Four Austin Police officers in the news recently for improper use of Department computers received their punishment last Friday, ranging from 5 to 45 days leave without pay and in some cases a demotion.
The allegations involved looking at porn or “other inappropriate material” on the internet or through email, and that frankly sounds
There is (justifiably) much talk in the blogosphere these days about how the firing fiasco scandal is effecting the “image” of the Department of Justice. But there’s really more to this than partisan political shenanigans. (Again, I don’t mean to downplay the importance of it; I’m just trying to talk about a bigger overall issue.)
Michael
Tom McKenna writes that when it comes to court appointed compensation for lawyers, the proof is in the pudding. Attorneys wouldn’t do it if they weren’t making a profit, right?
For every under-compensated case there might be ten that are adequately or even over-compensated. That is, since the vast majority of criminal cases are uncontested
Too often the phrase “splitting the baby” is equated with justice. And sometimes the arbiters of justice in our modern world (judges) believe that giving something to both parties involved in a dispute is the wise and fair thing to do, after all, that’s the Wisdom of Solomon, isn’t it? Well, let’s see…
Two women having recently
“Should I be a prosecutor or a defense attorney?”, someone googled, and for whatever unknown reason, this site popped up.
Well, I don’t know the motivation for the question, so I suppose it’s difficult to answer, but I’ll say this: there are a lot of practicing criminal defense lawyers who started by prosecuting
OK. I guess we all were – at least those who are Web 2.0 participants – which includes commenting on blogs (**hint hint**), even if you don’t have one of your own. From the article:
It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and
Voluntary Intoxication is not a defense to any crime in Texas (nor probably anywhere else). And we often see that it’s not a defense in the court of public opinion either. Anytime the media reports that a defendant is trying to blame, excuse or even mitigate his criminal behavior sue to alcohol or alcoholism, we see a
The Austin American Statesman ran an article today called “Unlicensed Drivers Clog System”. The short version of it is this: in 2003, the Texas Legislature needed to pull an accounting trick out of their hat, so that they could comply with the Texas Constitution’s balanced budget requirement. (See 2003 Budget Statement by Texas Comptroller.)
Within today’s New York Times most emailed articles is this gem: Expunged Criminal Records Live to Tell Tales. It chronicles the difficulties folks have when facing an employer armed with a criminal background check when they have a minor offense on their record, and even when they were granted an expunction.
(R)eal expungement is becoming
Also known as “Your Tax Dollars at Work”, Austin, Texas’ own KEYE news reports on the latest and greatest of Sting Operations out of Dallas:
Since January, arrests in sting operations featuring female officers posing as prostitutes are up 300 percent citywide. In the first nine months of 2005, there were about 141 arrests