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

I could have used the search box on this blog to locate the URL for an old post about Sharon Keller. Instead I went to Google, and typed in “I was wearing someone else’s pants”. I remembered those words in the title, and for something that odd, my post would be the first result, right?

Uh, no. Numero tres. Beaten out, at number two, by WikiAnswers - Can you get STDs by wearing someone else's pants? (Related link on the answer page… “Am I wearing pants?”)

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From Illegal Utah Marijuana Gardens Dot Com:

Did you know that marijuana is being illegally grown in Utah?

It is? Gee Wally, if I stumble across some marijuana when I’m out and about, what ever should I do?

If you think you have found an illegal marijuana garden, note the location either on a map or GPS unit. We will be able to find it either by latitude and longitude, or a place name.

Avoid any contact with the suspects who may be present and leave the area, undisturbed, as soon as possible. Contact us through this website or your local law enforcement, the sooner the better.

[Hat Tip: Robert Latham through the NORML listserv]

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I thought the doctors would be able to tell us whether my wife was carrying fraternal or identical twins. When she was pregnant with them. Wasn’t that something they could just know? Well, the answer was “not always”.

There are several ways of immediately identifying twins as dizygotic – that is, as coming from two separate eggs, aka fraternal – the most obvious being boy/girl. In our case, boy/boy, so that didn’t help. By the time of their birth, all other factors which could have marked them as fraternal were eliminated: placenta, inner amniotic and outer chorionic membranes, and same blood type. But what about separate sacs, don’t identicals share the same sac? Not for the super majority of monozygotes, and in fact it’s the rare same sac scenario that leads to such difficulties as conjoined twins. Thank goodness then, no confirmation there.

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Ran across Tamar Weinberg’s Techipedia via Simple Justice’s deconstruction of a comment on her post “The 7 Truths About Social Media Marketing”. SJ unfairly insists she is vapid, apparently missing out on gems like tip #4, “Social Media Is Social”. Perhaps she left out “Social Media Is Media” because everyone knows lists have to be in groups of seven or ten.

Personally, I was struck by these passages from tip number three, “Numbers Aren’t Everything”:

It’s more important to look at the holistic view of the individual or entity on Twitter and across other social channels. If someone has over 20,000 Twitter followers, how many people are they following?

Excellent. We’re going to get a holistic approach to figuring out whether someone is worthy of out Twitter attention. She then dissects folks into three categories of twitterers I should be wary of, based on their ratio of friends/followers. Group number one:

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My assistant just said, in a rather loud voice, "Hey, it's 4:20 on 4/20 guys!"  And I'm 99% sure she could pass a drug test.  Hmmmmmm.

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Tonight!  8 p.m.  Free.  At the Mohawk:  If you haven't caught it the first four times, you'll definitely want to go see Charlie Roadman's Marijuana Law for Musicians.

My excuse for the late posting is not that I'm forgetful.  Not at all.  I figured you wouldn't remember if it were mentioned too soon, therefore, a last minute reminder.  Review of the 2007 edition here, and it just keeps getting better every year.

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Tax day chatter from the NACDL listserv brought this item, from Page 1 of “Instructions for Form 1099-Misc,” to my attention:

Fees Paid to Informers. A payment made to an informer as an award, fee, or reward for information about criminal activity is not required to be reported if the payment is made by a federal, state or local government agency, or by a non-profit organization exempt from tax under 501(c)(3) that makes the payment to further the charitable purpose of lessening the burdens of government.

Wow. We are now paying so many confidential informants (wooops, I mean… “cooperating individuals”) that the issue of whether they must be 1099’d is addressed on the first page of the instructions.

[Update: since initial posting, Greenfield elaborates, "A Nation Of Rats"]

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From D.A. Confidential: at least we aren’t civil lawyers.

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Those who are interested in the history of law could do much worse than to read the letters of Pliny the Younger*. The second century Roman lawyer and magistrate’s letters are still preserved in near perfect form; the most famous of these is Epistle #10 to the Emperor Trajan.

Written in 112 C.E. – aka A.D. - its primary interest to most historians is that it’s the first written mention of Christians outside of the Bible (and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the non-canonized Gospels, etc. – in other words, the first “pagan” reference). Pliny asks Trajan what he should do: should he execute these pesky Christians whose crimes don’t include any sort of rabble rousing or trouble making but simply refusing to worship correctly?

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Amazon has an annoying (and highly profitable) habit of suggesting books I might like, based on my past searches and purchase history. Occasionally their software for figuring out what else they can sucker me into impulse buying goes horribly wrong, often with amusing results. Here’s a recent example:

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From The Tao Of Criminal Defense Trial Lawyering, No Balm In Gilead:

Up through law school, we’re taught that the American criminal justice system is a wonderful thing. The organized bar—the ABA, local and state bar associations—pushes the same propaganda. It’s a lie.

The truth is that, while it may be better than any other system yet created, the U.S. criminal justice system objectively sucks. Factually-innocent people get punished every day. Pleas are coerced. Insane people get punished for doing insane things. Crappy lawyers take people’s lives in their hands. Children get treated as adults. Adults with the minds of children get treated as adults. Wealthy defendants get more justice than poor defendants. [emphasis added]

That’s a Tiger Woods crazy-long list of serious problems for a system that might be the best in the world. Worse still, it’s non-exhaustive, easily modifiable by the phrase “including, but not limited to”. So are we the best?

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I’ve always said that they’re either identicals with a few physical differences, or fraternals that look an awful lot alike. I’ll explain, perhaps, in a later post how it is that after more than three years we still weren’t sure, but for now, the results:

Dear Mr. Spencer:

Our laboratory has successfully completed your zygosity test and your test results have been mailed. Thank you for your interest in our zygosity testing services. As requested when you placed your order, we have included a copy of your test results in this email.

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