In a post on Facebook, Charles Belk recounts this crazy thing that happened on the way from a restaurant to his car on Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills.  To appreciate it, it’s necessary to know a few things about Belk.

I was a well educated American citizen that had received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Indiana University (including a full Consortium Fellowship to business school) and an Executive Leadership Certificate from Harvard Business School.

Impressive, certainly.

I was a Consultant for the NAACP, a film and tv producer, a previous VP of Marketing for a wireless application company, VP of Integrated Promotions for a marketing agency, ran Community Affairs for the Atlanta Hawks, was the Deputy Director of Olympic Village Operations for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, was a Test/Quality/Mfg Engineering Manager for IBM and was a Bond Trader on Wall street.

Accomplished, obviously. Continue reading →

Via Grits For Breakfast, the head of the Innocence Project of Texas, and one of the Lone Star State’s most fascinating dinner conversationalists, Jeff Blackburn, ripped criminal defense lawyers a new one:

 “The real cause of unlawful convictions in Texas is indigent defense. … I have never handled an innocence case in which a good lawyer did a good job at trial. Virtually all of [those defendants] have had court-appointed lawyers,” wrote reporter Callie Enlow, “This has made Blackburn deeply cynical about what he calls (in his typical colorful language) ‘a pretty goddamned awful’ indigent defense system in Texas.”

Jeff isn’t the sort of guy to temper his words so that no one’s feelings are hurt. I like that about him, even though others in need of a tummy rub may find him harsh.

This quote is the sort that is likely to piss off a whole lot of lawyers, most notably those who handle indigent defense.  On the one hand, they are treated poorly to begin with, clients often asking if they’re “real lawyers,” assuming that the poor are given access to the third stringers if they’re real lawyers at all.  To borrow from Rodney Dangerfield, they get no respect. Continue reading →

“You come in here with a head full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.”

— Professor Kingsfield, The Paper Chase, 1973

Kevin Twitty, a software engineer “with a hobbyist’s interest in law,” sent an email asking for an explanation of what it means to think like a lawyer.  This isn’t exactly a new question, and others, like Lawprof Nancy Rappaport, have written at length on the question (and from whom I borrowed the opening line above).

The concept of thinking like a lawyer was at the heart of the movie The Paper Chase, which was meant as both homage and condemnation of legal education, and provided the first popular glimpse into the pressure and insanity of becoming a lawyer.

The answer to Kevin’s question isn’t all that hard.  Thinking like a lawyer, at its most basic, is taking a myriad of facts, identifying the salient facts, spotting the issue and analyzing the law as it applies to the issue.  Saying this is easy. Doing it is not. Continue reading →

Ah, that rascally New York Times, trying desperately to make sense out of this crazy world of ours.  In an article entitled “Key Factor in Police Shootings: ‘Reasonable Fear’” they offer a very thoughtful, deeply conscientious explanation of the rules of engagement between the police and the rest of us.

Each time police officers draw their weapons, they step out of everyday law enforcement and into a rigidly defined world where written rules, hours of training and Supreme Court decisions dictate not merely when a gun can be fired, but where it is aimed, how many rounds should be squeezed off and when the shooting should stop.

The Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot an unarmed African-American teenager two weeks ago, setting off protest and riots, was bound by 12 pages of police department regulations, known as General Order 410.00, that govern officers’ use of force. Whether he followed them will play a central role in deliberations by a St. Louis County grand jury over whether the officer, Darren Wilson, should be charged with a crime in the shooting.

You might get the impression that the use of force, the killing of another human being, is subject to strict regulation.  And indeed, that’s the paradigm, but for a few notable details. Continue reading →

I got a call the other morning from Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids fame.  Among the things we chatted about was her concept of “worst-first thinking,” which she saw in Colorado District Court  Judge R. Brooke Jackson’s decision to deny summary judgment to the Cinemark Theater that failed to have armed guards in place just in case a madman with guns happened to drop by to shoot up the place.

The judge there held within the realm of foreseeable the one-in-a-million act of a crazy, because the worst, most bizarre, least foreseeable possibility was, in his view, foreseeable.  Lenore saw worst-first thinking at work.  Notably, Ken White at Popehat thought the judge was correct.

Lenore’s concept is a variation on the physician’s zebra rule: when you hear the sound of hoofbeats, don’t assume it’s a zebra.  Expect the normal, unless there are reasons to think otherwise.  Don’t look to the outlier, the one-in-a-million shot, simply because it’s within the realm of possibility.  Don’t leap to the worst-case scenario when every probability suggests otherwise. It will make your head do crazy things, have terrible thoughts, and react to a relatively benign world in strange ways.

Lenore offers an example: Continue reading →

The Associated Press reported that all you social media addicts are enabling the bad guys.

SEATTLE (AP) — Police in Washington state are asking the public to stop tweeting during shootings and manhunts to avoid accidentally telling the bad guys what officers are doing.

The “TweetSmart” campaign began in late July by a coalition of nine agencies, including the Washington state patrol and the Seattle police, and aims to raise awareness about social media’s potential impact on law enforcement.

This explains why so many chases are interrupted so the criminals can check twitter on their smartphones to figure out what their next move should be. Continue reading →

In what may be one of the most bizarre gaps of logic offered as if it makes any sense at all, Amanda Marcotte at Slate’s XX Factor contends that the statute of limitations for rape should be eliminated.

State Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor who rose to national fame last year by spearheading a fight against a draconian abortion bill, held a press conference Wednesday to highlight her ideas on how to fight sexual assault. Talking about her legislative efforts to process the estimated backlog of 16,000 untested rape kits in the state, Davis said she wanted to take the solution a step further. She proposed lifting the statute of limitations for sexual assault entirely, in no small part to make sure that rapists don’t escape justice just because a rape kit lingered untested for so long that the window for prosecution closed.

Texas has a ten-year statute of limitations for rape, already substantially longer than most states, but that’s not good enough.  After all, they have a backlog of untested rape kits, and can’t possibly get to them within ten years.

One solution, of course, would be for the state to test the friggin kits timely.  You know, do the job right?  But no, that would cost money. That would be hard on the state. Doing things right is not a solution that brings a smile to politicians faces, as it suggests they are doing things wrong, which suggests they suck at running government. That would never do. Continue reading →

The New York Times Room for Debate raised the question, again, of whether online anonymity, what it called “The War on Trolls,” must be stopped:

The Internet may be losing the war against trolls, a broad term for destructive agitators who torment and heckle others online.

Robin William’s daughter, attacked by Twitter followers, quit the service, and the writers and editors of the feminist website Jezebel published an open letter, pleading for a technical solution to graphic images that were anonymously posted in droves in the comments section.

Does anonymity on the web give people too much license to heckle and torment others?

There is no doubt that people can be complete assholes on the internet, protected by anonymity (or pseudonymity, if you need to nitpick), more so than they tend to be IRL.  It can be unpleasant, and can devolve into conduct that’s criminal.  So what’s worse than these awful anonymous trolls?

How about intellectually dishonest law professors who pander to the butthurt and ignorant?  Danielle Citron, of Cyber Civil Rights ignominy, is tapped by the Times to protect the internet’s delicate flowers from mean words. Continue reading →

After the monumentally disturbing op-ed in the Washington Post by “homeland security” professor Sunil Dutta,  I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me, Judge Richard Kopf posed an interesting question:

I wonder whether Terry v. Ohio, improperly understood and mistakenly taught in police academies to give virtually unlimited power to stop (and frisk) citizens as they go about their business, emboldened generations of cops to be overly aggressive when they encounter citizens who simply don’t look right? If I am right that Terry is at least partially responsible for the Robo Cop mentality that you decry, then maybe someone ought to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider. In my view, unless Terry goes away, “stand and deliver” is the sensible mantra for citizens accosted by overzealous cops.

As commenters noted, Justice William O. Douglas in dissent on Terry thought this was a really bad decision:

To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path. Perhaps such a step is desirable to cope with modern forms of lawlessness. But if it is taken, it should be the deliberate choice of the people through a constitutional amendment.

What they’re talking about is the dreaded Terry Stop, where police can stop and question a person based upon a “reasonable suspicion,” meaning “articulable facts” that a person has, is or will be committing a crime. If there is a reasonable basis to believe the person poses a threat, they can pat down clothing for weapons. Continue reading →

A question was posed about what could have been going through Kajieme Powell as he waited for St. Louis police to arrive.  Lacking that magical power to read the minds of others, to project my thoughts into his and assume they were valid, I demurred.  Of course, Powell can’t explain because he’s dead.

The background was unsatisfying.

Authorities said Kajieme Powell stole donuts and energy drinks from a store yesterday afternoon, which prompted the owner to call police, according to KSDK. When two officers arrived shortly before 1 p.m., they said they observed Powell acting erratically. He refused to put down a knife when commanded to do so, police said.

Witnesses said the suspect yelled, “Shoot me now. Kill me now,” before approaching officers. Some people who saw the shooting described it as “suicide by cop,” according to USA Today.

Maybe.  Or maybe Powell, a few miles away from Ferguson, decided to test the police, to challenge them to kill another young black man. Maybe he thought he would be a martyr to the cause. Or maybe he suffered from mental illness and lacked the ability to recognize that what he was doing was not merely wrong, but fatally dangerous.  Maybe Powell could explain, but he can’t. He’s dead. Continue reading →