Criminal Law

Giddiness over Obama does not justify lowering vigilance on social justice.

Posted on January 21, 2009
   Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Even I felt some giddiness hearing Obama start his inaugural address yesterday. The nightmare of Bush and Cheney was behind us, and hopefully Obama would not repeat any of that nightmare; hope springs eternal...

Of Gingrich, Don King, and the meaning of MLK Day.

Posted on January 20, 2009
Demonstrators for Guantanamo's immediate closure, near the Nipponzan Myohoji temple in D.C. welcome Obama's approaching southbound motorcade on January 19. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Mancias, one of the members of the Hundred Days campaign to close Guantanamo now...

The artificial boundary between life and death

Posted on January 19, 2009
 The Chinese script for the character "mu," which means nothing. A friend who is getting on in years recently said that death is unacceptable. Here is my excerpted reply: Here are some things I have written about death over the years, for whatever it is worth to you, and in case it will help give you more harmony about the mortality of you and everyone else:  -      Woody Allen on death: "I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is, will they be able to break a twenty?"    -      "It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously...

Praised be Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on January 19, 2009
 Martin Luther King, Jr., presented his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech when I was just four months old. When he was shot dead on April 4, 1968, I was only five years old, and he was only thirty-nine. I have been very positively influenced by the nonviolent path in fighting for social justice from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, How did they take up and stay on the nonviolent path? For both, their deeply-held religious beliefs helped them on that path...

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Living t'ai chi daily.

Posted on January 18, 2009
  Lao Tzu, the purported author of the Tao te ching. Taoism is closely connected with t'ai chi principles.  (Image from the public domain).  Today's blog entry contains further ideas and links concerning t'ai chi, which heavily influences the way I practice law and life:  - Yesterday morning was the first time I joined the weekly Saturday morning outdoor t'ai chi practice at the nearby Cabin John Park in Maryland; I previously would sometimes join the practices in Glen Echo Park and in McLean, Virginia, but they do not involve t'ai chi push hands/boxing...

Secret U.S. court takes four months to release opinion permitting secret warrantless searches in the name of national security.

Posted on January 16, 2009
 Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.)  One day when I appeared in the U.S. District Court in D.C. before a judge who also is on the FISA trial-level court, I was dying to ask the judge about that thirty-year-old court, but knew that at best my questions would receive no answers, whether or not with a glare...

Judges: The Exclusionary Rule must even cover the countless police errors resulting from an overgrown criminal justice system.

Posted on January 15, 2009
Supreme Court spiral staircase. To my knowledge, when they were lawyers, no current Supreme Court justice prosecuted nor defended criminal cases in trial court, and none of them were police. Probably with few or no exceptions, the sitting justices' law clerks are chosen not for previous law clerking experience with trial prosecutors or defense lawyers, but primarily for having high law school grades, coming from law schools and colleges that have the toughest criteria for grades and LSAT/SAT scores, having law review experience, and having clerked for a federal appellate judge...

Three high-level DOJ picks are no strangers to the First Amendment.

Posted on January 14, 2009
  United States Constitution (From public domain.) Not long after I started law school in 1986, numerous people encouraged the resume benefits of working at the Justice Department. I had trouble jibing that with Ed Meese's control of the Justice Department at the time...

The war in Gaza

Posted on January 13, 2009
With the war in Gaza continuing in its third week, it feels too awkward not to write here about the war.  A distant cousin who long ago emigrated to Israel from the United States recently took notice of the lack of comments about Gaza on a discussion website that connnects relatives descended from two ancestors going back nearly two centuries...

Eliminating the barrier between cops and criminal defense lawyers.

Posted on January 12, 2009
  Cops and prosecutors were ordinary people before becoming cops and prosecutors, and that is at least one point of commonality I have with them.   In the District of Columbia Superior Court, I find more cops clam up when I try speaking with them than in any other courthouse where I practice, although there are plenty of exceptions...

Westboro Baptist case awaits Fourth Circuit opinion.

Posted on January 11, 2009
First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Last month, the Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments in a critical appeal by the Westboro Baptist Church and its three members who lost a Maryland federal trial in October 2007 for intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy...

Cops: Lay off on unconstitutional disorderly conduct arrests (and all other unconstitutional arrests).

Posted on January 09, 2009
 Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.)  Too often, police arrest for disorderly conduct simply because they cannot think of any other crimes to charge. That is beyond unjust.  Thanks to Jonathan Turley for posting on last month's South Dakota Supreme Court decision that the First Amendment protects the right of people to yell expletives at cops...

Cops: Lay off on unconstitutional disorderly conduct arrests.

Posted on January 09, 2009
 Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.)  Too often, police arrest for disorderly conduct simply because they cannot think of any other crimes to charge. That is beyond unjust.  Thanks to Jonathan Turley for posting on last month's South Dakota Supreme Court decision that the First Amendment protects the right of people to yell expletives at cops...

When pleading guilty, consider a no-civil-commitment agreement.

Posted on January 08, 2009
  Imagine being in prison for a few years or many more than that, and counting the days to freedom, as Tom Waits's Zack does at the beginning of this clip from Down by Law. Eventually the days until release are shorter than the days that have been spent in prison, and eventually the years turn into months, then weeks, and then days until release...

Your refusal to talk to the cops stays out of evidence, but your refusal of a blood alcohol test does not.

Posted on January 07, 2009
  Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Yesterday I blogged that refusing a search is inadmissible at trial. So is refusing to talk with the cops. Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976); U.S. v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171 (1975); Grier v. Maryland, 351 Md. 241, 718 A...

Refusal of a search is inadmissible at trial.

Posted on January 06, 2009
   Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Sometimes prosecutors try to present evidence at trial that my client refused a search. They may not do so:  "A person has a constitutional right to refuse to consent to a warrantless search of his or her automobile, and such refusal may not later be used to implicate guilt...

Judges: Time to distinguish between the smell of burnt and raw marijuana.

Posted on January 05, 2009
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) How many judges have experience smoking marijuana, smelling others who have smoked marijuana, and smelling raw marijuana? At least one judge has such experience. Soon after the Senate bounced Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan nominated a then-forty-one-year-old Douglas Ginsburg to the Supreme Court...

Praised be our support staff.

Posted on January 05, 2009
 Not long ago, I blogged that I welcomed resumes for an added part-time legal assistant position at my law firm. I am pleased to say that this position has been filled by a highly-qualified applicant who started last week.  As I do all the time to their faces, here in cyberspace I thank my staffmembers for their highly capable and dedicated work for our clients...

What makes David Lynch tick?

Posted on January 04, 2009
 David Lynch's Eraserhead. Great creativity from any quarter inspires me as a trial lawyer.  Film directors who particularly inspire me include Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, and David Lynch. All three came to filmmaking from outside the Hollywood filmmaking establishment, and all of them have pushed the creative envelope...

Trial skills must be developed in tandem with maintaining a strong body and calm mind.

Posted on January 02, 2009
Lao Tzu, the purported author of the Tao te ching. Taoism is closely connected with t'ai chi principles.  (Image from the public domain).   For over a dozen years, I have studied, practiced, and applied t'ai chi to my life and practice of law, as explained here, here ,and here...

Nonviolence starts with each of us.

Posted on December 31, 2008
Millions have been repeating "Happy New Year" this week. Millions make resolutions for the new year, so often not kept.  A worthy resolution that can be started immediately is nonviolence. Let this be the first of all days that people no longer hit their children, their significant others, nor anyone else...

Forfeiting confrontation rights through wrongdoing.

Posted on December 30, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Last June, the United States Supreme Court determined that Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) strictly limits prosecutors' ability to present to the jury a homicide victim's testimonial hearsay, even though the victim could have testified at trial had his or her killing not been procured...

Freddie Hubbard departs the planet.

Posted on December 29, 2008
Freddie Hubbard at the Messina Jazz Festival with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, and Sonny Fortune.  In 1980, I bought and started wearing out Freddie Hubbard's album Red Clay with my turntable needle, before the days of DVD players.  The local jazzplaying radio station WPFW today announced that Freddie passed away...

Does waiting tables make one a better trial lawyer?

Posted on December 28, 2008
  The closest I came to waiting tables was working as a pantry assistant in the kitchen of my old summer camp, making orange juice and bug juice with a garden hose and metal oar, moving food on hand trucks and flat trucks, shoving my hand in innumerable chickens to pull out the gizzard packets (in my pre-vegetarian days), and making sandwiches for the nighttime on duty staff...

The pathetic one-way street of no trespassing signs.

Posted on December 26, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) If a civilian walks or drives past NO TRESPASSING signs, s/he can get arrested, searched "incident to arrest", brought before a judicial officer to have a bond set, and prosecuted for trespassing. The suspect can be prosecuted even if s/he is illiterate, does not understand English, has bad eyesight, or does not see the NO TRESPASSING sign because it is dark and the sign is not illuminated; the defendant will be permitted to raise such a defense, and the arresting cop may testify or testilie that the defendant confirmed s/he saw the sign (while collapsing chronology about whether the defendant said s/he saw the sign only when the cop pointed it out, and obscuring whether the defendant said s/he coudl read or understand the language on the sign, and whether its lettering was obscured by the dark, by tree branches, or by years of wear on the sign)...

When the jury has no alternates.

Posted on December 23, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Why would a prosecutor and judge not try to have alternate members on a criminal jury? Certainly a criminal defense lawyer might not raise the issue, in order to have a chance -- if a juror were stricken -- for a mistrial to get a better jury, to move settlement negotiations further, or to have the advantage of better knowing the opponent's strategy and evidence on retrial...

Unseamly pants lawsuit kicked in its appellate seat.

Posted on December 22, 2008
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Why did Felt blow the whistle on Nixon?

Posted on December 21, 2008
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Mark Helm departs the planet.

Posted on December 20, 2008
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SuperLawyers renews me on its list.

Posted on December 18, 2008
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