Criminal Law

Waiting for Melendez: The Confrontation Clause Revisited.

Posted on November 20, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Sometimes the United States Supreme Court does true justice for criminal defendants. Miranda v. Arizona remains the best protection from the Court for suppressing coerced statements. U.S. v. Booker and its progeny led more judges to sentence below sentencing guidelines and prevented appellate courts from changing such departures...

As Underdog as it ever was.

Posted on November 19, 2008
Greenland dog image available for publc use here. ' Ken Lammers and Scott Greenfield recently commented on the dropping of Underdog from my blog's title line. I selected the Underdog moniker for this blog's 2006 maiden voyage, to capture the essence not only of me, my clients, and my criminal and Constitutional defense work, but also the immigration law work of my then-law partner Jay Marks...

The illusion of "I want to get it over with" / Giving clients the confidence to be more patient than that.

Posted on November 19, 2008
  When someone says "I want to get it over with," is the person doing nothing but merely chasing after an illusion?  Let us consider the ultimate effort to get it over with: suicide. My spiritual guru and friend Jun Yasuda told me that one day a man walked up to her teacher, the late Nichidatsu Fujii Guruji, and proclaimed that he was going to kill himself...

Marijuana is great medicine .

Posted on November 18, 2008
Image from public domain.  Marijuana is great medicine. It is natural and green, and lacks the very undesirable side effects of so many other medicines, including anti-depressants. It can be ingested in brownies and cookies, to avoid being smoked. Pharmaceutical companies have no financial interest in having marijuana legalized, because if it becomes legal, people can grow their own quality marijuana weed...

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A nasty thing happened on the way to the forum.

Posted on November 17, 2008
    Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When I was born in 1963, the Cold War raged, the Cuban Missile Crisis had diminished from its flashpoint only six months earlier, and the Hollywood movie studios'  pathetic capitulation to the House Un-American Activities Committee ("HUAC") had unraveled starting around six years earlier and accelerating at rapid speed in 1960 with Kirk Douglas's insistence that Universal Studios name blacklisted Dalton Trumbo as the screenwriter of Douglas's Spartacus film production...

We seek a part-time legal assistant.

Posted on November 17, 2008
 Imagine not just reading our Underdog blog, but working at Underdog's central headquarters. I humbly ask Underdog's readers to send the finest candidates our way to fill an additional part-time legal assistant position. Full details about the position are here...

Applying t'ai chi to trial lawyering.

Posted on November 14, 2008
  INTRODUCTIONWhen I told t'ai chi Master Ben Lo that, time permitting in the morning, I sometimes circle the courthouse where I am scheduled and conclude with t'ai chi, he asked if some people think I am crazy. I told him of my temporary police detention last June, when I was a suspected t'ai chi terrorist...

When cops speak Spanglish to a non-English speaker.

Posted on November 13, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Too many monolingual people seem to think that if they speak louder or repetitively that ultimately they will be understood by a person who does not speak the speaker's language. Too many people think that if a person understands such phrases as "Do you speak English" or "Fire, fire" that this means the person speaks the tens of thousands of other words and phrases needed to have a sufficient command of the English language...

"When you are fatigued, do t'ai chi."

Posted on November 12, 2008
  My t'ai chi teacher Len Kennedy once said: "When you are fatigued, do t'ai chi." On another occasion, I learned the following from Len: Internally, during one of "those meetings," the t'ai chi practitioner does t'ai chi, through relaxing and sinking into one's chair or into the ground if standing; by relaxing actively through being fully aware of what is happening around the t'ai chi practitioner without getting sucked into nonsense; and by emptying the mind and body of stress and wasted energy in order to deal with the matter at hand...

Jon Gettman on Marijuana

Posted on November 11, 2008
  A wonderful fringe benefit of my marijuana defense work has involved meeting key players who bring sense to overcome so much of the nonsense of anti-marijuana crusaders. In addition to meeting such players through NORML annual meetings, I have worked with marijuana smell expert Richard Doty, and marijuana grow experts Chris Conrad and Jon Gettman...

To hell with annotations.

Posted on November 10, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). When I started law school in 1986. my legal research class included researching weighty tomes with such titles as Supreme Court Digest, F.2d Digest, and A.2d Digest, which used key numbers to find various categories and subcategories of the law...

The tight economy demands a smaller criminal justice system.

Posted on November 09, 2008
 Image from Bureau of Engraving and Printing's website. What are the United States' largest socialist programs? This year's nearly trillion dollar bailout of AIG and other financial institutions is one. The social security system is another. Certainly, the criminal justice system is a major socialist enterprise, as well, which helps explain why so many economic conservatives want to downsize or eliminate the drug war...

Blue skies, smiling at me.

Posted on November 07, 2008
   During my first summer in law school, working in the regulations and legislation division of a federal agency, I mentioned my interest in becoming a litigator. One of the staff attorneys -- who had paralegaled at the ACLU, which was one of the places I wanted to work -- exclaimed: "Don't you know that is the legal path that causes the most ulcers?"   Ulcers shmulcers, I reasoned...

Who let Lucy van Pelt into the CIA?

Posted on November 06, 2008
From National Archives website.  Lucy van Pelt consistently invited Charlie Brown to kick a football. She held it to be kicked, but then would withdraw the ball.  Similarly, a few times recently, the National Security Archive complained in federal court that Lucy van Pelt -- I mean the CIA -- had unlawfully refused its request to be classified as a representative of the news media under the federal Freedom of Information Act, seeing that such representatives only need to pay for duplication costs of FOIA-requested documents, rather than needing to pay any fees to process the FOIA request...

Do not let government force television to dumb itself down to a child's level.

Posted on November 05, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Why listen to government/FCC-censored broadcast radio and television when we have the choice to listen to satellite and online radio and to watch cable television?  Why listen to broadcast radio and television when the FCC might still get upheld in court for heavily fining a station for broadcasting Allen Ginsberg's Howl masterpiece during prime time, or even a fleeting expletive by a winner at an awards ceremony or a successful player in a sporting event?  Yesterday's Supreme Court oral argument in the F...

McCain has remained silent on Palin's attack on the right to remain silent.

Posted on November 04, 2008
"Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... [Barack Obama is] worried that someone won't read them their rights." Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention (Sept. 3, 2008).  As much as I am not thrilled about Barack Obama -- and I am not thrilled at all about John McCain -- McCain blundered abysmally never to have rejected Palin's above-quoted mis-hyperbole about the essential right of detained criminal suspects to be read their rights to remain silent and to an attorney...

The polls are open, so we are, too.

Posted on November 04, 2008
 Even though Maryland courts and government offices apparently are closed for Election Day, we will be open today. Remember to vote early and often. Jon Katz.

Same court; two actors; two different appeal bond results.

Posted on November 03, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Wesley Snipes and Paul Little (a.k.a. Max Hardcore) both are actors -- very different actors, at that --  with pending federal criminal appeals from the Middle District of Florida. Their similarities end there both with the types of convictions involved (Snipes for a tax conviction and Hardcore for an obscenity conviction), the lengths of their sentences (Snipes possibly for a shorter period than the time to argue and decide his appeal, and Hardcore for nearly four years), and their abilities to make movies pending appeal (Snipes yes; Hardcore, no, because his appeal bond motion was denied)...

Why I am voting for Obama, and why I am inspired by Nader.

Posted on November 03, 2008
As I rise early on October 4, 2008, to get to the polls on the way to court, I will still be kicking myself for my own role, through inaction, in our having a two-party-dominated underdemocratic/barely democratic Tweedledum-Tweedledee political system...

Learning at the zoo.

Posted on November 02, 2008
  Zoos keep captive animals for the entertainment of humans. Yes, some zoos may have a higher educational and preservationist purpose. However, if attendees' entertainment motivation for going to zoos were eliminated, few would be visiting zoos, and many of those on display would no longer be put on display...

Halloween treats galore today from Virginia's Supreme Court.

Posted on October 31, 2008
  Image from Virginia Forestry Dept's website. Halloween treats came before sundown today with the following favorable criminal rulings from Virginia's Supreme Court, which issues opinions around every six weeks:  - Virginia's Supreme Court reversed a rape conviction where not more than a scintilla of evidence supported a jury instruction that the jury could consider the defendant's departure from the alleged victim's home, where Defendant claimed consensual sexual activity and where the evidence showed the Defendant's departure complied with the complainant's telling him to leave...

Wherever I go, Big Brother follows.

Posted on October 30, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) In 1981, I started college a few miles outside of Boston. I very much enjoyed the subway system. Barely two stations was designed alike. Some stations had elevated platforms to get on the trains, and at least one other station had the opposite engineering...

When is Gideon openly disrespected?

Posted on October 29, 2008
 On October 8, 2008, I blogged about the Maryland Public Defender's Office's cessation of funding for private lawyers to represent indigent defendants who have to be defended by non-public defender lawyers due to conflicts of interest with the office's existing clients...

Virginia's limits on relief for bypassed preliminary hearing.

Posted on October 28, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Today, October 28, a split Virginia Court of Appeals put firm limits on criminal defendants' possiblity of obainining judicial relief where a preliminary hearing has not been held. Wright v. Virginia (Oct...

Virginia's limits on relief for bypassed preliminary hearings.

Posted on October 28, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Today, October 28, a split Virginia Court of Appeals put firm limits on criminal defendants' possiblity of obainining judicial relief where a preliminary hearing has not been held. Wright v. Virginia (Oct...

We are all related.

Posted on October 27, 2008
  When googling for some further information on t'ai chi master Cheng Man Ch'ing, I happened upon an intriguing blog entitled Native American Taoist. The site's blogmaster is Thunderhands, who answered a blog comment about his Cheng Man Ch'ing posting with the closing phrase "Mitakuye Oyasin"...

Learning one cookie at a time.

Posted on October 26, 2008
  Some people reach ecstasy by seeing their favorite band live, as have I, when experiencing such superhumans as Return to Forever, Dizzy Gillespie, and Cat Anderson. Yesterday, I reached ecstasy by interacting more directly than ever with t'ai chi Master Ben Lo...

Emphatic advocacy

Posted on October 24, 2008
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Imagine if the late Ernie Kovacs attended law school and somehow was put under and followed the misimpression to speak and write in monotone.  Then, imagine if Ernie Kovacs were a lawyer, and injected all his vim, vigor, vitality, and humor into his written and oral words...

Earning a good living without focus groups: It can be done.

Posted on October 23, 2008
  In the summer of 1971, at the age of eight, I learned two indispensible things. First, I learned about Mad Magazine, which I read and subscribed to religiously for many years, and whose offices I got a tour of three years later, mesmerized as Associate Editor Jerry DeFucio led me down hallways filled with amazing art, drawers filled with such priceless gems as the original Godfather cover artwork, and Bill Gaines's office with a papier-mâché King Kong ready to burst in through the window; and as Sergio Aragones inked original drawings for me on the inside covers of his books...

A quality interpreter needs to know much more than language fluency.

Posted on October 22, 2008
 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Too often, people think that full bilingualism is enough to do sufficient interpreter work. Wrong, especially when it comes to the fast pace and rough-and-tumble of interpreting during a trial.  Next time a judge questions why passing an interpreter certification test is not good enough, show the judge this article, at http://www...

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