Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | May 30, 2010
New second-career criminal-defense lawyer desperately in need of a mentor Joe Attorney writes: [Reptile] is not a technique I could comfortably embrace. It suggests we should manipulate the more primitive emotions and parts of the brain to gain the desired result. To me it suggests that lawyers should worry more about ends than the means. [...]
Mark Bennett | May 28, 2010
For some reason, it happens in May: criminal-defense lawyers' fancies turn to . . . getting paid. This time 'round, Norm Pattis started it with Flat Fees, Black Holes, and the Value of Chaos: There are cross-cutting incentives in a flat-fee case. The client has paid for a lawyer and wants her expectations, no matter [...]
Mark Bennett | May 26, 2010
It's hard to find Beaumont senior district court judge Larry Gist's party affiliation. He gave $250 to Republican Ted Poe's reelection campaign in 2009; he has a jail named after him; he jokingly refers to his progressive son as "my son the communist." I would guess "Republican," but he may be some species of East Texas [...]
Mark Bennett | May 26, 2010
Five things that make me want to cover my ears and shout "la-la-la-I'm-not-listening" over and over instead of blogging: What Texas wants to teach my kids—and yours (New York Times). Eric Holder hinting that the administration might support expanding the Quarles "public safety" exception to Miranda (WSJ). Arizona's new immigration law (New York Times). Great [...]
Mark Bennett | May 25, 2010
From a civilian’s comment on this post about “John R.,” the anonymous Rochester, New York personal injury lawyer who dabbles in criminal defense and scoffs at the Bill of Rights: I understand John R.’s position as it relates to United States of America jurisprudence. The legal system is heavily stacked in favor of the government [...]
Mark Bennett | May 22, 2010
Here's why I don't allow anonymous comments here: In my opinion there's only one way to reliably win for a criminal defendant at trial: you have some evidence that is devastating to the prosecution's case, you disguise it so that neither the judge nor the prosecutor knows what its significance is, you get it into [...]
Mark Bennett | May 20, 2010
Why have I been repeating for three years (okay, for a lot longer than that) that lawyers should not waive detention hearings without good reason and that good reason means "because having a detention hearing will prejudice the accused"? Because better representation in a federal criminal case begins with a detention hearing, and for some [...]
Mark Bennett | May 19, 2010
Some years ago I got a call from a bureaucrat with the federal courts here in town: would I like to help handle the illegal reentry docket? By "handle the illegal reentry docket," I thought she meant, "defend people charged with illegal reentry"—I'm one of the few federal criminal-defense lawyers in Houston who speak Spanish [...]
Mark Bennett | May 18, 2010
Old-time West Texas judges used to travel the circuit with a single law book (and they were still better-read than most modern Texas judges. . .). If you had to preserve a single criminal-law volume so that the American criminal justice system would survive, what would you choose? If civilization were crumbling around our ears [...]
Mark Bennett | May 18, 2010
In 2007 years ago, when Pennsylvania decided to prosecute William Barnes 40 years after the fact for the murder of William Barclay, after Barnes had already served a prison sentence for the attempted murder of Barclay, I asked (Gideon reminds me now), "How does a conviction for attempted murder not jeopardy-bar a prosecution for murder [...]
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