Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | January 29, 2009
Today I had the great pleasure of dealing with one of Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos’s new prosecutors, hired from outside the practice of criminal law. I was sitting in the jury room behind a felony court, hanging out with my fellow criminal lawyers (defense and prosecution), waiting for a prosecutor from the child [...]
Mark Bennett | January 29, 2009
CharonQC’s podcast interview with U.S. District Judge John L. Kane of the District of Colorado. Judge Kane (not a fuzzy thinker) has some strong words against the “War on Drugs” and the politicians who have not yet caught on that the war on drugs has failed, cannot be won, and could never be won; and [...]
Mark Bennett | January 28, 2009
Houston Press article describing Houston criminal-defense lawyer Murray Newman’s blog as “A Digital Bathroom Wall for Pat Lykos“. As rumors spread of continued purges, of internal memos being distributed “Re: unprofessionalism of reading toxic antiregime blogs at work” and of investigations being conducted regarding improper use of county computers, Newman predicted that his former colleagues [...]
Mark Bennett | January 28, 2009
From a Defending People reader’s description of his experience with the criminal justice system: So, I got a good attorney. My bond was $5,000, and I was out for almost a year keeping my nose clean. Then he called me in and announced that he couldn’t do anything for me and that I was getting [...]
Mark Bennett | January 28, 2009
Telephone message from Terry Fifer, Tel. 480-345-3324: “New case — an injury that I was involved in. Please call me.” Since a) I don’t take injury cases; b) this is an out-of-town number; and c) the call went directly to my answering service (a listed number, but not one that I give out, so that [...]
Mark Bennett | January 27, 2009
The new edition of the American Society of Trial Consultants The Jury Expert is out. I’ll be paying special attention to Gail Herde’s Take Me to Your Leader: An Examination of Authoritarianism as an Indicator of Juror Bias. I think authoritarianism might be what I’m trying to get at with this scaled jury question; I [...]
Mark Bennett | January 26, 2009
A comment, in response to the Houston Chronicle’s front-page article today about the possible release, on PR bonds, of low-risk pretrial detainees (which article incorrectly describes the accused as “offenders”): This is a horrible idea! Releasing them on PR bonds defeats the purpose of tough justice. We need to keep them there so that we [...]
Mark Bennett | January 26, 2009
From a post, The Nature of the Job, last October: Clients sometimes think that they want a lawyer who will act unethically for them, but they don’t: first, because a defense based on lies is almost always doomed to fail; and second, because clients need lawyers they can trust. Unethical lawyers are . . . [...]
Mark Bennett | January 26, 2009
I asked regular reader Interested Counsel, a British criminal-law barrister, for a list of points that he found interesting or was curious about regarding the U.S. criminal justice system. He obliged me, prefacing his email: It is clear here that the Ministry of Justice is enamoured of all things American. It is easy for us [...]
Mark Bennett | January 25, 2009
Keith Hampton’s editorial in today’s Austin American-Statesman contrasts Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg’s new policy of providing defense lawyers with copies of offense reports with Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley’s policy of not allowing defense lawyers to see offense reports: In leading the way on this cost-saving measure, Lehmberg also reaffirmed the fundamentals [...]
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