Demonstrative Evidence: Criminal Law

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Demonstrative Evidence

Reviews recent criminal rulings in state and federal courts, comments on other legal news and shares humorous Web links.
By Charles Thomas

Post Frequency: 0.9/day

Last Entry: February 15, 2009 at 20:00:00

Meet Jane Roe

Posted on February 15, 2009
I may be a month late to this party, but at first I dismissed it as an insignificant piece of bizarro non-news, the opposite of a human interest story. More of a human freakshow.A single mother of six, undergoes in vitro and has octuplets. The public reaction ran the gamut, the full spectrum of human emotions...

How to have a college football playoff system in four easy steps

Posted on January 06, 2009
The infrequent blawgger returns to post about college football? Yeah - it's my blog. Deal. As it currently stands, and I am intentionally oversimplifying here, the college football championship is currently decided by consensus. The BCS is a system that is supposed to pit the two best teams against each other in a single championship game...

Why law school sucks, part I

Posted on August 17, 2008
Imagine you are a medical student. What if you were allowed to ignore an entire system of the body in order to study something cool and very difficult to get into, like plastic surgery? You wouldn't be much of a doctor - even plastic surgeons need to know about the digestive system...

Worst. CLE. Ever.

Posted on July 10, 2008
I am at a CLE, Internet Law Update. This is the worst waste of time I have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. The speaker on Web 2.0 and the law clearly did not use or understand Web 2.0 technology. In fact, he only spoke about Second Life, which he admitted he doesn't get...

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Does this mean we can have real forks again?

Posted on July 09, 2008
Hat tip to the brilliant (no exaggeration) John Wesley Hall for this. He writes in his Fourth Amendment blog that Homeland Security is considering requiring all airline passengers to wear an electronic ID bracelet with a - wait for it - built in taser...

Some thoughts on marriage, and the nature of rights

Posted on June 29, 2008
I had a thought earlier, and it was on the nature of rights- the right to act automatically includes the right not to act. In certain contexts, it is easy to conceptualize: the right to free speech includes the right not to speak; the right to privacy includes the right to be open (ever more relevant in this age of internet oversharing)...

Everything I hate about schools all wrapped into one.

Posted on June 17, 2008
I hate the stupid decisions made by [EDIT: corrected typos] school administrators, but this is egregious- to teach the kids of El Camino High in Oceanside, California that driving drunk has consequences, the school had police interrupt 20 classes and announce that 26 classmates had been killed in a massive DUI car wreck...

You know...

Posted on June 13, 2008
Probably the biggest case ever on the limits of Presidential power comes down this week, and the blawgosphere is agog about what might have been on Judge Kozinski's personal web site. Better minds than mine are writing about the former, and the latter isn't worth writing about...

Don't we have better things to do?

Posted on June 09, 2008
More outrage, which seems to be all I have these days. Osama bin Laden is still at large; the economy is in a handbasket on its way to hell; our energy "policy" is to consume as much as possible; and the Air Force haphazardly mishandles the US nuclear arsenal, by flying warheads across the country in an unguarded C-5...

Anger and outrage

Posted on May 27, 2008
Legal Times reports on a terrible example of how far insurance companies will go to screw plaintiffs (registration required). A hotel employee molested a young girl when her family vacationed in the US Virgin Islands. Police are notified, investigation ensues, other victims are discovered, and hotel employee gets convicted and sentenced to five years in prison...

So I'm a little late to this party....

Posted on May 22, 2008
The California same-sex marriage decision is fascinating on a number of fronts, but the one that stands out the most for me is that the Court held that it didn't matter whether you call it marriage, domestic partnership, or civil union, as long as the name applies to all persons across the board...

News & Updates

Posted on May 14, 2008
I have registered my own domain - www.attorneycharlesthomas.com - with the hopes of getting a real practice up and running in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I am trying to figure out how sync up all my services over there.

Some people never learn...

Posted on May 07, 2008
Remember the DC administrative law judge who claimed $54 million in damages over a missing pair of pants? He's at it again, although this time he is only after $1 million and his job back.

Inside the mind of a juror

Posted on May 07, 2008
Trial attorneys often wonder what goes on inside the jury room. Here's a very detailed look thanks to a juror in the Uma Thurman stalking case who also happens to be a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

How did this slip through?

Posted on May 06, 2008
Not being a patent attorney, I don't pay much attention to patent law. There are occasionally stupid patent decisions that get my ire up, but by and and large the ins and outs of patent procedure, but apparently two-thirds of the patent judges were unconstitutionally appointed...

The dark side of DNA

Posted on April 03, 2008
The Times has an excellent article on "surreptitious sampling," the police practice of collecting DNA samples from suspects without their knowledge (and without a warrant). In a typical case, the cops follow a suspect who may happen to be smoking a cigarette or drinking a soda...

A return to blawgging

Posted on April 03, 2008
I haven't been posting lately. By lately, I mean in the past 10 months. I am not really at liberty to discuss it, but I had to focus on other things. My situation is stabilizing, and I really miss writing about the law. So I am back.