Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer : Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Jamie Spencer Law Firm : DWI, DUI, Drug Possession : Serving Georgetown, Round Rock, San Marcos, Travis, Williamson, and Hays County, Texas

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.

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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.

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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.
 

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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?

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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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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:

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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?
 

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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.

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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?

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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:

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.

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