Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

Kimberlin v. Internet: Not a Partisan Issue

| May 31, 2012

Ken at Pope­hat, writ­ing about attacks on crit­ics of Speed­way Bomber Brett Kim­ber­lin: This is about everybody’s rights, not just the rights and inter­ests of “con­ser­v­a­tives” or any other polit­i­cal group. We need to tran­scend par­ti­san­ship over this — con­ser­v­a­tives need to tran­scend it because mak­ing this par­ti­san will mar­gin­al­ize the sit­u­a­tion, and lib­er­als and […]

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The Popehat Signal

| May 30, 2012

Ken at Pope­hat needs “a fed­eral crim­i­nal prac­ti­tioner in the Mid­dle Dis­trict of Florida, or admit­ted there and famil­iar with its courts….to help and advise a blog­ger who is being unjustly threat­ened with crim­i­nal consequences….because of what he has writ­ten about Brett Kim­ber­lin and his crew…. I also need some­one in the Mid­dle Dis­trict of Tennessee, […]

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Vial = Trial

| May 30, 2012

Texas coun­ties are mov­ing toward get­ting blood tests for alco­hol in more DWI cases. Tar­rant County pros­e­cu­tor (and some­time Defend­ing Peo­ple com­menter) Richard Alpert likes to say, “If it bleeds, it pleads.” That does not need to be true. Pre-testing issues Col­lec­tion tubes and direc­tions The lab­o­ra­tory Per­son­nel Test­ing Spec­i­men suit­abil­ity for test­ing Ana­lyt­i­cal methods—calibration Val­i­da­tion and approaches to […]

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DA Purge of ’12">The Great DA Purge of ’12

| May 30, 2012

Not only was Pat Lykos ousted by Har­ris County pri­mary vot­ers, but John Bradley of Williamson County was as well. I don’t know any­thing about his suc­ces­sor, Williamson County Attor­ney Jana Duty, but I hope she’ll drag the county out of the ranks of hell­ish white-flight sub­ur­ban back­wa­ters, where Bradley fought so hard to keep it for […]

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Harris County Primaries

| May 30, 2012

Lloyd Oliver (“Ollie the Cab­driver­tis­ing Attor­ney,” here) beat Zack Fer­titta in the Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary for Har­ris County DA. There’s no chance that Har­ris County will elect a Demo­c­rat to that posi­tion in 2012, but I thought there was zero chance that vot­ers would pick Oliver over Fer­titta, so what the hell do I know? We […]

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More Diverse Juries

| May 29, 2012

Dur­ing Blomberg’s jury selec­tion, 64 peo­ple were sum­moned and were divided into four groups of 16 each. The jury panel size varies on the amount of peo­ple a judge requests. Typ­i­cally, for a mis­de­meanor trial such as Blomberg’s, approx­i­mately 100 peo­ple are sum­moned to jury ser­vice, Daniel said. After poten­tial jurors are sum­moned, the selection […]

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DA Primaries">DA Primaries

| May 28, 2012

Tomorrow—Tuesday—Harris County vot­ers will choose Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can can­di­dates for Dis­trict Attor­ney. The Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­dates are Zach Fer­titta and Lloyd Oliver; the Repub­li­can con­tenders are Mike Ander­son and incum­bent Pat Lykos. I sat down to lunch with Fer­titta and Ander­son for short inter­views. I didn’t get to inter­view Lykos because she didn’t respond to requests, and […]

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Where’s Your Soulcraft?

| May 28, 2012

I won­der if this rings true for any of my friends in the Har­ris County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office: To begin with, Jack­all finds that though the mod­ern work­place is in many respects a bureau­cracy, man­agers do not expe­ri­ence author­ity in an imper­sonal way. Rather, author­ity is embod­ied in the per­sons with whom one has working […]

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Blog-About-Brett-Kimberlin Day

| May 25, 2012

I’m in a con­tin­u­ing legal edu­ca­tion pro­gram all day today, but if I weren’t I would write more about Brett Kim­ber­lin, the “Speed­way Bomber” who ter­ror­ized the town of Speed­way, Indi­ana and went to prison for it 30 years ago, and whose crit­ics are sub­jected to harass­ment, includ­ing: com­plain­ing to the victim’s work­place, defam­ing the […]

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…And Besides, Intellectual Honesty Doesn’t Win Elections

| May 17, 2012

Here’s how bonds work in Texas: D is arrested. Unless his case fits into a few nar­row excep­tions (cap­i­tal mur­der, habit­ual felony, felony while on bond, deadly-weapon felony after felony con­vic­tion, or vio­lent or sex­ual felony while on parole or pro­ba­tion) he is enti­tled to bail. High bail can’t be used as an “instru­ment of oppression”; […]

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