It could have been a monumental clash that would get federalists and statists stockpiling pithy slurs. Instead, it ended, as least for now, in more of a whimper. It’s unfortunate as the case teed up the ball about as well as possible for a pressing issue to be confronted.

Paul Curry had accused MillerCoors of violating Colorado’s employment discrimination statutes. The Chicago-based brewer fired Curry, who has hepatitis C, and osteoarthritis, for violating the company’s drug-free workplace policy.

Curry was a medical marijuana patient. Continue reading →

The arraignment clerk called the federal defender’s office to let them know of the arraignment at 2:00 p.m. The phone rang. It rang five times, then went into voicemail, and she left a message at the tone. It occurred to her that this had never happened before. Before, someone always answered the phone. After all, this was the federal defender’s office, not somebody’s home where they might have gone out for a walk. Somebody was always home. Always, until now.

The New York Times ran a piece putting together some of the various factors that affect the working of federal indigent defense. Continue reading →

The President has spoken:

This is probably controversial to say, but what the heck, I’m in my second term so I can say it.  (Laughter.)  I believe, for example, that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years — because by the third year — in the first two years young people are learning in the classroom.  The third year they’d be better off clerking or practicing in a firm, even if they weren’t getting paid that much.  But that step alone would reduce the cost for the student. Continue reading →

So everybody has a blog these days. I know this because I read the bios of people on twitter, and they say so. I check out the CLE “how to blog” offerings that arrive daily in the email box and see the lawyers teaching have blogs. The only problem is that, most of the time, I’ve never heard of them.

And according to what they say, they are renown, award-winning, famous and very important bloggers. And still, I’ve never heard of them. Sometimes I check out their blogs, and they have a handful of posts at most, the last of which was written a few months back. Continue reading →

It happened about one in the morning, last Sunday. A young man lost control of his car and hit a telephone pole. The police say he was drinking, and his night got worse after destroying his mother’s Infiniti. On the bright side, the pole and car got the worst of it; he wasn’t hurt.

The next day, a gaggle of Verizon guys appeared with a new telephone pole, and they promptly (and surprisingly carefully) put it into the ground next to the old one. They were a bit miffed, I was told, that nobody called them in the middle of the night, Continue reading →

New York Law School crimlaw prof Robert Blecker wrote a book that apparently says we’ve become a society of wimps, afraid to punish the worst of the worst in the way “justice” demands. Naturally, that means he had to pen an op-ed about it for CNN.

No matter how vicious the crime, no matter how vile the criminal, some death penalty opponents feel certain that nobody can ever deserve to die — even if that person burned children alive, Continue reading →

In a recent post, Noblesville police shot a 27-year-old suicidal man. The rationale was that he had a gun and, well, the First Rule of Policing kicked in, trumping whatever purpose the police might have had in preventing a suicide. Ironic and fundamentally contrary to anything remotely resembling sound judgment and practice, but at least there was an excuse.

Not this time.

Why exactly 44-year-old Michael Angel Ruiz decided that a rooftop in Phoenix was a good place to be isn’t clear, but there is nothing about being up there that puts a cop at risk.  And nothing about coming down from there that does so either. Via Police State USA:

After sustaining electric shocks from police, Ruiz complied with requests to come off the roof.  Video taken by witnesses shows him hopping down to a balcony. Continue reading →

At A Public Defender, Gideon goes on a well-deserved tear over the fact that our beloved Supreme Court Justices are busy making earth-shattering decisions about stuff they know nothing about.

The internet is a series of tubes, about….this big.

Isn’t it just so darling that these befuddled old justices get to pretend that it’s still the Bronze Age? It’s so adorable that they decide cases involving video games, but oh no, they’re a loveable bunch of pensioners who’ve never heard of video games, so they “try out a few”.

Funny? Not so funny if you remember that Continue reading →

A while back, a lawyer friend was preparing for a trial that frightened him in the way trials frighten a criminal defense lawyer. No spooky ghosts, but the deeper fear that he wouldn’t be up to the task.

He needed another set of eyes and ears to challenge his tactics, and I was happy to help. One of the things criminal defense lawyers do is work ourselves into something of a confidence frenzy, believing that through sheer force of will if not brilliance, we can put together a persuasive defense that will save a person’s life. Continue reading →

When federal defenders were “stripped bare by sequestration, its bones have been chiseled away as well,” few thought too hard about its long-term consequences. After all, there was no money to pay for the required defense of the indigent, the constitutional mandate of Gideon notwithstanding, and certainly nobody likes defendants anyway. So, basically, screw ’em, because we need the money for Hamid Karzai things that are dearer to our hearts.

One of the points raised was that the defense function still had to be filled, and with the facile emasculation of federal defenders, the job would fall to private lawyers who took assignment under the Criminal Justice Act. Some good, some not so good, Continue reading →