Among the reasons why criminal defense lawyers are rarely nominated for federal judgeships or win elections for public office is that our duty, the zealous defense of people accused of crimes, invariably exposes us to a simple, obvious attack. We defend bad people. Sometimes they’re evil. Sometimes they’re icky. Sometimes both.

But they are people who are easy to attack, easy to despise and we’re positioned in a place where the groundlings can be easily manipulated into believing that by defending them, we either support what they’re doing or use our efforts to put them back on the street to do it again. Maybe next time, to you. They are deplorable, and we, then, are deplorable enablers. Without us, the deplorables would be in prison where they couldn’t harm you. Bad lawyers. Continue reading →

There’s much to appreciate in an editorial that’s proven highly controversial on an issue that shouldn’t be controversial at all. That free speech has become a hot, and sore, topic proves the necessity for such an editorial. That it’s been reviled as an attack on the left, by the left, for its “bothsides-ism”* demonstrates its necessity.

So why then did the New York Times editorial board, no slouches they, open an editorial they knew would be so deeply controversial, and taken by those with whom they feel the strongest camaraderie, with these words? Continue reading →

If anyone could be accused of making cons a business, it’s safe to say Arnold Rothstein would be counted a guilty party.

Nicknamed “The Brain” because of an uncanny ability to calculate statistics and probabilities in his head, Rothstein was born in 1882 in Manhattan to Abraham and Esther Rothstein. Arnold enjoyed an affluent life growing up, but apparently was quite resentful of his older brother, who eventually became a rabbi. Continue reading →

Like it or not, Yale Law School is, at least for the moment, one of the premier duopoly of law schools in America. It has produced Supreme Court justices and legal academics galore. Its graduates, like Senator Josh Hawley, sit in the halls of power with Harvard Law School’s grads, like Senator Ted Cruz. Going to YLS is a big deal. Graduating from YLS puts you on a path of power and privilege. And the current crop of students believes that they should use that power and privilege for what they believe to be good.

And that’s a problem. David Lat sums up the latest controversy, primarily reported by  Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon. Continue reading →

Whether it’s the Spotlight Effect or any of a dozen other biases, the fact is that people are remarkably bad at estimating. Remember the survey wherein progressives were asked how many unarmed black people were killed by police each year?

Overall, nearly half of surveyed liberals [sic] (44 percent) estimated roughly between 1,000 and 10,000 unarmed black men were killed…

The hard number is 27, and of that 27, a vetting of the details may distinguish which were justified and which were wrong.

Continue reading →

There’s a curious character defect that allows the overly empathetic progressive prosecutor types to shamelessly switch from rationalizing the humanity of murderers, at least some murderers, while simultaneously pushing the most disingenuous sophistry when it comes to sex crimes. And whatever that character defect might be, former state and federal prosecutor, and most recently progressive candidate for Manhattan district attorney, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, has it in spades.

On March 8, at an unusual hearing, Juror No. 50 testified that he regretted making “an honest mistake” when rushing through his questionnaire. He was asked to describe repeated instances of abuse at the hands of a former stepbrother and his friend when the juror was 9 and 10 years old and the aftermath for him and his family. But, he told the court, the abuse “doesn’t define” him, and he does not think of himself as a crime victim. Continue reading →

The American Association of Law School’s, AALS, isn’t an organization that lawyers think much about. We take for granted that law schools are going to do their job, more or less, in turning out students who will someday join the guild and demonstrate at least minimal competence, if not excessive self-esteem in their early years until they finally figure out how little they know, how poorly they perform and how hard the job is. But I digress.

The mission of AALS is lofty and important, not to mention vague and facile. Continue reading →

Now that Elizabeth Holmes has gone from the genius waif of Theranos fame to convicted scammer, it was time for the government to take down Theranos’ COO and her ex-boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Holmes argued that it was Balwani, not her, who caused investors to be defrauded. She was the face but he was the brains.

Holmes claimed Sunny was “physically, emotionally and sexually abusive,” which sought to play into juror bias. The jury didn’t buy it.

Now it’s Balwani’s turn for trial. Then came the dump. Continue reading →

A while back, I engaged in a couple of twits with Nicholas Grossman of Arc Digital as he was expressing his views about Trump committing treason. My purpose was to explain that “treason” wasn’t something he felt it was, but a crime, and as a crime, had elements that had to be met or it wasn’t treason. Nick, who isn’t a lawyer, responded that he didn’t mean treason in the legal sense, but in the “colloquial” sense, the one without any elements or mens rea. The one that just feels kind of treason-ish.

There’s a “colloquial” sense of “treason”? Apparently so. Continue reading →

As Rush might have called it, even if you choose not to pay, you still have made a choice. Geraldine Tyler was 93 years old, which is pretty old, even for olds. Maybe she was no longer capable of handling her own affairs. Maybe she had no one to help her, no family or friends, and so maybe she lacked the capacity to understand or act upon what was happening around here. But that’s not the beef.

The 93-year-old left her Minneapolis condominium in 2010 after a nearby shooting and a disturbing encounter left her uneasy. But she was unable to finance both her new apartment and the property tax on her erstwhile condo, accruing $2,300 in debt. Continue reading →