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5th (and Final?) Annual Criminal-Law Blog Post of the Year
Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield is taking nominations for the 5th Annual Jdog Memorial Best Criminal Law Blawg Post: It’s that time of year again! Time to recognize the effort and...
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A Few Words for Dr. Michael Parsa
Most Western European and North American social and medical systems operate under the primary ethical principle of autonomy. This principle allows the individual to determine the degree to which he or...
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Everyone Hiring a Criminal-Defense Lawyer Should Read This
In Casual cruelty–part two Judge Kopf mentioned “Abraham S. Blumberg’s 1967 classic entitled The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game: Organizational Cooptation of a Profession.” Confidence games, law,...
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Avoiding the Criminal-Defense Confidence Game
In The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game: Organizational Cooptation of a Profession, Abraham S. Blumberg’s major thesis is that criminal-defense lawyers are turned from their duties to the...
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In Comal County, a Big Deal for Indigent Defense
Following on my last two posts… The complicated problem is that the Gideon decision created attorney-client relationships barely worthy of the name, between lawyers with conflicting incentives and...
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Trial Lawyers of the World, Unite!
Today in the UK, criminal barristers stopped work for the morning. (Don’t call it a strike.) The non-strike was prompted by the government, falsely representing the criminal bar as well-paid fat cats...
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SWRVs Hate Truth
Harris County DA Devon Anderson, in response to President Obama’s comment that marijuana isn’t more dangerous than alcohol, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer,” issued a press release....
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Fake Carl Ceder
I took all of Carl Ceder’s writings—blog comments and emails—from here, here, and here, and used them as the input to Dr. Nerve’s Markov Page. You might be able to distinguish the result from Carl’s...
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Bring a First Aid Kit: Online Damage Control for Lawyers
I tried to help the kid. Truly I did. I reached out to him through a mutual friend and told him, “you can salvage this. Apologize.” Things got worse for him. I emailed him directly, asked him to call...
View ArticleGreat Cicero’s Ghost
Three questions a criminal-defense lawyer should ask herself when considering action in aid of the defense in a criminal case: Is the action effective?; Is the action legal?; and Is the action ethical?...
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It’s All Connected
Launch Next, the lawyer has to actually start jury selection. It is important for the trial to get off to a good start, and for this reason few lawyers rely purely on improvisation at this early stage....
View ArticleZealous Representation: Not an Option
Max Kennerly asks: Is A Lawyer Ever Required To Present An Argument They Don’t Believe? The answer to the question is, to any true Scotsman criminal-defense lawyer, “absolutely.” We don’t decide...
View ArticleArizona’s Revenge-Porn Bill, HB 2515
Arizona HB2515: AN ACT AMENDING TITLE 13, CHAPTER 14, ARIZONA REVISED STATUTES, BY ADDING SECTION 13?1425; RELATING TO sexual offenses. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona: Section...
View ArticleLying Law Prof Mary Anne Franks Comes to Town
Thanks to the Houston Chronicle, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative activist Mary Anne Franks got to bring her special brand of authoritarianism to my neck of the woods: Franks dismissed claims by some...
View ArticleIn Which I Am Not Happy With Steve Greenleaf
A few days ago, I wrote a post, Great Cicero’s Ghost. It was part of a discussion of legal ethics, causes, and conflicts of interest, arising from this post by Charles Thomas (which in turn arose from...
View ArticleTrue Believers Redux
Six and a half years ago Scott Greenfield wrote The Fallacy of True Believers, about the danger of true believers: But Bill [Kunstler] was a scary guy. Bill was a true believer in the cause, not that...
View ArticleDirty-Talk Statute Dead in Texas, and a Misquote
This morning the Court of Criminal Appeals denied the State’s Motion for Rehearing (PDF) in my case invalidating Section 33.021(b) of the Texas Penal Code. The court pointedly ignored the Attorney...
View ArticleThe Ethics of Decolletage
My Three Commandments of Criminal-Defense Ethics: I. Thou shalt not break the law. II. Thou shalt put thine client’s interests above all else. III. There will be times when (I) and (II) seem to clash;...
View ArticleHarris County Criminal-Defense Residency
From Scott Ehlers at the Harris County Public Defender’s Office: The Harris County Public Defender’s Office received a grant from the Department of Justice to establish the Future Appointed Counsel...
View ArticleTexas Rules of Appellate Procedure
I couldn’t find the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure online in HTML format—only in PDF format—so I created them. You’re welcome. Copyright © 2013 Houston criminal-defense lawyer Mark Bennett. This...
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