Ask any criminal defense lawyer about the joys of forensic science and you’ll likely get an earful. It’s not just that junk science is junk, but that we’re accutely aware of its use, its misuse and the impact it has on juries. So Edward Humes op-ed in the L.A. Times comes as no surprise.

Forensic science’s shortcomings have left the justice system alternately in a quiet panic or massive denial. The issue was first brought into the spotlight by a highly critical report from the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, which found a dearth of scientific backing for most forensics methods other than DNA. It cited evidence that “faulty forensic science analyses may have contributed to wrongful convictions of innocent people.” That report was followed by an even more blistering presidential commission report in 2016, which found serious errors and junk science in a host of commonly used forensic methods tying suspects to crimes.

Note the dates. The NAS report was 2009. The presidential commission report was 2016. Yet, here we are, still talking about it. And there it is, still being admitted into evidence. Argue over Frye or Daubert all you want. It’s still coming in. Continue reading →

The set up couldn’t be clearer. On the one side, there is a vulgar, amoral ignoramus who can’t provide the time of day without either getting it wrong or lying about it. On the other there’s . . .

Not A Man 2020

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 21, 2019

There are two points buried in these succinct words. The first is obvious, that a woman would be more deserving of our vote than Trump because Trump is such an awful president. The other is that we should vote for a woman, any woman, because this is the time for a woman to ascend to the presidency. Continue reading →

Dead icons are fair game for the living, as there’s no one to dispute them. Spouses may try. Children too. But no one speaks for them, except those who have no authority to do so because they are distant and disconnected. The passionate will see them as fodder for their beliefs, seize upon the lofty but vague words of their quotes to bolster their certainty that if the icon was still alive, he would stand beside them.

Today is Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. day, and so he will be abused for the cause.

Put aside whatever aspects of his personal life that might have impaired him from hosting the Oscars, doing stand-up comedy, avoiding social annihilation. Don’t let the hypocrisy upset you, that his personal misadventures get a pass for reasons that aren’t supposed to matter. Better that was the case for all historic figures, for all icons, but it’s not. Continue reading →

Murder? Sixteen bullets? It seemed as if the former Chicago cop’s luck had run out. Hard as Rahm Emmanuel tried, he couldn’t hide the video forever. Hard as the blue brothers tried, their lies were revealed, even if they would be given a free pass for it. Unlike others, he was charged. Unlike others, he was convicted. And so Jason Van Dyke’s luck appeared to run out as he was to be sentenced.

“This is not pleasant and this is not easy,” Judge [Vincent] Gaughan said in delivering his ruling.

It’s not supposed to be. Continue reading →

The first videos to hit social media framed the issue. Some kid wearing a MAGA hat in the face of a Native American elder, with a fixed mocking grin on his face as other young white men chanted and laughed in the background. At its most benign, it was extremely disrespectful. At its worst, it was a racist confrontation.

On the one hand, this smirking, MAGA hat-wearing kid exemplified the persona of current-day evil. On the other, the Native American elder, Nathan Phillips, was a Vietnam vet and activist for the rights of Indiginous people. Continue reading →

It was between dinner and dessert that my devoutly Catholic mother-in-law announced that she supported a woman’s right to get an abortion. That being uncontroversial, and the silence at the table otherwise being awkward, I asked the obvious question designed to evoke her fury: So, you’re no longer Catholic?

And, as expected, she reacted. “Of course I’m still Catholic. I just disagree about abortion.” I had her. She wanted to remain a member of her tribe while disputing a number of fundamental tenets, both about abortion as well as papal infallibility. “Sorry,” I replied, “but you don’t get to be a Catholic if you reject the beliefs of the religion.” Maybe she could be Catholic-lite, or a cultural Catholic, but what she couldn’t be was Catholic. Religions aren’t the sort of thing where you get to pick and choose which beliefs you prefer. You believe or not. If not, then you may well be right, but you’re no longer a member of the religion.

When the Women’s March®* was founded, and the white women were replaced, there was an abundance of warm feelings. Unity was the word offered to express how the issues for which the march was formed, and so it wormed its way into the mission statement that few read and fewer still cared about. Continue reading →

If the purpose of law school is to teach students to become legal thinkers, lawyers, then Washburn University lawprof Rory Bahadur’s complaint misses the mark. No one is blaming students for being dumber than dirt. We’re blaming academics, Bahadur included, for doing a lousy job of either teaching them or, if they’re unteachable, handing them a dime.

But rather than think, at the curiously named site Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, he tells us dinosaurs to die graciously.

Most of us have heard the lament from colleagues that, “Because K-12 and undergraduate has changed so much since we went to school, students enter law school today undereducated and so unaccustomed to rigor, that law schools need to invest an inordinate amount of time just to enable students to be competent at the things that lawyers need to do.”  Corollary comments are:  students can’t write, and their grammar is deficient yada yada yada. Continue reading →

It wasn’t unexpected, but when I learned late yesterday afternoon that his time had come, it was still jarring. He had been prepared for it for a while, ready for his moment. He went quietly, asleep. My father, Edwin S. Greenfield, born 1925, passed away yesterday. His wife, my mother, Phyllis Joy Greenfield, passed away in 2015.

My father served in the 86th Infantry in World War II, Blackhawk Division, in Europe, where he was awarded two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Good Conduct medal. After raising two kids, he joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary, where he became the Public Affairs Officer for the Lake Worth Inlet Coast Guard station in Florida. He loved his Coasties, and they were incredibly kind to him. Continue reading →

Joe Otte observed the oddity:

Wow. Could you have predicted 97 replies in 24 hours on this, of all topics?

The “this” of which he writes is the “toxic masculinity” Gillette commercial. As for the specific number of comments, as well as some of the contentiousness, it’s hard to predict, but had I not thought it worthy of note, I wouldn’t have posted it.

But why, as Joe asks, did it generate such a response. Oskar von Aln took his swipe by replying “The frailty of men is hilarious,” a position he first sought to weasel out of until, when pressed, he put on his big boy pants and came out with it: Continue reading →

There was no “registration” fee when I was admitted to the bar. Then again, there were no bar numbers, no official cards secure enough to pass inspection at Sing Sing, either. We said we were lawyers, and that was good eough. If there was doubt, we were asked for a business card. Somebody would dutifully inspect it, turning it right, left, and eventually nod and say, “go ahead.” And we were off.

Things have gotten a bit more “official” since then. One change was the institution of attorney registration fees. Most states have them, because it’s money and they can. The initial rationale was to pay for the costs associated with becoming more official, since somebody has to, but the relation between the cost of officialdom and the amount of fees has never been clear. The benefit is that you get to continue to be a lawyer, like you were before, but now with a bar number. It’s not really much of a benefit, at least for the lawyer.

In his State of the State address, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made a number of announcements relating to lawyers, in general, and criminal law, in particular. Cuomo says we’re going to reform discovery. That’s good, given that we’ve been fighting that battle for four decades. Continue reading →