When the voting ended on January 2nd, we thought it was over.  But no, not by a long shot.  According to the ABA Journal, the ballot boxes were stuffed to the gills.  So after the voting was all over, the little elves in the backroom conducted a recount and have now announced that the winner of the Crime category was the one who should have been the winner all along, the Texas Tornado, Mark Bennett of Defending People.

In the crime category things were fairly tame compared to some of the other categories, where thousands of votes were changed, dropped and rejected.  It just goes to show that criminal defense lawyers are far more honest than civil lawyers.  And by the way, to everybody who voted for SJ early and often, thanks but I voted for Bennett (twice).

And while I really haven’t got a clue how the ABA Journal came up with the numbers they did, and they may very well be totally legit, changing around all the numbers in the backroom after the fact smells awfully bad.  Even for folks from Chicago.

The only thing we know for sure is that the right blawg won in the Crime category, and my congratulations to my friend and brother, Mark Bennett.