Best Law Blog Name I've Seen In Awhile
I’ve got to come up with a good name for this blog. Any suggestions?
Rick Perry's Definition of "More Harm Than Good"
The Governor’s reason for vetoing the expunction bill:
House Bill No. 3481 would authorize the expunction of criminal records, including law enforcement case files, 180 days after an arrest if no formal misdemeanor or felony charges have been filed. Current statutory provisions require that the statute of limitations for the particular offense, usually at least two years, expire before criminal records may be destroyed, including in cases involving misdemeanor offenses.
Actually, those statutory provisions were not put in place to deny folks the opportunity to expunge dismissed cases. It was the activist (as well as 100% Republican) Texas Supreme Court decision, State v. Beam, that incorrectly interpreted the legislature’s 2001 amendment’s to Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 55.01 dealing with expunctions.
Continue Reading...Signs of the Times
No texting in court. Reminds me of back when I started practicing(1997), cell phones were just becoming common in every day life. More and more lawyers were changing out their pagers for cell phones.
In those dark ages, however, every phone’s ring sounded virtually identical. You didn’t have several options, just the default; and you sure couldn’t download the latest Britney Spears tune as your ringtone.
Continue Reading..."I Could Be Doing Real Police Work"
Quoting a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Nicholas Kristof sees the light in the cleverly and accurately titled “Drugs Won the War”:
He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.
“I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana,” he recalled. “I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him to jail on a felony charge.” The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr. Stamper suddenly had an “aha!” moment: “I could be doing real police work.”
Also see Dallas criminal defense lawyer Robert Guest’s frequent posts re: opportunity cost.
Deterrence, Retribution or Rehabilitation?
From the New York Times:
On Monday, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, sentenced a former senior pharmaceutical executive to write a book.
Earlier this year the executive had pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the federal government about the company’s efforts to resolve a patent dispute over the blood thinner Plavix.
So as part of his federal misdemeanor probation, the defendant must write a book. About what, and for what purpose?
Continue Reading...De Facto Legalization of Prostitution?
Mike, of Crime and Federalism, reads an article about sex trafficking, “San Francisco Is A Major Center For International Crime Networks That Smuggle And Enslave”, and proclaims:
I'd always said, gee, of course prostitution should be legal. I'm changing my mind. San Francisco has de facto legalized prostitution. You can go to MyRedBook.com to read reviews of "massage parlors." Prostitution is, more-or-less, legal.
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A Citizen of the World
From Newt Gingrich’s speech last night at some important fancy-shmancy Republican Party fundraiser:
Let me be clear about this: I am not a citizen of the world… I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous.
He’s taking dead aim at this portion of Obama’s July 2008 Berlin speech:
Continue Reading...The Smell of Books
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I’ve read 5 books so far on my new toy, and expect to write a review of the Kindle soon. Assuming I ever get around to posting it, one of my few complaints, and an unfair one at that, will be that it just doesn’t feel like a book. I knew that, of course, before purchasing it and actually I’ve gotten pretty used to holding it and using it as “a book”.
On a related topic, ACDL reader Arsenic Julep (aka “my sister”) sent me this link:
Moving to an e-book reader can be a delight, but some of us enjoy the experience of books as well as the text inside. If you’re a reader of new books and love that freshly-cut-and-bleached paper smell, they’ve got a spray for that. You can get it here; you can also go to the devil for all I care, because I prefer the “Classic Musty,” which is what my apartment smells like with all these centenarian buckram and leather editions laying around.
I also enjoy breaking the back of a new book, stretching it in all the right places to make it appropriately “bendy”. Think someone’s gonna make a can of that for the Kindle?
May 35th, 1989
I’m no First Amendment scholar, but I’ll lay donuts to dollars that versus freedom of speech and freedom of religion, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is the least litigated of the First Amendment’s three spheres of protection**.
The reason for that? My uneducated off-the-cuff guess would be that while the majority always rules the legislative branch, it’s easy for them to forget that only unpopular and therefore minority speech needs protection. Ergo lawsuit. And inherent tensions between the free exercise and establishment clauses of freedom of religion simply demand litigation. It’s enivitable.
Continue Reading...Bing-O
Any other referrer watchers out there getting flooded with searches from Bing?
It could be that the new Microsoft search engine (some say the name BING is an acronym for But It’s Not Google) is simply getting the initial benefit from curious internet users, and that Google will keep increasing its stranglehold on search.
But so far, the new site seems to be getting good reviews. I'm torn between two competing instincts: (a) my need to at least try out the newest techie thing, and (b) my desire not to contribute to the global Microsoft monopoly. I guess I'll go mess around with it, with full intentions of returning to the Google. Am I playing with fire?
Continue Reading...Kill Him Already
It’s been twenty years. Two years after the 1989 murder of a Georgia police officer, Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the crime. He has still, eighteen long years later, still not been executed.
Former federal prosecutor and noted softie Bob Barr writes an op-ed piece in the NYT:
Continue Reading...There is no abuse of government power more egregious than executing an innocent man. But that is exactly what may happen if the United States Supreme Court fails to intervene on behalf of Troy Davis.
Mr. Davis is facing execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga., even though seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony against him. Many of these witnesses now say they were pressured into testifying falsely against him by police officers who were understandably eager to convict someone for killing a comrade. No court has ever heard the evidence of Mr. Davis’s innocence.
Come Senators, Congressman, Please Heed The Call
The political landscape is shifting. Perhaps slowly, but the numbers don’t lie.
The first elected official who ever made the case to me for legalizing gay marriage — and maybe the last, come to think of it — was Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota…
His libertarian philosophy extended to social issues, on which Ventura, who counted gay men among his closest aides and friends, said government had no business intruding.
As the governor told me then, he didn’t care what the gay couple next door were doing in the privacy of their home, including hanging up a marriage certificate, just as he didn’t think anyone should pester him about keeping a gun in his nightstand.
From last week’s NYT Magazine article “Queer Developments”, by Matt Bai. Same source, the percentage of respondents, by age, who agree that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is discrimination, by age:
Continue Reading...A Good Lawyer Is A (Very Very) Busy Lawyer
Starting with a little free market theory, let’s assume that he who builds the best mousetrap will eventually dominate the mousetrap industry. (I don’t insist that this is so; just throwing it out there to start the post.)
It follows therefore, that in the service industry, the better services you provide, the more customers will come your way. Surely then, the best way to measure the worth of a lawyer is by the number of his clients.
From a Houston Chronicle article on overworked defense lawyers comes this line:
Some felony cases are resolved in minutes.
It’s a true statement, sad but true. I actually can't tell if the author of the article is using the factual accuracy of the statement to justify the result. According to the article, one lawyer in Houston has accepted representation of 360 felony cases or more, every year, presumably for years. In a recent post, “It All Adds Up To Incompetence”, Houston defense lawyer Paul Kennedy breaks down the math:
Continue Reading...There are 52 weeks in a year and five working days in a week. That's a maximum of 260 days at the courthouse -- not counting holidays. That means that [this lawyer] accepts, on average, at least 1.3 felony cases a day, every day. There is no way a competent attorney can provide meaningful representation to his clients working that type of case load.
Clarity From Ambiguity
George Mason University School of Law Assistant Professor Neomi Rao writes a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece suggesting questions for recent Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings. She notes that:
[A] great deal of law is made (and unmade) when the court interprets statutes…
Statutes are enacted through a difficult constitutional process. They require passage by the House and Senate and the president's signature.
Justice Antonin Scalia argues that this finely wrought procedure requires judges to stick to the text of statutes and follow their plain meaning. Justice Stephen Breyer has argued, to the contrary, that judges should interpret statutes pragmatically to promote good consequences.
Ms. Sotomayor needs to identify where she lies on this spectrum.
If it’s not obvious out of context – or from the fact that this is published in the WSJ – read the whole thing, and you’ll easily conclude that Rao favors the Scalia model. Not surprising for a former associate counsel and special assistant to George W. Bush. The closer you are to the Scalia portion of the “spectrum” the more worthy you are of confirmation.
“Follow the plain meaning” – makes sense, judges are there not to make the law, but to interpret it… we all learned that in third grade.
Let’s back up however. What question was it that Rao thinks Sotomayor should be asked, where her response should be the Scaliaesque “plain meaning” answer?
The question itself, an ellipsis, and the Scalia portion of her answer, repeated for emphasis, follows:
What is the court's role when interpreting ambiguous laws?
… Scalia argues that this finely wrought procedure requires judges to stick to the text of statutes and follow their plain meaning...
If a nominee is asked how they should interpret an ambiguous law, and they seriously respond “by following the plain meaning of the statute”, they should be disqualified on the grounds of stupidity.
You've Just Been Acquitted
“Helio Castroneves, you’ve just been acquitted of Federal income tax evasion charges, what are you going to do next??”
“I’m going to win the Indy 500!”
Congrats.
"Are Those Your Grades? You Can't Do That..."
So said Ally Sheedy to Matthew Broderick around the 2 minute mark of this clip in WarGames, as he hacks into the school’s computer and changes his F to an A.
Continue Reading...She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie
99% chance this turns out to be (a) bogus or (b) no different than anywhere else, but:
A study commissioned by the Spanish government to monitor that country's air quality has reported what most European travelers already knew: Their entire country is just one enormous coke den. Like, you can breathe it!
Continue Reading...Reports MSNBC:
A new study has found the air in Madrid and Barcelona is laced with at least five drugs - most prominently cocaine.
It's About Time (Baby Steps Edition)
From tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal headlines:
Continue Reading...Premier anti-“Drug War” crusader Pete Guither wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
Guither said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.
Drunk? In Court?
Houston lawyer Tom Kirkendall figured that since the first thirty years of his law practice hadn’t provided him with the opportunity to watch one federal judge sentence another one to prison that he ought to carve out some time to go watch today’s Samuel Kent sentencing. Some snippets from Tom’s report:
We also learned tidbits of information that likely would have been already been revealed had Judge Vinson not maintained such tight control over information…
Do Ask, Do Tell
From It’s A Complete Outrage:
Lieutenant Daniel Choi, a founding member of Knights Out, an organization of out lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) West Point Alumni, received a letter from the Department of the Army on April 23, discharging him from the Army due to his sexual orientation…
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