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D.A. Confidential is outed by the Austin American Statesman:

Mark Pryor said that friends, neighbors and fellow lawyers regularly ask him about his job as a felony prosecutor in Travis County.

And the former newspaper reporter, who hopes to soon be a published novelist, loves to write.

So Pryor began a blog last month called D.A. Confidential, which he hopes will give readers insight into the local criminal justice system and will be a fun place to read his take on stupid criminals, novel crimes, crime novels and related things.

Far as I could tell, everyone in the courthouse already knew.

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Couldn't you save even more money by not buying junk you don't need in the first place?

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One of Sam’s teachers told me that he was the class clown. (When my wife was told the same thing at a parent-teacher conference, she said it must be genetic.)

Sounded possibly like a bad review of his behavior, but the teacher assured me that it wasn’t, that he just says things that make even his teachers laugh. And apparently at a much greater rate than most 3 year olds.

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I’ve been busy burying myself in the finer details of achieving a one word verdict, and wholly neglected to point folks to this week’s edition of Blawg Review.

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A scene from “Marijuana Inc.: Inside America’s Pot Industry” included a mini-tour of Oaksterdam University, which promotes itself as the first cannabis college, providing entrepreneurs with the “highest quality training” to enter California’s burgeoning marijuana dispensary business. On several walls were large red signs with yellow letters proclaiming:

Jurors Can Not Be Punished For Their Verdicts

An advertisement for jury nullification, albeit when considering the location, most likely preaching to the choir, or viewed more cynically, meant to assuage students’ doubts about the likelihood of a successful federal prosecution.

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Houston criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett makes sure he follows through on those pesky little certificates of service, because he doesn’t want to be accused of a criminal offense, say, tampering with a governmental record. So when a prosecutor filed a motion, and swore s/he had served Mark but hadn’t, he asked:

Are you laboring under the delusive belief that [the D.A.] won’t file charges against you?

I'm pretty sure the prosecutor was laboring under the 100% correct belief that charges won’t be filed.
 

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The Drug Policy Alliance released a paper last week, “Healing a Broken System: Veterans Battling Addiction and Incarceration”. One of several recommendations:

State and federal governments must modify sentencing statutes and improve court ordered drug diversion programs to better treat – rather than criminalize and incarcerate – veterans who commit non-violent drug related crimes.

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United States v. Ortega Reyna, 148 F.3d 540 (5th Circuit 1998):

After examining each piece of evidence from that perspective, we conclude that, like Newton's Third Law, for every inference of guilt that may be drawn from the evidence, there is an equal and opposite benign inference to be drawn.

A beautiful turn of phrase (but see my other concerns), Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion, colloquially stated as “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

Jesus Ortega Reyna appealed his 130 month sentence for possession with intent to distribute heroin and amphetamines, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). His sole point of appeal: insufficiency of the evidence.

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Paintings and sketchings from a Travis County prosecutor whose blog says she wants to work as a courtroom artist when she retires.  Primarily not courthouse related stuff, but there's plenty of that in there too.

Lots of good work: for example, in the second sketch, the person on the left could be a prosecutor or defense lawyer that I don’t recognize from behind, but that’s unmistakably Judge Kocurek in the middle.

[H/T: D.A. Confidential “Not Your Usual Sketch Artist”]

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From my recently kindled copy of Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman is interviewing Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker, on the subject of interviewing people:

What’s more interesting to you: someone who lies consciously, someone who lies unconsciously, or someone who tells a relatively mundane version of the truth?

Here’s a snippet of Morris’ answer:

…I read a piece about modern forms of lie detection – methods that go beyond the polygraph. The writer’s idea was that we can actually record activity inside the brain that proves who is or who isn’t lying.

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From the San Francisco Chronicle article “Report: Pot use, arrests rising in California”:

Marijuana arrests in California are increasing faster than the nationwide rate, and African Americans are being booked for pot-related crimes much more often than whites, a new report says.

But despite the rise in arrests and in the seizure of marijuana plants, use of pot in California has increased slightly, said the report, part of a nationwide study released Thursday by a Virginia researcher.

Isn’t arresting folks for marijuana possession supposed to discourage use?

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From an email several months back:

Writing on behalf of my son. We are completely frustrated with our attorney choice.

They told us 99% it would be dismissed in our first meeting. Court date arrives and then a new attorney starts on the case. There was no hope it would be dismissed.

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Anyone searching for a niche blog topic could do well blogging about contempt of court. Stories like these are getting more and more common (even if this one is beyond the pale):

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