Criminal Law

Feds issue updated § 2257 recordkeeping regulations.

Posted on December 18, 2008
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Persuading McSpeakers and their opposites.

Posted on December 17, 2008
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Persuading Twitterers, their opposites, and those in between.

Posted on December 17, 2008
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Prosecution: Fail to authenticate video at own risk.

Posted on December 16, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Some may say a picture is worth a thousand words, but first the picture must be authenticated to come into evidence at trial.  Rory Washington went to trial for attempted first degree murder in Baltimore, Maryland...

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Shoes blues.

Posted on December 16, 2008
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MD: If the handle fits the eye, you must acquit the guy.

Posted on December 15, 2008
7u Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). In some courthouses in Maryland, prosecutors often offer a plea deal involving a not guilty plea on an agreed statement of facts rather than a straight-out guilty plea. This approach often seems to be more a form of habit than anything else to which judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers are accustomed, and this approach gives defendants an opportunity to move for judgement of acquittal based on insufficient evidence, and to appeal if the trial judge determines that the evidence is sufficient to convict...

Blogging prosecutor announces own firing.

Posted on December 15, 2008
On the Objection blog, anonymous blogger Gspeezy last Thursday announced his or her firing as a prosecutor, apparently in Washington state. S/he did not say the reason.  Since early 2008, Gspeezy blogged anonymously not to protect his or her identity, but, s/he wrote, for such reasons as acknowledging the rights of those against whom s/he litigated...

The hell of captivity.

Posted on December 14, 2008
My two-year-old son loves the aquarium store down the street. With the aquarium and zoo, I do not ask my boy to consider whether the mistreatment and suffering of captive water and land animals would change his mind about visiting these places, particularly not at such a young age...

Maryland death penalty panel says abolish it.

Posted on December 14, 2008
 Last Friday, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment issued its final report to the General Assembly, recommending the abolition of the death penalty, saying: ?For all of these reasons -- to eliminate racial and jurisdictional bias, to reduce unnecessary costs, to lessen the misery that capital cases force victims of family members to endure, to eliminate the risk that an innocent person can be convicted -- the Commission strongly recommends that capital punishment be abolished in Maryland...

How racist is the judicial and criminal justice system?

Posted on December 12, 2008
A fellow criminal defense lawyer has over the years been an active local leader in the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union. Over the years, I have felt strong dissonance over remaining a Guild member, but have stayed for the reasons expressed here, here and here...

Sentencing, ex post facto, and conspiracy lifespans.

Posted on December 11, 2008
   United States Constitution (From public domain.) A critical part of practicing criminal defense anywhere is to advise clients of their sentencing exposure. In the jurisdictions that have sentencing guidelines, lawyers must know and understand them thoroughly and apply them well, in addition to all statutory guidelines provisions...

Human rights now!

Posted on December 10, 2008
 Today and every December 10 is Human Rights Day, renewing life into the sixty-year-old Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Human rights violations run too rampant to just observe human rights day once a year. Daily, government officials, soldiers and police worldwide torture people, execute within and without the judicial system, and jail people because of their political beliefs, or racial, ethnic or religious status...

If James Earl Jones were a trial lawyer.

Posted on December 09, 2008
  Well before he gave voice to Darth Vader, James Earle Jones paid homage to children with two incredible performances, one of the alphabet and the other of the first ten numbers, on Sesame Street.   Jones is so captivating an actor and speaker that he entertains fully when doing nothing more than the alphabet...

Club Ah v. Club Blah.

Posted on December 08, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). An essential focus at the Trial Lawyers College is to replace verbal legalese droning at trial with painting word images, telling persuasive stories by re-enacting events, and talking from the first-person perspective of non-lawyers involved in the drama...

"For me, knowledge is happiness."

Posted on December 07, 2008
Bitches Brew Creating and performing great music and delivering persuasive trial performance can look effortless, but they demand ceaseless practice, passion, inspiration and focus. This is a reason that music deeply inspires my trial law practice. Moreover, having played music onstage from 1972 through 1982, I became comfortable more quickly on the courtroom stage, while still cognizant of the stagefright challenging so many of my clients and their witnesses...

The obscenity of Richard Nixon and Warren Burger discussing obscenity ex parte.

Posted on December 05, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Before getting disbarred over his role in the Watergate coverup, Richard Nixon was a lawyer. While president he was still a licensed lawyer. Litigating attorneys are generally prohibited under governing ethics rules from communicating ex parte with judges about their pending litigation...

"How do you have time to blog?"

Posted on December 04, 2008
  Image from Library of Congress's website. Lately, several lawyers have pondered about my finding time to blog. My response is: Do you take time daily to eat, brush your teeth, and get dressed? Do you take the time to read court opinions, expand your persuasion abilities, and self-reflect? Can you write well and quickly directly onto the keyboard without needing to use a pen first? If so, there is time to blog, especially after eliminating wasted time on television, instant messaging, websurfing and listservs...

Googling jurors/Jurors FaceBooking.

Posted on December 03, 2008
Prosecutors have easier access to the criminal records of potential jurors and witnesses than criminal defense lawyers. Both sides, however, have similar access to search non-password-protected Internet pages for information on them, from Google to FaceBook...

Section 2257 madness.

Posted on December 02, 2008
18 U.S. Code § 2257 generally requires producers of sexually explicit material to prove the actors are not minors. Coming around the corner apparently will soon be updated § 2257 regulations from the Justice Department. More about this matter is here...

Party on, Wayne

Posted on December 02, 2008
Winter professional holiday party invitations are coming from left and right. Some of the parties are interesting, but some are less exciting than the tax-deductible one Rick Moranis planned in Ghostbusters.  One holiday party that will be both entertaining and good for social justice is the December 9 party in Baltimore by Civil Justice Network...

Unusual judge heckled Mukasey the night he collapsed.

Posted on December 01, 2008
Eleven days ago, Washington state Supreme Court justice Richard Sanders shouted "Tyrant" to outgoing Attorney General Michael Mukasey after Mukasey allegedly drew laughter at a Federalist Society meeting when he underlined that the last time he checked, Al Queda was not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions...

Awakening the child within.

Posted on November 29, 2008
 Several times I have written about the power of awakening the child within us, and the silliness of fearing a judge or anyone else who once wore diapers. Perhaps that approach is helped along by summoning an attendant visual image.  Above is a photo from 1973 or 1974 of me and my cousin Todd Zimmer, a fascinating person and talented graphic designer who shares with me an interest in R...

Page number one, number two, or number three?

Posted on November 28, 2008
Underdog readers, lend me an eye or two. I have found a webdesigner to update my clunky self-created static webdesign circa 1999.  After the designer sent me the first design, I asked about arranging for black typeface and putting in pictures of me and my staff, maybe with a slideshow, as well as automatic dropdown boxes...

Thanksgiving is bloodied by turkey corpses.

Posted on November 27, 2008
Regardless of their party affiliation, presidents each year "pardon" a turkey, only to leave 48 millions more for "Thanksgiving" slaughter.  Does the title of this blog entry sound harsh? Would it sound harsh or even overexaggerated to turkeys? Would I prefer such harsh words to the massacre (should we read that as "murder"?) inflicted worldwide on billions of innocent mammals, birds, and fish each year, to satisfy the cravings of human diners?   Would you be eating meat today if you were shown and told in advance since infancy what you were really eating and how the animals are slaughtered, including the blood, guts, and untold suffering? Is it anything but advertising euphemism that meatsellers cloak animal corpses in such code words as hot dogs, hamburgers, pork, beef, bologna, sausage, bacon, ham, meatballs, and meatloaf?  Soon after graduating college in 1985, I could no longer resolve all the toil I had spent advocating for human rights while chomping on burgers, chicken, and tuna fish...

The junk science of breath testing: All the more unfavorable to black people and women?

Posted on November 26, 2008
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Perhaps Connecticut DWI defense lawyer James O. Ruane overstates the matter by calling the Intoxilyzer 5000 KKK in a box.Certainly, breath testing for blood alcohol content is an oppressive junk science system that is perpetuated by court rulings that stand logic, truth, and the Constitution on their heads...

Lying cops exist.

Posted on November 25, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.)To say that no cops lie is to say that people do not grow old or die. As I have asked before, how on earth does one lie less by wearing a police badge? Am I the only one who believes that the vast majority of people lie frequently, and go well beyond so-called white lies? If that is true, then there is no reason to believe that cops are any more honest than those in the general population...

Barack Obama as Samuel Beckett in "Waiting for the Change"

Posted on November 24, 2008
  Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Waiting for Godot is a masterpiece play by Samuel Beckett, about two men in inertia waiting for some being named Godot who has made no promise to arrive. The play is a precursor of sorts to Neil Young's "Wonderin", about a stalker -- I mean heartbroken man -- who is so heartbroken that he is in denial that the object of his love will never return to town...

When a corporation responds with silence to a racial slur.

Posted on November 24, 2008
Image from NASA's website.  As Johnny Cash sang, "bad news travels like wildfire, good news travels slow ." The Journeys shoe retailer apparently disagrees with Mr. Cash's sage lyrics; or else has weak, incompetent, or non-existent public relations advisors; or else discovered that the following problem arose in higher corporate echelons than as merely an aberration at just one retail store unit...

When a new generation arises early Saturday to fight the drug war.

Posted on November 23, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) A marijuana defense client one day suggested I not clump all frequent marijuana users as stereotypical laidback potheads. Knowing that frequent potsmokers come in all different shapes and flavors, I used the stereotype in an effort to figure out why my frequent-potsmoking client was so highstrung...

You must remember best; a breast is just a breast; the fine's a nasty fine.

Posted on November 21, 2008
If Virginia's Virtus can bare a breast on the state seal, why cannot Janet Jackson do the same, penalty-free, during the Super Bowl hafltime? See more here.  Friends, opponents, and Obama, lend me some justice. On the beaches of France, Italy and beyond, countless women exercise the same right that men have to bare their breasts...

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