When Senior Judge John Kane rejected the plea agreement, not because he had any difficulty with the deal cut as far as the defendant was concerned, but that the government gratuitously threw in the now-ubiquitous waiver of appeal, the Tenth Circuit said no. Judge Kane’s position was that the government provided no additional consideration for the waiver. The Circuit’s view was, “So what? That’s the deal.”

In Garza v. Idaho, the Supreme Court issued one of those head-scratching decisions that gave the appearance of good news while accomplishing little, if nothing, to help. The Court extended the rule of Roe v. Flores-Ortega, that failure of counsel to file a Notice of Appeal was, per se, ineffective assistance of counsel.

This was a significant decision, as if would otherwise fall to the defendant to meet the requirements of Strickland v. Washington to show that counsel’s screw-up, the failure to file the notice, would survive the second-prong of the test, that there was a reasonable probability of a different outcome. In other words, you had to show a probability that you would win the appeal to get the right to appeal. This was not only an absurd burden, but gave cover to inexcusable failure. A first-level appeal is a right, so failure to file a notice is an unjustifiable failure. Continue reading →

If your image of a knitter is some grandma, softly repeating “knit one, purl two,” you haven’t been paying attention to the resurgence of what Vox calls “fiber arts,” Why the word “knitting” is deemed inadequate for the art of knitting is unclear. It could be because hipsters need a new word for everything, to distinguish it from what grandma did, or it lacked the prestige new wave knitters needed to validate their importance.

Still, knitting was a wonderful craft. Until it turned into a vicious cesspool of hateful outrage.

On January 7, Karen Templer, a knitting designer and owner of the online store Fringe Association, published an innocuous blog post on her website entitled “2019: My Year of Colour,” in which she enthused about her forthcoming trip to India.

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In advance of his testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Michael Cohen’s opening statement was released. It reveals nothing, absolutely nothing, about Donald J. Trump that shouldn’t have been brutally obvious to anyone paying any attention at all.

He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign – for him – was always a marketing opportunity.

That anyone could have believed otherwise is astounding.

He is a racist.
He is a conman.
He is a cheat.

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Ed. Note: This is a guest post by Roswell, Georgia, lawyer Charles Landrum, addressing the story raised by the Atlanta Journal-Constution about criminal defense lawyer and Georgia Speaker of the House, David Ralston. alleging abuse of his office for the benefit of his clients.

The annual Georgia legislative session lasts 40 days, from January to March. In 1905, the Georgia legislature passed a law that gives attorney-legislators the right to delay “any act” in a case in which they represent a party for so long as the legislature remains in session. O.C.G.A. § 17-8-25(a) does the magic in criminal proceedings. O.C.G.A. § 9-10-150 grants the same magical powers in civil proceedings.

A 40-day delay in a court case so that a duly-elected representative of the people has the opportunity to fulfill their legislative duties makes sense. Cases get delayed all the time; what’s another month and a half? A judge in Savannah or Augusta can wait on the Gold Dome in Atlanta. Continue reading →

For lawyers, our courtroom attire is a uniform, spanning the color universe of gray to blue and seeking to accomplish two things: make us appear serious and credible to the judge and jury and not distract from the more important things happening. We strive to create an impression that enhances our function without undermining that function.

This goes for all lawyers, regardless of gender, although men have it far easier than women given our clearer options and fewer possible fashion faux pas. Our shoe choices are black or brown, and the biggest issue at the toe end is plain, cap or brogue. No peeking.

Are we really so constrained by fashion protocol? Should we be? Is it just another manifestation of “toxic masculinity”? It’s one thing to take a risk when the only person who might suffer is you, but when we’re there solely for the sake of a client, is it irresponsible to risk our client’s interest to express our own fashion sense? Continue reading →

It was unsurprising when a friend, a teacher, told me that one of her students expressed a desire to be called by a name other than the one given by her parents. She told her principal, and inquired whether she should inform the child’s mother. Her principal instructed her that it was district policy not to do so, that the teacher was to acquiesce to the child’s preference and keep it from the parents.

In one story, parents are wonderful nurturing people. In another story, parents aren’t. The school wasn’t taking any chances of being on the wrong side of transphobia. Maybe the child is gender-dysphoric. Maybe not. But if they snitch to the parents, and the parents lack sufficient prescience to be supportive of a second grader who wants to be called Billy instead of Suzie, all hell could break loose. They don’t need that sort of backlash, and so the choice of keeping the parents in the dark prevailed.

Bioethicists have seized upon this mindset by invoking the power of the State not just to conceal information from parents, but to seize the child to be raised and medicated in the “right” way. Continue reading →

Dr. SJ and I watched Roma on Netflix because, as she explained to me, it was going to be an Oscar contender and we should watch Oscar-contending movies. We were about fifteen minutes into the film when she turned to me and said, “I don’t think it gets any better. I don’t think there’s any plot, any story at all.” It took us about a week to watch the movie, in small chunks, because we were bored.

As an aside in her Times op-ed against quota-izing our world to assure that the right number of genitalia are omnipresent, Reason Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Katherine Mangu-Ward, describes the movie.

But consider “Roma.” If there is any justice in this world, it will win the Academy Award for best director on Sunday. This wrenching, beautiful film is set almost entirely in the world of women; it delicately engages class and race, stares unflinchingly at the darkness and light of motherhood, and yet it shows up on the wrong side of the gender ledgers: The director is Alfonso Cuarón, a man.

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The group Turning Point USA had a table on campus at UC Berkeley, where legend has it that the free speech campus movement was born. Whether you like the group or not is irrelevant or all that matters, because they’re either entitled to express their views or not based upon whether you believe free speech is a right or speech is violence, and therefore to be met with violence.

This fellow falls into the speech is violence crowd because of his refined sensibilities of morality. Or maybe he embraces the punch a Nazi, punch a teenager in a red MAGA cap, punch anyone who disagree with you mentality. Or he just likes to punch. It’s impossible to say for sure since he has yet to explain himself.

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It served as one of the primary arguments against the Equal Rights Amendment, that if this came to pass, women would be drafted into the military. But such a fear was misguided, as this nightmare, if that’s what it is, has now come to pass by ruling of Southern District of Texas Senior District Judge Gray Miller.

If ever there was a time to discuss “the place of women in the Armed Services,” that time has passed.

The court held that “male-only registration” for selective service was unconstitutional, so the law requiring males to register, but not females (or any other gender, as the case may be), violates the Equal Protection Clause.

The decision deals the biggest legal blow to the Selective Service System since the Supreme Court upheld the draft in 1981. In Rostker v. Goldberg, the court ruled that the male-only draft was “fully justified” because women were ineligible for combat roles.

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Satisfying as it may be to sucker punch someone who says something you deem awful, you can’t punch a pickup truck. It’s an inanimate object and will just hurt your fist. So Andrew Bartell came up with an alternative. Torch it.

Bartell, a 26-year-old student at the University of Kansas, was visiting his grandparents in Holton in early July 2016. On July 3, Bartell’s grandparents’ neighbor, Steven Battles, had parked his truck on the street near Bartell’s grandparents’ home. Battles’ truck had a Confederate flag painted on the hood and a Confederate flag flying from the bed. Bartell found this very disrespectful because he felt the Confederate flag was “a symbol of hatred, slavery and the KKK.”

Bartell asked Battles to move his truck. Battles refused. Bartell went to the police, who refused to take a report of this hate crime. What else could he do? Continue reading →