George  Zimmerman was acquitted on a Saturday night. Keyboards were pounded. Reporters reported. Pundits opined. And the jury in the court of public opinion rendered its verdict.

Almost no criminal lawyer, prosecution or defense, saw a second degree murder conviction coming. Education and experience condemns us to view evidence and law with detached logic, so there is no emotionalism, no reliance on “common sense,” to fudge the proof. Continue reading →

Sheriff’s deputies in Clark County, Ohio, have been given dispensation to wear “pocket cameras” on the job. Not because someone decided it was a good idea for them to video their interactions with member of the public, which is not only a perfectly fine thing to do, but one that has been embraced by other department. According to the Dayton Daily News :

Clark County Sheriff’s deputies are wearing pocket cameras that record their work to help their cases and to protect themselves against accusations of misconduct. Continue reading →

Via John Wesley Hall at Fourth Amendment, a decision out of the 10th Circuit that puts an end to the pressing question of whether second hand smoke presents a sufficient justification to circumvent the 4th Amendment and enter a home without a warrant.  Lest you think this is too ridiculous to be worthy of consideration, bear in mind this is on appeal, the district court having denied suppression. Continue reading →

A squad of 18 deputies in Cook County were very aggressive in trying to collect money from deadbeat dads, using whatever methods they needed to bring these culprits to justice.  When they put a gun to 77-year-old Merien Macon’s head, however, they messed with the wrong person. From the Chicago Tribune :

When the unit arrived at the Macons’ home, two weeks before Merien’s arrest, officers had two outstanding warrants for couple’s son, Derrick Macon, then 50, Continue reading →

Many criminal defense lawyers studiously ignore cases that catch the public’s attention. They just aren’t that legally interesting, even if the facts or issues give rise to popular passion. And so it’s been for the trial of George Zimmerman for murder 2º in the killing of Trayvon Martin.  Aside from John Steele’s having  raised the question of the ethics of overcharging, there hasn’t been a whole lot to write about.

Now that the trial is coming to a close, however, an interesting question, both legal and tactical, has arisen: would it be best for the defense to take an all-or-nothing approach, murder 2º or acquittal, or a split-the-baby approach, charging the jury on the lesser-included crime of manslaughter.  Continue reading →

If I was hoping to court the legally-ignorant, politically conservative reader, yesterday would not have been a good day for me.  While lawprof Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, couldn’t be  bothered to learn about the criminal justice system before opining about how to fix it, he had time to write about how mean I was to him. Not terribly surprising, given how lawprofs tend to be a bit sensitive. Continue reading →

My expectations that SJ would be moving to new digs at WordPress yesterday were brutally dashed. My initial reaction was to say “screw it, this isn’t worth the hassle anymore,” but I spoke with a few friends who persuaded me not to give up the effort. 

It appears that my plans, having already gone through at least three iterations, need to be redrawn. While I remain disinclined to spend a substantial amount of money to make this happen as a matter of principle, the amount of work needed to accomplish this task has proven to be far harder, more involved and less interesting than previously thought.  At the moment, Continue reading →

As some of you know (and I know you know because you write me angry emails and exasperated twits), Simple Justice hasn’t worked well for months now. It takes forever for the posts to load, assuming they load at all.  After trying to find out from my host, GoDaddy, why this is happening, I was eventually told that they had given up on the blogging program I use, stopped doing anything to maintain its efficacy a year ago, and were preparing to “End of Life” their involvement in blogging. Continue reading →

Last January,  Instapundit lawprof Glenn Reynolds wrote a short essay that became the darling of many folks who take an interest in criminal justice issues  entitled  Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime. To be kind, it was a simplistic rehash of long-time, discredited silver-bullet solutions to complex problems. The only virtue was that it came from Reynolds, who was a law professor and thus credible by definition even though he was dabbling at the edges of an area of law about which he knew nothing.

It was excoriated here. Gideon beat it up Continue reading →

Appellants and amici briefs are now in at the Third Circuit on the appeal of Andrew Auernheimer’s conviction for somehow violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I say “somehow” as the government was never pinned down on whether it was exceeding authorized access or unauthorized access. But they were clear that what he did was wrong, wrong enough to get him convicted and sentence to 41 months imprisonment.

Weev didn’t help himself. Whether he wanted to be a martyr to the cause of geekdom or just unwilling to win except on his terms isn’t clear. Continue reading →