To its enormous credit, the Fifth Circuit managed to dispose of the case in a three-page opinion, which is about 173 pages below the norm since computers replaced quills. But their brevity is blunted by the likelihood that had they tried to write anything longer, the secret author of the per curiam decision would have collapsed in a tearful paroxysm. Judges hate that.

The legality of a traffic stop is examined under the two-pronged analysis in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). United States v. Brigham, 382 F.3d 500, 506 (5th Cir. 2003) (en banc). This appeal focuses solely on the first Terry prong—whether the officer’s decision to conduct a stop was justified at its inception.

Every case has to start somewhere, so when it involves a motion to suppress based upon a warrantless stop, Terry would be the natural starting point. Continue reading →

What if the New York City Council, finding a few moments in between enacting a regulation criminalizing the failure to use preferred pronouns and protecting black, but only black, employees’ hair style choices, enacted a regulation that prohibited abortion for any woman who couldn’t do 100 push-ups. And a non-uterus-challenged but physically-limited person sued for violation xir constitutional rights when denied an abortion.

An outrageous constitutional violation, most would cry, and with good cause. The case was granted certiorari and the City Council plotzed. In reaction, they repealed the offending regulation, and sent a letter off to the Court that they’d seen the error of their ways, fixed it, and there was nothing more to see here. As for the plaintiffs in the case, they offered free abortions, even though years had since passed and gestation, being what it is, made the gracious offer less than utilitarian. Continue reading →

Is it just one person, one monumentally stupid person, or is this the view of the California Bar Association?

Roseville attorney Joanna Mendoza may be winding down her law practice but she still finds herself at the heart of a legal debate.

Mendoza serves on a state bar committee charged with recommending ideas for increasing the availability of legal services to all Californians, not just those who can afford lawyers. Some of the group’s proposals so far—fee-sharing, allowing nonlawyers to own law firms, using artificial intelligence—have proven controversial. A recent public comment period on the options drew almost 2,900 responses, many of them critical.

Mendoza is passionately concerned about the lack of “access to justice” for people who are too poor to retain a lawyer, or just don’t want to spend their money on a lawyer. Continue reading →

It was only a few years ago when public defender Tina Peng publicly said what everyone knew, that she was failing her clients. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, or wasn’t a good lawyer, but that it was impossible to provide effective assistance of counsel given the numbers. Too many defendants. Too few lawyers. Not enough time to do a job beyond being a warm body standing next to an unknown person in a courtroom while they pled their life away.

One might have reasonably thought this fundamental problem had magically been resolved, given what’s been happening over the past couple of years. Public defenders have become the heroes of their own stories on social media, calling each other (but mostly themselves) badass, obsessed with using their time to respect the gender identity of defendants in lockup rather than use their three minutes to glean salient information to respond to the probable cause at arraignment. Continue reading →

Damon Young makes a pretty good argument for the revitalization of “woke,” a word that I admittedly use in a derogatory manner as reflecting people with impulse control issues and an excess of passion where a modicum of reason should be. I have to admit, he caught me off guard with his opening graf.

It was quaint, really. That feeling I had in the months after the 2016 presidential election, where I convinced myself I’d do everything possible in the next four years to prevent Donald Trump from becoming normalized.

Realizing, just a few years later, that it was “quaint,” introduced a bit of charm into what might otherwise be childish and churlish. It has nothing to do with one’s views of Trump, per se, as one can find him a vulgar, amoral ignoramus and still not “convince” oneself to dedicate the next four years of one’s life to fighting his every word, movement, “normalization.” Continue reading →

You have to give Kristen Etter credit, as she did two things of significance. The second was that she pulled it off, she went back to a conviction that happened decades before and found the smoking gun that changed everything. The first was that she sat down with Troy Mansfield and, despite there being nothing much to discuss beyond his horribly sad, but entirely credible, assertion of innocence, decided to try to help.

Troy Mansfield had barely sat down in his new lawyer’s office before his voice started cracking with emotion.

The married father of two grown sons choked back tears as he told Austin attorney Kristin Etter how he had spent two decades living with a scarlet letter for a sin he didn’t commit. He’d been cast out of homes, thrown out of his boys’ basketball games and even rejected at churches.

Continue reading →

The use of non-lawyer local justices in upstate New York has long been fertile ground for ridicule and outrage. Between astounding incompetent, rampant corruption and ethical violations, it’s enough to make your head explode, Then again, the groundlings argue that this is justice closest to the people, rather than that elitist stuff they puff in real courts where judges have to be, you know, lawyers.

ProPublica notes that it’s no different in South Carolina.

These courtrooms, the busiest in the state, dispose of hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor criminal cases and civil disputes each year.

They are overseen by political appointees, selected through a process that often places connections over qualifications. It’s a system that’s unlike any other in the country, and one that has provided fertile ground for incompetence, corruption and other abuse.

Continue reading →

It was a tragedy, and ought to remind us that there are bad people out there who do bad things, horrible things, to others. In the chorus about ending mass incarceration, it’s often lost that not everyone in prison is a victim of society. Some are there because they’re dangerous people who harm others without remorse, and some dangerous people may well be victims of the many ills of the system, but are still dangerous people.

Ruth George is dead because she was allegedly sexually assaulted and choked to death by Donald Thurman, who was out on parole from a 2016 robbery conviction.

His court-appointed attorney, public defender Valerie Panozzo, said in court Tuesday that he struggled with mental health issues and homelessness.

Continue reading →

Thank you for your support, your thoughts and your taking your valuable time to read SJ. As tradition dictates, I offer you the annual playing of Alice’s Restaurant. Happy Thanksgiving.

As has become his wont, with the approval of his employer, Charles Blow feels compelled to provide readers with their daily dose of our awfulness so that this Thanksgiving, no one will be without a heaping helping of misery on their plate.

When I was a child, Thanksgiving was simple. It was about turkey and dressing, love and laughter, a time for the family to gather around a feast and be thankful for the year that had passed and be hopeful for the year to come.

In school, the story we learned was simple, too: Pilgrims and Native Americans came together to give thanks.

Same with me. It was a wonderful secular holiday, celebrating love, family and brotherhood. It was the moment to reflect on the bounty we enjoyed and to do something too rarely done. Give thanks. Continue reading →