sometimes border on the sadistic, and the client who is finally released on bail, fatigued, dehydrated and humiliated, vows never to go back.
Pretty innocuous, I'd say, and in a place where few people would have read it and fewer would have given it any thought.
But Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia's in-house flack, Alan Bernstein, got a burr under his saddle and rattled off an indignant letter to "Legal Assistant" at the firm:
So I hope you will live up to your principles by deleting from said web site this inflammatory and highly dubious statement: "The jail personnel, especially in Harris County, seem to take a perverse pleasure in making the jail visit as unpleasant as possible. Their actions sometimes border on the sadistic, and the client who is finally released on bail, fatigued, dehydrated and humiliated, vows never to go back." I've got to admit, there are some crafty "weasel words" in there. It says that jail personnel in Harris County "seem to" take a perverse pleasure in making the jail visit as unpleasant as possible. But the damage of an unproven allegation has been done regardless.
On U.S. v. Fricosu and Word Magic
To begin with, Judge Blackburn did not order Fricosu to decrypt her hard drive.
Why not? The obvious answer: because the government didn't ask him to.
What did the government ask him to do? It asked him to order Ms. Fricosu "to produce the unencrypted contents of the computer."
(In fact, the government asked for a writ under the All Writs Act, 28 USC 1651, requiring Ms. Fricosu to produce the unencrypted contents. Judge Blackburn cited two cases in support of his authority to enter such an order: United States v. New York Telephone Co., 434 U.S. 159, 172, 98 S.Ct. 364, 372, 54 L.Ed.2d 376 (1977), and In re Application of United States for an Order Authorizing Disclosure of Location Information of a Specified Wireless Telephone, – F.Supp.2d –, 2011 WL 3424470 at *44 (D. Md. Aug. 3, 2011) [actually 2011 WL 3423370]. Use of the All Writs Act to compel a defendant to cooperate with the government against himself appears to be novel.)
Unpublished Comments
"Blake Jamerson" (IP 75.148.128.34) writes in response to Andy Nolen: Total Fraud?:
Mr. Nolen is a wonderful attorney. Not only does he know the law but lives by the law. He helped my family and I with some valuable insight on my brother's case. He returned all my calls and would call me if he was running late to court. I understand not every one person is alike but doesnt mean that one's negative opinion is everyone's opinion.
I would have published this one without a second thought, except that the events that prompted the post to which this person was responding included Andy Nolen posting false reviews (positive for himself, negative for other criminal-defense lawyers) on the internet. So to confirm its authenticity, I emailed the address that "Blake Jamerson" left, and got a "recipient not found" error from the server. I found no case in Harris County in which Nolen represented a person named Jamerson.
Is this another instance of Andy Nolen using sockpuppets to market himself?
Joseph Rakofsky in the Happysphere
In the last couple of weeks we learned that two more of the Rakofsky v. Internet defendants had settled with Rakofsky-not with money, apparently, but by abasing themselves, their codefendants, and the First Amendment.
LisaLori Palmieri, who on 6 April 2011 wrote a dreadful piece of blatant marketing dreck (archive.org, via comments here) about Rakofsky's failure in the Deaner case...
It seems that neither Rakofsky's law degree nor common sense played a part in his preparation and delivery for this case. This is a perfect example of why choosing an experienced and legitimate Tampa criminal defense attorney [link to her main site] is very important (one that is Board Certified is even better).
...and who in May 2011 (after Joseph Rakofsky filed his lawsuit against Palmieri and seventy-three other defendants) used the suit as an excuse for another marketing foray (archive.org, again via Greenfield's commenters)...
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