Before jumping into my review, two points must be made. First, I have been an admirer of Kevin Underhill’s work at Lowering the Bar for as long as I’ve been part of the blawgosphere.  In other words, I’m biased.  Second, he did not send me a cupcake with the book, despite my admonition that he do so to assure a positive review.  I really could have used the cupcake.

I started reading The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance by Kevin Underhill, published by ABA Books, on the train into the City. It was awful, as people kept staring at the crazy guy who couldn’t stop laughing.  I was unable to make it through the Introduction and Disclaimer without embarrassing myself by violating basic train etiquette and annoying all around me with my loud laughter. Continue reading →

When I mentioned #ReinventLaw, Silicon Valley edition, my bona fides to question its glorious exposition were challenged because I wasn’t in the room. Ironic for people with an affinity for distant connections via the internet, but there it was.

Scott – you owe me a retraction.

You were not in the room.  Really?  but you feel like making the sort of sweeping statements about what occurred via the prism of twitter?

Seriously – I would hope you are better than this?

I leave it to you to decide the level of irony in Dan’s demand. And so, when Reinvent Law came to New York City, and it became clear that neither of its young lawprof sponsors, Dan Katz or Renee Knake, planned to ask me to speak as a juxtaposition to cries for passion, pyrotechnics and safety glasses, I did the only thing left for me to do. Continue reading →

It’s been a long, hard week. Lousy weather, snow and more snow, followed by freezing rain. I was out in the John Deere Gator 6×4 at 5:30 a.m., plowing for an hour and a half to get the snow off the driveway before the freezing rain turned it into a sheet of ice. Lucky the Gator had headlights. Wish it had a roof and heater.

But it’s Friday, and that means my suffering isn’t necessarily over. I’m taking the train to Cooper Union to see ReinventLaw in the flesh.  Given all the less-than-positive things I’ve said, how could I not?

The word on the street is that it’s “sold out,” which is a curious description given that there was nothing to sell in the first place. Tickets were free, and LegalTechNY was in town this week, so the same crowd for one could attend the other. Plus me. Continue reading →

The first time I heard the sound of my voice while going through recordings of a client’s wiretaps was too funny to be disturbing. The client was driving me home from an arraignment for a friend of his, and I had forgotten to call my mother to wish her a happy birthday. It upset her when that happened, and the client was an early adopter of cellphones. I borrowed his, wished her a happy birthday and all was well.

Until the turnover. In there, it said, “Unk Male” was speaking to “Unk Female” in code, “believed to be narcotics.” The code was, “Happy birthday, Mom.” I laughed. The judge laughed. The prosecutor laughed. Even my client laughed.

Of course, there was nothing in my communication to indicate I was a lawyer, and my conversation wasn’t privileged.  In context, it showed how they would turn any conversation, no matter how innocuous, into a secret discussion in furtherance of the conspiracy.  The agents were dopes. Had they known it was a privileged attorney/client conversation, Title III would have required minimization; turn off the recorder and note the privilege in the log. Continue reading →

Jacob Gocheski was a teen with issues, which was why he went to school at the Parsons Child and Family Center. To get there, he took a bus, but the driver wasn’t comfortable with this troubled kid as a passenger, and so the Rotterdam police were called in. From the Albany Times Union:

Police were called after the driver said he felt he could not safely transport Gocheski to school at Parsons Child and Family Center, “based on threats that the student made in an aggressive manner,” police said in the release.

According to his attorney, who likely revealed far too much about a minor’s condition than discretion would have suggested, Continue reading →

When Noam Scheiber began his pitch for socialized law, he opened with the “requisite anecdote.” It’s a rhetorical device, used by those knowledgeable in the art of persuasion against the unwary.  It’s also used by the unwary because they fail to understand that it’s of no conceptual significance and they think it proves their point.  Let me tell you a tale of woe or joy, they begin, and you will then agree with me.

Linda Greenhouse explains the pitch as well as I’ve ever seen in her New York Times op-ed on the little nuns, a grandmother, Hobby Lobby and the murder of two abortion clinic workers.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion famously wrote in her essay collection “The White Album.” It’s a haunting line, because it’s so universally applicable. We tell ourselves stories not only for profound reasons but for mundane ones as well: to process the ambiguous and complex events that unfold every day around us, or even to try to understand the issues presented in a major Supreme Court case. Continue reading →

Bob Autobee was a corrections officer. His son, Eric, followed in his footsteps, and was murdered by Edward Montour, a prisoner already doing life.  Bob wants to speak at the sentencing of his son’s killer, as is his right under law as a victim, but a legal battle is at hand to stop him, to silence him.

Via Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic:

Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler . . . wants to block one couple’s efforts to speak out against the death penalty for the man who murdered their child. Brauchler has filed a motion in a pending case seeking to bar Bob and Lola Autobee from participating in the sentencing phase of the trial of Edward Montour, their son’s killer. The law only guarantees the rights of victims to “discuss the harm that resulted from the crime,” Brauchler argues.

What distinguishes the Autobees is that they are against the death penalty. Continue reading →

It’s not a new idea, by any stretch of the imagination.  At worst, it’s a variation on an old theme.  Target those who are hated and helpless, steal from them and, boom, Profit!!!  How long it worked for Suffolk County Police Sergeant Scott Greene isn’t clear, but it’s over now.

Via Newsday, courtesy of Radley Balko’s morning links (every one of which would be post-worthy on its own):

Sixth Precinct Sgt. Scott A. Greene was arrested during a sting operation after stealing a $100 bill from a car driven by an undercover Latino officer, Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said Friday.

Moments later, the uniformed patrol officer was caught on videotape taking the money from an envelope on the passenger seat, then folding the bill and stuffing it in his left sleeve. Continue reading →

When Eugene Volokh took up the pro bono cause of Crystal Cox, whose insane rantings and accusations bought her $2.5 million in judgments for having smeared Kevin Padrick and Obsidian Finance, it was believed to be a principled stand.  Ken White described it best:

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that we protect the free speech rights of the disturbed and vengeful blogger Crystal Cox, even though she abuses the legal system in an effort to censor and retaliate against people for criticizing her.

That’s how we roll.

And the 9th Circuit agreed, reversing the judgment and holding that anyone, not just bloggers as has been widely misreported, Continue reading →

In outraged voice, Noam Scheiber offers a radical proposition in the New Republic.  He sets the stage with the requisite anecdotes, since an appeal to emotion is always a great way to get the juices flowing despite it being a logical fallacy, tell of how the wealthy walk away from criminal charges unscathed while the poor go to prison forever, and their little dog, too.

One anecdote, however, strikes the mark pretty well.

This maxim is illustrated perfectly by the cases of two notorious Fort Worth teenagers, who trailed five dead bodies behind them. One night in 2004, 16-year-old Eric Bradlee Miller got drunk on a bottle of vodka, stole a pickup truck at a convenience store, then plowed into a car, killing the driver. Almost ten years later, Ethan Couch, also 16, packed several friends into his father’s pickup, stole two cases of beer from a Walmart, and proceeded to scream down a local thoroughfare until he collided with a disabled vehicle, killing its driver and three passersby. Continue reading →