Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | July 14, 2010
Texas’s highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, has held, in Stearnes v. Clinton, that a rule barring defense counsel from talking to some witnesses without the prosecutor’s presence “is not only in conflict with principles of fair play, but in direct conflict with defense counsel’s responsibility to seek out and interview potential witnesses.” [...]
Mark Bennett | July 13, 2010
It’s not that he loves his job: I could have been a contender instead of what I am, a document review attorney. (Twitter.) Nor that he enjoys it: What’s new in the contract attorney world? I hope you guys/ladies having a better time of it than me. (Twitter.) It’s not just that it’s fulfilling: The [...]
Mark Bennett | July 9, 2010
"Watch this, Mark. I'm going to lie to the judge just to show you that I can." That's not exactly what she said. This morning The Snake was seeking a delay of the trial (set next Monday) of a case in which she's prosecuting a client of mine. This was her second motion for a [...]
Mark Bennett | July 9, 2010
I am sorely tempted today to write about The Clown and The Snake—the incompetent, biased judge and the lying prosecutor—and use their names, creating a permanent googleable record. There would be good in it. The voters should know about The Clown, and if he knew that his hijinks might be published, it's not unimaginable that [...]
Mark Bennett | July 7, 2010
After twelve days of trial and deliberation, the jury found my client guilty of tampering with physical evidence. Now, ordinarily I figure that going and talking to a jury after a trial is a good way to get lied to, but here we had what I felt was a full and fair exchange of views. [...]
Mark Bennett | July 6, 2010
But I also recognize that my life experience is different from that of most African-Americans. And that experience allows me both the luxury of seeing people without the lens of race, but also (sometimes) to fail to imagine how people of other backgrounds might interpret my words. That's Kathleen Parker, in her column published in [...]
Mark Bennett | July 4, 2010
"Common sense" has nothing to do with it. The words do not appear in a Texas criminal jury charge. The existence of jury trials is not common sense. The presumption of innocence is not common sense. Requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not common sense. If any of these concepts were common sense, everyone [...]
Mark Bennett | July 4, 2010
Read the Declaration of Independence (I republish it here every year). The founders were not always patriots. They began as traitors, risking everything to sever their ties with the government that was supposed to keep them safe but that broke that promise and stole their freedom. America didn't become independent in the first week of [...]
Mark Bennett | July 4, 2010
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the [...]
Mark Bennett | July 2, 2010
Law student Laura McWilliams, blogging at Really? Law? (go ahead and add it to your feedreader now—done?—great), writes here and here about the thought process that has her leaning toward an eventual job prosecuting people. From the first post: In an idealist vision, (let’s just go with it; there’s nothing wrong with a little idealism) [...]
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