Sure, it was only a debate among the Democratic Party candidates left standing, and has to be taken with a grain of salt, it being a minute of pandering to the lowest common denominator in the hope of getting that small cohort of hardcore party primary voters to choose one over another. But one by one, they all agreed on one thing: criminal law was racist.

“But…but it IS!” you say?

Slow down, buckaroo. There is no question that black and Hispanic (or Latinx for Warren supporters) defendants are disproportionately represented in people arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. Contrary to what some believe that means, it does not mean that white people are not arrested and imprisoned. They are. In large numbers. Just not as disproportionately large as black and Hispanic men. Continue reading →

San Angelo attorney Patricia Stone is no rookie lawyer, even if she’s somewhat new to criminal defense. She served as a Texas assistant attorney general until she retired and went into private practice. One would be very hard pressed to assume that she wasn’t competent, smart and sincere when she argued on appeal the unconstitutionality of plea bargaining.

This case is brought to vindicate that principle. Patricia Stone argued in a criminal appeal that the plea-bargaining system violates the Texas and United States Constitutions because it is inconsistent with the text of the Constitutions and with the understanding of that text at the time the Constitutions were adopted. In response to these arguments, Defendants implemented a policy of refusing to enter a plea bargain with any of Stone’s other clients unless she personally agrees that her argument was wrong. The purpose of this retaliatory campaign is to silence any attorney who attempts to challenge the plea-bargaining system on which Defendants rely so that they will not have to defend against these challenges in Court.

Regardless of whether she’s right on the law or you support the elimination of plea bargaining as a matter of policy, the issue is that after she raised the argument, the Tom Green County District Attorney has created the “Stone Policy,” that they won’t negotiate pleas with any client represented by Patricia Stone.

Inside a Tom Green County, Tex., courtroom in October, a woman facing a misdemeanor forgery charge was about to lose her appointed lawyer.

That afternoon, the woman’s soon-to-be former defense attorney, Patricia Stone, was joined by a judge to explain to the defendant why Stone could no longer represent her: The district attorney in Tom Green County was trying to enforce a policy, pertaining only to Stone, that required her to sign a waiver against her beliefs for prosecutors to discuss plea deals for her clients.“

[The prosecutors] will not talk about trying to work deals or do anything by agreement. That could hurt my clients,” Stone said, according to court transcripts. “Therefore, I have a duty to my clients, since that’s the way they’re going, to not let that hurt you.”

At its most superficial level, this policy destroys Stone’s ability to represent clients by removing one, and for many the most critical one, tool in her bag. If clients represented by Stone won’t be offered pleas, then their choices are limited, they’re compelled to go to trial and denied the full panoply of options that a defendant represented by any other lawyer would be given.

To her enormous credit, Patricia Stone put her client first. While she won’t disavow the argument she raised on appeal, or be coerced into preemptively disclaiming the argument for any other client, she will similarly not let her clients be deprived of the options afforded any other client. Instead, she took the hit, giving up the case rather than allowing any harm to come to her clients.

As she was assigned to represent the defendant, it’s not as if  this implicates the denial of counsel of choice, per se, although clients and lawyers establish relationships of trust, and the client may very well prefer that Stone be the lawyer, particularly given Stone’s dedication to her client’s best interest and, well, the fact that not all lawyers doing indigent representation in Texas are renowned for their diligence. But a new lawyer will be assigned to the client, and Stone will be punished by the loss of the case, of the client, instead.

There’s no doubt that the prosecution’s “policy” is retaliatory for Stone’s having argued that plea bargaining is unconstitutional. There may be some sort of snarky rationale, such as “well, if she thinks it’s unconstitutional, then her clients shouldn’t get a plea. Let’s see how much she likes that!”

“In this case, the DA is saying, ‘we are going to dictate the legal arguments you can make, and if you don’t agree we’re going to make sure that your other clients don’t have the same right to justice as everyone else,’ ” Stone wrote. “They are trying to make me sell out one of my clients to do a good job for the others, and I won’t do that.”

While this shallow tit-for-tat game played by the Tom Green County prosecutor may seem roughly fair, Stone’s point is that the consequence of being forced to choose between her current clients being afforded the same options as any other defendants is to limit her ability to make a good faith, non-frivolous argument otherwise. If the policy directed at Stone for her temerity to challenge plea bargaining is allowed, then the DA would control the arguments she might make in future by the same sort of policy, the same sort of deprivation.

And if they can destroy Patricia Stone’s practice, her ability to represent clients, then what makes you think yours is safe if you make an argument that annoys the prosecutor enough?

To be clear, plea bargaining is a terrible compromise, coercive and manipulative, and the only thing worse than our current system of plea bargaining would be our current system without plea bargaining. But while I disagree with Stone’s contention, both on the law and as a matter of policy, she absolutely has the right to make the argument without suffering retaliation by the district attorney.

As long as plea bargaining remains a lawful mechanism for resolving criminal prosecutions, her clients must be afforded the same options as any other defendant. That doesn’t mean any client is entitled to any particular deal, but that they similarly can’t be denied any deal as a matter of prosecutorial policy.

For those stuck on what might appear to be the inconsistency in Patricia Stone’s position, lawyers argue in the alternative all the time. There is nothing improper about arguing in one case that plea bargaining is unconstitutional while taking a plea in another case. Aside from the fact that different cases demand different arguments, simply making the argument neither means she’ll prevail nor she sacrifice her clients for “the cause.”

Too many are blinded to the best interests of their client by their invocation of “the cause,” but not Patricia Stone. So she’s begging off cases to save her clients from harm, which is what an honorable criminal defense lawyer does. She just shouldn’t have to. No lawyer should fear that making a bold argument should force her to choose between the best interests of her clients and her ability to make any legitimate argument before a court.

Professional Wrestling is best likened to a very physical form of dance, where participants put their lives in each other’s hands nightly.* Outcomes may be predetermined, but injuries are very real, and wrestlers maintain faith in each other every night that they’ll leave the arena unharmed.

Then there’s Jerome Young, better known as “New Jack.”**

A self-professed ex-bounty hunter with allegedly five justifiable homicides under his belt, New Jack was more of a psychotic thug than a wrestler. His “matches” usually featured victims getting bludgeoned with various weapons Jack would carry to the ring in a trash can. From computer keyboards to guitars filled with jock itch powder, New Jack never found an object he couldn’t swing at someone while Dr. Dre and Ice Cube’s “Natural Born Killaz” boomed in the background. Continue reading →

Where the liberals once uttered the word “equality,” progressives have since replaced it with another word, “equity.” As with so many words that seem destined to mean whatever Humpty Dumpty feels it should, the word “equity” has largely escaped definition to be used as a catch-all for whatever outcomes are in need of rationalization.

But columnist Nancy Kaffer at the Detroit Free Press has offered a definition of the word “equity” in her quest to explain why Detroit should be “more fair.”

What does equity mean?

If you own a home, you’re familiar with this term as a measure of the value you hold in your property; in other words, the worth of the property after the debt you hold against that property is deducted.

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No matter what, Bernie Madoff, of the Ponzi scheme Madoffs, will not complete his 150 year sentence. To the extent there was any question of how long his sentence would actually be, the answer seems to be around the corner.

Bernie Madoff said he is in the end stages of kidney disease, must use a wheelchair and is in need of round-the-clock help. At 81, he is too old for a transplant, and he has been moved to palliative care within the Federal Medical Center prison in Butner, N.C. He is asking for compassionate release so he can die at home.

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If fees are outlawed, only outlaws will earn fees? New York City went through some quirky supply and demand for rental apartments decades ago. It brought out the well-intended micro-management of the market with rent control and stabilization laws, which begat a series of unintended consequences and very deliberate efforts to circumvent the law.

One such quirk was the creation of a real estate industry geared toward finding people rental apartments. Building owners didn’t need them, as a “reasonably priced” apartment put on the market for rental was snapped up within hours. The market was that tight. The people who needed someone to both do the legwork and have their finger on the pulse of rental availability were the wannabe renters. Continue reading →

New York, New York, is a helluva town, and the New York City Commission on Human Rights finally figured out how to use this to its advantage. Among the many industries that call NY home, or at least their American home, is the fashion industry. It’s not that it has to be that way, but it just turned out that way. Somehow, Des Moines didn’t make the cut instead.

So a little known, and even less cared about, city agency, the NYCCHR became captive of the woke, where they spun new rules and regs to reinvent their little patch of earth to suit their sensibilities. From African hairstyles to forbidden words like “illegal alien,” they dictated what was (sniff) politically acceptable and what would cost a bundle if you didn’t behave their way.

When their focus was turned by a complaint of offense at a fashion window display, the fashion house of Prada, inexplicably, decided not to resist. Continue reading →

Not that anyone necessarily agrees with me, but I’m a supporter of affirmative action, of diversity. From a group of otherwise fully qualified candidates, bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, and that includes people’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and, yes, social class, a deeper pool is created from which better ideas rise. Don’t hate me, and no, this is not the subject for discussion here, but merely a preface.

It’s because of my belief in the value of diversity that I say this to the University of California at Berkeley: you fucked it all up.

The University of California has been requiring prospective faculty members to affirm that they support diversity. This was Orwellian in its own right—reminiscent of the university system’s 1950s loyalty oaths, which required faculty to attest that they were not members of the Communist Party.

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It’s a trick question, of course, because it assumes the Iowa caucuses are dead, but then, Dr. David Leonhardt pronounced the death, so they must be.

It should never go first again because it is an overwhelmingly white, disproportionately older state that distorts the presidential nominating process. In the 2020 campaign, Iowa’s outsize role has already helped doom two black candidates (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris) and given a boost to candidates whose main appeal has been among white voters (like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar). Iowa’s Democrats look nothing like the nation’s Democrats, as Michael Tomasky explained in a Times Op-Ed.

Booker and Harris are out, which was either going to be Russia’s fault or Iowa’s, because it couldn’t possibly be their fault. After all they were “two black candidates,” which is a stand-alone policy position in the New Democratic Party. And not to be a pedant, but Tomasky didn’t explain much of anything, but argued in the finest progressive tradition that if you assume racial demographics are all that matter, then Iowa doesn’t matter. Continue reading →

Before the Iowa caucuses, the New York Times published an op-ed calling for the Democrats to ignore the state as being racially unrepresentative.

This must end for Democrats. Everyone knows it. Everyone argues it. But then, everyone throws up their hands. Iowa has been first for nearly 50 years now, a position to which the Democratic Party has given its tacit assent.

Does everyone know it? Does everyone argue it? Does everyone throw up their hands? Continue reading →