Criminal Law

Cops: Stop shredding the Constitution with hunches.

Posted on May 11, 2009
Cops 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, 2009
  Once 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, 2009
Colman 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, 2009
The 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...

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When cops break the law in seeking convictions.

Posted on May 08, 2009
Where 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, 2009
  To 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, 2009
Inadmissible 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, 2009
Image 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, 2009
Welcome 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, 2009
  A 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, 2009
On 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, 2009
In 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, 2009
Jun 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, 2009
SunWolf 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, 2009
Neither 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
Praised 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, 2009
Twitter 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, 2009
 Bill 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, 2009
Computer 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, 2009
Computer 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, 2009
 As 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, 2009
Copyright  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, 2009
Supreme 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, 2009
Not 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, 2009
Among 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, 2009
When 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, 2009
 Cecil 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, 2009
Courtesy 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, 2009
Thanks 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...

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