Dennis Elias’s Latest Tweet :. Injustice News Twitter Feed :.Mark Bennett | May 19, 2010
Some years ago I got a call from a bureaucrat with the federal courts here in town: would I like to help handle the illegal reentry docket? By "handle the illegal reentry docket," I thought she meant, "defend people charged with illegal reentry"—I'm one of the few federal criminal-defense lawyers in Houston who speak Spanish [...]
Mark Bennett | March 16, 2009
I first met “Brother Dave” when he was the case agent for an informant on a cocaine case I was trying. It was a state-court case, but the witness against my client had worked off a federal beef in part by making the case against my client, so Special Agent Brother Dave of the DEA [...]
Mark Bennett | January 30, 2009
English law blogger CharonQC interviewed U.S. Senior District Court Judge John Kane of Colorado a couple of days ago. Judge Kane had some interesting things to say about the war on drugs (as well as about civil procedure); I linked to the interview here. With the permission of CharonQC, I’ve commissioned a transcript of the [...]
Mark Bennett | January 29, 2009
CharonQC’s podcast interview with U.S. District Judge John L. Kane of the District of Colorado. Judge Kane (not a fuzzy thinker) has some strong words against the “War on Drugs” and the politicians who have not yet caught on that the war on drugs has failed, cannot be won, and could never be won; and [...]
Mark Bennett | January 16, 2009
Momentum is building in Texas to reduce possession of less than a gram of cocaine from a state jail felony (six months to two years in state jail, day-for-day) to a class A misdemeanor (up to a year in county jail, with time off for good conduct); 16 of 22 Harris County felony court judges [...]
Mark Bennett | December 2, 2008
As a matter of constitutional law and legal ethics, quality representation for the poor is not negotiable. If the state doesn’t want to pay for indigent defense, it needs to prosecute fewer people (or at least fewer poor people). Kansas Defenders (H/T Capital Defense Weekly). The actual experts seem to agree on this one: the [...]
Mark Bennett | November 21, 2008
The New York Times suggests a solution to the problem of insufficient funding for indigent defense: With states struggling to come up with financing for schools and hospitals, we fear politicians are unlikely to argue for significantly more money for public defenders’ offices. To solve the immediate crisis, new sources of support would have to [...]
Mark Bennett | November 20, 2008
House Bill 164. Full text. I’d like to believe it has a chance of passing. Really, I would.
Mark Bennett | March 15, 2008
Via Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Robert Guest, the pro-War-on-Poor-People Drug Free America Foundation’s poll on whether drug use is a victimless crime. As Robert notes, 2/3 of the poll’s respondents agree or agree strongly. I voted for “Strongly agree. What a user chooses to do themselves is no one’s business.” But three of the other [...]
Mark Bennett | March 11, 2008
AHCL’s post on the “war on drugs” and my response started with AHCL’s question on the overall message of The Wire with regard to that “war.” Was the message intended to be that the WoD is unwinnable but worth fighting? Or was it that the WoD is unwinnable and self-destructive? Now (with a hat tip [...]
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