Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | November 19, 2008
I’ve started reading the quarterly magazine of the American Society of Trial Consultants, The Jury Expert. It’s right up Defending People readers’ alley; it’s even subtitled “The Art and Science of Litigation Advocacy. I downloaded a stack of issues to carry in my bag for quiet times; there are several treasures in each volume. If [...]
Mark Bennett | October 31, 2008
In jury selection for my aggravated assault trial last week, I objected to the State’s use of a challenge for cause to exclude a potential juror whose religion forbade him judging other people. The objection was under Article I, Section 4 of the Texas Constitution, which provides in relevant part, “No religious test shall ever [...]
Mark Bennett | October 22, 2008
I’d much rather be in trial than waiting to go to trial — a good day in trial is better than just about anything else you’d care to name. This is my sixth jury trial in twelve months. It’s an aggravated assault charge — CW got glass in his eye, needs money, blames D. In [...]
Mark Bennett | October 17, 2008
From a 2007 interview with improvisational comedy teacher Keith Johnstone: GM: And you won’t be nervous. KJ: No. Why should I be nervous? So I can screw up? If you can’t screw up, you have to be nervous. I can’t win them all. Usually it goes fine. But the one thing I mustn’t do is [...]
Mark Bennett | September 17, 2008
It’s that time again, when voters in about 20 states get to choose a president for the rest of us. Being in Texas, where I get only a symbolic vote in the presidential election, I am at some leisure to observe the mechanics of the election and consider how they might relate to the art [...]
Mark Bennett | July 23, 2008
A Harris County prosecutor today (perennially gruff but a marshmallow on the inside) took umbrage at my public statements that until very recently I hadn’t seen a Harris County prosecutor conduct a voir dire that was worth a damn. I invited him to tell me when he was picking a jury, and I’d come watch [...]
Mark Bennett | July 14, 2008
I’m in trial* on a white-collar criminal case. It is not an easy case, but sometimes we have to try the tough cases. I’ve got to wonder why the prosecutor left on the jury two jurors who admitted that they couldn’t consider the top end of the statutory punishment range (i.e. life in prison). Maybe [...]
Mark Bennett | June 19, 2008
I wrote last month about Laurence Gonzales’s Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why and promised “much more later.” It occurs to me that the start of scavenging Gonzales’s work for criminal trial lawyers has to be relating survival to a criminal trial. When Gonzales is talking about survival situations, he’s not referring only [...]
Mark Bennett | June 18, 2008
Suppose that you were a prosecutor prosecuting a first-time DWI case, and that I was defending it. Suppose further that the accused’s husband, an ex-cop, watched her performing the field sobriety tests at the scene, and would testify that she did fine. That the arresting officer claimed that his in-car video camera wasn’t working. That [...]
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