Governor Kathy Hochul nominated the Presiding Justice of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, Hector LaSalle, to be Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, filling the vacancy of former Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore, who had replaced Jeanine Pirro when she was bumped to judge to get her out of the job. One of the things people often fail to realize is that political parties use judgeships as payoffs or dumping grounds to get rid of people.

Why Justice LaSalle is unclear. Was this payment of a debt? It’s hard to imagine that Hochul knew or cared anything about him personally, as she couldn’t find Brooklyn without a map, and LaSalle’s history was as a prosecutor, a past position over-represented already. The last thing New York needed was another former prosecutor on the Court of Appeals, keeping them the majority voting bloc as appointed by Dem governors who feared being viewed as soft on crime. Continue reading →

It’s like the marketing slogan often emblazoned on cop cars, “To Serve and Protect.” People take this very seriously, not realizing it carries about as much weight as “New and Improved.” When it comes to criminal law, the phrase so often used is “worst of the worst,” not because it has any meaning but because it sells laundry detergent.

The Bail Reform Act clearly favors pretrial release in most cases. At the Detention Hearing, a person must be released unless “the judicial officer finds that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other person and the community.” 18 U.S.C. § 3142(e). But the Act contains a rebuttable presumption of detention for some crimes—most federal drug offenses and § 924(c) gun charges.

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Criminal defense is not for the faint of heart. We do an ugly job, representing people who are often very guilty of doing very bad things to other people, and still defending them and, if it’s possible within the bounds of the law, beating the case. Sure, there are innocent  defendants and overcharged defendants, and there are defendants who’ve been burned by life and ended up committing crimes for lack of any viable alternatives within their sphere of understanding, but there are also defendants who are bad dudes. And then there’s the dirty little secret that most defendants are guilty.

Yet we defend them, and we don’t think too hard about whether we’re the good guys or not. Everyone has a constitutional right to a defense, and it’s our job to fulfill our end of the constitutional duty. Continue reading →

There has been little reason to write about the travails of Hamline University adjunct professor Erika López Prater, fired for the “harm” she caused by showing a Muslim-created “renowned 14th century painting depicting the Prophet Muhammad” in a class about Islamic art. After all, there has been near universal support for the professor, both as a matter of academic freedom and because she did everything humanly possible to accommodate the most fragile sensibility of students.

In the syllabus, she warned that images of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, would be shown in the course. She asked students to contact her with any concerns, and she said no one did. Continue reading →

I was up most of the night and didn’t fall asleep until the morning, so I slept in and have no post for today. In its place, I’m going to try an open thread, where you can talk about whatever things/issues are on your mind.

Please don’t make me regret this. Thank you.

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

First, it was one high school in Virginia. Students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, already subject to controversy for its plan to end competitive admission  in favor of “holistic” admissions, given that the majority of its students were Asian, which meant they weren’t black. But at the time, there was another issue brewing that had yet to become known, that the principal concealed from students and parents the awarding of merit scholarship recognition.

While Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid claims the principal at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology withheld National Merit awards from students in a “one-time human error,” parents at two local high schools got a Friday and Saturday night surprise.

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After World War II, GIs came home from the war, went to college under the GI bill as a nation thanked those who survived for their service, and married. These budding new families needed a place to live, and so suburbia was born. Green lawns and trees, Air. Quiet. Privacy. The squalor of city life, too many people in too small a space, was replaced with detached homes and backyard barbecues. Continue reading →

For those of you who have been around here for a while, or at least around the blawgosphere in the olden days when there were a bunch of criminal defense lawyers with blawgs, you probably remember Norm. Norm was there before me, hanging with Mike Cernovich at Crime and Federalism, and later on his own, until one day he decided to break ties with the blawgosphere, pretend we were all evil and he was the lone good lawyer who had enough of being tainted by his association with us mean, nasty lawyers.

But Cerno told me his practice was dead, so Norm decided to repackage himself. He built a new website, hired a publicist, and tried to become an important lawyer. That was more than a decade ago, and he’s had some success since then. He beat the case of Yale student Saifullah Khan, which was a great win. Continue reading →

There is a logical fallacy called “Appeal to Authority,” where someone with ascribed expertise in a subject makes an assertion to be accepted as true because the authority said so. It creates a tension. You, not an expert, are put in a position of being compelled to accept the word of an “authority,” while at the same time the authority may be wrong, whether intentionally or otherwise, such that a false assertion is accepted not because it’s true or accurate, but because an expert said so.

On the other hand, people with legitimate expertise are generally far better authorities on a subject than someone who lacks any expertise. Continue reading →

“Hand downs” are back. Yay, you say? More likely, what are “hand downs,” a very fair question for anyone who isn’t paid to sit in the press section of the Supreme Court gallery. It’s when the justices announce their decision to the audience, summing up their rationale and conclusion. It’s not law, like the opinions themselves, but a tradition disappeared during the pandemic, when oral argument went livestream, justices got to feign asking questions in order to put on a play for the listening audience and the lay listening public got to hear argument they rarely understood or appreciated.

While the Court will resume hand downs, it will not do so by livestream, so that it will still only be heard by the audience in the room. Frankly, who cares? Why Linda Greenhouse, of course. Continue reading →