Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

I Was Half Right About Dionne Press’s Assisted-Suicide Case

On 18 Sep­tem­ber the aid­ing sui­cide case that Dionne Press neglected and that I offered to work on for free (which caused Press to try to get the DA’s Office to file charges or a griev­ance against me) was no-billed by the grand jury of the 351st Dis­trict Court.

So I was right in pre­dict­ing that result (to be hon­est, the out­come was a no-brainer, which is why Press should have filed a writ of habeas cor­pus ten weeks ago), but wrong about the time­line. Press’s client didn’t spend almost sixty days in Har­ris County Jail charged with a fine-only offense; he spent eighty days in Har­ris County Jail charged with a fine-only offense.

What a waste.

Press’s mar­ket­ing says:

I take every Crim­i­nal charge seri­ously. I will work hard in your defense to pro­tect your rights and freedom.… 

* * * * *

I will pro­vide you with indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion, pro­fes­sional exper­tise and aggres­sive representation.

I will use my years of expe­ri­ence and ded­i­ca­tion to fight for your rights and aggres­sively defend your case.

Utter hog­wash. “Aggres­sive” is not nec­es­sariyly the best way for a criminal-defense lawyer to be, but if that was “aggres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” I’d hate to see a criminal-defense lawyer being passive.

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This entry was posted by on Friday, September 21st, 2012 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

2 Responses to “I Was Half Right About Dionne Press’s Assisted-Suicide Case”

  1. Mike Paar says:
    21 September 2012 at 2:20 pm

    Press isn’t the only one with blame. Lykos & Co. shoul­der most of it. Incom­pe­tence on both sides of the bar.

    Reply
  2. Ric Moore says:
    21 September 2012 at 8:21 pm

    I think the cor­rect term would be “assertive”. The word “aggres­sive” is not always used cor­rectly. It basi­cally means that I value my goals 100% and the rela­tion­ship value between us is 0%. Being prop­erly assertive, I value my goals at !00% and our rela­tion­ship 100%. “Com­pro­mise” is where I agree to lessen my per­sonal goals per­cent­age in favor of your goals, in order to main­tain our rela­tion­ship, by less­en­ing our rela­tion­ship per­cent­age some­what as no one else HAS to live up to my expec­ta­tions. It’s a good thing. Being aggres­sive is not a route to com­pro­mise, although it is use­ful when it comes to start­ing a stalled lawn­mower. The things you learn in da joint. :)

    Reply

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