The Grumpy-Cat Rule
From the San Antonio Court of Appeals’ opinion in Ex Parte Thompson (PDF), which is before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on discretionary review (and will be argued tomorrow morning by Don...
View ArticleThe State’s Argument in Ex Parte Thompson
Ronald Thompson was arrested last September for taking photographs of swimsuit-clad children at Sea World in San Antonio. He was charged with violating Texas’s improper photography statute: A person...
View ArticleMark Sandoval and Christopher Ernest Braughton (Updated)
Emanuel Dominguez’s fiancée, Jessica Cavender—a Marine like Emmanuel—was nowhere near when, according to this account, “Emmanuel Dominguez began backing away with his hands in the air when [Christopher...
View ArticleVindication
Five years ago, in February 2009 I filed an application for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a guy—we’ll call him Mr. Doe—who had been on probation since 2006 for online solicitation of a child under...
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Moron Dallas Lawyer Everett Newton
A caller today said, “I heard that you got part of the Online Solicitation of a Minor statute held unconstitutional, but I know that decision doesn’t apply to distributing sexually explicit material to...
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Class Acts
Copyright © 2013 Houston criminal-defense lawyer Mark Bennett. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in...
View ArticleSacred Duty
I have tried a bunch of cases, and pled more. Win or lose, clients whose cases I’ve tried have almost universally been happy afterwards. Clients whose cases I’ve pled are often unhappy afterwards. The...
View ArticleKarenev Starts to Crumble
Harris County Assistant PD Nick Hughes had a huge win in the First Court of Appeals on Schuster v. State. Mr. Schuster had pled guilty to online solicitation of a minor by explicit communication,...
View ArticleAnother Bad Texas Statute
I had filed a pretrial writ of habeas corpus challenging Texas’s Online Impersonation statute on First Amendment grounds. The prosecutor agreed with me off the record, dismissed the case, and instead...
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Victimocracy is for Sociopaths
After reading Martha Stout’s 2006 The Sociopath Next Door recently I’ve been thinking a great deal about sociopaths. Stout contends that four percent of the U.S. population are sociopaths, people...
View ArticleProgramming Note
The original version of this post included two lawyers who had cried “victim.” I identified neither; only a very small group (six people) knew who both were; those six already knew my opinion. While I...
View ArticleStupid Lawyer-Email Disclaimer
I noticed this at the bottom of an email from a lawyer on a First Amendment civil case (he’s suing, I’m defending): NOTICE OF DISCLAIMERS & CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENT NOT TO REMOVE DISCLAIMERS: This...
View ArticleWhere Improv and Lawyering Meet
I’ve started taking improvisational theater classes again, now at The Station Theater, about halfway between my house and my downtown office. (I took classes at ComedySportz and at Bay Area Theater...
View ArticleVictimocracy Because Reasons
In There’s No “Ick” in Victim, in which she lauds victims for speaking up, Brooklyn lawyer1 C.A. Goldberg turns her truly dizzying intellect my way: Then you have the George Wills and Mark Bennetts of...
View ArticleThe Psychology of Expensive Paper
I use 28-pound printer paper for my pleadings. Have done for years. Judges and prosecutors often notice the paper: it’s heavy, stiff, and smooth. It also costs almost four times times as much as cheap...
View ArticleTexas Criminal First Amendment Action
Here’s a survey of what’s going on in Texas with regard to the First Amendment in criminal cases: Texas Penal Code Section 33.021(b) (online solicitation by explicit communication) was held...
View ArticleOn Twitter, Be Your Own Censor.
When I saw this Polygon post last month, about how Twitter “gives so little attention to the now-routine harassment experienced by so many members of the service” because “it drives engagement,” I...
View ArticleFree to Be Stupid
You think it’s insane that Arizona allows a 9-year-old to shoot at a firing range? ABC News reports that one in Texas allows them to do so at age 6. -Leonard Pitts, Jr. So we make the leap from dumbass...
View Article¡Justice, Sí, Safety, No!
Harris County District Judge Katherine Cabaniss’s email pleading for votes in the popularity contest that is the Houston Bar Association’s Judicial Preference Poll (via Robb Fickman, who I hope will...
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Robert S. Bennett (Absolutely No Relation)
I’ve written about Robert S. Bennett from time to time, and I’m not impressed by him. But neither was I impressed with the State Bar’s effort to disbar him, which effort succeeded in March. Robert S....
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