Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

There’s Always a Prosecutor

| September 28, 2010

Mike (Crime and Fed­er­al­ism) writes: I blog about pros­e­cu­to­r­ial mis­con­duct more than any­one else. Peo­ple are too busy cre­at­ing Twit­ter norms. Because crim­i­nal lawyers should be more wor­ried about whether some moron is dup­ing lawyers into sign­ing mar­ket­ing con­tracts. (!) Fair crit­i­cism? Pos­si­bly. In the scheme of things, whether pros­e­cu­tors are cheat­ing and putting people […]

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Business Plan: Never Lose

| July 23, 2010

Back in March (some­times posts per­co­late for a few months before bub­bling to the sur­face) Norm Pat­tis wrote some­thing about about Gerry Spence that caught my atten­tion. I recall years ago his com­plain­ing that he could not get into court. His cases kept set­tling. I offered him a chance to come on board in a […]

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Trick Questions

| July 2, 2010

It doesn’t mat­ter who asks them—defense lawyers, pros­e­cu­tors, cops—or whom they are asked—witnesses, the jurors them­selves, defendants—jurors don’t like trick ques­tions. Get­ting caught ask­ing a trick ques­tion lessens the questioner’s cred­i­bil­ity. Here’s a trick ques­tion that cops some­times ask peo­ple sus­pected of DWI: “On a scale of zero to ten, how intox­i­cated would you say […]

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But My Way is Really Best

| 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 how unrea­son­able or […]

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Desert-Island Book

| 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 (if? who […]

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Input Needed: Reptile in Criminal Cases

| March 3, 2010

David Ball, co-author of Rep­tile, is ask­ing crim­i­nal lawyers to help him develop a list of “rea­sons we lose crim­i­nal defense cases.” He wants to hear from lawyers in the trenches who deal with these prob­lems all the time.  The list will help him and his team develop the use of Rep­til­ian advo­cacy for criminal […]

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The Four Most Powerful Words in the Criminal Courthouse

| January 22, 2010

Try this: Stand up. Raise one foot off the ground. Now shift your weight for­ward. Don’t set your raised foot down. What hap­pens? You fall down. But if you do the same thing and set the raised foot down  to stop your fall, you take a step. Raise the other foot off the ground, shift your […]

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Trial Lawyer Esoterica

| December 8, 2009

Bennett’s Chain­saw dic­tates that it will not be easy, but I love the what really hap­pened? case—the one in which the client is inno­cent, but his inno­cence is entirely incom­pat­i­ble with the proof the gov­ern­ment thinks it has. In these cases, often a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion reveals the key to the case, dis­cred­it­ing or clar­i­fy­ing some […]

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The Mississippi of the West

| November 4, 2009

Via Sim­ple Jus­tice, this video of Mari­copa County Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Stod­dard raid­ing the file of a criminal-defense lawyer while her back is turned: Notice the pathetic weak pas­sive behav­ior of Judge Lisa Flores.

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To What End?

| October 23, 2009

On Face­book, one of my friends com­mented on this post: I’m really okay with the DA pros­e­cut­ing fault for seri­ous car crashes (these are not “acci­dents”), assum­ing they charged it appro­pri­ately. Hous­ton leads not only Texas but the nation in terms of car crashes, and Houston-area auto own­ers pay among the high­est lia­bil­ity insur­ance rates […]

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