Apparently yesterday was sentencing hell day at Simple Justice.First up, Scott reminds us of the case of Antwuan Ball, Joseph Jones, and Desmond Thurston who were accused of engaging in a massive drug dealing conspiracy. The case went to a jury trial, and they beat all of the conspiracy charges. The jury only found them guilty of some relatively small-time drug … [Read more...] about Lessons in Allocution and Acquitted Conduct
A Few Ways to Look At Criminal Lawyers
(This post started with a few ideas, and then got all long and rambling, but I don't have time to make it shorter. Sorry.)A few years ago I had a toothache, and I made an emergency appointment with my dentist.Her diagnosis was that the tooth's pulp was infected around the nerve, and her treatment procedure required a lot of painstaking work using her carefully-honed … [Read more...] about A Few Ways to Look At Criminal Lawyers
The Forensic Geology Series – Review
When I don't have any new novels from my favorite major authors, I like to browse the cheap e-books at Amazon to try to find new authors. Many of them turn out to be unappealing -- not so much because they are badly written but because, like most indie art, they have a somewhat narrow appeal. Of course, when that narrow appeal is aimed straight at me, it's like digging a random … [Read more...] about The Forensic Geology Series – Review
Scattershot 2014-02-28
Random shots around the web:What is it with Illinois and bizarre double jeopardy cases? In the 1990's we had the Harry Aleman murder trial do-over which wiped out his earlier acquittal (a classic Chicago tale), and now the state is requesting to re-try Esteban Martinez after refusing to present its case in the first trial. (Gideon covers it too.)Greenwald and Snowden … [Read more...] about Scattershot 2014-02-28
Why Helix Kinda Sucks
(Spoiler Alert for potentially all 8 Helix episodes to date.)I loved the Andromeda Strain, both the book and the movie, and so I'm always willing to give a good plague story a try, which is why I really wanted to like Helix, the new series on SyFy, about a CDC team sent to investigate a mysterious situation at a biological research complex somewhere in the … [Read more...] about Why Helix Kinda Sucks