In 1975, I pledged the Alpha Rho chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma.  I can still recite the Greek alphabet five times on a match, and having been elected to the exalted position of Delta (bartender), I held the secret recipe of our fraternity beverage, The Blue Meanie.

It’s not that I was big on the whole brotherhood thing, but that I needed a place to live sophomore year and PKS had a pretty nice chapter house, Greentrees.

It is now the home of Pi Kappa Phi, as my fraternity was banned from campus in 1991 following an unfortunate incident.  But when I was there, we had some damn good parties and some great times.  Nobody realized at the time that this was horribly wrong. Continue reading →

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Eight people rose, one at a time, from the gallery of the United States Supreme Court to express disapproval of the Supreme Court’s decision Citizens United.  They were led off to face the consequences.

Kathleen L. Arberg, the Court’s public information officer, said eight individuals were arrested in Wednesday’s disturbance. Seven have been charged with violating a federal law against making “a harangue or oration, or utter[ing] loud, threatening, or abusive language in the Supreme Court Building,” as well as with violating two Court regulations.

Arberg said those seven, along with the eighth individual, were also charged with “conspiracy-related offenses” under District of Columbia law.

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As every lawyer is well aware from the gazillion solicitations that come via every conceivable means, there is an industry out there dedicated to taking as much of your money as possible whose claim is to make you fabulously wealthy. If it wasn’t for all those damn ethical rules that states impose on legal marketing.

So legal ethics lecturer and Avvo’s general counsel and vice president for marketeering business development, Josh King, urges a radical change:  it’s time to “gut” the ethics rules.

Get rid of most attorney advertising regulation.

Or more specifically, eliminate everything other than restrictions on false advertising and real-time solicitation. Our suggested advertising rules would look like this:

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Few things resonate more than the Castle Doctrine, the right of a homeowner to defend his home and family from attack.  When it turns out that the invaders wear shields, the homeowner’s defense turns from an inalienable right to controversial.  So controversial that homeowner Marvin Louis Guy faces the death penalty for the killing of Det. Chuck Dinwiddie.  Had Dinwiddie not been a cop, Guy might have gotten a medal instead.

So when Dallas Horton’s shooting of Sheriff Louis Ross four times for kicking in his door  resulted in prosecutors declining to charge him, one would have expected some cheers for the rights of the homeowner against the police invaders.

The homeowner who nearly killed an Oklahoma police chief during a raid won’t face charges since cops busted the wrong house. Continue reading →

An old man gripes about inexperienced lawyers mucking up his courtroom with their oozing inexperience:

Not for the first time, I wondered why it was then that any kid out of law school or any office-practice lawyer could wander into my courtroom and take a federal felony case to trial or plea as counsel for the defendant if he or she was retained to do so by the defendant. Not to put too fine a point on it, that’s [Ed. Note: Trigger warning, ableist slur ahead] crazy. Nevertheless, virtually every day we stand by and watch inexperienced lawyers muddle about representing people charged with federal felonies merely because they passed the Nebraska Bar exam and someone was dumb enough to hire them.

It’s not like anybody named Rakofsky would take a murder case, right?

I propose that no lawyer be permitted to practice federal criminal defense law until he or she has been certified as sufficiently experienced to do so. Continue reading →

A recurring gripe is that readers agree with me 75% of the time, but that last 25% is the killer. Not only do they disagree, but they vehemently disagree, to the point where they want to reach through the computer and strangle me. How, they ask in earnest, can I be so wrong?

The “wrong” at issue is my writing on the subject of the changing tides of sexual assault, rape and neo-feminism.  The dilemma is easy to understand: liberal ideology vehemently supports the due process rights of criminal defendants, the free speech rights of individuals right up to the moment when an allegation is raised by a woman, whereupon the ideology does a 180° and blind support for women trumps everything else.  Why don’t I get that?

Female criminal defense lawyers have informed me that as much as they agree with me completely about criminal law, they find me intolerable when it comes to gender issues.  Whereas they take a principled stance when it comes to their duty as lawyers, they see no problem with abandoning all principle when the allegation is rape. Murders, no problem. Drugs, whatever. Rape? Well, that’s what ideology does to reason. Continue reading →

Chances are that it would have been a great story, a winning story, when Rocky Ford police officer James Ashby explained why he had no choice but to kill Jack Jacquez.

Jacquez was skateboarding on a street when the officer approached him. Ashby said Jacquez cursed at him and walked erratically before heading toward the yard of what turned out to be his house.

Ashby told authorities he suspected Jacquez was trying to burglarize the home. He also said he thought Jacquez was getting ready to strike him with a baseball bat.

What else could Ashby do but shoot Jacquez as he was about to strike the officer with a baseball bat?  Of course, it wasn’t exactly a perfect story, because Ashby had a small inconvenience to address, a ride-along passenger, Kyle Moore. Continue reading →

When I first heard of the video, I winced, but didn’t think it sufficiently worthwhile to waste my time. After all, there are always magic tricks being spread about the internet that claim to have found a cool, secret, magic way to beat the cops at their own game.

One self-promoter wrote a book that did pretty well teaching people to puke on themselves based on the premise that cops won’t arrest you if you’re covered in vomit because then they’ll have to clean up their cars.  Then, there was the infamous Redemption Theory post at Bennett’s Defending People, where Mark gave the proponents of sovereign citizens a chance to smear their crazy all over the comments at his blog.

The latest along these lines, the plastic bag trick, was the subject of Matt Brown’s post at Tempe Criminal Defense.

An interesting DUI checkpoint video has been circulating lately. In it, the driver gets through without even rolling down his window, passing by with ease thanks to a plastic bag attached to his car with a string. The bag contained his license, registration, insurance information, and a note saying “I remain silent,” “No searches,” and “I want my lawyer.” As clever as it may be, it’s also dangerous to think it will always be that easy.

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I sent an email to Swiss Watchmakers in Cambridge, this morning, but think the message applies to a great many things and is worth sharing.

I gave my son, Jack, a Glycine Airman Base 22 Purist for Christmas. I’m a watch collector, and I hoped that my son would share my love and appreciation of mechanical watches. When he saw the Glycine, his eyes lit up. I had given him a few watches before, but this time I really captured his interest. I was thrilled.

A few days later, he told me that the hands didn’t align properly. The hour hand was about 15 minutes off proper alignment. No problem, I told him. I called your shop and was told that you could handle it. I was told it would take a day or two, and that it would be no big deal to properly align the hands.

My son brought his watch to you on January 5th. He was told, as I was, that it would be done in a day or two, and he would be called to come get it. A few days later, he still hadn’t heard anything so he called (at my urging) and was told it was being worked on. So much for a day or two. Continue reading →

That law is a profession, not just a business, has long been a theme here, and I haven’t been shy about pounding that theme whenever possible.  And yet, I’m particularly wary when the theme is used in ways that blow beyond professionalism as a weapon against lawyers.

Aric Press, retiring from his 16 years as Editor in Chief of ALM (formerly American Lawyer Media), offered his parting thoughts in a paywalled post that was partially copied by Kevin O’Keefe.  Among his “lessons” learned while getting his ALM big guy paycheck was this:

Pro bono isn’t charity. I cringed recently when I heard a longtime public interest lawyer refer to pro bono work as what big-firm lawyers do so they’ll have something to put on their tombstones. I’m not that cynical. I think it’s work that lawyers do because they belong to a profession, and professions have obligations to the broader society in which they operate. Otherwise they don’t deserve the privilege of self-regulation and the honor of a special status in our courts. Part of the price for that status is serving those who can’t afford legal services. It’s a duty, in my view, but also an act of self-protection. With outside investment money beginning to slosh around the legal world, the question of bar regulation will be visited again in your futures. If you want to maintain the current framework, you have to pay the dues. It’s a profession, if you choose to keep it one.

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