The blawgosphere was atwitter recently over that Kentucky murder trial where the defendant had confessed, but claimed it was a false confession, due to “sleep-deprived psychosis” from drinking too much coffee. The jury didn’t buy it (here’s a short article on it). Did that case remind anyone else of this...
The Supreme Court is back in session on Monday, and we’re not ashamed to admit that we’re excited. As always. And they’re starting off the argument season with a bang — a critical issue on federal sentencing of gun crimes. Can’t wait. The case is actually two cases, Abbott v....
Another good post by Mark Bennett today over at his blog “Defending People,” entitled “Today Only?” He recounts the plea-bargaining tactic some prosecutors use, attempting to force a plea by saying the offer is only good that one day, and won’t be offered again. Did the words mean what they...
WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS BLATANT SELF-CONGRATULATION. COMMON SIDE-EFFECTS INCLUDE NAUSEA, EYE-ROLLING, INVOLUNTARY VOCALIZATIONS, AND ENNUI.
Everyone knows that the indigent defense system in this country is broken. The courts have mandated that every jurisdiction has to pay for indigent criminal defendants to get a lawyer. It is required. The vast majority of criminal defendants are indigent (or have no legitimate source of income, and...
Nicholas Marsh (pictured) committed suicide over the weekend. He and the other prosecutors in the Ted Stevens fiasco were being investigated for their handling of the case, after the judge found them to have withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. (See our previous posts on this here.) After dismissing the...
You’ve probably all seen the video by now of the motorcyclist recording himself speeding down a Maryland road, only to get pulled over by a plainclothes cop who leaps out brandishing a gun and otherwise behaving inappropriately. And you’ve probably heard how the motorcyclist is now facing trial on charges...
When we left the Manhattan DA’s office some years ago, we firmly believed that prosecutorial misconduct was as rare as it was despicable. We can’t think of a single one of our colleagues for whom it would have even occurred to cut corners, and it certainly would not have been...
One of our all-time favorite writers, P.J. O’Rourke, has an intriguing little article in World Affairs Journal today, called “Innocence Abroad: The Tea Party’s Search for Foreign Policy.” Go ahead and check it out, we’ll wait. As the title suggests, he finds a seeming contradiction between the movement for limited...
Note to incoming first-year law students: The law itself is not terribly difficult. We lecture to schoolkids from time to time, and they seem to get the concept pretty easily when we explain that the law is nothing more than the rulebook for how to play the game of...
It should come as no surprise to anyone with any experience in criminal law that perfectly innocent people will sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Perhaps they were in a suggestible state, and the police led them to believe they’d done it. Maybe they were broken by the...
We just checked our stats, and during the past week-plus that we took off, we got more hits than ever, and links from quality sites shot up 20%. So, basically, the less we write, the more you like us? Well, too damn bad. We like writing. (If you like, you...
A year and eight days ago, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of granting an “original writ,” and handed down a novel decision directing a federal court to revisit the murder conviction of Troy Anthony Davis by allowing Davis to put on evidence of actual innocence. (See our...
The 9th Circuit judicial conference wrapped up yesterday. Hundreds of lawyers spent the last several days discussing this and that in Maui, and finished up with a speech and some Q&A from Justice Kennedy. He had a lot of different things to say, most of which are unremarkable (such as the Court will be...
The news is full of reports today about the hung jury in the Blagojevich trial — they found the governor guilty of a single count of lying to federal agents something like five years ago, and hung 11-1 in favor of conviction on the remaining counts. All kinds of pontificators...
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