Criminal Law
Underdog 
Pulling no punches in commenting on the day's legal issues involving criminal defense and individual rights.
Post Frequency: 2/day Last Entry: November 20, 2009 at 01:00:00 Recent Entries: 559
By Marks & Katz, LLC
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Seeking full-time legal assistant.
Posted on November 20, 2009Regular Underdog readers know that I have posted several help wanted notices during the past few months. Some were an effort to replace my longtime full-time assistant due to his always-known plan to go to law school, where he currently is at. Today's ad for a full-time legal assistant is to add to my current staff of two excellent part-time assistants...
Martial arts and the law.
Posted on November 19, 2009The martial art of t'ai chi, of course, is an essential part of my personal and professional life. It turns out that some lawyers brand themselves as martial arts lawyers. Practicing in the nearby city of Fairfax, David Kaufman runs the Karate Law blog...
Alternatives to self-medication.
Posted on November 19, 2009Many "recreational" drug users are not only using them for recreation, but to self-medicate. The following blues-fighting list from local psychologist Michael Radkowsky, though basic, is spot-on. As an aside, I met Michael through the listserv of the Horowitz-Margareten extended family; we are very distantly related...
Where do all the little green men come from?
Posted on November 18, 2009A Lexis search of appellate opinions shows no judge calling anybody a nutball or whackjob. However, a Lexis search does show at least two dozen occasions where appellate opinions have included the phrase "little green men", including yesterday's opinion from the D...
This just in: Available legal research and writing professional for short-term projects.
Posted on November 17, 2009To those seeking assistance with short-term legal research and writing projects, I highly recommend the following top-notch person: Legal research/writer: twenty+ years of experience in research and drafting trial court motions and legal memos and state and federal appellate briefs concerning criminal and immigration matters...
A mere hunch does not permit a frisk nor a search.
Posted on November 16, 2009Praised be Virginia's Court of Appeals for last week further distinguishing the factors separating a mere hunch -- which does not justify a police frisk or search -- from a Terry frisk based on reasonable articulable suspicion to believe the suspect is armed and dangerous...
When doctors force medical treatment. When one overcomes physical handicaps.
Posted on November 15, 2009In 1995 at the Trial Lawyers College, I met Dax Cowart. He is one of my favorite people from the college. On the one hand, I prefer to think of Dax for himself, not for any physical handicaps. On the other hand, he has travelled extensively telling the story about being burnt all over his body in 1973, and he has transcended the hellish ordeal of feeling skinned alive during doctors' forced efforts to treat him when he refused medical treatment and insisted on dying...
"An anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant?s basis of knowledge or veracity."
Posted on November 13, 2009Image from the Government Printing Office's website. On November 12, 2009, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals issued its most recent ruling on the Second Amendment, as well as on the Fourth Amendment. Plummer v. U.S.. _ A.2d _ (Nov. 12, 2009)...
More from Ray Sipsa.
Posted on November 13, 2009Today, I added more words from the guest blog entry of sage Rey Sipsa, here. In case anyone is wondering, Ray Sipsa is not I, nor is Mr. Mary Jane. Unlike Ray Sipsa, I had access to a country club golf course as a child, but never cared to use the course, and would have immensely enjoyed spending time with Ray instead...
When does the speedy trial clock start running anew?
Posted on November 12, 2009When does the speedy trial clock start running anew? Under Maryland law, a recharge after a nolle prosequi generally re-starts the 180-day Maryland speedy trial clock, unless the prosecutor has acted in bad faith. For instance, if a Maryland prosecutor enters a nolle prosequi after a judge denies a motion to amend the date on a charging document -- within the 180-day state speedy trial period -- and then recharges the alleged crime, Maryland's 180-day clock restarts after the charges are refiled: "The severe sanction of a Hicks [180-day rule] dismissal is reserved for situations where the State seeks to circumvent the strictures of § 6-103(a) and Rule 4-271(a)(1) and unjustifiably delay a defendant?s trial beyond 180-days...
Guest blogger Ray Sipsa on advocating for a moneyed injury victim.
Posted on November 12, 2009One of my favorite people and favorite trial lawyers wrote an excellent response to a lawyer concerned about juror bias against his injured client, for already having financial privilege. This friend permitted me to re-print his response, but only under the anonymous monker of Ray Sipsa: I would first try a motion in limine to preclude evidence of his membership in this exclusive golf club...
Why and how should lawyers market themselves online and beyond? Speaking in Baltimore today on this topic.
Posted on November 11, 2009Is the practice of law all about making money? Many lawyers seem to think so. One of them unabashedly implored me point-blank over lunch many years ago: "Isn't the law practice all about money?," so he believed. He is fifteen years older than I...
Virginia rushed through John Allen Muhammad's execution, and the Supreme Court allowed it.
Posted on November 11, 2009Death penalty: Always unjust Virginia executed John Allen Muhammad before he was to have completed his first round of federal habeas corpus appeals. Concurring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens -- joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor -- underlined the importance of completing the first round of federal habeas corpus appeals before permitting executions: "This case highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process has been fully concluded...
"Mr. Mary Jane" comments on marijuana smell, from experience.
Posted on November 10, 2009Image from public domain. Thanks to anonymous commenter Mr. Mary Jane, who has this to say to Underdog readers about very strong pot, in response to my discussion on the striking difference between the smell of burnt and unburnt marijuana: BY MR. MARY JANE For what ever it's worth - from personal experience: Very strong pot has an incredibly powerful pungent and unique odor in its raw form - even in a sealed zip lock bag - this aroma will fill a car...
PDF creator
Posted on November 09, 2009Thanks to a listserv member for posting this link for creating free PDF documents: http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/free-pdf-converters-drivers.shtml .
Defending rogue cops in criminal court.
Posted on November 09, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). On the one hand, I believe strongly in providing an aggressive defense to everyone suspected of a crime. On the other hand, rogue cops who commit crimes shielded by their badges certainly would present a challenge to my resolve to defend anybody accused of a crime, although I would do it anyway...
Woman kills self after man sees her nude.
Posted on November 08, 2009Thanks to a listserv member for posting this link to the following October 14, 2009, China Daily article: A woman from Huxian county in Shaanxi province ended her life after a man accidentally saw her nude in a public bathroom last Thursday. The man said he had accidentally walked into the women's bathroom and saw the 25-year-old girl naked and immediately ran out...
Nonsense of scenting dogs.
Posted on November 05, 2009The NIH's caption to this drug dog photo is enough to turn the stomach: "Nice to nose you: Flyer, NIH?s only certified drug-sniffer, serves on the K-9 team along with 10 bomb-sniffers. A dog?s nasal cavities contain over 220 million olfactory receptors; the human version has 5 million...
If anti-abortion centers want to lure those wanting abortions, they may do so.
Posted on November 04, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Everyone supports free expression that they agree with. However, if we want our own speech rights protected, we must support robust free expression rights for all, even for expression that makes us heave, hurl, and heave some more...
When may a court order a criminal defendant drugged to be competent to stand trial?
Posted on November 03, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) When may a court order a criminal defendant drugged to be competent to stand trial? In the Fourth Circuit, the prosecution must justify such an order by clear and convincing evidence. U.S. v. Barbara Michelle Bush, __ F...
Does the Second Amendment apply to the states?
Posted on November 02, 2009Image from the Government Printing Office's website. Last Friday, Maryland?s intermediate appellate court treated the Supreme Court's Heller opinion as doing nothing to change the Maryland Court of Special Appeals' 2005 ruling that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states...
Chicago trial court protects Craigslist over erotic ads.
Posted on October 30, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Last week, a Chicago federal trial judge extended protection beyond libel suits to listserv operators, online bulletin board operators, and bloggers for third-party postings concerning erotic services, even where those postings might be thinly-veiled or even non-veiled ads for prostitution: [47 U...
When a judge -- in front of the jury -- coerces an adverse witness to testify, pounce on it.
Posted on October 29, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Two years ago, a Baltimore City, Maryland, judge incorreclty warned a prosecution witness in a murder trial -- in front of the jury -- that she had no right to remain silent. On October 28, 2009, Maryland's intermediate appellate court reversed the resulting conviction of Anthony Dickson, for the following main reasons: "We nevertheless conclude that, even though Thomas?s [the reluctant witness] claim of privilege was personal to her, and even though there are significant distinctions between this case and Archer, the trial court?s error in summarily rejecting Thomas?s claim of privilege likely prejudiced the appellant?s defense, and therefore warrants a new trial...
Why patronize a state that allows felony convictions for bong water?
Posted on October 28, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) If bong water possession were going to be made a felony anywhere in the United States, one would have expected that more likely to happen in the deep South or the bible belt, and not in Garrison Keillor country...
D.C Court of Appeals reverses conviction for unlicensed carrying, and reaffirms that certificates of no record are testimonial.
Posted on October 27, 2009Image from the Government Printing Office's website. Post-Heller, here is more from the District of Columbia on handgun prosecutions: In the District of Columbia, "to convict a defendant of CPWL [carrying a pistol without a license], UF [unregistered firearm] or UA [unregistered ammunition] on an aiding and abetting theory, 'the government must show that the principal (not the aider and abettor) was not licensed...
For the zillionth time, silence is golden with the police.
Posted on October 26, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Do you have a burning desire to talk to the police, even though doing so with real cops might get you arrested and prosecuted? If so, go watch Cops and talk to the television screen instead. For a decade, my website has had this top ten list for dealing with the police, including keeping one's mouth shut except to identify oneself...
Living in one's eighties in great health.
Posted on October 25, 2009Some amazing teachers are amazingly selfless. Ben Lo is one of them http://katzjustice.com/underdog/archives/1402-Learning-one-cookie-at-a-time..html. At 82, ten years after a liver transplant, flying from his home in San Francisco, and -- as always --tremendously powerful physically, mentally and spiritually, Master Lo continues to come to the Washington, D...
Worth 1000 words: Last night's Cartoons & Cocktails at the National Press Club
Posted on October 23, 2009Image from Library of Congress's website. Last night, at the National Press Club, I attended Cartoons and Cocktails, an auction and reception that each year raises funds for Cartoonists Rights Network International and Young D.C. Thanks to Ted Rall -- whom I met at the 2007 underground Small Press Expo -- for informing me by twitter about this annual event that has been ongoing in my own backyard for two decades A problem about these fancy receptions is the disconnect between the fanciness of the gathering sand the seriousness of the causes...
We are fully staffed.
Posted on October 21, 2009Thanks to everyone who has applied to fill our recently-opened part-time position. The position is no longer vacant, and we are fully staffed. Jon Katz
Converting a 40-plant marijuana felony charge to a half-ounce misdemeanor.
Posted on October 20, 2009Image from public domain. In late 2006, I blogged about getting a thirty-plant Maryland marijuana felony prosecution reduced to a simple marijuana possession conviction, and a medical marijuana sentence of a $100 fine plus court costs, which ultimately was converted to a probation before judgment...
Seeking a part-time legal assistant.
Posted on October 19, 2009My law firm seeks a top-notch part-time legal assistant (25 hours weekls) to start as soon as possible. Full details are at http://katzjustice.com/jobs.htm#apply . This part-time position is in addition to our two experienced part-time legal assistants...
"Great Day in Harlem"
Posted on October 18, 2009As I have said before, for me jazz is improvisation, spontaneity, feeling, being in the moment, tight interaction, entertainment, pushing the limits of excellence, creativity, expanding into new frontiers, fun, inspiration, and discovery. That also is what my criminal defense work is about, albeit with frustration frequently challenging the fun part...
Prosecutions for groping.
Posted on October 16, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) As I consistently say, I am sickened, to say the least, by many crimes that my clients are alleged to have committed, if indeed they were committed. I am not talking about drug, theft and drunk driving crimes...
Terry is not satisfied by a police bulletin claiming a person is probably armed and a drug seller/user.
Posted on October 15, 2009Terry v. Ohio wrongfully tramples on civil liberties. (Image from FBI's website). Praised be Virginia's Court of Appeals for reversing a conviction due to a weapons frisk based on nothing more than a police computerized bulletin board claiming that Corey Smith was "probably armed and a narcotics seller/user...
The caselaw flaw on raw v. unraw marijuana.
Posted on October 14, 2009Image from public domain. Perhaps a prerequisite for taking the bench should be having firsthand experience smelling the tremendous difference between smoked/burnt marijuana and raw/unburnt marijuana, even if that means updating the laws to make this possible through the smelling and smoking experience...
Visiting the scene.
Posted on October 13, 2009One of the early critical lessons taught to trial lawyers is to visit (and photograph) the scene of the alleged incident, even if that takes substantial time, effort and discomfort. Recently, two fellow trial lawyers, myself, a client, and top-notch jury trial/psychodrama expert Don Clarkson joined to visit the scene beyond what can be photographed, to get into my client's mind, memories, feelings and experiences relating not only to defending against the current prosecution against him, but to understand him as a whole person, and for him to understand his situation and to help him and me tell his persuasive story...
The cat-and-mouse game of fighting adult entertainment laws.
Posted on October 12, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Nearly a decade ago, I added adult entertainment to my law practice. Such representation is a great way to defend the First Amendment, and can include criminal defense, as well. Litigating against adult entertainment zoning and licensing laws can be like a cat-and-mouse game, pitting businesses against censorious municipalities, seeing which businesses will cave rather than financing expensive litigation and, sometimes, expert witness fees, getting significantly different outcomes depending on the prevailing appellate circuit, and witnessing often sharply-divided Supreme Court opinions...
Columbus did not discover America. We will be open today.
Posted on October 12, 2009For your information, our law firm will be open today, Columbus day, October 12. The only reason thus far that I have identified to justify closing on Columbus day is to give my staff a well-deserved day off, which I can do on a different day from Columbus day...
Experiencing the Dalai Lama and Ihaleakala Hew Len.
Posted on October 11, 2009Over the years, I have been deeply inspired by the teachings and positive example of the Dalai Lama, including his approach to talking to everyone the same, regardless of their "socioeconomic" background; his book The Art of Happiness at Work and another, whose title I forget, about transcending fear of death to making one's last breath a good one; and Roger Kamenetz's account of him...
Preparing clients to testify.
Posted on October 09, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Thanks to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, trial lawyer Anna Durbin for authorizing me to post her attached excellent email message responding to a listserv discussion about how lawyers prepare their clients to testify at trial...
Can a hug end war?
Posted on October 08, 2009Thnks to Juan Mann and the Free Hugs Campaign My website's site statistics show that six people have found my blog this month with the keyword "hugging culture", which finds my October 2007 hugging blog entry as the first google result. If people are not going to receive and give literal hugs, then at least figurative hugs are in order, starting with sharing warmth rather than coldness, shedding our protective armor more often, connecting rather than disconnecting, being empathetic, and recognizing that we all are interconnected and that we harm ourselves when we inflict direct or indirect violence to other human and non-human animals, including when we eat meat, fish and fowl...
Admissibility of 911 calls.
Posted on October 08, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) On October 2, 2009, Maryland's intermediate appellate court affirmed the admission of a 911 call, where the call was geared to obtain medical attention after the patient had been assaulted, and where the overall circumstances supported that the 911 caller was the person the police found at the hotel lobby referenced by the 911 caller...
When cops stray from Miranda, pounce on it.
Posted on October 07, 2009Ernesto Miranda (r). (Image from State Department's website). In neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland, a seasoned police officer rambled about and mis-advised a murder arrestee about his Miranda rights. For the officer's deep and damaging straying from Miranda's warning script, Maryland's intermediate appellate court affirmed the trial court's suppression of the defendant's statements that followed to the police...
Challenge experts not only on expertise, but on foundation, as well.
Posted on October 06, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Maryland follows the Frye/Reed test for admitting expert testimony into evidence: ?[B]efore a scientific opinion will be received as evidence at trial, the basis of that opinion must be shown to be generally accepted as reliable within the expert?s particular scientific field...
When the prosecutor's case does not fit the jurors' script.
Posted on October 05, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Jurors give scripts to themes, e.g. armed robbery. If prosecution evidence does not fit with the jurors' scripts -- for instance, if the armed robbery defendant looks like a computer nerd who would not and could not even rob a fly --the defendant can benefit...
Unrepresented criminal defendants: Beware.
Posted on October 02, 2009What is the meaning of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel -- and the Fifth and Fourtheenth Amendment right to due process -- if prosecutors communicate directly with unrepresented criminal defendants soon after their arrests, to start the clock on short court filing deadlines without the assistance of a defense lawyer? In one Virginia county where I regularly practice, within two days after my client's arrest and three days before I was hired, the prosecutor mailed my client a notice of intent to introduce at trial my client's certificate of analysis of his breath test results without necessitating live testimony of the breath technician, and advised him of his statutory right -- within fourteen days of the filing of that notice with the court -- to file an objection with the court to the trial admission of the certificate of analysis...
DWI experts.
Posted on September 30, 2009Thanks to the Kavinoky law firm for posting this list of expert witnesses for drunk driving defense. Included in that list is Patrick Demers, whom I have retained several times as an expert witness.
Virginia: Defendant entitled to new sentencing hearing after the jury recommended an illegally high sentence.
Posted on September 29, 2009In Virginia, the jury decides guilt-innocence, and recommends a sentence in the event of a conviction. Jerome Rawls was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the jury's recommendation, for second degree murder. At the time of sentencing, Rawls's lawyer, the prosecutor, and the trial judge mistakenly thought that the then-existing forty-year maximum sentence (instituted in 1993) applied, but instead the twenty-year maximum applied, as it existed at the time of the 1992 crime...
Seeking a full-time legal assistant.
Posted on September 29, 2009Our law firm seeks a top-notch experienced legal assistant to start as soon as possible. Full details are at http://katzjustice.com/jobs.htm#assist . This full-time position is in addition to our two experienced part-time legal assistants. We deeply appreciate any Underdog readers who help us identify the right candidate...
Closed today for Yom Kippur. Back tomorrow.
Posted on September 28, 2009We are closed today, September 28, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. The holiday ends sundown, and I will start checking phone messages and emails this evening. We will be back in full fighting and blogging swing tomorrow, September 29. Jon Katz.
Did Clarence Darrow distract a jury with a long ash?
Posted on September 27, 2009Years ago, I heard a story that a lawyer -- posttibly Clarence Darrow -- distracted a jury from the opponent's argument, impressed that Darrow could create a very long ash with his cigarette or cigar, in the days that smoking was allowed in courtrooms...
Transcending daily tasks and obligations.
Posted on September 27, 2009Competing with seizing life's opportunities and challenges are work, mundane daily tasks, and fatigue. Perhaps I met Andrew Wales yesterday as a reminder to keep focusing on transcending the latter hurdles in life. I met Andrew yesterday at the annual underground comics Small Press Expo at the North Bethesda Marriott on Marinelli, or perhaps I should say he found me and my boy, who is now 3 1/2-years-old, and had more of an interest in getting lunch at the bagel carryout up the street than taking this backyard visit to which many others had driven hundreds of miles...
More ammunition for beating prosecutions for open alcohol containers.
Posted on September 25, 2009Too often, defendants all too eagerly plead guilty to possessing an open container of alcohol, whether it be beer, vodka, wine, or any other alcohol-containing beverage, whether that be to minimize the fine or other sentencing exposure, particularly when they are unrepresented by an attorney...
The two-witness rule governs perjury convictions.
Posted on September 24, 2009On September 17, the D.C. Court of Appeals reversed a perjury conviction where the two-witness rule was not satisfied. Gaffney v. U.S., __ A.2d. _ (D.C., Sept. 17, 2009). The Court described the two-witness rule as follows: According to the venerable ?two-witness? rule, ?the uncorroborated oath of one witness is not enough to establish the falsity of the testimony of the accused set forth in the indictment as perjury...
Westboro Baptist Church wins hands-down.
Posted on September 24, 2009For a week and a half in October 2007, my life was consumed with my defense of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) and its pastor before a Maryland federal jury against charges of intentional infliction of emotional distress and intrusion upon seclusion...
Back from spreading the Bill of Rights gospel at the University of Maryland.
Posted on September 23, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Following up on my September 18 blog entry: This past Monday night, I spoke on a Know Your Rights panel at the University of Maryland. Here is the brief Diamondback campus news article on the packed gathering...
D.C. Circuit strikes First Amendment-violative F.E.C. rules.
Posted on September 23, 2009On September 18, the D.C. Circuit struck down new F.E.C. rules limiting "how non-profits may spend and raise money to advance their preferred policy positions and candidates." Emily's List v. F.E.C., _ F.3d _ (Sept. 18, 2009). Praised be and long live the First Amendment...
Maryland's highest court reverses conviction for insufficient waiver of counsel.
Posted on September 22, 2009On September 18, 2009, Maryland's Court of Appeals made it loud and clear that judges must correctly advise defendants about their sentencing exposure, or risk having convictions reversed where the defendant waives assistance of counsel. Brye v. Md., __ Md...
DC: Police emergency lights plus an already stopped car might not implicate the Fourth Amendment.
Posted on September 21, 2009What if a person pulls legally to the side of the road to dial a phone number, intending on driving away immediately after doing the dialing? What happens if a police officer pulls up behind the car with emergency lights flashing, and testifies that this was done merely to show the driver and other cars that the officer is approaching, rather than to tell the driver not to move the car? If the foregoing scenario happens in the District of Columbia, the driver may have a steep battle to have this qualify as a seizure...
The late Cat Bennett's website, with sample voir dire.
Posted on September 20, 2009See sample jury voir dire at the Cat Bennett jury consultants website.
September 21: Jon Katz speaks on "Know Your Rights" panel.
Posted on September 18, 2009Support FlexYourRights, (Jon Katz serves on its Board of Advisors.) On Monday, 7:00 p.m., September 21, I will be returning for a third time to the University of Maryland to spread the gospel of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to refuse searches and seizures (passively, of course), to say not a damn thing to cops, and to stand firmly on those rights no matter how scary, pressure-filled, or divide-and-conquer the situation seems...
Learning more about American Indian law.
Posted on September 18, 2009Numerous law schools have American Indian law classes. Mine did not. I have wanted to learn more, including the law concerning treaty rights, land rights, gambling, and sacred medicine, and also about the past and current mistreatment and slaughter of Native Americans and efforts and accomplishments to reverse such mistreatment...
Call your Congress member now, to stop Rep. Souder's ongoing efforts to bar financial aid even for marijuana possession.
Posted on September 17, 2009For years, students with convictions for drug convictions as minor as possessing marijuana would have their federal financial aid stripped away as a result. Wonderfully, currently proposed legislation will take a huge bite out of that sting by limiting financial aid deprivation to those with drug sales convictions during the time they receive financial aid, even though hopefully even that penalty will ultimately go away...
"We think too much and feel too little."
Posted on September 16, 2009Sixty-nine years late, I finally saw Chaplin?s final speech in The Dictator. It is time to watch the rest of the movie. The speech is transcribed in this YouTube link. KarmaTube links to this remix of the speech, by Dan Reed.
Melendez Diaz's footnote 1 elucidates, but does not limit, the wonderful M-D opinion.
Posted on September 14, 2009Soon after its release, I felt resistance to Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), by many judges, concerning Crawford?s prohibition on testimonial hearsay at trial where the declarant does not testify. Now I feel resistance to Melendez-Diaz v...
September 11, eight years later.
Posted on September 13, 2009Last year I posted this entry about September 11. I would have preferred posting it two days ago, on September 11, but all day was in two courthouses and away from the computer. While the horrors of September 11 must not be allowed to give the government the green light to trump civil liberties, this does not preclude the deep importance of keeping the vicitims in our hearts and memories...
Sending good karma to Jack Herer.
Posted on September 13, 2009Around late 1990, I attended part of the annual NORML conference, in Washington, D.C., which was a much smaller event than today. I was very taken by Paul Krassner's talking about Abbie Hoffman, and got belly laughs from his jokes; was told that Hunter Thompson's no-show was Hunter Thompson being Hunter Thompson; and felt less isolated on such important issues as drug law reform when, unknowingly, I was a few months away from leaving the life of corporate law to defending indigent clients with the Maryland Public Defender's Office...
When immunity trumps the Fifth Amendment.
Posted on September 10, 2009The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, in part, that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." However, over thirty-five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that witnesses can be compelled to give immunized testimony even if they assert their Fifth Amendment right not to be witnesses against themselves: "[T]he immunity provided by 18 U...
First Amendment Protects the Finger.
Posted on September 09, 2009A survey would likely find infinitely more arrests for finger flipping than finger pulling. However, the First Amendment protects finger flipping, as confirmed earlier this year by the Western District of Pennsylvania: By 2006, numerous federal courts, including a United States District Court in Pennsylvania, had ruled that the middle finger gesture was constitutionally protected speech...
Remember people and their labors every day.
Posted on September 07, 2009Labor Day parade (from Library of Congress's website). NOTE: This blog entry is updated from my Labor Day 2008 blog entry. Before the current recession/depression, on Labor Days, sales (handled by labor), vacations (serviced by labor), and the end of summer eclipsed sufficiently deep thinking and feelings about labor...
The drug wars are more harmful than drugs.
Posted on September 06, 2009Having finished high school before the D.A.R.E. program, how did I stay away from using illegal drugs other than ultimately smoking marijuana literally a handful of times? It did not hurt that I always found tobacco-cigarette smoking gross, and joint-smoking even uglier, since joints looked uglier than tobacco cigarettes, especially when smoked...
In D.C., attempted escape requires specific intent to do so. Judge may not use jury instructions to broaden the indictment.
Posted on September 04, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Praised be the D.C. Court of Appeals yesterday for reversing a conviction for attempted jail escape, due to the trial judge's refusal of the defendant's requested jury instruction that specific intent to escape is an essential element of the crime of attempted escape from jail...
Abolish the death penatly.
Posted on September 03, 2009Thanks to Barry Scheck for posting about the injustice of the death penalty, which continues to ensnare innocent people, and for referencing a recent in-depth New Yorker article presenting the case that Cameron Todd was innocent of arson, but still executed in 2004 for the fire deaths of his two children...
Do defendants waive confrontation rights by not filing demands for opposing witnesses' presence?
Posted on September 02, 2009Virginia and Maryland have statutory provisions requiring defendants, pretrial, to demand the presence at trial of drug chemists and breath technicians, or to waive that right otherwise. Yesterday, Virginia's Court of Appeals made clear that such a requirement is met when the defense files a demand, and does not require the defense to have the witness subpoenaed...
In Virginia, risky for probationers to refuse to admit their "crimes".
Posted on September 02, 2009Sentencing judges often are fond of "treatment", without sufficiently considering how beneficial the treatment will be. Too many treatment providers are overly paternalistic, bureaucratic, and barely hesitant to tell on probationers to judges...
Fail to engage at your own risk.
Posted on September 02, 2009A few weeks ago, I blogged about the need to engage one's opponent, the judge and the jury. Here are a few more thoughts on the topic: - How can we persuade without engaging our audience? How do we engage without listening to what is said and not said, and caring? - How many of us flock to those who engage us, and flee those who do the opposite? How does a jury respond when it wants to flee, but cannot? - We can engage juries and judges without kissing their behinds...
Tuning fork documents as inadmissible testimonial hearsay.
Posted on September 01, 2009When the prosecution tries to use documents to prove speeding in its case in chief -- for instance in a jailable Virginia reckless driving case -- consider responding with the following pre-Melendez cases that limit hearsay evidence to establish such proof: Royals v...
Blogroll
Posted on August 31, 2009Recently, I scaled back my blogroll, mainly removing blogs that are inactive, infrequently active, or less of a good fit than they previously seemed. I list blogs that seem to fit in well with mine, that might interest readers, and that interest me. I do not list blogs to try to get them to list me, and do not list blogs merely because they list me...
The eyeball's role in battle.
Posted on August 31, 2009Two days ago, I learned the following at the weekly t'ai chi practice east of the Captiol: Allow no more pressure on your body than you would allow on your eyeball. To avoid such pressure, yield powerfully, and push substantially with the ch'i, using no more than 4 ounces...
Hearsay at sentencing hearings.
Posted on August 27, 2009Here are some ideas some colleagues recently suggested for responding in Virginia and beyond to prosecutorial objections about a defendant's hearsay submissions at sentencing: - Argue that if the presentence report is considered at sentencing, as well as any other hearsay from the prosecution, then what is good for the goose is good for the gander...
Virginia: Forms for objecting to affidavits and certificates of analysis without live testiomony.
Posted on August 27, 2009Following up on this past Monday's blogpost entitled "Virginia responds to Melendez-Diaz, with a Constitutionally questionable vengeance," thanks to a listserv member for providing this link to the forms here and here that are available for objecing to a Virginia Commonwealth's Attorney's office's notice of its intent to introduce into evidence affidavits and certificates of analysis without live testimony...
Virginia: Forms for objecting to affidavits and certificates of analysis without live testimony.
Posted on August 27, 2009Following up on this past Monday's blogpost entitled "Virginia responds to Melendez-Diaz, with a Constitutionally questionable vengeance," thanks to a listserv member for providing this link to the forms here and here that are available for objecting to a Virginia Commonwealth's Attorney's office's notice of its intent to introduce into evidence affidavits and certificates of analysis without live testimony...
Why do any judges wonder whether they have authority to rule a statute unconstitutional?
Posted on August 26, 2009Over a year ago, I argued to a Virginia District Court judge that a statutory sentencing provision was unconstitutional. He thought about it, and then said that he had concluded that my Constitutional argument had to be argued in the Circuit Court through a de novo appeal...
Two of three fired Maryland public defender lawyers have been unfired.
Posted on August 25, 2009Some days life seems no clearer than a Zen koan. Last Friday, I blogged about the abrupt termination of Maryland?s Public Defender Nancy Forster by a 2-1 board vote. However, the same abruptly-fired chief Public Defender apparently abruptly fired two public defender lawyers just hours before the public announcement of Ms...
Virginia responds to Melendez-Diaz, with a Constitutionally questionable vengeance.
Posted on August 24, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) With a vengeance, Virginia's legislature and governor have pushed through their Constitutionally questionable response to Melendez-Diaz. The bill, HB 5007, was signed into law last Friday, and provides that it takes immediate effect...
Sending good karma to Thich Nhat Hanh.
Posted on August 23, 2009When I was struggling much more than at present over my own mortality, I came across the following passage by Thich Nhat Hanh: Contemplation on No-Coming and No-GoingBy Thich Nhat HanhThis body is not meI am not limited by this body.I am life without boundariesI have never been born,And I have never died...
Receiving mercy does not prepare one for battle.
Posted on August 23, 2009Each Sunday morning t'ai chi/sensing hands practice reinvigorates me for another week of fighting for justice for my clients, and doing so without anger, with continued zest for the battles and wars, with powerful calmness, and with no fear. As I sometimes say to my particularly skilled push hands/sensing hands partners: "I want no mercy from you, just as I usually do not get it from prosecutors or opposing witnesses, and sometimes not from judges, either...
2-1 vote terminates Maryland's chief Public Defender.
Posted on August 21, 2009Last night, a 2-1 vote of the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Public Defender System terminated Nancy Forster, the state's chief Public Defender since 2001. I was a Maryland public defender lawyer for five years, until 1996. Nancy joined the office as a law clerk in 1984, later became chief of the appellate division, and then moved to the helm of the statewide agency...
Prosecutors: It is better to overdisclose than to underdisclose exculpatory evidence.
Posted on August 20, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) The newest addition to my blogroll -- under the Beyond Blogs category -- is Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). I urge all judges, prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, and police to read Brady at least once a year, particularly its key holding: "We now hold that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution...
Back to blogging
Posted on August 19, 2009After a few days away from blogging, some new entries are on their way. I was away from blogging this past long weekend while in Manhattan, where I lived for a year before law school. As with many cities, Manhattan's gritty underbelly is my favorite...
Once criminal appellate relief is exhausted, new benefiical Supreme Court cases usually are of no help.
Posted on August 14, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Appellate courts are ever-wary about opening litigation floodgates. In that context, the United States Supreme Court has -- with narrow exceptions -- made the benefits of its new rulings unavailable to criminal defendants who have already exhausted appellate relief...
Why would a judge let air out of someone's tire?
Posted on August 13, 2009In a democratic society, no judge nor any other public official should escape scrutiny for their actions. In that light, this week, Charles County, Maryland, Circuit Court Administrative Judge Robert Nalley admitted both to the press and to the regional chief administrative judge that he let air out of the tires of another car for being parked where he said it should not have been parked in the courthouse parking lot...
Why are there lying cops? Because there are lying members of the general population.
Posted on August 13, 2009Too many judges, jurors, and members of the general public accept cops' words hook, line and sinker, merely because they are cops. Becoming a cop does not cloak a person with superhuman powers not to lie, cheat and steal. Police are drawn from the general population, and lying, cheating, and stealing are rampant in the general population; nothing makes police less susceptible to doing so...
Congress moves further on 100:1 cocaine powder:crack sentenciong disparity.
Posted on August 11, 2009On May 1, 2009, I blogged about the Justice Department?s efforts on eliminating the statutory disparities between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. Thanks to Congressman Robert "Bobby" C. Scott (D-Va.) for his introduction of the "Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009...
More on the risks of viewing child pornography online without trying to save the images.
Posted on August 11, 2009On November 16, 2006, I blogged about a Pennsylvania Superior Court opinion that the crime of possessing child pornography from an online source (as opposed to a statute prohibiting the mere viewing of child pornography) requires that the defendant know that the image is actually being saved to the computer...
Congress moves ahead on eliminating the statutory crack:powder cocaine sentencing disparity.
Posted on August 11, 2009On May 1, 2009, I blogged about the Justice Department?s efforts on eliminating the statutory disparities between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. Thanks to Congressman Robert "Bobby" C. Scott (D-Va.) for his introduction of the "Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009...
Merging DUI and DWI per se.
Posted on August 10, 2009NOTE: This blogposting is being re-uploaded, after some WYSYWIG problems kept delivering faulty formatting. The jurisdictions where I practice criminalize both drunk driving (DUI) and driving with a blood alcohol content over 0.08 (DWI). If a defendant is convicted of both, the defense lawyer should be ready to ask the judge to merge the two convictions, or, in the alternative, the two sentences...
Hail, hail, the gang's all here. Now I see their colors, on some of their brothers...
Posted on August 07, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Florida law outlaws even the display of gang symbols on the Internet. Would such a ban apply today to Our Gang, which some might have seen as including some ne'er do wells; Kool and the Gang; or the Gang of Four, which in a show trial was convicted as a group of criminals in a Chinese show trial? Thanks to Carlos Miller for posting on an ongoing Florida prosecution of two men -- Elvis Rodriguez and Richard Figueroa-Santiago -- over their posting of gang symbols on MySpace...
The U.S. government atom-bombed Hiroshima sixty-four years ago today.
Posted on August 06, 2009The U.S. government atomic-bombed Hiroshima fifty four years ago. Here are some thoughts: - My 1999 visit to Hiroshima was very sad. Here I am adding to the collection of peace cranes at Hiroshima's memorial: http://bit.ly/st2yn. - Hiroshima's horrors are highlighted by the ash mound of tens of thousands of victims whose remains were not claimed: http://bit...
Engaging the opponent.
Posted on August 04, 2009At this past Sunday morning t'ai chi practice, one of my push hands partners talked of the need for a push hands player to engage the opponent and to connect with the opponent's tan t'ien, which generally is the point near the navel where t'ai ch practitioners are taught to sink their ch'i, their minds, and their very centers, with one of the many benefits being that an opponent has more trouble finding any center against which to push...
Merging DUI and DWI per se.
Posted on August 03, 2009Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. The jurisdictions where I practice criminalize both drunk driving (DUI) and driving with a blood alcohol content over 0.08 (DWI). If a defendant is convicted of both, the defense lawyer should be ready to ask the judge to merge the two convictions, or, in the alternative, the two sentences...
Q: Did you go to law school? Penn: No, clown school.
Posted on August 02, 2009Penn Jillette sticks it to those with a crabbed view of the First Amendment.
D.C. Court of Appeals rules against convicted peace protestors.
Posted on July 31, 2009On July 30, 2009, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled against convicted peace protestors in Tataz, et al. v. D.C. My brother civil liberties lawyer Mark Goldstone wrote the non-pro-se defendants'-appellants' brief in the appeal. The three?judge appellate panel in Tataz ?- with Judge Ruiz partially dissenting, in favor of reversing the conviction for unlawful assembly at the Rayburn Building ?- affirmed all convictions of multiple defendants for unlawful assembly in the Capitol Building, at the Hart Senate Office Building and the Rayburn House Office Building, and for crossing police lines after leaving permit-issued protest space outside the Capitol Building...
The First Amendment trumps Virginia's unconstitutional harassment statute.
Posted on July 31, 2009Virginia has an unconstitutionally vague and overbroad harassment statute, which provides: "§ 18.2-186.4. It shall be unlawful for any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass another person, to publish the person's name or photograph along with identifying information as defined in clauses (iii) through (ix), or clause (xii) of subsection C of § 18...
An indictment is merely an accusation delivered by a sham grand jury proceeding.
Posted on July 30, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) An indictment is merely an accusation delivered by an unfairly slanted grand jury proceeding. The least that prosecutors can do is to clearly acknowledge that indictments are no more than that. Both under the current and prior presidential administrations, the United States Justice Department has issued a flurry of press releases about federal prosecutions, convictions, sentences, and even acquittals (see additional acquittal press releases here)...
Police Chief David Baker, meet prosecutor Davis Ruark and the litany of others.
Posted on July 28, 2009Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. My first five years in criminal defense was with the Maryland Public Defender's Office. There, I was always on the opposite side of cops, except for the one time I defended an ex-cop. Among the many cops I have met on and off of my work time, I have interacted with police running from the delightful and caring to the reprehensible-acting, just like in the general human population...
Maryland's highest court provides trial courts guidance on handling inmates' DNA testing requests.
Posted on July 24, 2009Today, Maryland's highest court issued two opinions providing trial courts guidance on handling inmates' DNA testing requests: - Gregg v. Maryland, __ Md. _ (July 24, 2009). - Simms v. Maryland, __ Md. _ (July 24, 2009).
Our phone system works again.
Posted on July 22, 2009Thanks to Verizon's staff who quickly eliminated the fallout from a downed wire by first closing off the non-functioning phone line last night so that our phone and Internet system worked as if nothing was inoperable, but instead just one phone line short...
Henry Louis Gates, Jr's story shines the light on common police practices.
Posted on July 22, 2009Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr's story shines the light on police practices that too often are business as usual operating too often in the shadows. Here are some of my thoughts on his conflict with the police; - Too many police will arrest for disorderly conduct when people exercise their First Amendment right to complain about those holding governmental power...
Our main phone line is temporarily down.
Posted on July 21, 2009As of around 6:30 p.m. tonight, our main phoneline is temporarily down. Until then, you can reach us and our answering machine at 301-495-8822, and 301-495-8823. Our phone technical expert should be here between tonight and tomorrow morning. It appears that our building's main phonebox may have a technical problem, rather than the problem originating from my office unit...
Persuading by being centered.
Posted on July 19, 2009On May 25 and 28, I wrote about Jan Diepersloot's Warriors of Stillness, This book further says: "Dantian [a.k.a. "tan tien"] means 'field of elixir', after the Taoist and Buddhist discoveries that putting awareness there in meditation generates a warmth and feeling of well being that permeates the entire body...
D.C. Circuit enjoins police checkpoints to screen neighborhood entrants.
Posted on July 16, 2009In 1994, a border patrol agent stopped my car many miles north of the United States-Mexico border, as I drove at night towards my resting point in Albuquerque from Las Cruces, New Mexico. The stop was not pleasant, as the border patrol agent checked the back of my rental car -- perhaps to see if the trunk was weighted down with illegal drugs, smuggled people, or unauthorized mescal -- and then proceeded to try to get me to say I have a green card (maybe I've had a plaid card, but not a green one), and then waved me on after giving me his name, which I had requested, ultimately for no benefit...
Be neither limp nor stiff.
Posted on July 15, 2009Because battle in court as well as everywhere else calls for being calm and powerful in the eye of the storm, I continue practicing t'ai chi daily, and joining many highly-skilled t'ai chi practitioners each Sunday morning at Carderock Park along C&O Canal in Maryland...
What is with these "I'll sue you" letters?
Posted on July 15, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) When a client comes to me with a lawyer's letter threatening a lawsuit unless my client makes amends for allegedly libelous words about the lawyer's client, I might remind the lawyer about the First Amendment's limitations on such lawsuits, as well as a lawsuit's re-airing of the allegedly libelous communications that the plaintiff claimed s/he did not want aired in the first place...
Limit junk science testimony.
Posted on July 14, 2009Too many trial judges allow pseudo-expert cops to testify as expert witnesses on such topics as illegal drug sales and gang activity. Here is a Second Circuit case that at least puts brakes on testimony that masquerades as coming from the expert realm, but instead tries to introduce factual allegations that would not come in without expert testimony and that cannot come into evidence with expert testimony, either...
Replacing our legal assistant, who is going to law school.
Posted on July 13, 2009My full-time legal assistant, David, will start law school this August. We have an immediate opening for his replacement. The successful full-time legal assistant candidate will be trained by me, David, and our part-time legal assistant who will begin her college senior year this fall semester...
"In this war of all against all, who can withstand the might of the federal government?"
Posted on July 09, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) The Drug Enforcement Administration revoked Novelty, Inc's, registration to distribute list I chemical products. Novelty, Inc., v. DEA, et al., _ F.3d _ (D.C. Cir. June 22, 2009). Putting aside the questionable company name if it wants to be taken seriously by straight-faced government regulators, such a revocation clearly was devastating to Novelty, Inc...
What if a person cannot find a restroom?
Posted on July 08, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) In court recently, I watched a public urination bench trial after my case finished. The county code carries up to six months imprisonment for such a violation. The cop got straight to the point by testifying that he was patrolling a parking garage in one of the higher-end commercial districts in the county, and saw the defendant get out of his car, pull out his ____ (using a two-syllable word beginning with a "p" more commonly heard in a raucous bar), and urinate (but he used the three-letter word for it)...
Miranda need not kick in to exclude silence in the face of police questioning.
Posted on July 07, 2009At a recent drunk driving bench trial -- in Maryland, where defendants facing over ninety days of possible incarceration for one count may opt for a bench trial followed by a de novo jury trial on appeal, or a jury trial in the first instance -- the police officer testified that my client was silent when the officer asked my client on the roadside about what he had imbibed earlier that evening...
A formal arrest is not required to exclude silence in the face of police questioning.
Posted on July 07, 2009At a recent drunk driving bench trial -- in Maryland, where defendants facing over ninety days of possible incarceration for one count may opt for a bench trial followed by a de novo jury trial on appeal, or a jury trial in the first instance -- the police officer testified that my client was silent when the officer asked my client on the roadside about what he had imbibed earlier that evening...
Persuading and fighting more successfully by humanizing opponents.
Posted on July 05, 2009Lately, I have gotten many new weekly ideas for persuasion and trial combat, through weekend t'ai chi push hands gatherings, daily solo practice, and ongoing viewing of videos and reading of books by today's and yesterday's t'ai chi masters. Here are some recent ideas: - Learned at Sunday t'ai chi push hands practice today: Do not be too late in yielding nor attacking...
Give me a serious discussion on civil liberties over July 4 pomp and circumstance any day.
Posted on July 03, 2009NOTE: Following is a reprint of what I wrote for July 4 in 2007 and reprinted in 2008: Whenever I look around on July 4, the scene is long on fireworks, beer, and merrymaking, and too short on discussion of what Independence Day is all about. The Declaration of Independence was hardly signed by a bunch of pacifists...
As we approach our first anniversary.
Posted on July 01, 2009Last July, my decade-long former law partner Jay Marks and I opened our separate law firms. The good karma with which we made this transition -- including sending out a joint news release -- has continued to this day, and dates back to our first meeting at a six-year-old birthday party in Connecticut in 1969...
Virginia Super Lawyers adds me to its list.
Posted on July 01, 2009Jonathan L. Katzonly 5% selected each yearvisit superlawyers.com For whatever it is worth, Super Lawyers has added me to its 2009 list of Virginia criminal defense lawyers, on top of my inclusion in 2008 and 2009 in Super Lawyers' criminal defense lawyer listing in Maryland and Washington, D...
Fourth Circuit denies en banc review in the Whorley obscenity case.
Posted on June 29, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) On March 9, 2009, I blogged about the Fourth Circuit's decision upholding a conviction and steep sentence on counts for obscenity and child pornography in the form of Japanese anime drawings and allegedly obscene e-mails...
More on strength through non-attachment and non-resistance.
Posted on June 28, 2009As Peter Ralston says, problems between people "are really a parallel to what occurs in martial interaction and in fighting." Therefore I keep practicing the martial art of t'ai chi daily, and t'ai chi fighting/pushing hands weekly. The t'ai chi practitioners whom I push hands with on the weekends -- right up to the highly skilled -- are all selfless and patient in helping me advance to higher levels of martial art ability, and I try doing the same with those who are newer to t'ai chi pushing/sensing hands than I...
Supreme Court tells judges to follow its rulings.
Posted on June 26, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). For testimonial evidence, Crawford scrapped the rule of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), that the Sixth Amendment right to confront one's accusers does not preclude unavailable witnesses' hearsay so long as said hearsay bears adequate indicia of reliability...
Of sealing, expunging, and shielding.
Posted on June 25, 2009In addition to my own clients, frequently I receive calls from people asking for help to expunge their criminal records when I had never been in court with them in the first place. For my pre-existing clients, I gladly do the work where they are eligible for expungement...
Internet connection problems lead to fewer Underdog postings.
Posted on June 25, 2009Since last Sunday, my home Internet connection has been dead. A technician hopefully will fix the problem tomorrow. As a result, there was no Underdog entry last night.
Non-attachment: An essential practice.
Posted on June 22, 2009- One day I was speaking with a law school professor, and asked if he knew a particular person from his home town. Know him? The professor exclaimed: "What a pr*ck." - With difficult judges, trial master Steve Rench applies the basic and effective lesson of the magic mirror...
New drug conspiracy opinion from Fourth Circuit.
Posted on June 17, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) On June 17, 2009, the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion in a drug conspiracy case, addressing the following particularly important issues, in U.S. v. Marc Jeffers. __ F.3d _ (4th Cir., June 17, 2009): - The Fourth Circuit rejected Jeffers's request for plain error review on the absence of a jury instruction about the possibility of multiple unrelated conspiracies...
Human conflict paralleling martial arts.
Posted on June 15, 2009In Cheng Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power Peter Ralston makes total sense in declaring that problems between people "are really a parallel to what occurs in martial interaction and in fighting." If this is so, how can a trial lawyer afford not to learn, study, practice and apply martial arts in court? Choose the martial art you want, but forego martial arts in court at your own peril...
An overburdened federal trial courthouse, in the nation's capital.
Posted on June 11, 2009Last night I stopped by the annual D.C. Bar-sponsored meet-the-judges reception at the District of Columbia Superior Courthouse. I am of two minds about attending such gatherings, which I rarely attend. On the one hand, the situation is somewhat artificial because the lawyers' conduct rules prevent me from talking about my most burning concerns and questions without my opposing lawyers' presence...
T'ai chi may lead to fewer blogposts, but they will continue.
Posted on June 10, 2009Before this month, rarely a business day passed without an Underdog posting. This month has seen some business days without postings. When I am not working or spending time with my family, I am spending increased time practicing t'ai chi ch'uan. At first, when I started practicing t'ai chi in 1994, I thought t'ai chi development needed at least one daily full round of the 37-posture yang style short form, as developed by Cheng Man Ch'ing...
David Carradine: "If you cannot be a poet, be the poem."
Posted on June 08, 2009For many years, David Carradine and his Kwai Chang Caine character were virtually one and the same for me. I did not think about whether Carradine was the best actor for the role, nor how realistic or not Kung Fu presented effective martial arts. His character presented an alternative to the brute force, hard style of fighting that predominated in the West at that time, and an alternative to the daily hustle-bustle of life...
Fight repeat offender sentencing tooth and nail.
Posted on June 04, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Although a relative warned me, when I considered law school, that many lawyers are dissatisfied by the tediousness of practicing law, an essential part of practicing criminal defense -- if not all litigation battle -- is to meticulously obtain, review, analyze, synthesize, and apply the applicable evidence and law...
Don't let tyrants sleep: The blood still soaks Tiananmen Square.
Posted on June 03, 2009On June 3-4, the Chinese army turned its guns on its own people, who were peaceful demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Such atrocities are not limited to China. Look no farther than Kent State nineteen years earlier, even if on a smaller scale and not ordered from the highest echelons of power...
The sometimes long and prickly road of probation.
Posted on June 02, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) NOTE: Underdog's June 2 blog entry is being posted late. Stay tuned for a resumption of regular daily postings. Criminal defendants sometimes focus on their time out of jail versus in jail, and not enough time on the often onerous and even draconian deprivations of liberty involved during supervised probation and parole...
More on Judge Sotomayor
Posted on June 01, 2009Thanks to listserv members for bringing my attention to the following material on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, looking at her performance as a judge and as a lawyer: - "A View of Judge Sonia Sotomayor from Cyberspace," by Arthur Bright. - "Sotomayor Sides With the Cops - And persuades a Republican judge to go along with her," by Emily Bazelon...
Persuading by being open.
Posted on May 31, 2009Today, I was minding my own business waiting for a traffic light to turn green when there was a light tap on my driver's side window. There was a time when I would have tensed up in defensiveness with my armor under the same circumstances, before knowing who was there, lest it be someone with a knife or otherwise...
Is Obama any better than Clinton with Supreme Court appointments?
Posted on May 29, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) When Bill Clinton was elected president, I was happy to be seeing George Bush I leave the presidential palace, but did not have high hopes for Bill Clinton -- including consideration of his detour to attend an execution during the presidential campaign -- but had higher ones than I had for Bush I...
Gaining advantage over opponents without angering them.
Posted on May 28, 2009On May 25, I wrote about Jan Diepersloot's. In Warriors of Stillness, Diepersloot writes: "Both in the conduct of his life and in the methods of his teachings, Master Cai [Song Fang] epitomizes how knowing one's own center and that of those we come in contact with in push-hands and energy field play can be used to shore people up rather than upsetting them, stabilizing rather than destabilizing them...
4th Circuit: Trial courts may not presume reasonableness of Guidelines sentences.
Posted on May 27, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit confirmed that trial courts may not presume reasonableness of Guidelines sentences: While an appellate court reviewing a sentence may presume that the sentence within a properly calculated Guidelines range is reasonable, see United States v...
Lessons from Wolfe Lowenthal.
Posted on May 26, 2009As I said yesterday, t'ai chi ch'uan is essential for my life and law practice. Here are some powerful passages from Wolfe Lowenthal's biography of t'ai chi master Cheng Man Ch'ing, entitled Gateway to the Miraculous: Further Explorations in the Tao of Cheng Man Ch'ing: "Whatever abuse or oppression we may experience, its effect on our balance is still in our hands...
New legal assistant hired.
Posted on May 26, 2009To those asking if we are still seeking a new legal assistant, the position has been filled. Thanks to all those who applied. In this day of resumes sent by the simple click of a button, we may not get a chance to reply individually to each candidate who applied...
More t'ai chi lessons.
Posted on May 25, 2009Long ago, I learned that t'ai chi ch'uan is essential for my life and law practice. Consequently, I decided to incorporate the t'ai chi symbol in my above-displayed law firm logo, after having toyed with a tidalwave or my initials in bamboo shape. The tidalwave symbolizes t'ai chi's lesson to be as hard to push against as water or air, but as powerful as a tidalwave or hurricane...
When the power of arrest corrupts cops.
Posted on May 22, 2009If a cop is going to arrest a reporter and news camera operator for covering something as non-political and non-controversial as an overturned truck from the opposite side of the highway, imagine what the same cop will do under the cover of the night passing by people doing "oink, oink" pig sounds...
Unauthorized third-party phone recordings do not come into trial evidence.
Posted on May 21, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Daniel Crabtree was found in violation of federal probation in part based on audiotapes that his girlfriend surreptitiously recorded of Crabtree's phone conversations with others. Two days ago, the Fourth Circuit reversed Crabtree's probation violation ruling, writing in part that: "In our view, the issue is resolved by the language of [18 U...
Getting convicted for assault without even raising a hand or fist.
Posted on May 20, 2009In the courts where I practice criminal defense, even giving an unwanted hug is an assault. That is additional testimony to the wisdom of bowing to others to greet them, apart from the reduced risk of catching swine flu (or mucus, if the person recently sneezed into the right hand), but I digress...
Look before you sue.
Posted on May 19, 2009Although most of my time is spent on criminal defense, my strong civil libertarian bent has led me to do in-depth civil litigation over the years, as well, particularly defending free expression rights of political activists, adult entertainment industry members, and libel defendants...
The art of happiness at work and in court.
Posted on May 18, 2009Several years ago, the Dalai Lama provided material for The Art of Happiness at Work, which sequels The Art of Happiness. How many people truly enjoy their work? How many are miserable in their work? One of the Dalai Lama's themes in The Art of Happiness at Work is to see the bigger, optimistic picture of the work we do, including work as basic as folding shipping boxes...
The world around us.
Posted on May 17, 2009Until around fourteen years ago in particular, I too often saw life in shades of gritty, sometimes depressing, sometimes heavily empty, and sometimes constraining gray. When driving through beautiful parts of Maryland's Eastern shore to or from court, I would obsess about how much more unjust criminal defendants tended to be treated in those courts than in the already unjust Maryland courts closer to Baltimore and Washington, D...
Sun Tzu as an unsympathetic character.
Posted on May 17, 2009Last February, I wrote of the many beneficial non-violent lessons from the Art of War by Sun Tzu. Recently, I read the following story about Sun Tzu in Samuel Griffith's Art of War translation from Ssu-Ma Ch'ien's Shih Chi/Historical Records' biographical account of Sun Tzu: As Griffith translates the account, Ho-lu, the king of Wu, hired Sun Tzu to conduct an experiment in the movement of troops, using a few hundred women, some or all of whom were the king's concubines...
Sentencing havoc from a speck of cocaine.
Posted on May 15, 2009DEA image in the public domain. Federal courts repeatedly impose harsh prison sentences, including with drug sentencing schemes that should not exist in a just world. Although the federal sentencing guidelines by now are advisory only, many federal judges still rely heavily on them, as did the sentencing judge of Timothy Jenkins, who gave and applied to Mr...
Maryland bars HGN evidence without expert testimony.
Posted on May 14, 2009Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. If you are going to drive after drinking alcohol, why agree to perform the junk science "tests" requested by a cop suspecting you of drunk driving? Ironically, today Maryland's highest court mandated expert testimony to present evidence on the junk science horizontal gaze nystagmus...
Guilty pleas are ripe for attack when the record does not show the defendant was informed of the nature and elements of the charged offense.
Posted on May 13, 2009Guilty pleas are ripe for attack when the record does not show the defendant was informed of the nature and elements of the charged offense. Miller v. Maryland, __ Md. App. _ (May 4, 2009).
D.C. Circuit rules on FOIA exemptions 1 and 3
Posted on May 12, 2009On May 8, 2009, the D.C. Circuit issued a detailed ruling on exemptions 1 and 3 of the Freedom of Information Act. Larson, et al. v. Dept. of State, et al. Larson describes the two FOIA exemptions as follows: "Exemption 1 protects matters 'specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and ...
Good luck keeping your jurors off the Internet about your case.
Posted on May 12, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) In her wonderfully compassionate way, the amazing SunWolf emphasizes that jurors generally are going to bring their usual behaviors from their daily lives into the deliberation room regardless of the judges' warnings to tell them to change behaviors that jurors are already habituated to -- or see as personally sacrosanct as deciding whether to put the right shoe on before the left one...
Cops: Stop shredding the Constitution with hunches.
Posted on May 11, 2009Cops must stop shredding the Constitution with hunches, particularly because they are not Quasimodo. Praised be Maryland's highest court for recognizing that the cops had no more than a hunch of criminal activity afoot when witnessing a car drive around a parking lot, and then signaling left and followed by signaling and turning right...
Fighting and persuading from the center.
Posted on May 10, 2009Once again, yesterday, I learned great lessons at the Capitol Hill t'ai chi-sensing hands/push hands practice, including the following for sensing hands: - Move hands little and with little force. - Connect elbows with pusher. - Connect palm to pusher's'wrist...
Honoring Mothers' Day by not eating them nor their children.
Posted on May 10, 2009Colman McCarthy put it well in 2003 when he said he will not eat anything that had a mother. Today, words praising mothers pour in from individuals and greeting card companies. How many of the same people speaking those words are going to eat mothers and their children today? Let us remember that each land and sea animal and each fish was born to a mother...
Attack claims of reliable and unbroken drug chain of custody.
Posted on May 09, 2009The criminal justice system is so overgrown that crime evidence is bound too often to get mixed up, misplaced, and contaminated. For drug prosecutions, the suspected drugs may pass through several hands before being tested by a chemist. Often, the seizing police officers have the alleged controlled dangerous substances field-tested and sealed...
When cops break the law in seeking convictions.
Posted on May 08, 2009Where do so many judges and jurors get the false notion that cops always tell the truth? Cops are but humans, so they are as prone to prevaricate as any non-cop. Praised be my fellow criminal defense brother Paul Mack -- from neighboring Howard County -- for obtaining and playing the smoking video showing that a cop in a DWI arrest never saw his client in the car's driver's seat, despite the cop's repeated insistence to the contrary...
T'ai chi books for the plane.
Posted on May 08, 2009To learn t'ai chi, nothing beats practicing live with excellent teachers, practicing daily and correctly, practicing with others, and relaxing to the point where it is as hard to be pushed as pushing water or a ghost. For those times and places when practicing the t'ai chi form is not possible -- for instance on an airplane, but even there one can do the raising hands movement -- here are some books I just learned about from a fellow participant in the Saturday morning t'ai chi form/sensing hands sessions on Capitol Hill: - T...
Inadmissible hearsay remains inadmissible even if to explain a cop's reasons for being on the scene.
Posted on May 07, 2009Inadmissible hearsay remains inadmissible even if to explain a cop's reasons for being on the scene. At best for the prosecution, let the parties stipulate for the cop to testify simply that s/he was on patrol. Praised be Maryland's highest court for unanimously getting this issue right...
Medical cannabis: Not just for tie-dye wearers anymore.
Posted on May 07, 2009Image from public domain. Marijuana is wonderful medicine. Pharmaceutical and liquor/beer/wine companies do not want marijuana interfering with their turf, because people can economically grow their own high quality marijuana, thereby only enriching the soil and sellers of gardening products...
The indecency of penalizing George Carlin's seven dirty words.
Posted on May 06, 2009Welcome to Singapore -- I mean the United States Supreme Court -- which this week allowed the Federal Communications Commission to fine television and radio stations for fleeting expletives, where such allegedly indecent words as those from George Carlin's list of seven can get a broadcaster severely fined even if the broadcaster has no reason to know the speaker is going to utter those words on a live program...
Are you relaxed? Are you open?
Posted on May 05, 2009A few months ago, a t'ai chi teacher asked if I knew local Judge M__________. I did not have much dealings with the judge. The teacher proceeded to tell me that the judge used to practice t'ai chi, but then switched to Aikido, because of the judge's ego, in the teacher's view...
Supreme Court to consider Constitutional limits on life sentences for juveniles.
Posted on May 05, 2009On May 4, 2009, the United States Supreme Court decided to address the Constitutional limits on imposing life sentences on juveniles. So long as the court addresses the Eight Amendment issues in the twin cases -- which is likely -- the court's resulting opinions likely will have important implications for adult criminal sentencings, as well...
When an unjust law boomerangs on the supporting lawmaker.
Posted on May 04, 2009In 1992, Harold Brazil was a member of the District of Columbia city council. I understand he supported the 1992 bill to reduce a whole slew of misdemeanors to a maximum sentence of 180 days or less, to avert a jury trial. Last Friday, Mr. Brazil was convicted of assault at a Georgetown tattoo parlor, where apparently his only alleged crime was throwing an air punch...
Essence of Jun Yasuda
Posted on May 03, 2009Jun Yasuda. Last week, I posted on my family's visit to my teacher and friend Jun Yasuda's peace pagoda and temple, east of the Hudson River. Subsequently, I found the following five-part video series from the pagoda's fourteenth anniversary celebration, which event I unfortunately missed...
"Do not surrender to pragmatism or materialism." - Tony Serra
Posted on May 03, 2009SunWolf perpetually inspires me. (Courtesy SunWolf.) Commercial success and personal excellence sometimes overlap, but often not. For instance, many movies enjoy huge commercial success for little reason other than that all the millions of dollars of well-placed advertising and public relations hype -- and news organizations that hyped the hype -- drew filmgoers to the box office...
Cops: Even conservative courts are limiting your searching authority.
Posted on May 01, 2009Neither the Fourth Circuit nor the Virginia appellate courts are known as liberal hotbeds. That makes this week all the more sweet with the following two Fourth Amendment appellate victories from those courts: Neely v. U.S., __ F.3d _ (4th Cir., April 29, 2009), confirms that defendant Neely only consented for the cops to search his vehicle's trunk, but gave no consent to search any other part of his car...
Justice Department moves on eliminating 100:1 cocaine powder:crack disparity.
Posted on May 01, 2009The Justice Department is moving further towards eliminating the 100:1 cocaine powder: crack disparity. On April 29, the Justice Department's criminal division chief, Lanny A. Breuer, presented this written statement to the Senate on the matter. Breuer's statement talks of the creation of a Justice Department-created working group to examine federal sentencing and corrections policy...
Upset by itself does not get around Crawford.
Posted on April 30, 2009Praised be Maryland's highest court for refusing to let a state of upset, by itself, get around a Crawford objection to the cops' testifying about the words of an upset complaining witness. The case is Maryland v. Lucas, 407 Md. 307, 965 A.2d 75 (2009).
To twitter or not when Daniel Schorr, SunWolf and Jack Herer are there?
Posted on April 29, 2009Twitter is McSpeak. Long before the Internet came about, yogi Baba Hari Dass went silent and communicated by a chalkboard hung around his neck. Such communication helped Baba-ji free himself from excessive verbal and written noise so he could focus on living the yoga life...
Fourth Circuit: Individualized sentencing assessment must be put on the record.
Posted on April 28, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) A federal trial judge imposed a below-guidelines sentence for a firearms case. However, on April 27, 2009, the Fourth Circuit remanded for a resentencing, based on the trial court's failure to "place on the record an 'individualized assessment' based on the particular facts of the case before it...
Peer-to-peer file sharing as distribution.
Posted on April 28, 2009Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). On April 27, 2009, the Fourth Circuit joined other circuits that consider peer-to-peer file sharing to qualify as distribution under federal Sentencing Guideline § 2G2.2's sentencing provisions for distribution of child pornography: "While this circuit has not addressed whether use of a peer-to-peer file-sharing program qualifies as distribution, other circuits have found that it does...
Protect your rights against document subpoenas by clamming up always.
Posted on April 27, 2009Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). This past Saturday, we took our boy to the Thomas train fiesta at the Baltimore Railroad museum. For his peers, this is akin my excitement at the prospect of seeing the Police perform live once again...
Ahmad Jamal - Poinciana and the artistry in simplicity.
Posted on April 26, 2009As I previously wrote about a lesson from Count Basie, excess verbiage should be pared down, so as to becomes a stepping stone to an in-the-moment argument that is tighter, more confident, and more persuasive than just getting up and winging the argument...
Life is a river.
Posted on April 26, 2009Copyright Jon Katz. Copyright Younghee Katz Up the pagoda staps with my boy (Copyright Younghee Katz) Drumming up peace in the temple, with my boy (Copyright Younghee Katz). The rustic setting is offset by a soothing woodfired traditional Japanese bath up the road and behind the temple...
A case supreme.
Posted on April 24, 2009Supreme Court spiral staircase. Law school presented me with a challenge of maintaining harmony in the face of such Supreme Court criminal law abominations as Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), which authorized police to search an arrested person and the area around his or her "lunge and grasp" even once s/he is handcuffed; Bowers v...
Bill Moffitt departs the planet.
Posted on April 24, 2009Not having found any online news on the following, I briefly post the sad news that criminal defense lawyer Bill Moffitt passed away today, after being hospitalized a few days ago. I first heard of Bill when a fellow law student told me that he was defending Earl Clanton against the death penalty when I was obsessively getting the word out against the death penalty in collaboration with my law school?s Amnesty International chapter...
Overhaul the grand jury system.
Posted on April 23, 2009Among my biggest complaints about the grand jury system -- at least the way it is run on the federal level, which is similar to the way it is run in the state-level jurisdictions where I practice -- is that the whole show is run by prosecutors without the presence of a judge, defense lawyers, and lawyers for those giving testimony...
More temperamental than a pencil.
Posted on April 23, 2009When I was born, fax machines did not exist, let alone personal computers, the Internet, cellphones, BlackBerries and Iphones, and CD players. A simple pencil, pen, or typewriter -- sometimes even a manual one -- got the written job done fine. Today, people overdepend on electricity, batteries, phone lines, and the Internet to communicate, to the point that a crisis can arise if any of them break down...
Sending Cecil Taylor good karma.
Posted on April 22, 2009Cecil Taylor is an amazing musician who refuses to cut commercial corners on his road of ongoing excellence. Cecil and I are close mutual friends of Trudy Morse, whom I write about here. I had the good fortune to experience Cecil at the Library of Congress in 1999, and then to join with Trudy and numerous others at Cecil's hotel room to hear him talk captivatingly of music and other topics, which followed his backstage discussion of such topics as the artistry of bridges...
Fearlessness in midair.
Posted on April 21, 2009Courtesy David Wagner. Our legal assistant David went skydiving over the weekend. Watch his exuberance in these pictures here, here, here, and here. He's in the purple suit. David's fearlessness is clear, even in his smiling right at the camera. T'ai chi master Cheng Man Ching spoke of overcoming our fears in terms of imagining that we are practicing t'ai chi (or are engaged in trial battle, for that matter) while balanced atop a narrow pointed cliff...
Link to the CIA torture memos.
Posted on April 21, 2009Thanks to ACLU for uploading the recently released CIA torture memos. As to the people decrying the release of the memos, particularly since J. Edgar Hoover reigned at the F.B.I., and to this day, the United States government has continuously abused its power and acted as if the government serves at its own pleasure rather than for and with the blessings of the governed...
Underdog is three years old / Happy 420
Posted on April 20, 2009Today, Underdog is three years old. We launched on 4-20-06.with this tribute to 420. Reprinted below is our 4-20-08 anniversary blog entry: Since our 2006 launching, Underdog has blogged every weekday, except for holidays and a few vacation days (sometimes I blog a few articles in advance of vacation days, and pre-program the articles to upload each day I am away)...
When SunWolf speaks, gems emerge.
Posted on April 20, 2009Courtesy SunWolf: A criminal defense lawyer's criminal defense lawyer, showing lawyers the powerful path to humanizing our clients, through storytellilng, kindness to all, summoning our inner magic, and a reminder that "reality is no obstacle." Dr...
More on lessons of powerful peacefulness.
Posted on April 19, 2009Enso - Japanese symbol of Zen Buddhism. (Available for public distribution.) An essential path towards powerful advocacy as a lawyer is to follow the path of powerful calmness and fearlessness of death. Buddhism has many beneficial teachings on this path...
Watch out about opening doors.
Posted on April 17, 2009Often prosecutors are fond of proclaiming that defense counsel "opened the door." Which door is the prosecutor talking of, seeing that hundreds of thousands of doors exist within as little as a mile radius of many courthouses. Paying homage to Lucy van Pelt, prosecutors of defendant Anthony Loyd Mitchell told the jury, during opening statements, of the the witnesses that the prosecution might or would call against Mitchell, but then some of the listed significant witnesses did not testify...
Where would we be without Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Tamm?
Posted on April 16, 2009Before my college sophomore year began in 1982, I started working at a small Brooks Brothers-type men's clothing store in Harvard Square. One of the two owners delighted in watching a boxing match between African-Americans, exulting at "two n-gg-rs" (his phraseology) "beating the crap" out of each other...
Guest Blawger Ben Trachtenberg on hearsay and its exceptions.
Posted on April 16, 2009Welcome and thanks to guest blawger Ben Trachtenberg, who sent an email of such high quality about yesterday's blogpost on cops using "magic language" that I asked him for permission to post it here, or for him to update it to a guest blawg entry, which he did...
When cops use "magic language", watch out for exaggeration, omission, and prevarication.
Posted on April 15, 2009Why do cops repeatedly parrot back similar language in their incident reports, no matter the suspect? If there is a training manual with this standard language, I want it, whether through a freedom of information request or otherwise: Here is some standard language I see repeatedly: For drunk driving cases: ?The defendant had slurred speech, and bloodshot and watery eyes...
Barbaric hunt for undocumented people ensnares even United States citizens.
Posted on April 14, 2009Being American or lawfully-admitted to be in the United States does not involve an "American look" or a "documented look". One of the great things about the United States is that it has a great mix of people arrived or descended from around the world...
Beware Shepard's
Posted on April 13, 2009In the days before Al Gore discovered the Internet, my law school legal research and writing instructor introduced us to the tomes -- called Shepard's Citations -- through which we painstakingly checked whether court cases being cited by us had been overturned, reversed, or affirmed, or had certiorari granted or denied...
Finding beauty in the suburban outdoors and beyond.
Posted on April 12, 2009Somewhere between the excitement and grit of the city and the natural beauty of the wilderness lie the suburbs and exurbs. Two months after moving two years ago to our current home fifteen miles from downtown Washington, D.C. I was minding my own business removing the groceries from my car after dinnertime on a Sunday evening not long before Halloween, and my otherwise very likeable and interesting neighbor asked me if I had gotten my pumpkins yet...
When may a prosecutor reopen the case in chief?
Posted on April 10, 2009In the Fourth Circuit, "[t]he reopening of a criminal case after the close of evidence is within the discretion of the trial judge. See United States v. Walker, 772 F.2d 1172, 1177 (5th Cir. 1985); United States v. Molinares, 700 F.2d 647, 652 (11th Cir...
President Obama: It's time to clean house at the VA.
Posted on April 10, 2009Imagine entering the military, risking your life in the line of duty, being treated at a Veterans Administration Hospital, complaining voluntarily about the VA hospital treatment to a reporter after speaking up at a town hall gathering there, and then having VA security stop the interview and strongarm the tape from the reporter...
Bad civics lesson: U. Maryland's president caves to state senator's efforts against on-campus erotic film screening.
Posted on April 09, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) For many years, I have proudly defended the robust First Amendment rights of everyone, including political activists of all stripes, libel defendants, and the adult entertainment industry. Politicians' efforts to clamp down on adult entertainment are hardly confined to the Bible Belt...
Of Passover and social justice.
Posted on April 09, 2009Passover commenced last night. Human rights and social justice are the most important message to me with Passover. A close relative yesterday emailed a Passover greeting to family members. I replied as follows: Because I will not be with any of you to do so live at the seder table, here?s the rabble I would have roused at the seder: Passover, of course, is a bittersweet holiday, not only because it juxtaposes slavery with release from slavery, but also because it continues to portray a god with a hairtrigger finger, although I do not believe in the torah as non-fiction...
Rowe to the rescue.
Posted on April 08, 2009Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Where I usually practice law in Maryland, a drunk driving defendant with a good driving record and nothing unusual in his or her case is a good candidate for a probation before judgment after any guilty verdict...
The jury watches everything the client and the lawyer do.
Posted on April 07, 2009Courthouses and courthouse procedures expose parties and their lawyers to being seen and heard by the juries doing things they do not intend to be seen and heard doing, including conversation in restrooms, criminal defendants in chains before being brought to the courtroom, and parties and their lawyers looking disengaged from the jurors...
Persuasion should not be akin to filling uncomfortable phone silences.
Posted on April 06, 2009The Chinese script for the character "mu," which means nothing. Recently, a prosecutor -- not too many years out of law school, for whatever that is worth -- kept talking and talking and repeating and repeating to the judge during a bench trial...
Replacing our legal assistant, who is going to law school.
Posted on April 05, 2009How I wish I had done trial litigation work with a law firm, public defender office or ACLU-type group before beginning law school. That would have helped me reach harmony more quickly with those three years of legal boot camp. My full-time legal assistant, David, will start law school this August with such an advantage...
One is never too young to stand up for one's convictions.
Posted on April 05, 2009This evening, I stopped by the local Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist temple (I maintain the temple's webpage here) during its annual flower festival, where I met up with the local nun and my friend and teacher Takako Ichikawa, my longtime friend and mentor Jun Yasuda, and Brother Kato and Brother Toby from the Leverett, Massachusetts Nipponzan Myohoji temple...
Expose police abuse far and wide.
Posted on April 03, 2009When police operate in the shadows, the risk increases that they will abuse suspects' rights. After all, power corrupts, including when a cop has a handgun, taser, blackjack, billyclub, handcuffs, a badge, and the power of arrest, and the suspect has none of those...
Unlawfully entering the United States does not enable a conviction for visiting a miltary base.
Posted on April 02, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Why do good deeds so often go punished? Eliazer Madrigal-Valdez probably thought he was doing a soldier a favor by dropping him off at his military base in Fort Lee, Virginia. Instead, when Mr. Madrigal was unable to produce a government-issued identification at the military base's checkpoint, he was detained, interrogated, deemed to have been a Mexican citizen, found not to have a record of being lawfully in the United States, arrested, and prosecuted...
Listen to your client, or else.
Posted on April 01, 2009After practicing criminal defense for many years, a lawyer can get jaded by some of the more cockamamie-sounding urgings from clients, including the absence of fingerprints when ten witnesses and five videocameras caught the double-killing, and the shooting defendant was then tackled and held until the arrival of the police...
Jim Webb distinguishing self from Jack Webb?
Posted on March 31, 2009Before now, nothing impressed me about Senator Jim Webb other than that he was less worse than George Allen of macaca-gate infamy. On March 26, 2009, Webb introduced the National Criminal Justice Act of 2009. It is good that more people than criminal defense lawyers and ACLU types are publicly proclaiming how much of a failure is the nation's criminal justice system...
Some cases just need to be tried.
Posted on March 30, 2009In what way is our payment of taxes for the salaries of uncaring and unjust prosecutors any different from Kevin Bacon's imploring "Please sir, may I have another [whack on the butt]" in Animal House? Too often, prosecutors refuse to hear from my witnesses to help them assess whether to prosecute a case, or whether to move closer to narrowing the settlement negotiations gap...
Keeping fascination going, even in an otherwise stuffy courtroom.
Posted on March 29, 2009Steve Martin's flawless famous napkin trick. My law practice keeps me away from the outdoors too often, except when I drive to and from courthouses, jails, and incident scenes. On this glorious day, my three-year-old boy and I visited Potomac Overlook Park for the first time...
If tongue stud remains, the 20-minute rule is violated.
Posted on March 27, 2009Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. In all jurisdictions where I practice law, guidelines call for checking for an empty mouth for at least twenty minutes before administering breath tests for blood alcohol levels, because doing otherwise risks getting an inaccurate result from an already inaccurate procedure...
Atrocities plague the drug war, too.
Posted on March 26, 2009War breeds atrocities. We saw it with Abu Ghraib, My Lai, mini-My Lais (see here, too), and the list continues pathetically and endlessly. Consequently, great care must be taken by the government in deciding when and how to wage armed war and war in the criminal justice system, and in minimizing the risks and occurrences of atrocities...
Being human, prosecutors can act like Lucy van Pelt.
Posted on March 25, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) As liars go, Lucy van Pelt was a pro. How else did she repeatedly convince Charlie Brown to try to kick a football that she always pulled away a split second before his foot touched the ball? Being human, prosecutors, judges, criminal defense lawyers, and everyone else have the capacity to go back on their word, whether or not they do so intentionally, and whether or not they never intended to fulfill their part of the bargain in the first place...
Down by law for upskirting and downblousing.
Posted on March 24, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) On the one hand, I think peeping camera laws have gone too far to to the point of chilling legitimate photography and other legitimate activities that have no lascivious intent and no intention of capturing intimate images...
Using scene-setting to persuade the decisionmakers, and to get the client to open up to the lawyer.
Posted on March 23, 2009Often I feel an ill-placed center of gravity sought or accepted by too many judges. Of course judges bear the brunt of overloaded dockets and postponed cases by at best feeling like a grocery store cashier with never-ending lines of customers mixed in with inconsiderate and unaware people cutting in the line to ask where to find the store-brand wax beans...
SuperLawyers renews me on its Washington, D.C., list.
Posted on March 20, 2009Jonathan L. Katzonly 5% selected each yearvisit superlawyers.com For whatever it is worth, Super Lawyers has renewed me in its 2009 list of Washington, D.C., criminal defense lawyers, on top of my renewed inclusion earlier this year in its Maryland criminal defense lawyer listing...
Our email is down until further notice.
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White House does welcome FOIA about-face / Judge gives web-only newsletter media status under FOIA.
Posted on March 20, 2009Curiously, the federal Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") was not spawned by Watergate, but instead was passed in 1966, eight years before Nixon left the White House for good. Then again, I loved to hate Richard Nixon for surreptitiously taping conversations, but then learned that Lyndon Johnson showed Nixon how to use the already tape-rigged White House recording system...
Our email problem is solved.
Posted on March 20, 2009Earlier today, I posted about our email bottleneck. The problem has been solved. Thanks to our sitehost for fixing it.
To choose a lawyer.
Posted on March 19, 2009Many criminal defendants naturally wish to know an attorney's fee -- or at least a ballpark or fee range -- over the phone or email before taking up to several hours to drive roundtrip to meet with the lawyer. Criminal cases often are scheduled for quickly-approaching court dates, and too many criminal defendants suffer by waiting until the last moment to obtain a lawyer...
The eternal mantra is "I want an attorney. I want an attorney..."
Posted on March 18, 2009Police are well trained to break down people's assertion of their Constitutional rights, including: - "If you are innocent, why do you need an attorney, and at such unnecessary expense?" - "If you have nothing to hide, why not pop open your trunk for me to have a look, so you can be on your way?" - "If you refuse to let us search your house, we will get a warrant and tear the house apart worse than if you just let us in...
Comments welcomed, and no longer moderated at the front end.
Posted on March 17, 2009What is worse -- moderating blog comments before they see the light of day, or reviewing them daily to remove those promoting irrelevant miracle Viagra substitutes or linking to vile racist videos? For Underdog's first year using blog software, I did not moderate comments...
The canard of "I will never forget that face."
Posted on March 16, 2009Imagine the dissonance felt by the victim of a serious crime not to be able to identify the perpetrator. If the perpetrator is not found and convicted, the victim may feel that the victim has been let down, the police have been let down, the victim's family has been let down, and the public has been let down, leaving the the perpetrator free to perpetrate again...
Practicing peace in the face of war.
Posted on March 15, 2009On March 11, 2009, I wrote about strength through fearlessness of death. Of similar importance to success in life and trial practice is practicing peace even when surrounded by war. In that regard, recently I picked up Pema Chodron's Practicing Peace in Times of War...
Of Crawford, drugs, guns, and certificates of no record.
Posted on March 13, 2009On March 12, 2009, the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals reversed a drug felony conviction, after reaffirming that drug chemist reports are testimonial hearsay under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). Millard v; U.S., _ A.2d __ (D.C., March 12, 2009)...
In Maryland, judges may not order sex offender registration if law does not mandate registration.
Posted on March 12, 2009Maryland's sex offender registration laws do not require sex offender registration for people who expose themselves in public, even to children. The situation is different in neighboring Virginia and the District of Columbia. Praised be Maryland's highest court for invalidating a judge's sentencing condition to register as a sex offender for a defendant who entered a guilty plea to indecent exposure...
Strength through fearlessness of death.
Posted on March 11, 2009Last June I blogged about maintaining calm in the eye of the storm. In my view, the deepest calm will come not from becoming a hermit but by learning to be calm in the most otherwise stressful situations, and by continuing to test one's calm in such circumstances...
The dissent gets it right in Supreme Court's latest speedy trial decision.
Posted on March 10, 2009The United States Supreme Court ordinarily rejects criminal cases for review absent a material split of opinions in the state appellate courts, federal appellate courts, or both, unless the Court finds a compelling Constitutional question to justify review nonetheless...
Preserve the right to be let alone.
Posted on March 09, 2009Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), was one of my favorite Supreme Court cases from my law school case books. The majority opinion, penned by Justice Thurgood Marshall, reversed an obscenity conviction where the conviction was based on the possession of allegedly obscene materials in the defendant's home...
Michael Jordan as t'ai chi practitioner.
Posted on March 08, 2009Hesitant to promote Nike -- which at least in the past has had some overseas contractors who imposed substandard working conditions at best -- I like Mike in this Nike commercial (posted at Conflict Zen) where he underlines how success is impossible without risking loss...
Perhaps Cook County's sheriff did not read Underdog's blog entry yesterday.
Posted on March 06, 2009Bloggers and listserv hosts can escape liability for libelous third-party comments.
Posted on March 05, 2009People's lawyers invited to Pennsylvania March 20-22 Trial Lawyers College program
Posted on March 04, 2009Marylanders: Senate vote on death penalty repeal coming as early as first thing March 4.
Posted on March 03, 2009Marylanders: Urge your legislators to support abolition of the death penalty.
Posted on February 27, 2009You are what you wipe with?
Posted on February 25, 2009This blog mainly deals with the law and social justice. Of course, if the environment gets as bad as 1973's science fiction-fact Soylent Green, the world and social justice will be in even deeper doo-doo than it already is. Speaking of doo-doo, it is curious how poverty can encourage environmental preservation when it comes to toilet paper and other luxury items...
If Zippy the Pinhead got permission to visit Cuba, so should everyone else.
Posted on February 24, 2009Bill Griffith's comic strip hero and alter-ego "Zippy the Pinhead" is so saturated with commercialism and television that he turns the commercial, the televised, and the real into the surreal, to the point where he worships at the altar of laundromat dryers...
"I will never forget that face, or will I?"
Posted on February 23, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) People misidentify other people all the time. People startled by the trauma of a burglary or other felony in progress will tend to misidentify all the more. As Maryland's highest court recognized last week, depending on the person doing the identification, cross-racial identification can increase the risk of misidentification all the more...
Congrats to the video game community and the First Amendment.
Posted on February 22, 2009One thing I did not like about my years before eighteen-years-old was all the added restrictions on my liberty, including things as simple as going to a music club or dance club just because I had not yet reached the drinking age (which was eighteen in my native Connecticut at the time) even if I did not give a damn about drinking there...
Cops: Exceed a frisk at own risk.
Posted on February 20, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Praised be Maryland's highest court, which this week reversed a conviction where the police opened a gym bag (and found heroin there), without more than reasonable, articulable suspicion at the time. The Court confirmed: "When the container is subjected to a more intrusive search in lieu of a pat-down, the State can sustain its burden of proof that the search was reasonable either by having the officer explain why it was necessary to conduct that search or by demonstrating from the container itself that a pat-down would not have revealed the presence or absence of a weapon...
Cops: Exceed a frisk at your own risk.
Posted on February 20, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Praised be Maryland's highest court, which this week reversed a conviction where the police opened a gym bag (and found heroin there), without more than reasonable, articulable suspicion at the time. The Court confirmed: "When the container is subjected to a more intrusive search in lieu of a pat-down, the State can sustain its burden of proof that the search was reasonable either by having the officer explain why it was necessary to conduct that search or by demonstrating from the container itself that a pat-down would not have revealed the presence or absence of a weapon...
Batson advanced in the former cradle of the confederacy.
Posted on February 19, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Remnants of the confederacy are still heavily highlighted all over Virginia, which closes its courts and other government offices on Lee-Jackson day, has the miles-long [Robert E.] Lee Highway that stops just a half mile from Washington, D...
Prosecutors: No reward for late-produced drug chemist reports.
Posted on February 19, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Prosecutors like getting drug analysis reports into evidence at trial without the chemist's presence, so that chemists may test more drugs, more drugs, and even more drugs in an effort to nab more people in the unjust drug war...
How to stay healthy during trial battle?
Posted on February 17, 2009Regular Underdog readers know of my strong interest in improving physical, mental, and spiritual health to be a more powerful trial lawyer. That is why I practice t'ai chi daily, to improve physical health, reduce stress, and increase calm. Trial work involves battle and war, and no warrior should go to battle from the couch potato position...
Trial after trial after trial not automatically unconstitutional.
Posted on February 16, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) A colleague once suggested that the risks of being sufficiently paid for one's time for drawn-out federal drug conspiracy defense work are often too high unless the work is done by court appointment under the Criminal Justice Act...
Kangaroo tribunals and student discipline.
Posted on February 15, 2009In addition to criminal defense, I do student discipline defense. The two legal defense areas go well together, sometimes with student disciplinary matters relating to pending or potential criminal charges, and involving the fight for fair proceedings and fair treatment...
Chatting with cops
Posted on February 13, 2009Today, I was waiting in line at a lunch carryout, and a local cop was behind me. I admit that I remain so obsessed over all the police brutality, other police misconduct, police slickness, and legally-sanctioned police lying (to get confessions and other discovery) going on in the world that I do not tend to do much chatting with cops outside the courthouse (unless it is about a pending case), as much as I know the value of knowing the opponent...
Don't get caught in cops' slickness.
Posted on February 12, 2009For awhile I have praised the Busted video for giving people practical approaches to assert their Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights with the police. Now adding to that arsenal of important information is the following YouTube presentation by a former criminal defense lawyer and a cop, where the professor encourages people to assert their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, and the cop says that the vast majority of people can be coaxed to talk within the bounds of law...
Gerry Spence on video.
Posted on February 11, 2009The powerhouse of John Johnson and Gerry Spence (Aug. 1995, Thunderhead Ranch) Lately, more videos of trial great Gerry Spence -- who founded the Trial Lawyers College, which I attended in 1995 -- are getting to YouTube. Here are the most notable videos: - Cross examining, and asking: "You did have a coach? Oh!...
Apprendi and safety valve sentencing.
Posted on February 10, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. MI). Imagine pleading guilty when facing a high risk of a three-strikes non-parolable life term in prison. Why enter such a guilty plea unless such an approach is one's only realistic hope not to die in prison, for instance where the prosecutor offers, in exchange for a guilty plea, to dismiss other pending criminal charges that are even more certain to result in life imprisonment either by themselves or by accumulation of counts? Scott William Thompson unsuccessfully rolled the dice by entering such a guilty plea...
Human cattle call and a roll of toilet paper in John Waters country.
Posted on February 09, 2009Too many people are unjustly caged in American prisons. (Image from Bureau of Prisons' website). Why does John Waters make so many of his films in Baltimore? Because nobody could create in a studio setting as strange a place so full of urban decay and quirks as Baltimore...
Trials and the art of bloodless war.
Posted on February 08, 2009Is criminal defense work about proverbial war and sometimes bloodletting? Hell, yes, whether one wants it that way or not. As I have said before, t'ai chi principles are important to criminal defense, for focusing on harmonizing an imbalanced situation without applying more than a few ounces of force and without seeking to inflict heavy proverbial casualties as a goal, but not shying away from inflicting such casualties if necessary and within the bounds of law and legal ethics...
Respond to despicable speech with more speech.
Posted on February 06, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Recently, a fellow lawyer asked me my motivation for representing libel defendants "who destroy another person's reputation and peace of mind with malice." I turned my answer into the following blog entry: - I strongly believe that libel suits violate and are incompatible with the First Amendment...
If everyone substituted marijuana for alcohol, society would be a better place.
Posted on February 06, 2009Image from public domain. Imagine if everyone drinking alcohol tonight switched to puffing marijuana, nibbling a hash brownie, or downing a marijuana smoothie. As a result, fewer people would beat the sh*t out of others, fewer would act like raving lunatics, fewer would be heaving chunks, and some people would be receiving medicine superior to many of the pills and injectables peddled by Pharmaceutical, Inc...
The jury is the thing. Petty offenses are the barrier.
Posted on February 05, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Yesterday I blogged on a recent marijuana bench trial victory in federal magistrates court. In my view, however, it is unconstitutional -- absent the clear and informed consent of the criminal defendant on the record in court -- to expose a person to incarceration without a judge nominated by a governor or the president and confirmed by the respective legislature -- or else elected pursuant to state Constitutional provisions -- and without the right to a trial by jury...
William Thomas's funeral is February 7
Posted on February 05, 2009The peace symbol went far beyond hippies. Gerald Holtom designed the symbol in 1958, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament adopted the symbol for its logo.On January 25, I blogged about the passing of William Thomas. News reached me yesterday of his following funeral time and location: February 7, 2009, 4:00pm-5:30pm, New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1313 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20005...
Defending in federal magistrates' court
Posted on February 04, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Recently, I won a marijuana possession case in federal magistrate's court. I won the case not through pulling any rabbits out of the hat, but by using procedural rules and procedural strategy to my advantage...
When a court's affirmative orders meet with lawyer silence.
Posted on February 03, 2009Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Today, Virginia's intermediate appellate court found a lawyer in contempt and disbarred her for her insufficiently explained silence in response to the Court of Appeals' orders to file an amended petition for appeal after denying her petition to withdraw as court-appointed appellate criminal counsel (she also was silent when the order was repeated), not responding to a subsequent order to show cause why the foregoing behavior should not lead to a contempt order, and then not appearing in court on the date designated for hearing the contempt show cause matter...
Why is PETA's sexy vegetable ad worse for children than McDonald's cruelty on a bun ads?
Posted on February 02, 2009Following up on my January 30 blog entry on PETA's racy vegetable ad rejected for Super Bowl airtime (see NBC's very explicit rejection e-mail at PETA's site), Jonathan Turley -- whose blog is among the handful I read almost daily -- blogged yesterday his view that too many children watch the Super Bowl to justify running the ad during that event...
The secret taping did not begin with Nixon.
Posted on February 01, 2009One thing that made me fond of vehemently disliking Nixon starting in the early 1970s was his non-stop or near non-stop secret audiotapings of conversations from the Oval Office. Then, several years ago, I learned his two Democratic predecessors were frequent secret audiotapers, and that Lyndon Johnson showed Nixon the taping system at some point between Nixon's 1968 electoral victory and taking office...
Horton hears a who: What about mice and rats?
Posted on January 30, 2009Whether or not one agrees with PETA's message -- and I agree with PETA's advocacy of vegetarianism and boycotting of circuses that use non-human animals (Cirque de Soleil apparently only uses human animals, for instance) -- the group has developed a knack for persuasive videos...
Being out of the U.S. does not automatically prevent challenging asset forfeiture action.
Posted on January 29, 2009Image from Bureau of Engraving and Printing's website. Doesn't the United States government have better things to do than to be prosecuting gambling? Would the government be chasing after gambling operations if the prospect did not exist to obtain forfeiture of the alleged gambling operations' money and to obtain unpaid taxes? Greed clearly is not limited to the private sector, particularly when one includes greed for power in the mix...
Supreme Court further entrenches Terry v. Ohio.
Posted on January 28, 2009Terry v. Ohio wrongfully tramples on civil liberties. (Image from FBI's website). The United States is far from a truly free nation; nor are any other nations. Light a flame in a dried-out forest, and soon an uncontrollable inferno will rage beyond the control of the firesetter...
Summary judgment risk to civil defendants evading entry to the United States.
Posted on January 28, 2009Image from Bureau of Engraving and Printing's website. Doesn't the United States government have better things to do than to be prosecuting gambling? Would the government be chasing after gambling operations if the prospect did not exist to obtain forfeiture of the alleged gambling operations' money and to obtain unpaid taxes? Greed clearly is not limited to the private sector, particularly when one includes greed for power in the mix...
The inseparability of knowledge, technique, and fighting strength.
Posted on January 27, 2009Yin Yang T'ai chi works for trial battle and beyond, A fellow otherwise accomplished criminal defense lawyer recently took issue with the inclusion in a state criminal defense association newsletter of my recent article on applying t'ai chi principles to trial battle without seeing other articles dealing with the written law and non-t'ai chi trial technique in that issue...
RNC demonstrators win.
Posted on January 26, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) A few days ago, a Ramsey County, MN, trial judge dismissed a prosecution for insufficient evidence against protestors who demonstrated during the 2008 Republican National Convention. The defendants were charged with obstructing the legal process, disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly and blocking traffic...
Living and sweating it out when death is an inevitability.
Posted on January 25, 2009On death, Woody Allen asked: "I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is, will they be able to break a twenty?" My own death seemed somewhat abstract to me until, at nineteen years old, a close relative was diagnosed with cancer...
Thomas departs the planet.
Posted on January 25, 2009Thomas: "I don?t like unnecessary suffering." In August 1986, I came to George Washington Law School after a year working at a Wall Street bank, where I learned that I would need to seek much more deeply and widely if I were going find fellow Amnesty International and ACLU enthusiasts in the belly of the capitalist beast...
Judges: Why reveal indictments to the jury?
Posted on January 23, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Criminal jury trial are fast-paced events that risk all sorts of appealable errors. While it is nice to have good appellate issues to argue in the event of a conviction, it is nicer to prevent the errors in the first place...
Scrutinize jury instructions with a fine-tooth comb.
Posted on January 22, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) In jurisdictions where the judge instructs the jury on the law before closing trial arguments are made, it is tempting for lawyers to focus on putting the finishing touches to their closing arguments while the judge instructs the jury...
Giddiness over Obama does not justify lowering vigilance on social justice.
Posted on January 21, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Even I felt some giddiness hearing Obama start his inaugural address yesterday. The nightmare of Bush and Cheney was behind us, and hopefully Obama would not repeat any of that nightmare; hope springs eternal...
Of Gingrich, Don King, and the meaning of MLK Day.
Posted on January 20, 2009Demonstrators for Guantanamo's immediate closure, near the Nipponzan Myohoji temple in D.C. welcome Obama's approaching southbound motorcade on January 19. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Mancias, one of the members of the Hundred Days campaign to close Guantanamo now...
The artificial boundary between life and death
Posted on January 19, 2009The Chinese script for the character "mu," which means nothing. A friend who is getting on in years recently said that death is unacceptable. Here is my excerpted reply: Here are some things I have written about death over the years, for whatever it is worth to you, and in case it will help give you more harmony about the mortality of you and everyone else: - Woody Allen on death: "I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is, will they be able to break a twenty?" - "It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously...
Praised be Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted on January 19, 2009Martin Luther King, Jr., presented his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech when I was just four months old. When he was shot dead on April 4, 1968, I was only five years old, and he was only thirty-nine. I have been very positively influenced by the nonviolent path in fighting for social justice from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, How did they take up and stay on the nonviolent path? For both, their deeply-held religious beliefs helped them on that path...
Living t'ai chi daily.
Posted on January 18, 2009Lao Tzu, the purported author of the Tao te ching. Taoism is closely connected with t'ai chi principles. (Image from the public domain). Today's blog entry contains further ideas and links concerning t'ai chi, which heavily influences the way I practice law and life: - Yesterday morning was the first time I joined the weekly Saturday morning outdoor t'ai chi practice at the nearby Cabin John Park in Maryland; I previously would sometimes join the practices in Glen Echo Park and in McLean, Virginia, but they do not involve t'ai chi push hands/boxing...
Secret U.S. court takes four months to release opinion permitting secret warrantless searches in the name of national security.
Posted on January 16, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) One day when I appeared in the U.S. District Court in D.C. before a judge who also is on the FISA trial-level court, I was dying to ask the judge about that thirty-year-old court, but knew that at best my questions would receive no answers, whether or not with a glare...
Judges: The Exclusionary Rule must even cover the countless police errors resulting from an overgrown criminal justice system.
Posted on January 15, 2009Supreme Court spiral staircase. To my knowledge, when they were lawyers, no current Supreme Court justice prosecuted nor defended criminal cases in trial court, and none of them were police. Probably with few or no exceptions, the sitting justices' law clerks are chosen not for previous law clerking experience with trial prosecutors or defense lawyers, but primarily for having high law school grades, coming from law schools and colleges that have the toughest criteria for grades and LSAT/SAT scores, having law review experience, and having clerked for a federal appellate judge...
Three high-level DOJ picks are no strangers to the First Amendment.
Posted on January 14, 2009United States Constitution (From public domain.) Not long after I started law school in 1986, numerous people encouraged the resume benefits of working at the Justice Department. I had trouble jibing that with Ed Meese's control of the Justice Department at the time...
The war in Gaza
Posted on January 13, 2009With the war in Gaza continuing in its third week, it feels too awkward not to write here about the war. A distant cousin who long ago emigrated to Israel from the United States recently took notice of the lack of comments about Gaza on a discussion website that connnects relatives descended from two ancestors going back nearly two centuries...
Eliminating the barrier between cops and criminal defense lawyers.
Posted on January 12, 2009Cops and prosecutors were ordinary people before becoming cops and prosecutors, and that is at least one point of commonality I have with them. In the District of Columbia Superior Court, I find more cops clam up when I try speaking with them than in any other courthouse where I practice, although there are plenty of exceptions...
Westboro Baptist case awaits Fourth Circuit opinion.
Posted on January 11, 2009First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Last month, the Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments in a critical appeal by the Westboro Baptist Church and its three members who lost a Maryland federal trial in October 2007 for intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy...
Cops: Lay off on unconstitutional disorderly conduct arrests (and all other unconstitutional arrests).
Posted on January 09, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Too often, police arrest for disorderly conduct simply because they cannot think of any other crimes to charge. That is beyond unjust. Thanks to Jonathan Turley for posting on last month's South Dakota Supreme Court decision that the First Amendment protects the right of people to yell expletives at cops...
Cops: Lay off on unconstitutional disorderly conduct arrests.
Posted on January 09, 2009Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Too often, police arrest for disorderly conduct simply because they cannot think of any other crimes to charge. That is beyond unjust. Thanks to Jonathan Turley for posting on last month's South Dakota Supreme Court decision that the First Amendment protects the right of people to yell expletives at cops...
When pleading guilty, consider a no-civil-commitment agreement.
Posted on January 08, 2009Imagine being in prison for a few years or many more than that, and counting the days to freedom, as Tom Waits's Zack does at the beginning of this clip from Down by Law. Eventually the days until release are shorter than the days that have been spent in prison, and eventually the years turn into months, then weeks, and then days until release...
Your refusal to talk to the cops stays out of evidence, but your refusal of a blood alcohol test does not.
Posted on January 07, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Yesterday I blogged that refusing a search is inadmissible at trial. So is refusing to talk with the cops. Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976); U.S. v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171 (1975); Grier v. Maryland, 351 Md. 241, 718 A...
Refusal of a search is inadmissible at trial.
Posted on January 06, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Sometimes prosecutors try to present evidence at trial that my client refused a search. They may not do so: "A person has a constitutional right to refuse to consent to a warrantless search of his or her automobile, and such refusal may not later be used to implicate guilt...
Judges: Time to distinguish between the smell of burnt and raw marijuana.
Posted on January 05, 2009Bill of Rights (From public domain.) How many judges have experience smoking marijuana, smelling others who have smoked marijuana, and smelling raw marijuana? At least one judge has such experience. Soon after the Senate bounced Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan nominated a then-forty-one-year-old Douglas Ginsburg to the Supreme Court...
Praised be our support staff.
Posted on January 05, 2009Not long ago, I blogged that I welcomed resumes for an added part-time legal assistant position at my law firm. I am pleased to say that this position has been filled by a highly-qualified applicant who started last week. As I do all the time to their faces, here in cyberspace I thank my staffmembers for their highly capable and dedicated work for our clients...
What makes David Lynch tick?
Posted on January 04, 2009David Lynch's Eraserhead. Great creativity from any quarter inspires me as a trial lawyer. Film directors who particularly inspire me include Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, and David Lynch. All three came to filmmaking from outside the Hollywood filmmaking establishment, and all of them have pushed the creative envelope...
Trial skills must be developed in tandem with maintaining a strong body and calm mind.
Posted on January 02, 2009Lao Tzu, the purported author of the Tao te ching. Taoism is closely connected with t'ai chi principles. (Image from the public domain). For over a dozen years, I have studied, practiced, and applied t'ai chi to my life and practice of law, as explained here, here ,and here...
Nonviolence starts with each of us.
Posted on December 31, 2008Millions have been repeating "Happy New Year" this week. Millions make resolutions for the new year, so often not kept. A worthy resolution that can be started immediately is nonviolence. Let this be the first of all days that people no longer hit their children, their significant others, nor anyone else...
Forfeiting confrontation rights through wrongdoing.
Posted on December 30, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Last June, the United States Supreme Court determined that Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) strictly limits prosecutors' ability to present to the jury a homicide victim's testimonial hearsay, even though the victim could have testified at trial had his or her killing not been procured...
Freddie Hubbard departs the planet.
Posted on December 29, 2008Freddie Hubbard at the Messina Jazz Festival with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, and Sonny Fortune. In 1980, I bought and started wearing out Freddie Hubbard's album Red Clay with my turntable needle, before the days of DVD players. The local jazzplaying radio station WPFW today announced that Freddie passed away...
Does waiting tables make one a better trial lawyer?
Posted on December 28, 2008The closest I came to waiting tables was working as a pantry assistant in the kitchen of my old summer camp, making orange juice and bug juice with a garden hose and metal oar, moving food on hand trucks and flat trucks, shoving my hand in innumerable chickens to pull out the gizzard packets (in my pre-vegetarian days), and making sandwiches for the nighttime on duty staff...
The pathetic one-way street of no trespassing signs.
Posted on December 26, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) If a civilian walks or drives past NO TRESPASSING signs, s/he can get arrested, searched "incident to arrest", brought before a judicial officer to have a bond set, and prosecuted for trespassing. The suspect can be prosecuted even if s/he is illiterate, does not understand English, has bad eyesight, or does not see the NO TRESPASSING sign because it is dark and the sign is not illuminated; the defendant will be permitted to raise such a defense, and the arresting cop may testify or testilie that the defendant confirmed s/he saw the sign (while collapsing chronology about whether the defendant said s/he saw the sign only when the cop pointed it out, and obscuring whether the defendant said s/he coudl read or understand the language on the sign, and whether its lettering was obscured by the dark, by tree branches, or by years of wear on the sign)...
When the jury has no alternates.
Posted on December 23, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Why would a prosecutor and judge not try to have alternate members on a criminal jury? Certainly a criminal defense lawyer might not raise the issue, in order to have a chance -- if a juror were stricken -- for a mistrial to get a better jury, to move settlement negotiations further, or to have the advantage of better knowing the opponent's strategy and evidence on retrial...
Unseamly pants lawsuit kicked in its appellate seat.
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Why did Felt blow the whistle on Nixon?
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Mark Helm departs the planet.
Posted on December 20, 2008pspan style=FONT-SIZE: 9.5pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,51); FONT-FAMILY: Verdanaspan style=FONT-SIZE: 9.5pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,51); FONT-FAMILY: Verdanaspan style=COLOR: rgb(51,51,51)spanspan style=FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: nonespan style=FONT-SIZE: 9...
SuperLawyers renews me on its list.
Posted on December 18, 2008div class=serendipitySideBarItem container_serendipity_html_nugget_plugindiv class=serendipitySideBarContentfont size=1div class=sl_badge_120div class=profilediv class=sl_badge_120div class=profilea title=Super Lawyers Profile for Jonathan L. Katz href=http://www...
Feds issue updated § 2257 recordkeeping regulations.
Posted on December 18, 2008pspan style=COLOR: rgb(51,51,51)spanspan style=FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: nonespan style=COLOR: rgb(51,51,51)spanspan style=FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: nonefont size=2emspan style=COLOR: rgb(51,51,51)spanspan style=FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: nonefont size=2img style=WIDTH: 210px; HEIGHT: 249px height=249 hspace=0 src=http://markskatz...
Persuading McSpeakers and their opposites.
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Persuading Twitterers, their opposites, and those in between.
Posted on December 17, 2008span style=FONT-SIZE: 9.5pt; COLOR: #333333; FONT-FAMILY: Verdanapspan style=FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arialfont face=Verdanaimg hspace=0 src=http://markskatz.com/pen2.jpg align=bottom border=0 alt= /font face=Arial /font/font/span/pp font size=1Image from a href=http://www...
Prosecution: Fail to authenticate video at own risk.
Posted on December 16, 2008Photo 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...
Shoes blues.
Posted on December 16, 2008pspan style=FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arialspan style=COLOR: rgb(51,51,51)spanspan style=FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: nonespan style=FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,51); FONT-FAMILY: Verdanaspan style=FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,51); FONT-FAMILY: Verdanaimg hspace=0 src=http://katzjustice...
MD: If the handle fits the eye, you must acquit the guy.
Posted on December 15, 20087u 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, 2008On 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, 2008My 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, 2008Last 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, 2008A 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, 2008United 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, 2008Today 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, 2008Well 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008Bitches 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, 2008Bill 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, 2008Image 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, 2008Prosecutors 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, 200818 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, 2008Winter 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, 2008Eleven 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, 2008Several 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, 2008Underdog 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, 2008Regardless 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, 2008Image 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, 2008Bill 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, 2008Bill 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, 2008Image 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, 2008Bill 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, 2008If 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...
Waiting for Melendez: The Confrontation Clause Revisited.
Posted on November 20, 2008Bill 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, 2008Greenland 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, 2008When 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, 2008Image 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...
A nasty thing happened on the way to the forum.
Posted on November 17, 2008Bill 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, 2008Imagine 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, 2008INTRODUCTIONWhen 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008My 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, 2008A 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008Image 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, 2008During 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, 2008From 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, 2008Bill 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, 2008Even 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008As 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, 2008Zoos 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, 2008Image 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, 2008Bill 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, 2008On 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008When 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, 2008Some 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, 2008Photo 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, 2008In 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, 2008Bill 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...
Work as play/ Play as work.
Posted on October 21, 2008For fewer than two years between leaving the Maryland Public Defender's Office and becoming my own boss, I worked at a civil trial law firm. I learned many good things there. However, I realized that I would be able to spread my wings the farthest by being my own boss...
Should fingerprint evidence be banned from court?
Posted on October 20, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Should fingerprint evidence be banned from criminal trials? Yes, says Maryland public defender lawyer Patrick Kent, who also is a forensic expert. Last May, Kent said that DNA evidence is scientific, but that fingerprint analysis is an art that is too filled with error to permit fingerprint testimony at trial...
Announcing our additional office in McLean, Virginia.
Posted on October 19, 2008For many years, I have been defending about as many criminal cases in Virginia as in Maryland. In Virginia, I defend more criminal cases in Fairfax County than anywhere else in the commonwealth. Most of the counties where I practice in Virginia are a close drive to my office and home...
Announcing our branch office in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Posted on October 19, 2008For many years, I have been defending about as many criminal cases in Virginia as in Maryland. In Virginia, I defend more criminal cases in Fairfax County than anywhere else in the commonwealth. Most of the counties where I practice in Virginia are a close drive to my office and home...
Obama and McCain on Civil Liberties: More like Tweedledum and Tweedledee?
Posted on October 17, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Had Ralph Nader not run for president in 2000, Al Gore would have beaten George Bush, II. Nader knew he would not win the presidency, but also had a powerful message that most Democratic and Republican candidates and officeholders are more fundamentally alike than they are different, maintaining most of the status quo of the government-military-industrial complex...
Criminal juries may not make up the governing law.
Posted on October 16, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Around fourteen years ago, at the post conviction/habeas corpus stage, I won a retrial in a Maryland trial court for a man convicted of burglary for breaking into his grandmother's house with the intent to rape her, and of raping her...
Finding points of commonality with opponents.
Posted on October 15, 2008It is human nature to avoid unpleasant people and to seek out pleasant ones. That is why I avoid Barney and am transfixed by the Dalai Lama. No matter how much I myself could not stomach prosecuting or being a cop, I have to deal daily with those serving such functions...
Can lies be turned on and off?
Posted on October 14, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Once a liar always a liar? How many jurors except cops from that maxim when the cop's lie is designed to elicit a confession to a crime? Last week, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed a conviction following a most egregious police lie to obtain a confession, but warned that the police tactics presented a close call...
When a judge stops being an impartial adjudicator.
Posted on October 13, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When I started working as a public defender lawyer in 1991, I observed about fifteen minutes of a felony jury trial being presided over by a then-longtime sitting judge. I was astounded to see the judge -- in front of the jury -- silently and emphatically mouthing words, apparently to coach the prosecutor during the prosecutor's cross examination, without any objection from defense counsel...
We will be open Columbus Day
Posted on October 12, 2008FYI, our law firm will be open on Columbus Day, October 13. The only reason thus far that I have identified to justify closing on Columbus Day is to give my staff a well-deserved day off. Other than that, I do not agree with the holiday, particularly when no federal holiday exists to remember the Native Americans who suffered tremendously from the lengthy brutal and unjust treatment that followed over the years and centuries after Columbus's arrival in the Western Hemisphere...
Why plead guilty when pleading innocent is not much more risky?
Posted on October 10, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Most people in my neck of the woods go to court without a lawyer for non-jailable criminal matters. However, even non-jailable convictions can come back to haunt people. For instance, a conviction for possessing a pot pipe is deportable for non-U...
We are closed today for Yom Kippur.
Posted on October 09, 2008Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, when I will continue my three decades-long practice of a completely dry fast from sundown last night to sundown tonight; focusing on harmony with others, nature, and myself; and focusing on continuing to improve daily in treating my fellow humans and other living things justly, caringly, and kindly, including a continuation of my two decades of strict vegetarianism...
When indigent criminal defense funding dries up, shrink the criminal justice system.
Posted on October 08, 2008Clarence Gideon. Two weeks before I was born, the United States Supreme Court mandated that the states provide lawyers to indigent criminal defendants. Gideon V. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). (Listen to the later-to-be, short-lived Justice Abe Fortas -- when he was a name partner at one of Washington's still most highly-regarded huge corporate law firms -- arguing for inmate Clarence Gideon who beat all odds by obtaining the rare right to Supreme Court review after having filed a pro se petition for writ of certiorari...
Max Hardcore sentenced for obscenity conviction.
Posted on October 07, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). What is obscenity? Nobody knows until the jury rules, because obscenity cannot be sufficiently defined. A jury across the courthouse hallway might even reach an opposite conclusion. Therefore, the Supreme Court's obligatory Miller obscenity test gives little First Amendment protection...
Mu: The power of nothingness.
Posted on October 06, 2008The Chinese script for the character "mu," which means nothing. Why are so many intricate brush strokes needed to convey nothing? (The copyright was relinquished by this animated symbol's creator. The symbol also is available here.) At first blush -- at least from a traditional Western perspective -- irony would be apparent in the concept that nothingness can be powerful...
Rock Lobster
Posted on October 05, 2008At the Trial Lawyers College, singing was encouraged and was everywhere, some of it good, some of it mediocre at best, and some of it drowning out the rest of the conversation too much. A good point was made that by doing more singing, we are better at getting our words and arguments not only past our lips, but in a full voice that carries the message where it needs to go...
Poll the jury.
Posted on October 03, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Before going to trial with or without a jury, it is critical to have a good trial checklist. For jury trials, a critical part of that checklist is to have the jury polled in the event of an adverse jury verdict...
"I want to refer to non-Latino Spanish-speaking lawyers."
Posted on October 02, 2008Reality so often is more pathetic than fiction. Yesterday, I was talking with a woman on the way down the courthouse elevator. She works in the courthouse, and we spoke in Spanish, her native tongue; I do not have as much of a throughout-the-day chance to speak Spanish now that I am no longer with my former law partner, whose Spanish is impeccable and whose practice heavily involves the language...
The dragnet of drug arrests.
Posted on October 01, 2008DEA image in the public domain. In college, on-campus drug use -- and sometimes drug sales, apparently -- ran rampant. I would sometimes be right in the room or in the dorm hallway as others smoked pot or, in one instance, snorted cocaine. If I did not want to be a hermit, it was hard to avoid being with people who smoked pot; this was the early Eighties, and both pot and beer were very popular (and also unlawful for those under twenty-one to purchase)...
We are closed today, for the Jewish New Year.
Posted on September 30, 2008Today is the Jewish New Year/Rosh Hashanah 5769, which I celebrate every year. Therefore, our law firm will be closed today, and will reopen on October 1, 2008, to serve you. L'shana tova/happy new year. Jon Katz.
Herman Lee Taylor, Jr.: Meet Kumar Barve and Davis Ruark.
Posted on September 29, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). The nation's drunk driving laws became out of whack by the time the states succumbed many years ago to federal legislation requiring drunk driving convictions for driving with a blood alcohol level of 0...
David Wasserman leaves the planet
Posted on September 28, 2008Sadly, David Wasserman died last Thursday. Nine years ago, I was further exploring how to get paying, versus only pro bono, clients for First Amendment defense both for criminal and civil cases. This goal fit squarely with my obsession over and passionate work on free speech issues with Amnesty International in college and law school, and my service on the board of the local American Civil Liberties Union a few years before...
Flatulent defendant; albatross of domestic military patrols
Posted on September 26, 2008Today I argued a felony criminal appeal before the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia where I stayed overnight, so today's blog entry is brief, but very important. As George Carlin said on his Occupation: Fool album from the early 1970's, "farts are fun"...
Do you order from my client's restaurant menu, too?
Posted on September 25, 2008- "I don't care what the contract says, it's my money that paid for your work and I am going to know from you what's going on in the case."- "He's my family. Blood is thicker than water, and I'm going to be involved in your discussions with my brother...
What is obstruction of justice?
Posted on September 24, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Among the three jurisdictions where I practice, police in Virginia seem most fond of arresting for obstruction of justice. What does the phrase mean? Last year, Virginia's Supreme Court gave some details, in Jordan v...
D.C. Jail is on lockdown status.
Posted on September 24, 2008(Image from Bureau of Prisons' website). The District of Columbia jail is one of the most unpleasant of the over twenty or so jails and prisons I have visited. My experience would be a picnic compared to what the inmates must endure. Thanks to a fellow listerv member for getting the word out that the jail is on lockdown until 6 October, and that all legal visits need to be made through the staff entrance...
Unreasonable suspicion.
Posted on September 23, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) What made me become so skeptical of cops? Certainly, plenty of socializers tried to keep me and my school classmates enamored of cops from the earliest age. I played with cop and fireman toys. I watched Dragnet, Adam-12, Hawaii Five-O, Baretta, Columbo, Police Woman, Kojak, and plenty of other entertaining police shows that shined a favorable light on cops...
Defending online copyright infringement.
Posted on September 22, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). On May 23, 2008, I blogged about bucking the trend of 94% of federal criminal prosecutions resulting in guilty pleas, by proceeding to a jury trial in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court for alleged criminal copyright infringement...
Welcoming your comments / Why fear someone who once wore diapers?
Posted on September 22, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website. Some blogs get more comments then other blogs. The Volokh Conspiracy, TalkLeft, WSJ, and Res Ipsa get constant dialogue among commenters throughout the day. My criminal defense lawyer brothers Scott Greenfield in particular, Gideon and Mark Bennett get their fair share of comments both quantity- and quality-wise, too; they post many blog entries that entice comments, and they participate with their commenters...
Being a t'ai chi bear in an otherwise stressful court.
Posted on September 21, 2008Yin Yang Nobody can fully and sufficiently describe what it feels like and what the best responses are to being a lawyer being berated by a judge while the lawyer's client is standing right next to the lawyer, and when plenty of other eyes and ears -- and the court reporter's record -- are focused on the action...
Ketchup on your Frankenburger?
Posted on September 19, 2008First the FDA approved the safety of cloned offspring on your plate. Now it's genetically modified chicken, What next? When I was in summer camp, my eyelids needed velcro to stay open as I read a friend's letter telling me about the tomatoes his mother was growing...
Would a Virginia bar kick out Virtus if pastie-less?
Posted on September 18, 2008Virginia's state seal has a bared breast. Virginia's above-displayed seal shows a half bare-breasted Virtus. under current Virginia law, if Virtus walked into a Virginia bar, she would either be required to cover up with pasties or something more modest, or to leave...
First Amendment slays spam conviction.
Posted on September 17, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). Thanks to the lawyer(s) who last Friday won a First Amendment-based reversal of a spam conviction in Jaynes v. Com., _ Va. _ (Sept. 12, 2008), http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1062388...
"You're not wanted in these parts."
Posted on September 16, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) The late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall knew the ugliness of racism in Maryland right through his bones. In one televised interview, Justice Marshall recounted one day as a youth, when he was in a section of Baltimore where he could not find a bathroom other than those designated for white people only...
Yin-yang and the scales.
Posted on September 15, 2008At the Trial Lawyers College, the inevitable day comes when everyone is handed a paintbrush, and is told to tell an important personal story through painting, without regard to technical artistry. As it turned out, when I did the painting exercise, some of the most meaningful paintings at first looked as rudimentary as those done by elementary schoolers while the final piece of one of the more talented brushmasters told more of an a la carte menu than an integrated and deep story...
Before retiring tonight, don't forget to wave goodnight to the FBI outside your window.
Posted on September 14, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) In college, I had an excellent Eastern European politics professor -- Sarah Terry -- who recounted a Halloween party she attended at one of the Western embassies or other Western centers in Warsaw during the Cold War (I think in the 1970's or 1980's)...
The strength of positive karma.
Posted on September 12, 2008A Maryland Daily Record reporter reads my blog, and saw my posting about the transition from the Marks & Katz law firm into separate firms. She interviewed me for an article expected to appear this Monday, about law firms that split. I said that although I know about some friction-filled law firm split-ups, ours was amicable, and Jay and I continue sharing good karma (and even have similar roots to our new email addresses, shown below)...
Seven years later.
Posted on September 11, 2008The Silver Spring, Maryland, YMCA has become an eerie place of sorts. On September 11, 2001, I was working out there before starting the workday. On my way to the locker room to the office, I saw the television playing the horrifying footage of the World Trade Center attack and collapse, and learned that the Pentagon -- just about ten miles away -- also had been attacked...
Revisiting a denied objection.
Posted on September 10, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Judges are generalists, at least where I practice law. They are expected to grasp and rule on a vast body of law. The law is too vast for even the most conscientious insomniac judge to be a walking encyclopeia on the law...
ACLU seeks staff attorney in South Carolina
Posted on September 09, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Full Glass Consulting has asked me to spread the word about an open ACLU staff attorney position. In the early Nineties, I served on the board of the ACLU of the National Capital Area, and recommend applying for this position if you are looking for a new position and if your ability and interest meet the job description, which follows: Position Availability / Staff Attorney of South Carolina National OfficeCharleston, South Carolina The American Civil Liberties Union welcomes applications for the position of Staff Attorney of the South Carolina National Office, available immediately...
Money laundering: On a hanger or in a box?
Posted on September 09, 2008Image from Bureau of Engraving and Printing's website. The closest I ever came to being a cop was my year before law school as a financial auditor at a large Wall Street commercial bank. Early on, among our duties, we were taught to monitor for violations of the money laundering laws, by verifying that IRS Form 8300 had been properly filed for cash transactions over $10,000, and that multiple deposits by the same customer were not being used to circumvent the money laundering laws...
I will never forget that face?
Posted on September 08, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) An armed robber bursts into the local bank with guns drawn. As a bank customer, do you stare at the robber's face to be able to describe the perpetrator to the police in the minutest detail, or do you try to protect yourself and those around you? Unfortunately, countless innocent people are wrongfully convicted on the testimony of an eyewitness saying "I will never forget that face" when the witness never had a chance to process the image of the suspect's face and other features in the first place, when the visual and sound observation totaled only seconds at best, and when the witness's first priority was to emerge safely, rather than to be a photographic-memory witness...
Practicing law in the black.
Posted on June 15, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website. Critical to practicing law is placing clients ahead of money. To do the opposite likely will result in less income for a lawyer, or else in income not sufficiently or properly earned. Fortunately, many lawyers believe in the importance of doing good for society on the road to doing well; staying committed to social justice while practicing law; doing pro bono and low bono work; and helping others (including competitors) rise along with the lawyer, rather than stepping on their throats and heads in the process...
Immigration risks from criminal cases.
Posted on June 13, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) The National Immigration Project's website has some good links for criminal defense lawyers to review a client's negative immigration exposure. Thanks to a fellow listserv member for providing the foregoing link...
Maintaining calm in the eye of the storm.
Posted on June 12, 2008Some people seek calm by avoiding conflict. I seek to use calm to harmonize conflict to the advantage of me and my client. By applying the principles of t'ai chi to my law practice, I do my best neither to chase an opponent's power nor to hide from it, but to use my opponent's power and energy to the best of my advantage, by doing my best to anticipate the opponent's strategy and attack, to give the opponent nothing to push against, to find the opponent's weaknesses, and to neutralize the opponent...
Should I get a Blackberry or iPhone?
Posted on June 12, 2008Checking email only at the office has become too inefficient, to the point of offsetting the bliss of not having email to deal with when away from my wired computer. Therefore, having read some of the articles comparing the BlackBerry and iPhone, I seek Underdog readers' input before making a final decision...
The Longest Walk: Donations needed.
Posted on June 11, 2008Longest Walkers meet police in Columbus. In my office is an American Indian Movement emblem, and at home is my AIM t-shirt. I became all the more interested in the movement after reading Dennis Banks's autobiography Ojibwa Warrior, and then meeting him in 2006 at the conclusion of the Sacred Run...
Virginia Court of Appeals finds no First Amendment violation with online solicitation of minors law.
Posted on June 11, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) On June 10, 2008, Virginia's Court of Appeals found no First Amendment infirmity with the law prohibiting soliciting sexual activity with a minor. Podracky v. Com., __ Va. App. _ (June 10, 2008). The court also emphasized that such a crime can take place even if the "minor" turns out to be an undercover cop,...
The Longest Walk
Posted on June 11, 2008Longest Walkers meet police in Columbus. In my office is an American Indian Movement emblem, and at home is my AIM t-shirt. I became all the more interested in the movement after reading Dennis Banks's autobiography Ojibwa Warrior, and then meeting him in 2006 at the conclusion of the Sacred Run...
Maryland substantially amends criminal discovery rules.
Posted on June 10, 2008Image from Maryland State Archives. To those practicing criminal defense in Maryland: Generally effective July 1, 2008 (see the Court of Appeals' implementing Order), the District Court and Circuit Court will have significantly updated discovery rules, as designated in the following links to Maryland Rules 4-262, 4-263, and 4-301...
Fourth Circuit sends terrorism case back for resentencing.
Posted on June 10, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) In this post-Rita, Gall and Kimbrough world, the Fourth Circuit recently reversed the thirty-year sentence of a terrorism convict as too lenient, and seemed to call for the trial judge to look more closely at the sentencing guidelines before deciding whether to depart from them...
In praise of Tod Mikuriya.
Posted on June 09, 2008As I became more knowledgeable over the years about the marijuana legalization movement, from time to time I would hear about Tod Mikuriya, M.D. As the May 29, 2007, New York Times tells it, Mikuriya "was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients...
The tighter job market, and eliminating me, me, me & I, I, I.
Posted on June 08, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website. The job market is tightening for all jobs, including law jobs. When applying for jobs before and during law school, I often felt that plenty of employers were non-feeling and too unfair. Now that I am on the hiring end, I feel that many qualified candidates are not getting their point across succinctly and persuasively enough to get a job interview and to be hired, and that many underqualified candidates do not appear underqualified at first blush, thus calling for careful screening by employers of job candidates (although I do not support going as far as doing drug testing and privacy-violative background checks)...
Jury convicts Max Hardcore.
Posted on June 06, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) On June 3, 2008, I blogged about the Paul Little/Max Hardcore federal obscenity trial that was then underway. Sadly, on June 5, the jury convicted Mr. Little on ten counts of distributing obscenity online and by snail mail...
DC Atty General: ?I?m not worried about the constitutionality" of Mayor's state of emergency.
Posted on June 05, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Giddiness seemed to run wide over Adrian Fenty's ascension to the District of Columbia mayoral throne two years ago at age thirty-five. He apparently made good at knocking on more voters' doors than his competition, had the energy to get his daily work done and still run for miles weekly, and learned valuable work ethic lessons from his parents who took a risk at opening an ultimately thriving running store...
Exclude defendant's refusal to consent to a search.
Posted on June 04, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) A suspect's right to refuse a search is as sacred as a suspect's right to refuse to talk with the police. Therefore, such refusal by a criminal defendant should generally be excluded at trial. Whether or not the refusal follows advice from cops about the right to refuse, the jury is not permitted to consider the refusal for purposes of inferring any guilt...
Max Hardcore's obscenity trial underway.
Posted on June 03, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) On June 4, 2007, I blogged about Paul Little's (a.k.a. Max Hardcore) obscenity prosecution in Tampa federal court, and said, among other things: "The feds' latest effort to go after the more shocking variety of adult material is its May 17, 2007, indictment of Paul F...
Speedy trial clock should continue after bad faith non-prejudicial dismissal.
Posted on June 02, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) In some courthouses, it is hit or miss whether the prosecutor will be ready for trial on the trial date. In other courthouses, it is unusual for the prosecutor not to be prepared to proceed forward on the trial date...
Congratulations, Gerry Spence and Geoffrey Fieger!
Posted on June 02, 2008The powerhouse of John Johnson and Gerry Spence (Aug. 1995, Thunderhead Ranch) I owe a lot to Gerry Spence. On the one hand, my guru of gurus Steve Rench was the paramount motivator for my attending the Trial Lawyers College. On the other hand, Gerry is the yin to Steve's yang, completing an essential whole...
Don Fiedler departs the planet.
Posted on June 01, 2008In 1990, I took out a subscription to High Times magazine in protest over a federal prosecutor's subpoenaing the magazine's advertiser records -- as reported by Index on Censorship -- in an apparent effort to clamp down on hydroponic sellers and customers, and various other suspected marijuana-related vendors...
The importance of identifying dangerous jurors.
Posted on May 30, 2008How many times do we meet people with twisted if not dangerous ways of looking at life and processing information? Some sue the government to stop directing neurotransmissions at their brain functioning. Others are convinced the FBI and CIA are tailing them, even when doing so would be a complete waste of the FBI's and CIA's time...
When convicted felons are nearby guns and drugs.
Posted on May 29, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When convicted felons are around guns and unlawful drugs, they risk exposure to substantial incarceration time. Lewis D. McCarson learned that when federal marshals came to his girlfriend's home with an arrest warrant for him...
When acquitted conduct is considered for federal sentencing.
Posted on May 28, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Last December 2007's Gall and Kimbrough opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court raise questions about whether it any longer is legitimate for sentencing courts to consider acquitted conduct in setting a sentence. In an unpublished opinion from March 21, 2008, the Fourth Circuit reversed a sentencing that refused to consider acquitted conduct, and held that the standard at sentencing is whether a crime can be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, even if the conduct was acquitted under the beyond a reasonable doubt standard...
What will come of the Viacom v. YouTube suit?
Posted on May 27, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). Even my most well-heeled litigation clients set a ceiling on the money they are willing to spend for litigation fees and expenses. One thing that interests me in the pending Viacom, et al...
What does Memorial Day mean?
Posted on May 26, 2008Image from website of the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance. Last year on Memorial Day, I posted the following piece on the topic. I agree with the posting as much today as last year. Intervening since the 2007 Memorial Day was my father's fiftieth West Point reunion yesterday, which I attended with my wife and boy...
Defending criminal copyright infringement cases.
Posted on May 23, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). According to a posting at lawyer Allan Ellis's website, the United States Sentencing Commission reports that 94% of federal criminal cases result in guilty pleas. This week, my client and I bucked that trend by proceeding to a jury trial in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court for alleged criminal copyright infringement...
Marijuana smokers: Lend me an ear.
Posted on May 22, 2008Image from public domain. No stems, no seeds that you don't need,Acapulco Gold is -- pfffffffffffffffff -- bad-ass weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. - Cheech & Chong (listen here). My introduction to the pro-marijuana culture was heavily influenced by Cheech & Chong, who at once indulged (at least Chong, and I assume Cheech) in marijuana and lampooned those who did the same...
Does the First Amendment prohibit convictions for juxtaposing lawful images of children with adult sexual images?
Posted on May 21, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.)NOTE: The following blog entry was written before the awful May 19 Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Williams (May 19, 2008).This blog entry follows up on my previous discussions of child pornography defense here and here...
Your vote for president will affect the Supreme Court's tilts for decades to come.
Posted on May 20, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) On May 19, 2008, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a conviction involving the mere promoting of child pornography, as opposed to the possession or distribution of such material, even if no child pornography is behind the promotion...
Blogging by Google senior copyright counsel.
Posted on May 19, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). Our blogroll grows by around one new blog every three to six weeks. One of our most recent blogroll additions is William Patry's Copyright blog. Patry is a senior copyright counsel at Google, which gives him a very informed angle from which to blog...
Reverberations of a step and a drum.
Posted on May 18, 2008Where did I get on this calmness kick that I discuss in my May 16 blog entry? It predates my t'ai chi practice to reach to the late 1970's, when meditation was already highly popular in the United States. I learned meditation through Herbert Benson's Relaxation Response book...
Addressing adversity like a t'ai chi teacher.
Posted on May 16, 2008A big dichotomy can exist between the devotion to being calm, and actually being calm. Although I do not know if it is true, a well-known peace proponent whom I respect very much claims that Gandhi, the very would-be pillar of calmness, was a tyrant to his wife...
In New York, it's Geoffrey Holder; in D.C. it's Douglas Ginsburg.
Posted on May 15, 2008Imagine Geoffrey Holder, with his commanding voice, arguing before Judge Douglas Ginsburg. I have lived in two celebrity towns: Manhattan and Washington, D.C. In Manhattan, I'd pass Lou Jacobi as he dropped off dry cleaning, Geoffrey Holder (see him in the YouTube video above) on a cold weekend afternoon in Greenwich Village, and Madeline Kahn in the audience waiting to see Linda Hunt and Wallly Shawn onstage...
A new assistant and a new beginning.
Posted on May 15, 2008Two weeks ago, I blogged that I was accepting resumes for a new legal assistant. My search ended quickly, and my new assistant Sandra started working with us this week. Sandra is highly experienced in litigation, cares very much about our clients, and is a big asset to our firm...
Supremes: Constitutional for lawyers to agree to magistrate judge jury selection.
Posted on May 14, 2008Supreme Court spiral staircase. On May 12, 2008, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a conviction where the defendant's lawyer agreed to magistrate judge-run jury selection, even though the defendant was not asked directly on the record whether he so consented...
State's Attorney Ruark pleads guilty to driving under the influence.
Posted on May 13, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). On February 25, 2008, I wrote: Wicomico County, Maryland, State's Attorney Davis Ruark said of his arrest from last Friday, which involved an alleged 015 blood alcohol content reading: "I am human ...
Interstate commerce has its limits in criminal law.
Posted on May 12, 2008Praised be Orlando federal judge Gregory Presnell for delineating the limits of federal jurisdiction in criminal prosecutions, in finding the federal sex offender statute unconstitutional when it comes to criminalizing to failing ot register with a state agency as a sex offender...
If you want to reach me, please refrain from bcc.
Posted on May 09, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website.Lately, I have been inundated with a few hundred daily spam emails that do not list my email as the recipient. Such emails get filtered to a box that I have no choice but to empty daily without reviewing the messages...
Stop police abuse now by shrinking the criminal justice system, disciplining cops, and maintaining compassion for them.
Posted on May 09, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Praised be the inventors of videocameras, right into today's generation of lightweight, small, inexpensive digital cameras. Without such cameras, more rogue cops would get away with lying that a suspect's face got rearranged merely because "he struggled with the cuffs, lost balance, and landed on the tip of my boot, then bounced off the tip of my boot onto my fist, and, by some strange happenstance, this got repeated seventy-three times until he finally landed nose-first on the pavement below...
The risks of refusing a test that should be fully refusable.
Posted on May 08, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Field sobriety tests are junk science administered by cops who have no expertise to administer them, because junk science precludes having expertise. See how poorly is the performance when asking even a fully sober and awake person to follow unfamiliar instructions for standing on one leg for a count of thirty and walking heel to toe ("don't miss heel to toe") nine times and pivoting correctly on the way back...
"There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine."
Posted on May 07, 2008Sketch by John Iorio Not long ago, a burnt-out appearing lawyer expressed cynical surprise that I continue getting a big charge out of fighting for criminal clients. He said something along the lines that after practicing over ten years, I will see what he means; at the time, I was approaching fifteen years of criminal defense practice...
Thanks, Mildred and Richard Loving.
Posted on May 06, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Growing up in southern Connecticut, I recoiled in horror over the blatant, violent, and rampant racism that overtook so much of the South right into the 1960's. Confronting such a reality made me also recognize all the more the substantial extent of racism right in my Northeast United States backyard -- and, sadly, even my local backyard -- without the South's then-recent Jim Crow laws...
Horan's county bar tribute was not in my name, and never will be.
Posted on May 05, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When a criminal defense lawyer whom I highly respect and admire became the president of a Northern Virginia county bar association, I asked myself "why?". Why get involved in overseeing tributes to retiring judges merely because they are judges, tributes to lawyers merely because they are lawyers, and bench-bar dances to congratulate lawyers and judges all the more merely because they are lawyers and judges? Or, did this lawyer find a Doug Henning secret to overhaul the bar association to the image of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or the American Civil Liberties Union? I imagine the above-mentioned county bar association does more than arranging events and programs to congratulate lawyers and judges merely for being lawyers and judges...
How to reduce hunger and eating costs, and slash methane and fecal pollution?
Posted on May 04, 2008For food-producing animals. life is no picnic, and usually is incredibly short. (Image from USDA's website.) The global food price crisis is real and worsening. Many factors certainly contribute to the crisis, including rising energy costs (if only the globe's runaway appetite for fossil fuels could be tamed dramatically)...
Deborah Jean Palfrey: It should not have ended this way. Not the time for a media feeding frenzy.
Posted on May 02, 2008Awaiting federal sentencing for her prostitution ring conviction, Deborah Jean Palfrey took her life this week. On the one hand, Ms. Palfrey's suicide brings to mind how rampant is suicide in society, and how much desperation contributes to it. Ms...
"Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me." Farewell, Albert Hofman
Posted on May 01, 2008LSD image from DEA's website. Although I have never used LSD, it has had a profound indirect impact on me. Ram Dass --born Richard Alpert -- likely became Ram Dass only because he was booted out of Harvard with Timothy Leary for having conducted LSD experiments in the Sixties, so he had some time on his hands to make his trip to India that is recounted in his essential and tremendously influential Be Here Now...
"Sir, I have never been to Paterson, New Jersey."
Posted on April 30, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Ten years ago, lawyer Michael Tigar told the Washington Post that in interviewing to clerk for Justice William Brennan, Brennan asked Tigar "Did you attend a Communist Party training camp in Paterson, New Jersey?' " Tigar responded: "Sir, I have never been to Paterson, New Jersey...
Everyone is my teacher, including Justice Scalia on advocacy.
Posted on April 29, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). The Dalai Lama wisely said that "everyone is my teacher, starting with my enemy." As much as I often have sharp differences with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's judging -- see here and here, offset here and here -- he apparently has much that is beneficial to teach with co-author Bryan Garner's Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges...
Jon Katz seeks experienced legal assistant/paralegal.
Posted on April 29, 2008Underdog readers, please lend me a hand by spreading the news that our law firm has an immediate opening for an experienced litigation legal assistant/paralegal to work with me for criminal and First Amendment defense. Do you know the right candidate to work just a mile from our nation's capital while fighting for truth, justice, and the Constitutional way? Who better to help us find the right applicant than our Underdog readers? Our office sits across the greenest and most beautiful part of downtown Silver Spring, overlooking Woodside Park and its multi-foot fountain...
Praised be brave bloggers. Support their right to voice their views.
Posted on April 28, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website. Robust protection must be provided to free speech worldwide. That is a message I have been emphasizing and re-emphasizing for decades. Bloggers represent one of the biggest perceived dissident threats to repressive governments -- and all government repress people's rights to one degree or another -- by changing the pre-Internet, pre-computer government censorship model that went beyond jailing dissidents to depriving disfavored publishers of newsprint, printing presses, photocopiers, and publishing licenses; jamming radio broadcasts; and monitoring and jamming dissidents' telephone calls...
Keeping the wonder of the child within.
Posted on April 25, 2008Recently, my wife, 2-year-old boy and I went to a local puppet theater production from part of the Jungle Book. The walking puppeteers and production were very good; fortunately I have not yet had to have a Barney moment with my boy, who does not yet know who that annoying person is in a purple dragon suit and, worse, his entourage...
Moore no more - Never Moore.
Posted on April 24, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When the U.S. Supreme Court granted cert in Virginia v. Moore, _ U.S. _ (April 23, 2008), that did not sound good. Yesterday, five years after the Supreme Court unanimously crushed a great Maryland high court probable cause case like a potato chip, Maryland v...
When a jailer suffers the justice system's injustices / How prepared should a prosecutor be?
Posted on April 23, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When I started practicing criminal defense, I spoke with a very experienced criminal defense lawyer who told me that he had never prosecuted, but expected he would love it if he had such a job; this was a variation on a theme of some former prosecutors who recommended that I precede my criminal defense career by prosecuting, which I refused to do...
Have you been inundated with "undeliverable" emails?
Posted on April 23, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). Starting this past Monday night and running into yesterday morning, I got flooded with a few hundred e-mails -- many from Russia and elsewhere overseas, and many with attachments that I did not open -- proclaiming that e-mails I never sent were undeliverable...
Do you have any wisdom to share with me?
Posted on April 22, 2008Some of my greatest teachers have been within arms reach. The key is to know who are those teachers, to be open to new teachings, to have an idea of what teachings might be vital to receive and learn, and to welcome their teachings if they will share them...
In praise of Ernie Lewis.
Posted on April 21, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Every criminal defense lawyer should attend the National Criminal Defense College's Trial Practice Institute, known in shorthand as Macon for the program's location. At least when I attended in 1994, competition for each Macon slot was very high among state-level public defender lawyers...
Underdog is two years old / Happy 420
Posted on April 20, 2008Today, Underdog is two years old. We launched on 4/20/06.with this tribute to 420: Since our 2006 launching, Underdog has blogged every weekday, except for holidays and a few vacation days (sometimes I blog a few articles in advance of vacation days, and pre-program the articles to upload each day I am away)...
Some of this week's critical appellate opinions.
Posted on April 18, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) In addition to my April 17 review of the Supreme Court's Baze lethal injection case, here is a brief overview of some additional critical criminal appellate decisions from this week: - In Burgess v. U.S., _ U...
A vote for McCain will further shred civil liberties from the federal courts.
Posted on April 17, 2008Although I am not fond of Barack Obama and am less fond of Hillary Clinton, I absolutely oppose John McCain. For starters, he will keep the Iraq war going and will disrespect civil liberties more than Obama or Clinton will do. For starters, McCain undoubtedly will tap into the bucket of Bush I and Bush II appointees, who in general are more hostile to civil liberties than those who served under Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter...
Michael Maggio lives on.
Posted on April 16, 2008On February 10, I wrote about the passing of Michael Maggio, who was one of the people who inspired me to a legal career focusing on social justice. Above is a YouTube picture montage of Michael, created by his nephew. It provides some more of Michael's essence...
Palfrey. Spitzer. Enough already!
Posted on April 15, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Consenting adults should be able to engage in private sexual conduct without fear of prosecution, including when money exchanges hands for such activity, also known as prostitution. The United States Supreme Court has already recognized the broad hands-off approach the government must take with private consensual adult sexual activity...
What are your favorite cross examination publications?
Posted on April 14, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). On a trial lawyers' listserv recently, a member passed on a law student's request for publications for learning effective cross examination in criminal cases. While nothing replaces learning cross examination through live training and in the courtroom, some high quality publications do exist, including Larry Pozner's and Roger Dodd's presentations, videos, and cross examination book...
Cops and governments: Don't hand over torch security to China-supplied security.
Posted on April 13, 2008Too often, too many American police run roughshod over people's Constitutional rights. Why, then, did the San Francisco government permit a group of strongarm, China-trained, China-selected men (did sexism permeate the selection process?) to encircle and enforce the non-human Olympic flame's protection during the San Francisco leg of the Olympics torch relay? That just pours acid into the wounds already inflicted on civil liberties by the United States federal, state and local governments...
When a death penalty defendant smears feces on his face, in front of the jury.
Posted on April 11, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). The death penalty is a barbaric system thinly masquerading in the United States as something not barbaric. A legitimate debate among the most skilled of criminal defense lawyers has taken place before -- and probably still continues and rages -- about whether refusing to defend capital cases is more justified than defending them...
Connecting wtih our clients, with their fears, and ours.
Posted on April 10, 2008Rather than Charles Manson causing Alfred Hitchcock the most fear, it was getting stopped by the police for speeding. See Hitchcock at minute 3:38 of this video. Numerous potential criminal clients' first words to me include: "This is my first time seeking a lawyer...
One World / One Dream / Free Tibet!
Posted on April 09, 2008This week at the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco. Today, the Olympics torch relay approaches in San Francisco, This city is the sole United States location for the relay. Demonstrators for human rights in China will be out in force; hopefully all peaceful in the footsteps of Gandhi The sign unfurled in the above video from the Golden Gate Bridge reminds me of the sign held in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D...
Ooh, ooh that smell... Can you REALLY smell that smell?
Posted on April 09, 2008Bill of Rights (From public domain.) On April 8, 2008, Virginia's Court of Appeals affirmed a "plain smell/plain feel" search mainly on the basis of the alleged smell of unburnt marijuana confirmed by the feel of a bag of marijuana during a Terry weapons patdown...
Necessity defense prevails in Texas marijuana case.
Posted on April 08, 2008Image from public domain. Congratulations to medical merijuana user (for HIV symptoms) Tim Stevens, for winning his legal necessity defense against a marijuana possession prosecution. The Texas jury took only eleven minutes to deliberate. Marijuana is powerfully beneficial medicine...
Is a great trial lawyer only born, or can one be taught?
Posted on April 07, 2008Can great trial lawyering be taught, or is one only born with it? When I was a college senior struggling to figure out whether to go to law school or business school (I preferred saving the world with a law degree, but saw a business career as a safer way to financial security), and what to do with my life in either discipline ?- rather than taking a t?ai chi harmonious approach, not having learned t?ai chi yet -- a close relative panned my consideration of possibly being a trial lawyer...
Our website was temporarily down a few weekend hours.
Posted on April 06, 2008Our website -- and other websites using our sitehost -- was down on April 5 from around 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and on April 6 from around 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., as was our email during the latter April 6 timeframe. I await word from our sitehost how this happened...
Reporters and misquotes should not be like peas in a pod.
Posted on April 04, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website. As I have said previously, journalists are fallible humans, so lawyers should resist the temptation to treat them as confidants. One reason to beware of talking with journalists about a client's case is the risk of being misquoted, whether by direct misquote (e...
Court permits stop of a dark blue car despite lookout for a tan car.
Posted on April 04, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) During the 2002 Washington sniper manhunt, too many police abandoned the Fourth Amendment by stopping white truck after white truck, based on erroneous eyewitness tips. However, the now-convicted sniper defendants were found in a non-white sedan...
For the ten thousandth time, don't waive your right to remain silent.
Posted on April 02, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) Susan Smith apparently would not have been convicted had she not spoken to the police. Mark Castillo smoothed prosecutors' path towards a murder conviction -- unless he successfully argues insanity -- by calling the police this past weekend to tell them he had killed his three children, who lived in the town where my law firm is located...
When the spotlight turns to the judge and lawyer who did not foresee a homicide coming.
Posted on April 01, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) With the help of an attorney, Mark Castillo successfully convinced judges in Montgomery County, Maryland -- where our law firm sits and where I live -- to deny his wife's begging to the court to deny unsupervised visits between Mr...
Happy birthday, Cesar Chavez / Some staff out in celebration.
Posted on March 31, 2008Cesar Chavez: A champion for the empowerment of workers and immigrants. In honor of Cesar Chavez's March 31 birthday, most of our support staff will be out of the office in celebration. Our lawyers -- Jay and myself -- will be working. My assistant will be out, so please be patient while I get calls returned today and tomorrow; I will be in court most of today...
Return to Forever
Posted on March 30, 2008As I have said before, jazz is improvisation, spontaneity, feeling, being in the moment, tight interaction, entertainment, pushing the limits of excellence, creativity, expanding into new frontiers, fun, inspiration, and discovery. That also is what my criminal defense work is about, albeit with frustration frequently challenging the fun part...
The ambiguity of silence; the silencing of ambiguity.
Posted on March 27, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) Undoubtedly, cops have legions of tricks to convince suspects to give up their Miranda right to remain silent, starting with delaying an arrest and detention so as not to need to give such rights yet, proceeding to intimidating body language (including patting the cop's handgun and handcuffs), and proceeding to leaving the suspect the choice between languishing in a depressing, decrepit, smelly, and confining lockup while waiting the weekend to see a judicial officer for a bond review or to be taken on a McDonald's field trip with unlimited Coca Colas and fries in exchange for spilling the beans...
Macon and Dubois
Posted on March 26, 2008Yin Yang. Practicing life and law as a harmonious whole. The best multi-day trial lawyer seminars that I know of are the National Criminal Defense College's Trial Practice Institute (also known as Macon, which I attended in 1994 for two weeks) and the Trial Lawyers College in Dubois, Wyoming, which I attended for four weeks in 1995...
Criminal penalties for not reporting a felony that one has concealed.
Posted on March 25, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) Every once in awhile, the media reports on federal prosecutions for "misprision of felony". This blog entry seeks to debunk any notion that it is a crime merely to fail to report a crime, as opposed to concealing a felony cognizable by a federal court and not reporting it...
To self-execute or not self-execute, that is the question! Or is it?
Posted on March 25, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) Yesterday saw five of the most conservative of the Supreme Court justices refusing to require a state court system (in Texas) to let an International Court of Justice ruling cause Texas to deviate from its law that does not permit more than one state-level habeas corpus proceeding...
Dealing with fish tales from witnesses and politicians.
Posted on March 24, 2008For criminal defense lawyers, Hillary Clinton's Pinochiotales featured in the above YouTube video -- thanks to Jonathan Turley for posting it -- are but variations on themes that many clients and opposing witneses bring our way. Until I last checked around 7:00 p...
For the thousandth time, you don't need to consent to searches nor be interviewed by the cops.
Posted on March 23, 2008When I spoke on the March 11 "Know Your Rights" panel at the University of Maryland, I told the audience how often potential clients say "Oh, sh*t" or something to that effect when I play them the Busted video to explain that they gave up rights that they had no obligation to give up...
When the Recording industry sues for copyright infringement.
Posted on March 22, 2008The Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Copyright infringement brings the risk of significant money damages and, sometimes, criminal prosecution. The First Amendment fanatic that I am, I feel very comfortable defending people accused of copyright infringement...
Justice Alito surprises by strengthening Batson.
Posted on March 20, 2008Bill of Rights (Image from the public domain.) Once a person becomes a Supreme Court justice, no concern should exist about being pleasing enough to senators and the president to get onto a higher court (and getting elevated to a higher court or retained on the existing court, when it comes to some state courts, should not be a concern with any judge on any court); this is the highest court the United States ever has had...
Joe Ligotti leaves theguyfromboston.com. He is a price of a robust First Amendment.
Posted on March 19, 2008A price of a robust First Amendment is protecting Joe Ligotti's rants. (Bill of Rights image from the public domain.) Last December 21, I blogged about xenophobic (at best) Joe Ligotti, who posted his rants every Wednesday on www.theguyfromboston.com...
BUENAS NOTICIAS Y MALAS NOTICIAS EN MONTGOMERY COUNTY
Posted on March 18, 2008Image from NASA's website.Tuve el agrado de reunirme junto a otros abogados con el director del centro de detención ?7 Locks? y sus tenientes. El motivo de nuestra reunión fue la preocupación de parte de nosotros los abogados sobre la tendencia de los oficiales de detener ilegalmente a los emigrantes a causa de los ?Detainers? de la Migra...
Meeting Winter Soldiers, Amy Goodman, and James Yee.
Posted on March 18, 2008Amy Goodman and James Yee (March 18, 2008). Both photos by Jon Katz, Thanks to my brother Jeff Katz for manipulating these photos from the overexposed cell camera originals. How many people, when asked "What were you doing during [some major historical event]?" can only shrug their shoulders to say they missed it all, during the daily grind of work, the commercial monster, commuting, eating, sleeping, and beer? It is easy to do; my biggest motivator for doing the opposite comes from kicking myself for having chosen law school studies one night over what turned out to be my only life's chance to meet the late Abbie Hoffman, who spoke just two blocks away...
If your email to us bounced yesterday.
Posted on March 17, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). This follows up on this morning's blog entry about problems for a few hours yesterday afternoon and evening with e-mails to us bouncing back to e-senders. If you received an email that your email to us could not be delivered, it is best to re-send it to us...
Kudos to victorious pro se murder defendant Harold Stewart.
Posted on March 17, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Congratulations to pro se first degree murder defendant Harold J. Stewart not only for winning his retrial last month in Prince George's County, Maryland, Circuit Court, but also for doing so with a jury deliberation that lasted less than one hour...
Fighting for immigrants.
Posted on March 17, 2008Image from NASA's website. NOTE from Jon Katz: Our immigration partner, Jay Marks, has submitted some legal articles in Spanish to Radio Zol 99.1 FM, which has posted them directly to its website and to a blog set up for his articles, which address Maryland probation agents helping set up non-U...
Our email is working, after being down a few hours Sunday evening.
Posted on March 16, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). On rare occasions our email gets bottlenecked for one or more hours before we receive the messages, and on even rarer occasions it bounces back to the sender (that apparently has only happened twice in the two years we have had our current sitehost...
Tibet is but one reason to consider not watching the Chinese Olympics.
Posted on March 16, 2008Image from NASA's website. Every government violates human rights to one extent or another. Consequently, every choice for an Olympics game site involves the political, unless the games are limited to an Olympics-governed parcel of land set aside exclusively for all Olympics games...
When courts apply 1+1=3 to the Constitution.
Posted on March 13, 2008The Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) When I applied to law school, I was excited about the prospect of overlapping my then-future law career with my obsession with human rights work. I expected that part of my law studies would involve learning the language of the oppressive enemy, so that I could more successfully battle that enemy...
Boston College law professors say no to Mukasey.
Posted on March 13, 2008The Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) When then-attorney general Dick Thornburgh had been invited as my law school's commencement speaker, I was none too pleased. To me, Thornburgh's Justice Department continued where the Ed Meese Justice Department left off, with rampant disrespect for immigrants' rights, a First Amendment-trampling anti-obscenity campaign, advocating drug-testing of its employees, and, of course, continued assault on women's right to choose abortion...
Appearing tonight at U. Maryland on "Know Your Rights"
Posted on March 11, 2008Here is more information from my last week's blog entry about my panel participation tonight at the "Know Your Rights" program, March 11, 2008, 7:00 p.m. at the Prince George's Room, Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland. Here is the detailed event flyer...
When alleged child victims talk by videotape.
Posted on March 11, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) On March 10, Maryland's highest court addressed how prosecutors can get around Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), in trying to present at trial videotaped conversations between alleged child abuse victims and social workders and other government employees...
Time to legalize prostitution.
Posted on March 10, 2008Why is it news that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer may have been a john of high-priced prostitutes? Because that would amount to adultery? Because prostitution is illegal everywhere in the nation except parts of Nevada? Because it raises questions about where he found the funds for such high-priced indulgences? Because it would be hypocritical for this man who crusaded against prostitution to turn around and use their services himself? Like marijuana, prostitution needs to be legalized, along with gambling...
Have love songs made everyone love one another?
Posted on March 10, 2008Following are some Frank Zappa quotes relevant to this blog entry: There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. Frank Zappa responding to Tipper Gore's and friends' notion that explicit music lyrics would poison the nation's children...
Think before you drink tap water.
Posted on March 09, 2008I have long been grossed out about drinking tap water, which includes treated water originating from toilets. Filtering the water does not remove the toilet water. Spring water is not a perfect solution, not being regulated sufficiently to know the impurities that are there, and often (if not always) being chlorinated, just as tap water is chlorinated...
Power through fearlessness.
Posted on March 09, 2008Fearlessness is a critical component of living powerfully as a criminal defense lawyer and as a person. To be fearless, I take inspiration from t'ai chi master Cheng Man Ching, who spoke of overcoming our fears in terms of imagining that we are practicing t'ai chi while balanced atop a narrow pointed cliff...
Yow! I AM having fun.
Posted on March 07, 2008Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Zippy the Pinhead is my favorite comic strip. Zippy spews non sequiturs, repeatedly proclaims "Yow!", and asks "Are we having fun yet?" in this overcommercialized society that tells people they won't be glad til they use Dial...
Bigoted words from clients, politicians, and talk radio.
Posted on March 06, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) In the past, sometimes I would lash out when hearing bigoted words. I learned that such an approach might satisfy me that I had expressed counter-speech, but that my lashed-out words may have barely been heard by the person speaking bigoted words...
IRS: Not so fast claiming tax evasion.
Posted on March 05, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Kudos to the United States Supreme Court for unanimously reversing a conviction for tax evasion and filing a false income tax return, where defendant Michael Boulware claimed his company had no earnings or profits for the tax years in question, and asserted the defense of a return on capital (i...
Jon Katz appearing on "Know Your Rights" panel.
Posted on March 05, 2008Too many clients come to me after having urinated away too many of their rights with the police. Many say they did not know the relevant rights listed in our Know Your Rights webpage and demonstrated in the Busted video. I try to minimize such knowledge lapses by linking our Know Your Rights page to every page on our website...
"NO TRESPASSING" signs be damned in 4th Amend. challenges?
Posted on March 05, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) On February 28, 2008, Maryland's intermediate appellete court proclaimed that so long as the cops are on legitimate business, they can knock (and keep on knocking -- even banging, probably -- for minutes on end) in an effort to talk with suspects...
Bloggers and webmasters: Lend me your ears.
Posted on March 04, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). To my fellow bloggers and webmasters, and to Internet tekkies: As you know from my earlier post, our entire website and blog were down during primetime this morning when a server was down at our websitehosting company...
Our site was down for an hour; now it is back.
Posted on March 04, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). Our law firm's website hosting company is reliable, to the extent that is possible for shared sitehosting without redundant servers to keep our blog, website, and email (to our *@markskatz...
Of Monty Python, Hormel, and unsolicited bulk email.
Posted on March 03, 2008Technical difficulties interfered with my including the following addendum to my blog entry this morning about the 4-3 Virginia Supreme Court decision upholding Jeremy Jaynes's nine-year spam sentence: In the face of this wrongly-decided Jaynes opinion, I offer the following spam humor...
Return of the Winter Soldier Investigation
Posted on March 03, 2008The vast majority of American soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere not only do not recall the countless American military atrocities in Vietnam as they happened, but were not even born yet. What a splendid way for the military to have recruited with a cleansed slate on Vietnam, let alone the invasions of Grenada and Panama, and the list goes on...
Four of seven Virginia Supreme Court judges uphold First-Amendment-violative criminal spam law.
Posted on March 02, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). All spammers' eyes should be on Virginia -- where a high percentage of computer crime cases are prosecuted, due to Virginia's housing such major computer servers as America Online's -- after its Supreme Court wrongfully upheld the state's criminal anti-spam law that prohibits sending out bulk e-mail that hide the identify of the sender...
Revolutionary Communist Party and I.
Posted on March 01, 2008My life in and out of the law practice has brought me in contact with many interesting people, including those with whom I vehemently disagree. The Revolutionary Communist Party is a group with which I very much disagree. Nevertheless, I have had two very interesting interactions with some members of this Maoist communist group...
Wikileaks.org is back.
Posted on March 01, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). Following up on my February 24 blog entry, my closer reading shows that the permanend injunction issued for the Wikileaks case plaintiffs was by consent of one of the defendants, but not by Wikileaks...
Meeting Revolutionary Communist Party members
Posted on March 01, 2008My life in and out of the law practice has brought me in contact with many interesting people, including those with whom I vehemently disagree. The Revolutionary Communist Party is a group with which I very much disagree. Nevertheless, I have had two very interesting interactions with some members of this Maoist communist group...
The Supremes on legal writing and advocacy.
Posted on February 28, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Thanks, Scott Greenfield, for posting this link to interviews of eight Supreme Court justices talking about appellate writing and advocacy. Regardless of one's personal opinion about a particular judge, justice or court system, when a lawyer chooses to enter the courtroom arena, the lawyer must know the judge...
One percent of adults are behind bars in America.
Posted on February 28, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) One percent of adults are behind bars in the United States (see the 2008 Pew Charitable Trust report here and a related news article here). Imagine the financial, psychological, and social drain illustrated by such a statistic...
"Chicago 10" on screen.
Posted on February 27, 2008Among my many influences from the Sixties are the Chicago Seven/Eight trial (the number of trial defendants went to seven after Bobby Seale was separated from the remaining defendants, but not before the trial judge ordered him bound and gagged); Ram Dass and his heavily influential Be Here Now; Bhagavan Das, who introduced Ram Dass to being here now; and Jack Kerouac, whose 1950's On the Road approach to life and writings heavily influenced the hippie movement...
The real McCoy
Posted on February 27, 2008A Jon Katz(l) and the legendary McCoy Tyner (r) (Thanks to my brother Jeff Katz for manipulating this photo from the underexposed cell camera original.) One thing I love about digital photography is that it reduces the need for using gelatin (ordinarily from slaughtered animals), which is common in the printing of photographs from film...
May Ruark's prosecution make prosecutors more sensitive about collateral consequences.
Posted on February 26, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Wicomico County, Maryland, chief prosecutor Davis Ruark risks losing his seventeen-year post if convicted for his February 22 arrest for drunk driving and possessing a handgun while under the influence of alcohol...
Thanks and goodbye, Percy Julian.
Posted on February 26, 2008When I joined the First Amendment Lawyers Association in 2001, one of the longtime members who stood out as a welcoming figure was Percy L. Julian, Jr. He came across as a skilled lawyer with no big ego. Sadly, Percy died this past Sunday, at 67. Fellow FALA member Jeff Scott Olson and close friend to Percy said: "He was a model for other lawyers in how to be a good lawyer and a kind heart at the same time," and "how to live a full, full life...
Impeachment with prior inconsistent statements.
Posted on February 25, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) On February 7, 2008, Maryland's intermediate appellate court issued a lengthy opinion on the rules governing the admission into evidence of a witness's prior inconsistent statements for impeachment purposes...
This week in D.C.: "Practicing Human Rights Law in America"
Posted on February 25, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Thanks to a listserv member for announcing this week's seminar on "Practicing Human Rights Law in America," which runs February 25-28 at the George Washington University Law School (from where I graduated) in Washington, D...
When prosecutors get prosecuted.
Posted on February 25, 2008The Bill of Rights.should apply no more nor more less to an arrested prosecutor than to anyone else. (Image from the public domain.) Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto./I am human: nothing human is alien to me - Publius Terence. So many prosecutors and cops so often sneer when I make arguments to them or to sentencing judges in the above vein...
Where's the sleight-of-hand man's third hand?
Posted on February 24, 2008This 2005 video shows how McCoy Tyner plays as if he had a third hand, including at the 6:45 through 7:40 minute mark. My inextricably intertwined connection to jazz and criminal defense practice is explained here. My related deepening fascination with John Coltrane and his music are covered here...
Wikileaks continues at .cx domain.
Posted on February 23, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). On February 15, 2008, a federal trial judge in San Francisco ordered that wikileaks.org be closed. Although wikileaks.org no longer functions -- after its sitehost apparently carried out the judge's order to close down the site -- wikileaks...
To ride or not to ride?
Posted on February 23, 2008This video retraces part of Robert Pirsig's route recounted in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, on the very R60 ridden by John Sutherland along with Pirsig. NOTE: As is sometimes more common on weekends than the rest of the week, today's blog entry is less law-related, which is the side of my life that helps enrich the law practice side of my life...
Police abuse in Shreveport.
Posted on February 21, 2008The only silver lining I know of about this police station beating is that the assaulting police officer was terminated. Thanks to Jonathan Turley for covering this story. Jon Katz.
When an arrest is on an inapplicable roadway.
Posted on February 20, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). In driving-related prosecutions, an initial critical question is whether the driving was on a roadway that even applies to the criminal statute involved. The analysis starts with the text of the applicable criminal statute (e...
How many journalists is the U.S. holding?
Posted on February 20, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) The United States military learned much from the negative Vietnam War news coverage, to make more effective efforts at making people think subsequent wars are more like detached Space Invaders games than the bloody scenes of carnage they really are...
Confessions are inadmissible without interpreters' testimony.
Posted on February 19, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Foreign language interpretation is an art rather than a precise science (which helps explain why the Chevy Nova sold so poorly in Latin America, seeing that "no va" means "no go"). Consequently, it would seem obvious that suspects' statements made through a foreign language interpreter are inadmissible against the suspect at trial if the interpreter does not testify to said statements...
Fifth Amendment protects right to withhold computer password.
Posted on February 18, 2008Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website). The Fifth Amendment protects one from disclosing his or her computer password. In re Grand Jury Subpoena (Boucher), 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87951 (D. Vt. Nov. 29, 2007) ) (Niedermeier, Mag...
Marijuana myth-smasher John Morgan joins co-conspirator Lynn Zimmer in the hereafter.
Posted on February 18, 2008Image from public domain. John P. Morgan, M.D., was a pharmacology professor and advocate for marijuana legalization. With the late Lynn Zimmer, he wrote Marijuana Myths Marijuana Facts: A Review Of The Scientific Evidence (Lindesmith Center), going head on against such myths as the notion that marijuana is a gateway to more harmful drugs...
ACP recognizes benefits of medical marijuana.
Posted on February 17, 2008Image from public domain. In a recent position paper, the American College of Physicians recognized real benefits of medical marijuana, called for continuing research, and acknowledged the importance of rescheduling marijuana from its Schedule I status...
Here a scanner, there a scanner, everywhere a scanner scanner.
Posted on February 16, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) An entire generation of people now as old as their twenties and older grew up with so many intrusions into their privacy that too many of them probably accept such a state of affairs unquestioningly, and thus are more willing to impose the same oppression on others...
Tragedy at Northern Illinois University
Posted on February 14, 2008Yesterday's tragic shooting at Northern Illinois University has been widely covered in the news. My initial inclination was to limit this blog entry to express my horror over yesterday's violence and to express my sympathy to the shooting victims and their loved ones...
In Maryland, subsequent offender papers can't be filed for the first time on an appeal to Circuit Court.
Posted on February 14, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). In Maryland, District Court prosecutors in the larger counties get inundated with cases, to the point that sometimes they might inadvertently overlook filing timely pretrial subsequent offender notices while the case is in District Court...
Scalia and torture.
Posted on February 14, 2008Constitutional rights seem to be tortured enough by Justice Scalia's votes and pen. Now -- thanks to Scott Greenfield for posting on this -- we have an audio where he leaves open the possibility of permitting government torture in some instances. Chilling...
Keep the light shining on cops.
Posted on February 13, 2008On February 12 came the story about the Baltimore cop assaulting a teen in broad daylight at a major tourist attraction. Also on February 12 came the story of the Florida deputy who dumped a quadriplegic from his wheelchair (thanks to Jonathan Turley for blogging on this atrocity)...
Something about Valentine's Day, courts, and sexual devices.
Posted on February 13, 2008Molly Ivins on the stupidity of Texas's ban on the sale of sexual devices. She did not live to see the Fifth Circuit's ban on this ban. Happy Valentine's day. When we set aside the commercial hype around the holiday, it is a day and state of mind that focuses on the power of loving and caring, and thus -- when practiced daily -- a way to reverse the violence, nastiness and heartlessness that has run rampant in human society since the beginning...
People are humans, not aliens, Part II.
Posted on February 12, 2008Cesar Chavez: A champion for the empowerment of workers and immigrants. In May 2007, I decried the continuing and widespread use of the terms "illegal aliens" and "illegals". After a fellow criminal defense listserv member disagreed with my view against using the term "illegal aliens" (he apparently does not say "illegals"), I decided to see the extent to which statutes and regulations use the phrase "illegal alien," and was saddened to learn how frequently it is used, including in the following instances: - A federal statute provides for reimbursing states for incarcerating "illegal aliens" after conviction for a felony...
If Mickey Mouse were a criminal court judge.
Posted on February 12, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Yesterday, the Lansing State Journal interviewed me about the legitimacy of a disciplinary action against students where not all the disciplinary board members had been legitimately seated in their positions...
Shine the light on cops throughout the day.
Posted on February 12, 2008Here's another example why people should shine the light of day on police abuse with their cameraphones, and why strong legal protections need to be in place for videotaping, photographing, and recording police. This abortion of justice by this now-suspended cop took place in broad daylight near Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which ordinarily is swarming with visitors, working people, and car traffic throughout daylight hours...
Six September 11 suspects to have military death penalty trials.
Posted on February 11, 2008In a secret military commission tribunal system where military-employed criminal defense lawyers are encouraged to pretend to defend, United States military prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against six September 11 suspects who are held in Guantanamo, Cuba...
Tom Lantos leaves the planet.
Posted on February 11, 2008Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) When it comes to politicians, I ordinarily have looked at the glass as more than half empty than the other way around. Until the age of fourteen or so (born in 1963), I was optimistic that Nixon was an abberration and that the political system could be made better than in Nixon's image...
Randazza returns with a vengeance.
Posted on February 10, 2008Image from Library of Congress's website. Sometimes I am too spare in praising others. Of course, when I do praise, I clearly mean it. Two or three years ago -- through the First Amendment Lawyers Association's listserv -- I met Marc Randazza, a First Amendment lawyer in Florida who blogs expletives more often than I, because, like I, he often gets fed up with all the times that other people urinate on others' rights...
Toking photo keeps Amy Winehouse from the Grammys?
Posted on February 10, 2008Image from public domain. Tonight will air portions of the fiftieth Grammy awards. I say portions, because the annual awards are notorious for going off-camera and offstage for giving awards for high quality music that draws limited mass appeal. However, being wildly popular does not automatically guarantee a Grammy stage spot for non-United States citizens suspected of committing drug crimes, even if the suspected activity is as minor as smoking marijuana...
Michael Maggio leaves the planet.
Posted on February 10, 2008Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Today, Michael Maggio passed away. The world is all the poorer for it. In 1987 during my second year of law school, I was obsessing over how to overlap my goal of doing good with my law degree while not being relegated too long by my earnings to living in a group house and eating only rice and beans for dinner; of course, many honorable pursuits do not enable living much more luxuriously than with rice and beans...
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