More About Talking To a Lawyer When Arrested
A few weeks ago, I wrote about an organization called First Defense Legal Aid that provides legal advice to people arrested or detained by the Chicago Police, just by calling 1-800-LAW-REP-4. Criminal defense lawyer Matt Haiduk (whose blog I quoted in the original post) adds this note in a comment: …don’t ever think it’s as [...]
Fitzgerald’s Law
Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield has been smacking around former federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, because Scott’s not happy with the advice Fitzgerald is giving to some corporate clients. At times, Scott seems puzzled by the things Fitzgerald is saying (although I suspect Scott is faking to highlight the outrageousness). Here are some summaries of [...]
1-800-LAW-REP-4
Here’s a phone number worth memorizing if you live in Chicago: 1-800-LAW-REP-4 It sounds like marketing for some kind of cheesy lawyer, but it’s actually an 18-year old program that is supporting our Sixth Amendment right to counsel by filling in some of the gaps surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which [...]
The Outrageous Park Doctrine
For some reason, the folks at Public Citizen sent me a hardcopy of their Health Letter, and at the back they have a feature titled “Outrage of the Month!” This month’s example titled “More About Drug Industry Lawlessness” by Sidney M. Wolfe, M.D. is about regulatory violations by pharmaceutical companies, and it’s definitely outrageous, but [...]
What the Death Penalty Deters
Jeff Gamso has an interesting post today about what may be the most common use of the death penalty: And there’s Jared Lee Loughner who might have been found insane rather than guilty of murder and locked away for the rest of his life after a trial rather than quickly pleading guilty and getting locked [...]
Christopher Darden is Apparently Still a Little Bitter
Seventeen years after O.J. Simpson got away with murder, prosecutor Christopher Darden announces he’s figured out why he lost: Former Los Angeles deputy district attorney Christopher Darden on Thursday accused Simpson’s defense lawyer, the late Johnnie Cochran, of “manipulating” one of the infamous gloves that the prosecution said linked Simpson to the grisly double murder [...]
Scott Andringa Won’t Be a Judge After All
So here’s a bit of good news: In the race to succeed longtime Pinellas County Judge Henry Andringa, Cathy McKyton defeated Scott Andringa. Scott Andringa is Henry Andringa’s son. I don’t know anything about Cathy McKyton, except that Brian Tannebaum supported her, which means she probably isn’t a complete tool. On the other hand, I [...]
An Urgent Legal Question About Ladies’ Undergarments
Lawyers in the blogosphere are always complaining that having a presence on the internet doesn’t bring them more business, just more people asking for free legal advice. Today, while cleaning out a bunch of spam email, I discovered that somebody was asking me for free legal advice. Since I’m not a lawyer in any way, [...]
Dangers of Searching for a DUI Lawyer Online
If you’ve ever tried to use Google to find a lawyer for a DUI or traffic offense, you’ve probably stumbled across one of those relentlessly SEO optimized sites that isn’t actually a law firm but promises to put you in touch with a lawyer. Basically, they’re referral services. This always seemed annoying but harmless to [...]
TOS OMG
Remember Lori Drew? She’s the woman who used MySpace to play a very unkind trick on a teenage girl named Megan Meier, who killed herself. Prosecutors in Missouri, where Drew and Meier both lived, didn’t prosecute her for this, probably because saying mean things to little girls isn’t a criminal act. That didn’t stop grandstanding [...]
Towards a Definition of Reasonable Doubt: A Modest Proposal
I’m not sure, but I think I may have just taken a huge step toward solving one of the toughest problems in criminal law: The meaning of reasonable doubt. It is famously difficult to define this standard for members of the jury, which is a problem, because they’re supposed to use it to decide if [...]
Stalin In the Courtroom
Jamison Koehler takes on the topic of accepting responsibility. I read about it all the time in crime stories and legal blogs: The defendant is convicted, and the severity of his sentence depends on a number of factors, one of which is “accepting responsibility” for his crime. Jamison saw a case where it went like [...]
Good Guys Don’t Suborn False Confessions
There’s a lovely case over at Simple Justice today. According to the news story, it went something like this: A guy was murdered, and a man named Douglas Warney came forward to police saying he knew something about the victim. Police interrogated him, and he apparently confessed, providing eleven details about the murder that only [...]
Oh My God, Chicago Has a Criminal Defense Blogger!
Back in July of 2009, I declared myself the Greatest Criminal Defense Blogger in Chicago. This was not a boast, it was a lament. I am not a lawyer, and most of my posts have nothing to do with criminal defense. Yet I seemed to be blogging more about criminal defense than any actual Chicago [...]
Can’t Deduct Defense?
It’s a good question, really… Over at Popehat, Patrick has this to say about Joel Rosenberg’s defense fund: Note that this is not tax-deductible. The government does not encourage its subjects to stand up for the blameless. Well, why the hell not? As far as I can tell, the tax rule for legal expenses is [...]
Smell the Retaliation
Scott Greenfield is more familiar than I with the history of Joel Rosenberg’s recent conflicts with the Minneapolis police department, leading up to Joel’s arrest, and in his latest post Scott offers this important bit of background: For a fellow who sincerely believes in principles, there comes a point, a threshold if you will, where he [...]
Infobleg – Suing Government Contractors?
I need to beg my legal readers for some information. I’ve been arguing with some guy in another blog’s comments that if the airport passenger checkpoints were operated by private security firms instead of a government agency, we’d have a better chance of suing the screeners when they do something wrong. My argument is based [...]
Turkey Tom Lawsuit
It’s still October, but it’s not too early to get into a Thanksgiving atmosphere. Jimmy John’s is suing Halsted Street Deli (a local sandwich shop here in Chicago) over the names of two sandwiches. Jimmy John’s uses the sandwich names “Turkey Tom” and “Hunter’s Club” while Halsted Street Deli uses “Tom Turkey” and “Hunt Club”. I don’t [...]
Not Even Close
Deep inside the cynical exterior of a Miami criminal defense lawyer…beats the heart of a true believer. Brian Tannebaum wins his case, and shows us that sometimes not even the federal government can send a man to prison for doing nothing wrong. This was not about an acquittal, a framed verdict form on an office [...]
Of Criminal Defense and Flushing Toilets
There’s been a lot of discussion in the criminal defense bloggosphere about the role of the criminal defense lawyer. Basically, prosecutors are supposedly charged with seeking justice. The question naturally arises then, are criminal defense lawyers also supposed to seek justice? And if so, what is their duty to their client? As near as I [...]