What’s not to love about a FBI director who knows his Broadway tunes, a time-honored tradition since J. Edgar owned the place.  As the New York Times reports, Jim Comey pulled one out for his speech at Georgetown University.

Citing the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” from the Broadway show “Avenue Q,” he said police officers of all races viewed black and white men differently. In an address to students at Georgetown University, Mr. Comey said that some officers scrutinize African-Americans more closely using a mental shortcut that “becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights” because black men are arrested at much higher rates than white men.

That everyone is a little bit racist, if not a lot racist, is hardly controversial.  Indeed, not realizing this obvious fault would be quite disturbing.  But Jim then goes to dark places where someone who uses Hoover’s old closet shouldn’t go: that racism “becomes almost irresistible.”

The numbers overwhelmingly show that black men are arrested at much higher rates than white men.  But if Jim could think like a freak, he might understand that his facile connection of statistics to the “almost irresistible” rationale for racism defies logic.  Correlation does not prove causation.  Continue reading →

According to reports, Antonio Zambrano-Montes threw a “large” rock at a car. Why is unknown, but throwing a rock at a car is a very bad and dangerous thing to do.  This was before the police arrived.  What happened after was captured on video.

To the extent it’s unclear what’s happening, let’s take the worst-case interpretation of the video from PoliceOne.  It starts with a remarkable statement:

It’s unclear in the video if he was armed and police say they are unsure if a weapon was found at the scene.

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It’s been a while since any bar association-type has asked me to be on a future of law panel.  My guess is that it’s because I’m unpredictable, a bomb-thrower type of guy. Most association types prefer to pack panels with friends, or at least people who won’t say things that hurt their feelings.  After all, what point is there in being a very important bar association leader if someone hurts their feelings?

Yet, somebody blew it when they put Toby Brown of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog on a panel for the National Conference of Bar Leaders on the future of the profession.

For those of you unfamiliar with how bar associations make decisions, I offer the following story:

If someone asked for permission to go to the bathroom, a bar would form a task force (or commission) to fully examine whether going to the bathroom was a good idea and to highlight all of the pitfalls around bathrooms. After 18 months they would issue a report stating that going to the bathroom is generally a good thing and should be promoted to those who need to go, but only if all of the potential negative impacts have been understood, limited and communicated to those considering bathroom breaks. The report would not actually authorize the request to use the bathroom. It would be left to the Bar Board to actually enact a rule permitting said activity. The Board rarely follows up as they are busy forming the next task force and would not want to take any heat for authorizing such a dramatic change.

In the meantime, the guy who made the original request either went, or died.

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Ah, the power of a young person who believes that his cause is just.  Baylor University’s Student Judicial Board may only preside over the small pond of Baptist college in Waco, Texas, but it still affects lives.

Baylor University’s student judicial board issued a no-contact order to members of the student newspaper on Thursday — an attempt to limit coverage of a student disciplinary case.

Junior Cody Coll, who was confirmed as the Baylor University Student Court court’s chief justice last week, said the order is within his jurisdiction, though he was “unsure” if prior chief justices have issued similar orders to student publications in the past.

“It’s within the purview of the chief justice to instruct the justices to not communicate with the media,” he said. “It’s also within the jurisdiction of the court to issue an order such as the one that was issued yesterday.”

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There is little doubt that the mistaken killing of a guy who had the tragic misfortune to be in a stairwell when a scared rookie cop discharged his weapon in a dark stairwell of the Louis Pink Houses in Brooklyn was wrong. It was no accident that the cops revealed the dead guy’s rap sheet, even though there was no question that he did nothing wrong here, but no one will be indicted for that.

Kings County DA Ken Thompson has obtained an indictment for Peter Liang’s killing of Akai Gurley:

A grand jury impaneled last week decided it was a crime. The jurors indicted Officer Liang on several charges, including second-degree manslaughter, said a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the indictment had yet to be unsealed. The other charges are criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, second-degree assault and two counts of official misconduct, the official said.

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There were other options for the concerned relative in Anson County, North Carolina.  The relative could have called on the telephone, and kept calling until someone answered. Or called a neighbor.  Assuming those options didn’t work, the relative could have hopped in the car and made the drive to Gastonia.

Instead, the relative called the Gastonia police to check on the welfare of 74-year-old James Howard Allen.  A few hours later, they got their answer.

Police were called to the home of James Howard Allen about 10 p.m. Saturday because a relative of Allen’s in Anson County was worried about his condition, Gastonia police Chief Robert Helton said during a Sunday morning press conference.

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While it’s true that it’s all about the client, it’s not an absolute.  Jamie Koehler writes about clients withholding information from their lawyer.

The withholding of information can occasionally lead to that cringe-inducing moment at trial in which you are caught completely off-guard by something the government’s witness says on the stand.  Although I always tried my best to maintain my poker face when this happened, I could feel my client squirming in the seat next to me.  And it often led to an angry exchange afterward:  Really?  You didn’t think that was something I might want to know?  The defendant was usually sheepish about this.   I don’t know, one of them might say.  I thought you would try harder if you thought I was innocent.

To withhold information is to deceive.  Sometimes it’s by omission, as Jamison notes, and other times it’s by commission, where the client will tell you something, with his sincere eyes looking at you for belief, that is just an outright lie.

There’s a spiel I tell clients, that they don’t want their lawyer to be the stupidest guy in the room, and if everyone else in the room knows something I don’t know, or knows something different than I do, I’m that stupidest guy. Continue reading →

The write-up was the sort that could well show up in a commendation request, or more importantly these days, as proof of how dangerous it was to be a cop.

“While running towards my partner I saw the Hispanic male grab my partner with both his hands by his chest upper vest area and slammed him into a brick wall of the building. The Hispanic male held my partner up against the wall and began throwing elbows towards my partner’s face and head area,” McKnight said in a signed statement, echoing the account given by Robinson, according to the charging documents.

This, we might have been told, is why we don’t get it, why challenging the use of force by police reflects our naiveté, our disrespect, of the precarious position of a cop on the street.  This should make us ashamed of our doubting that it’s not easy being cop. Continue reading →

For reasons that elude me, Huffington Post Women published a post by Jeena Cho explaining that we should stop training lawyers to be jerks.  She begins with the obligatory anecdote.

When I was a young lawyer, I was invited to sit in on a deposition with one of the managing partners at the firm. This was my first deposition, and one of my first experiences coming face to face with an adversary. When I got to the conference room, I asked opposing counsel and his client if they wanted anything to drink and if they were comfortable. I don’t recall if they asked for anything, but what I do remember is what happened after the deposition. The managing lawyer pulled me aside and told me never to do that again. It was not my job to offer water or make the opposing side comfortable and in fact, it was my job to do the opposite. To make them as uncomfortable as possible.

She took this “mentoring advice” to heart, but explains that being the “most aggressive lawyer in the room” didn’t work for her.  Her own mentoring advice is to lead with kindness:

We can debate whether such tactics work or not. However, to me, it doesn’t matter. Even if not offering water did somehow give us a slight edge, I still believe I should have offered it. I became a lawyer to pursue justice and to help people. This means that I have to maintain my humanity.

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The crime of resisting arrest is one that conceptually disturbs a great many people.  Putting aside the cognitive dissonance when that’s the only crime charged, most would contend that it’s the crime of arrest, not the lack of cooperation with police in effectuating our own arrest, that should matter.  If a person is being arrested for a crime they didn’t commit, why should it be a separate crime not to facilitate their own wrongful arrest?

New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton doesn’t see it that way. Not at all.

On Wednesday, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton urged state legislators to consider increasing the penalty for resisting arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony. The change, he argued, would help New Yorkers “get around this idea that you can resist arrest. You can’t.” It would also give cops an easy way to turn victims of their own worst impulses into the worst class of criminal.

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