Criminal Law

SuperLawyers renews me on its Washington, D.C., list.

Posted on March 20, 2009
Jonathan 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.

Posted on March 20, 2009
html,body { border: 0px; } body { font-size: 10pt; padding: 10px; color: #333333; background-color: #FAFFFF; font-size: 9.5pt; font-weight: normal; font-family: verdana, arial, geneva, helvetica, sans-serif; direction: ltr; } /** Embedded images with the s9y image manager **/ ...

White House does welcome FOIA about-face / Judge gives web-only newsletter media status under FOIA.

Posted on March 20, 2009
Curiously, 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, 2009
Earlier today, I posted about our email bottleneck. The problem has been solved. Thanks to our sitehost for fixing it.

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

To choose a lawyer.

Posted on March 19, 2009
Many 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, 2009
Police 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, 2009
What 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, 2009
Imagine 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, 2009
On 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, 2009
On 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, 2009
Maryland'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, 2009
Last 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
Stanley 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, 2009
Hesitant 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, 2009

Cops are not permitted to make up law as they go along.

Posted on March 06, 2009

Bloggers and listserv hosts can escape liability for libelous third-party comments.

Posted on March 05, 2009

People's lawyers invited to Pennsylvania March 20-22 Trial Lawyers College program

Posted on March 04, 2009

Marylanders: Senate vote on death penalty repeal coming as early as first thing March 4.

Posted on March 03, 2009

Feds to finally stop raids where medical marijuana is legal.

Posted on March 02, 2009

Paul Kay departs the planet.

Posted on March 01, 2009

Bloggers: Upload police beating videos.

Posted on March 01, 2009

Marylanders: Urge your legislators to support abolition of the death penalty.

Posted on February 27, 2009

How did Daniel Ellsberg avoid a conviction?

Posted on February 26, 2009

You are what you wipe with?

Posted on February 25, 2009
This 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, 2009
Bill 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, 2009
 Bill 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, 2009
One 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, 2009
 Bill 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...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.