For decades, the fight on the side of criminal defense lawyers has been to break the public and judicial mindset that cops don’t lie.

Why would he lie? He doesn’t know the defendant and has no reason to harbor any personal animosity toward him. Why would he lie about him?

This was the common refrain from judges as you argued that the officer’s testimony was false, at least about a critical fact such as whether the defendant consented to a search or admitted an element of a crime or the “poignant” smell of marijuana emanated from the car. There was no video. There was no recording. It was a cop’s word against a defendant’s. Why would the cop lie? Continue reading →

It takes a special brand of twisted to indulge in the sophistry of justifying looting. And yet, here we go again.

Black Lives Matter Chicago warned Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday that the renewed civil unrest that’s gripped the city throughout the summer won’t end until “the safety and well-being of our communities is finally prioritized.”

Since when did breaking into stores equal “civil unrest”? Not rioting. Not looting. Nope. Civil unrest. And just how civil unrestful does Black Lives Matter Chicago threaten? Continue reading →

There will be a first round of commentary explaining what Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris, the “1st woman of color on a major ticket” as the New York Times puts it on its front page, means, followed by a round of damning the commentary for taking a woman, and then a black woman, to task, when “no one ever challenges a male candidate for vice president” like that.

But is Harris, as Chryl Laird argues, finally the recognition by the Democratic Party of its most loyal constituents?

Yet the significance of this decision and its meaning for Black women, the most loyal members of the Democratic Party, cannot be overstated. Black women’s commitment to the party has often gone unacknowledged, but they have been tirelessly loyal to the Democratic Party for generations. Continue reading →

For a brief and shining moment, woke radicals decided that Hispanic people were being oppressed by the word “Latino,” and so they did as they’re wont to do, changed the word to the ingenious “Latinx.” It turned out there was only one flaw in the plan. Hispanic people overwhelmingly hated it.

A Vox ‘splainer made a typically comical pitch for why the word was “catching on” with everybody but Latinos, not that the 98% of them mattered. Probably just self-loathing Latinx, as the woke rationalization for why anyone wouldn’t do as they decided was fabulous goes. Continue reading →

Someone asked the other day, “why is it different now?” An old criminal defense lawyer replied, “Because I can talk to six thousand people instantly with a device in my pocket.” Most of the time, those six thousand won’t care, but when the call goes out over social media that it happened again, the cops killed another black person, this time a 15-year-old, it goes viral.

No, no evidence is needed. Few ask the obvious question, “What happened? Why?” Oddly, it’s almost been trained out of people, to learn of an outcome and not ask anything, not wonder why, the outcome occurred. Dead black guy? Good enough. Black lives matter. Except this time, it was mostly wrong. Continue reading →

As was clear to Southern District of New York Judge John Koetl, there was nothing about the new Title IX rules to justify a delay in their imposition. So Princeton’s decision to change its procedures to comply with the new rules on August 3d might seem like a wise choice.

During an Aug. 3 webinar open to the University community, the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) voted to approve a revised Title IX policy to comply with federal guidance — as well as a separate “University Sexual Misconduct policy” addressing incidents outside of Title IX’s recently-narrowed scope.

But Princeton took it a step further, and in a somewhat different direction. Continue reading →

Helicopters in the air. Dogs in the hallway. RMPs everywhere and tons of cops. A mass murderer? Terrorists? Nope. Shit for brains, as nothing else explains the incomprehensible excesses to arrest a 28-year-old protest leader for talking with his megaphone near the ear of a cop.

But wait! They came without a warrant. They left without an arrest. Even in the grand scheme of stupid cop tricks, this one takes the cake. Continue reading →

There have been some curious discussions of pedagogy of late, from 2+2=5 to whether the rules of grammar should be abandoned, in recognition of diversity and inclusiveness. Or, as the more blunt put it, anti-racism. The math issue, where values were conveniently altered to prove the point, was the sort that served only those who desperately sought to argue their point.

But what if you use base 8? Huh? HUH?

But what if it’s 2 apples plus 2 oranges? Then you don’t have four of either. SEE?!?

Except you have four pieces of fruit, the common denominator, because 2+2 still equals four. Yes, in base 10, which is our norm, because without norms, even in such mundane subjects as math, we would be incapable of communicating. Change the values, the base, and you change the equation. These are the shared rules by which we understand each other.*

Continue reading →

For years, I’ve highlighted failings within the legal system. Police are one of the major sources of problems. Prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers too, but police play a far different role in society. Most of the time, cops didn’t like what I had to say about them much. I was always criticizing, and it hurt their feelings not to be recognized for the good they do. Even when I wrote something nice about cops, it wasn’t enough for them. They were heroes in their own mind, and while they all acknowledged that there were bad cops, they weren’t the bad ones. The bad ones were always some other cop, not them.

But I wrote out of concern, not so much for the individual cops themselves, for their existence. Bad as they can be, and they can be horrifically bad, they are still a necessary part of a functioning society. Continue reading →

The children running the Daily Tar Heel, the campus newspaper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sued the school under the state public records law for the identities of students “found responsible” for sexual misconduct under Title IX. Its reason, unsurprisingly, was “transparency.” Not transparency for its own sake, but for the “survivors.”

When we asked the University for these records in September, I wrote a column about why we wanted to take on this fight. All those reasons are still true.

But this isn’t an ordinary story, or even an ordinary lawsuit. Continue reading →