Not that there is a lack of ironies when it comes to police interactions with the public, but few are more inane than the handling of a call for a potentially suicidal person. By definition, this is a person who courts death, and the reason for the call to police is to stop him from doing so.

Does this elude the officers, or does the First Rule of Policing trump reason? From the IndyStar:

Noblesville police shot and injured a 27-year old man Continue reading →

When Kevin O’Keefe twitted the link to me, he explained the story as being about a “blogging lawyer.”  The lawyer was Eric Dixon out of New Mexico, and if he was a “blogging lawyer,” it was news to me. So I responded to Kevin, “another blogging lawyer nobody ever heard of?”

But while Dixon and his blog may not be a household name around the blawgosphere, that doesn’t make his story any less disturbing.  From the Alamogordo Daily News:

Now Dixon’s freedom and career are at stake Continue reading →

As I’ve written before, I urge everyone to get involved in sound, well-managed and legitimate charities.  It’s not just about the cool name or facially good cause behind the charity, but about where your contributions will actually serve the cause, and serve it well.

There are no shortage of scam charities, and no shortage of fools with money, but even seemingly legitimate charities are often horrendous abusers with good press. Continue reading →

Going postal used to mean spraying one’s co-workers from a semi-automatic. While that hasn’t happened in a while, it appears that some postal workers are still just as totally nuts as ever. And they’ve figured out that the police are more useful as their cohorts than the guys putting an end to their shooting spree with a well-placed bullet.

From Mission, Kansas, where tolerance, respect and love of family are cherished values, comes the handling of a less than satisfied Continue reading →

When I read my buddy Tamar Birckhead’s post at PrawfsBlawg, I cringed. While Tamar is a clinical lawprof now at UNC, she used to be a federal defender, whose days were spent getting her butt kicked in the trenches.  This distinguished her from the others, who only knew the trenches from photographs, but also saddled her with a burden she needed to realize. She didn’t.

Her post, that Zimmerman prosecutor Angela Corey may have violated ethics by charging him with a crime she couldn’t prove, had a personal subtext. Continue reading →

Most of the time, there is a tragedy that overshadows the two fundamentally different views of what happened, so that it’s impossible to divorce the consequences from the mechanics. Not so when it comes to the story of 59-year-old Louise Goldsberry in the Herald-Tribune, where it’s about as clean and clear as it gets.

It’s basically a he said, she said story when the operating room scrub nurse arrived home from a day at work, only to find as she washed some dishes at her kitchen sink Continue reading →

It’s been quite a while since there was any life at Eric Davis’ blog, Sustained, which, if I recall correctly, went dormant right about the time Eric and his former associate, Jackie Carpenter, left private practice to join the staff of Alex Bunin’s newly created Harris County Public Defenders office.

He’s back, and brought with him his anecdotal takeaway from his undergrad teaching gig in criminal law at University of Houston.

During one of our class discussions Continue reading →

As the New York Times explains, “President Obama did something Friday that he hardly ever does — and no other president could ever have done.”

He addressed the racial fault lines in the country by laying bare his personal anguish and experience in an effort to help white Americans understand why African-Americans reacted with frustration and anger to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Many have responded to the President’s heartfelt, Continue reading →

Matt Brown, the Tempe Kid, has an incredible knack of seeing the obvious that more experienced lawyers no longer do.  It’s not just that Matt brings us back to the days when it was all new and shiny, but that he reminds us of systemic wrongs that we’ve grown inured to. It’s important that we never forget these things.

Much as we may hate it, the fact is that a plea bargain is at the core of saving a great many defendants from the fate that pandering politicians, Continue reading →

This could have been another Readers Mailbag, marketeering version, based on two particular emails that arrived this week, but rather than posting the usual snarky response, a little more directed parsing might prove more useful.

Dear webmaster,

I’m writing today to ask that you remove any and all links leading to CriminalJusticeDegreesGuide.com from your site, Continue reading →