Maybe it’s like the “reply all” error, where a private note intended for one person ends up in the hands of the very people you didn’t want to see it. Or maybe it was that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s city council relations director, Denise DosSantos, didn’t appreciate the virtues of segregation. Either way, the email went out, and so too did the cat from the bag.

A Wu administration official, on behalf of the mayor, mistakenly sent all Boston city councilors an email Tuesday inviting them to a holiday party that was meant exclusively for “electeds of color,” prompting an apology and mixed reactions.

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Over the past decade, public defenders’ offices, at least in New York, have become increasingly dedicated to social justice. While the lawyers who took on the representation of the indigent always trended to the left, the offices became increasingly progressive rather than liberal,  and increasingly intolerant of anyone who wasn’t dedicated to the farthest left fashions.

More than a few of the long-time public defenders have told me that if they applied for a job today, they wouldn’t get it because they were insufficiently woke. They say it as if it’s a joke, but it’s no joke. They live in fear of the younger lawyers, who will attack them at the slightest hint of heresy. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Chris Halkides has been kind enough to try to make us lawyers smarter by dumbing down science enough that we have a small chance of understanding how it’s being used to wrongfully convict and, in some cases, execute defendants. Chris graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and teaches biochemistry, organic chemistry, and forensic chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

In 1989, Han Tak Lee and his daughter were staying in a 1000 square foot cabin in Pennsylvania when a fire destroyed it, claiming his daughter’s life. In 1990, Mr. Lee was convicted of first degree murder and arson, and sentenced to life without parole. The evidence against him included identifying one ignition point of the fire by the presence of crazed glass, thin, irregular fractures. The collapsed furniture and bed springs, spill patterns (pour patterns?), and deep charring and alligatoring of wood were also taken as evidence of a very hot fire; therefore a deliberately set fire. Crazed glass is created by cold water hitting hot windowpanes. Nor are collapsed furniture springs, pour patterns, alligator patterns or depth of charring of wood accepted any longer as evidence of arson. Continue reading →

Much of the time, a little legal research will produce a ruling that can guide the court and litigants as to how an issue has been addressed in the past. Sometimes, it’s precedential, for what that’s worth these days. Other times, its value is merely persuasive, leaving the decision to stand or fall on its merits. Rarely is there absolutely nothing out there, no court decision addressing an issue at all. But when it comes to Trump, novelty is the new normal.

Special prosecutor Jack Smith has employed a rarely used writ of certiorari before judgment to bring two issues before the Supreme Court in advance of trying Trump for his role in the January 6th insurrection. The question presented was carefully framed. Continue reading →

Kate Cox was the perfect patient to suit the Texas exception for the health of the mother. The circumstances could not have aligned better to test the merits of the law that, it was argued, didn’t ban all abortion, but allowed for medical intervention when the mother’s life or health was at risk. And despite her desire to have a child, her non-viable pregnancy was doomed, removing any cries of murder.

But her doctor had a point. This was Cox’s medical reality, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, no stranger to indictment himself, was of the view that he, and not those damn doctors, got to decide whether aborting Cox’s pregnancy was a crime. Even a judge ruling in her favor wasn’t enough to stay Paxton from control, and so he appealed and obtained an injunction from the Texas Supreme Court, which was apparently unaware that it lacked the jurisdiction to prevent medical harm from coming to Kate Cox while letting time go by. Continue reading →

While a candidate for the Virginia state house, Susanna Gibson’s online past came back to haunt her. Even so, she came within 1000 votes of winning the race, as the Democrats took the house. She’s now raising the question of whether her consent to putting her sex acts online for money in what she would argue was a private forum was consent to the Washington Post to write about it and others to repost video of her having sex and offering to pee for profit for all to see.

I think this is going to continue to happen as millennials age into running for office. There was a 2014 study conducted by McAfee that said or showed that 90 percent of millennial women have taken nude photos at some point. This is something that is very common, especially in the younger generations. Continue reading →

For a brief period years ago, my next door neighbor was a cop. Not just any cop, but an emergency services cop who worked on the SWAT team. Nice guy. Pleasant, friendly, helpful to a fault. Never, during that time, did I hear a mean word, no less a curse, come out of his mouth. And yet, we talked one day about the way in which he executed his duty, and one of the things that stunned me was that his language changed from my good neighbor to a vulgar animal.

When I asked him why, he explained that it had shock value and enabled him to establish “command presence,” the assertion of control over the person he was dealing with. It showed that he was not “fucking” around, but was both very serious and not inclined to tolerate any challenge. As a cop, this was a life or death need, he explained. Any crack in his commanding facade could spell death for him, and he had no plan to die that day. Continue reading →

It was December in the town of Mud Lick, Alabama and Christmas magic seemed to fill the air.

For one, it was snowing. Mud Lick almost never got snow in the winter months, but this year it came in huge, fluffy white droves. The town’s residents were typical Southerners, which meant everyone was enchanted with the thought of a white Christmas for about a day. When the schools closed because buses couldn’t run safely and businesses closed as a result, everyone started getting frustrated with what they called “White Death.”

Both grocery stores had a run on bread, milk and eggs. Teachers at Bear Bryant Elementary moved their classes to Zoom school since that was the way of the world these days. More importantly, everything in what was normally a very quiet rural Alabama town slowed down and quieted so much that if you weren’t a local you would’ve sworn time came to a complete stop. Continue reading →

Bret Stephens got it right, although to be fair, it wasn’t really a hard question.

The presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania testified before a House committee on Tuesday about the state of antisemitism on their campuses. It did not go well for them.

Let’s assume, arguendo, that these are smart, capable women, How hard could it be to answer the question posed by Rep. Elise Stefanik, “whether ‘calling for the genocide of Jews’ violated the schools’ codes of conduct or constituted “bullying or harassment”? Yet, not one could bring themselves answer “yes.” Continue reading →

There is a weird dynamic that happens when you attend an elite college. You go in believing you’re pretty darn smart, which is why you’re heading for New Haven instead of Podunk, and as a pretty darn smart person, you’re supposed to get pretty darn good grades. In the olden days, you heard the speech at orientation that began “look to your left, look to your right,” and were informed that one of you will flunk out.

The warning was to tell you that you weren’t in high school anymore and would have to work, and work hard, to make the cut. There would be no free ride. Whether it was accurate or merely a scare tactic, I dunno, but it worked. At my college, they graded on a curve, and we knew only too well that there was a pretty darn good chance we would not get an “A.” But then, I didn’t go to Yale. Continue reading →