Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | April 17, 2008
HCCLA is putting on six hours of free ethics CLE — that’s two years’ worth — tomorrow from 9 to 2* in the lawyers’ ready room on the 7th floor of the Harris County criminal courthouse. I’ll be speaking in the coveted “last speaker on Friday afternoon, long after everyone else has gone home” slot [...]
Mark Bennett | March 25, 2008
PJ’s first comment here made me think of this, from Edward O. Wilson’s sociobiology book, On Human Nature: Lawrence Kohlberg, an educational psychologist, has traced what he believes to be six sequential stages of ethical reasoning through which each person progresses as part of his normal mental development. The child moves from an unquestioning dependence [...]
Mark Bennett | March 17, 2008
There are many reasons people commit crimes: addiction, anger, avarice, arrogance, fear, ignorance, and disease, to name just a few. Typically more than one reason can be identified for the commission of a particular crime. Addiction and avarice, for example, or ignorance and fear. Arrogance can cause crime if a person know that the rules [...]
Mark Bennett | March 10, 2008
I wrote last year about the interplay of Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 1.05 and Texas Rule of Evidence 503, and their surprising cumulative effect on the attorney-client and work-product privileges in Texas. Now the Court of Criminal Appeals proposes amending Rule 503 to remove the “special rule of privilege in criminal cases”: (2) [...]
Mark Bennett | March 8, 2008
A man has gotta have a code to live by. (So does a woman.) I think most lawyers don’t have one. What’s yours?
Mark Bennett | January 29, 2008
Today (January 29th) I got a fax from the prosecutor on a misdemeanor case. The fax contained: A Motion to Disclose Experts; and An order granting that motion. The motion carried a certificate of service claiming that the motion had been served on me on the day the motion was filed or before. It had [...]
Mark Bennett | January 15, 2008
The Houston Chronicle has an interesting column today by Lisa Falkenberg, in which she suggests that when Kelly Siegler described the 45,000 members of Houston’s Lakewood Church as “screwballs and nuts” she might not have been being entirely candid with the court. The context: Kelly was trying a capital murder case. The defense made a [...]
Mark Bennett | January 4, 2008
Gideon wrote today about the cost of jury trial, noting that many citizens-accused with retained counsel can’t afford to pay for a jury trial. He asked, Who can do something to avoid this? Should clients always assume they will go to trial and hire only attorneys they can afford? Should attorneys not charge a subsequent [...]
Mark Bennett | December 21, 2007
Something that should cheer those who hold that “The Sun rises and falls on the sole question of the client’s interest” and feel that “if serving the client harms another, so be it” . . . . Here, if the federal government is to be believed, is a lawyer who doesn’t just pay lip service [...]
Mark Bennett | November 30, 2007
A friend in Tennessee writes: Your November 29, 2007 post seems to me to be potentially irresponsible and potentially unethical. How many times have you gotten your clients into more trouble? I bet you would not admit it if you had. Friend, aside from being an unfriendly thing to say, that last bit is a [...]
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