Legal

DUI lawyer Lawrence Taylor has been writing for a while about the resistance by breathalyzer manufacturers to various legal attempts by defense lawyers to get a peek at the source code for software that controls the machines. As a civil libertarian and software developer, I have mixed feelings about this. I can certainly understand why the defense would want to know more … [Read more...] about Who Should See Breathalyzer Source Code?

I remember back when I was a kid and I did something wrong, sometimes my parents would handle it separately, and I'd get yelled at or punished by both of them for the same misdeed. It seemed so unfair. Lawmakers do much the same thing. Only instead of doing it at the same time, they do it one after another. Not a year goes by that my state legislators don't bump up the … [Read more...] about Evil Lawmaking: Piling On

In a post a few weeks ago, I pointed out that Mississippi dentist Dr. Michael West, a bite mark analyst who often gives expert testimony in criminal trials, isn't much of a scientist. I based my conclusion on Radley Balko's Reason article, which included this description of West's methodology: But even in an already imprecise field, Dr. Michael West has taken forensic … [Read more...] about Forensic Testing and the Single Experimenter

Yesterday I wrote about the evils of free punishment, which tempts lawmakers into punishing people just because they can. But free punishment is just the low endpoint of a much bigger problem: Profitable punishment, also known as fines. There's nothing inherently evil about fining wrongdoers, but it carries the risk of turning law enforcement into a profit-making operation … [Read more...] about Evil Lawmaking: Profitable Punishment

About a month ago, Gideon at a public defender posted a poll for his fellow criminal defense lawyers to pick the "most evil legal principle". Being lawyers, Gideon and his readers are concerned with real legal principles, like harmless error and reasonable suspicion. I'm more concerned with the principles used by legislatures when creating new criminal laws. One of the … [Read more...] about Evil Lawmaking: Free Punishment