You haven’t met me. How do you know I’m not a dog? Well sure, you could check to see that someone with my name is licensed to practice law in New York, but am I that guy? The New Yorker ran a famous cartoon years ago about this.
But we’re so much smarter now, so much more sophisticated that no one could get away with creating a fictional persona online. As Dan Bauman shows at the Chronicle of Higher Education, we’re still easily fooled. Continue reading
For criminal defense lawyers, the question was why it took so long for him to file the declaration.
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, will invoke his Fifth Amendment right in a lawsuit filed against the president by Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star better known as Stormy Daniels.
On the one hand, there was little question but that his exercising a fundamental right embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution would bring about a storm of stupid from those who despised his beloved boss, and by extension, him. But on the other hand, there was no serious question that it had to be done. Continue reading
The Texas Tornado took a loss. Not being a kid in need of manufacturing a shiny internet persona, he used his loss as a learning, and teaching, opportunity. Good lawyers will do that. They don’t have to pretend that everything they touch turns to acquittal, though some detractor will eventually point out it and shout “loser, loser.” That guy will always be there, so all you can do is shrug and thank your lucky stars it’s not you.
It wasn’t an earth-shattering case. Not a high profile murder. Not a massive drug conspiracy. It was a DWI, but even DWI defendants deserve lawyers as good as Mark Bennett. The defendant’s BAC was tested 80 minutes after the stop, and rang the bell. The prosecution’s expert testified that “it was impossible to say what the BAC at the time of driving was from the blood test 80 minutes later.”
This was enough. Or it should have been enough. Continue reading
Some angry random person twitted some ridiculously outrageous crap about former First Lady Barbara Bush and everybody went nuts.
“Conservatives keep sparking ‘free speech’ battles. When a Muslim professor tweeted about racism, guess what happened?” The subhead adds, “Randa Jarrar’s case is a reminder that when a woman of color speaks out on her views about race, she faces unique dangers.” The way Vox senior reporter Anna North tells it, Jarrar is a victim of anti-minority bigotries, a case study about what happens when progressive women of color try to engage in important conversations about race.
Some called for her to be fired, to which this angry random person replied: Continue reading
So much of our beliefs about “who done it” is conclusively wrapped up in the gold standard of identification, DNA. It’s not just all scienc-y, but good, solid repeatable science. Sure, there are tons of quibbles about the statistical likelihood of DNA being from a different person, contamination, magic-box testing and whatever other screw-ups humans bring to the lab, but when we’ve got it, we can take comfort in knowing that science says we got the right dude. Or better yet, they got the wrong dude, an innocent person, so cut him loose.
But there remains another nasty problem with DNA, that it doesn’t like to stay in one place.
Back in the 1980s, when DNA forensic analysis was still in its infancy, crime labs needed a speck of bodily fluid—usually blood, semen, or spit—to generate a genetic profile.
That changed in 1997, when Australian forensic scientist Roland van Oorschot stunned the criminal justice world with a nine-paragraph paper titled “DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints.” It revealed that DNA could be detected not just from bodily fluids but from traces left by a touch. Investigators across the globe began scouring crime scenes for anything—a doorknob, a countertop, a knife handle—that a perpetrator may have tainted with incriminating “touch” DNA.
The first trial ended in a hung jury, to the consternation and outrage of onlookers certain that there could be no outcome other than conviction. The difference was that the jury heard evidence. This time, the atmosphere may be different.
Bill Cosby’s retrial for drugging and sexually assaulting a former employee of his Philadelphia alma mater, Temple University, resumed. His first court case ended in a mistrial in June 2017, after the jury deliberated for more than 50 hours, but couldn’t agree on a verdict. But, things might be different this time. This second trial comes in the wake of the national #MeToo movement. And, it could change everything.
This is quite right, and very wrong. There was much wrong about the fact that the evidence itself was old, stale, in the sense that it reflected mores of an earlier time which have since been supplanted by presentism, the view that historic facts be considered in current context rather than the context of their time. And still Cosby’s jury hung. Continue reading
The attention of lawyers was drawn to one sentence, uttered during the protest to silence Josh Blackman at CUNY law school. Perhaps it was the fear that they had tainted all law students at the school, given that they might someday care to work in the legal profession, or perhaps it was the fact that no lawyer or academic supported their worthy sacrifice for the cause, the CUNY law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild issued a letter explaining themselves.
What We Mean When We Say “Fuck the Law”
Before the explanation, my understanding was when the law was, in their view, “unjust,” then the law was wrong. It was a simplistic, but comprehensible, position. If there was a law that said a police officer may shoot a person at will if, in the officer’s view, the person deserved to be shot, I would scream “fuck the law” too. This was merely their version of it, and they are entitled to believe that some laws are unjust whether Josh, or I, agree.
But as it turns out, that was not quite right. Continue reading
Judge Mark W. Bennett takes a momentary break from his thoughtful posts here to take a deep dive into the myth of empiricism of the federal Sentencing Guidelines.
A federal district judge who has sentenced more than 4,000 offenders in multiple districts shares his experience and criticisms of current federal sentencing. The article begins with a history of federal sentencing, then focuses on problems related to mandatory minimum sentencing and application of 21 U.S.C. § 851 prior conviction enhancements in federal drug cases. The next section exposes the myth of empirical federal sentencing guidelines. The final section offers eight specific suggestions for federal sentencing reform.
Judge Bennett has made the point before, that we’re “addicted to sentencing,” and have come to believe the myth that there is some particular magic, some empirical reality, to the numbers of the guidelines that make them real, worthy, appropriate. Continue reading
It started as a white supremacist rally, the sort that was used to explain how the nation was being overtaken by Naxos bent on taking over Trump Nation. About two dozen showed.
A neo-Nazi rally outside of Atlanta on Saturday drew only a few participants and did not last very long.
It proved, yet again, that they are utterly insignificant. Better used as a source of humor and ridicule, if only people still had a sense of humor. So naturally, the unduly passionate in desperate need for a target of their outrage and zeal appeared to protest the handful of pathetic worms. Continue reading
It’s hard. It’s a burden. Your life is so full, so busy, and then Darth Cheeto goes and farts again. You’re literally shaking, but can’t muster the energy to lift your finger in protest. Does that make you a bad person? Where can you turn for a tummy rub that the utter pointlessness of your existence doesn’t make you a traitor to the cause?
Dear Roxane,
Yes, *Roxane Gay. Who better to turn to when you need serious life advice? Continue reading