You’ve probably heard, by now, of this Joseph Rakofsky kid. You know the one — the newly-licensed lawyer who took on a murder trial without any trial experience, who is alleged to have told his investigator to “trick” an eyewitness into denying having seen anything, and whose performance was so...
When we were just starting out in the law, we frankly had no problem with the concept of profiling. Not racial profiling — that’s just a logical absurdity along the lines of “most people who commit crime X are of race Y, therefore it’s reasonable to suspect people of race...
Our jury’s still out, and there’s so much stuff to catch up on. There’s the 5th Circuit’s denial of Jeff Skilling’s appeal, even though the Supreme Court had struck down the “honest services fraud” charge last summer. We were so ready to write something about it yesterday, but work intervened,...
We started yet another trial this week, and it’s looking like it will continue into the first week of April. Not our longest trial ever, but fairly lengthy for a state case. But at least it’ll be over before the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, which also began this week, and...
We’ll admit to a guilty pleasure. Sometimes we surf over to Avvo and check out the questions people are asking criminal lawyers here in NY, and the answers various lawyers are providing. It can be cringe-worthy, but once in a while it can be instructive. We cringe when people ask...
Criminal law is about as serious as it gets. Our clients’ liberty, reputations, freedoms, rights, opportunities, property — and even their lives — are at risk. What we do affects not just our clients, but their children, their parents, the victims, and the community at large. What we do...
Sex offender registries aren’t necessarily a bad idea. For whatever reason, there are certain people who get off on molesting little kids or raping people, and who are not likely to be rehabilitated by a stint behind bars. It’s how their sex drive is wired. If they get caught...
Last week, the House passed a bill that would prevent the federal government from prosecuting Guantanamo detainees in civilian courts (by cutting off the funds to do so). The Senate is now considering it as part of the 1,900-page omnibus spending bill. This is largely seen as a reaction to...
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...
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...
So we’ve been hearing about this new blog, “UnemployedJD.com,” where some guy named Ethan is documenting his hunger strike “to bring awareness to the concerns of [his] classmates. Their primary concerns are inaccurate employment statistics, ineffective career counseling, and rising tuition costs. [His] intention is to have these concerns...
Over the weekend, the NYT printed an article calling the Supreme Court under C.J. Roberts the “most conservative in decades.” “The court not only moved to the right,” the article said, “but also became the most conservative one in living memory, based on an analysis of four sets of political...
“There has been a spate of particularly brutal and senseless attacks on the police,” according to Eugene O’Donnell, professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a former police officer and prosecutor. “It seems to me, [there is] an unprecedented level of disrespect and willingness to challenge...
“Hate” is not an element of New York’s “hate crime” law. You don’t have to hate to commit a hate crime. Instead, the law merely requires that you have “a belief or perception” regarding a person’s race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation. ...
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