Recent Articles

A Long, Long Year

December 22, 2009 04:22

So, this year is drawing to a close. I have tried:Two MurdersAn Aggravated Sexual BatteryAn Aggravated SodomyA Rape/Aggravated AssaultAn Armed RobberyA Burglaryand ... something else.I tried and retried a murder with my boss as second chair. I've closed somewhere near 325 cases. I have been tired...

Too Busy

August 10, 2009 02:57

I've tried four cases so far this year of my own, and sat second chair on the trial and retrial of another. Tomorrow, I'll probably pick a jury on a complicated, challenging child molestation. My opinion is that we will be fighting a long, uphill battle, yet the client wants to charge forward.There...

Frustration

June 04, 2009 15:45

The delivery of mental health services has largley transferred to the criminal justice system: for instance, the L.A. County jail has the largest mental health hospital in the world. As a result, people are arrested for petty crime, such as criminal trespass or disorderly conduct, and sitting in...

Long time, no post

June 18, 2008 03:00

I've got a jury deliberating on a rape case, just now. They went out on Monday at 1:45 and by 3:30 they sent out a note saying that they were deadlocked. They twice sent out notes that they were "deadlocked," today. In the last, they even said that they were "hopelessly deadlocked."The thing is,...

Belated update

January 29, 2008 02:13

The jury was out for about 8 hours. They convicted my guy of 3 counts of robbery by intimidation, 4 counts of aggravated assault, hung on the possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and acquitted on the 3 armed robbery counts. The verdict is inconsistent, at the least -- they...

Jury's out

January 11, 2008 04:40

I tried a armed robbery/aggravated assault this week. I think it is a fairly good case, despite what the story sounds like at first blush. Four guys get robbed, allegedly by three other guys, and a cop just happens to roll buy and interrupt it. My guy runs. But everything was very confused in the...

Boggled

January 04, 2008 03:53

Client: Well, are they going to dismiss the case?Me: No, no, I don't think so. They want a trial or a plea.Client: There's no way that they're going to win -- they know that they don't have any evidence. I need to get home.Me: Well, what concerns me is that the dude is going to say that you...

And the Judges always think we're nuts

December 22, 2007 23:52

An officer in a neighboring jursdiction started a blog and it apparently lies now in neglect, as it seems most blogs do.What's interesting about this blog is that it is written from the perspective of the cop out on the street. It traces his journey through the academy and his application for a job...

Ugh.

December 20, 2007 00:18

My Residential Mortgage Fraud client is scheduled for sentencing tomorrow. Apparently, the Attorney General's office is going to recommend two years to serve, followed by eight years of probation. (10 do 2, in local parlance.) That seems a bit excessive to me. But then it probably should, given...

Progress and disappointment

December 16, 2007 20:56

The past six weeks have brought a whole new layer of sophistication to my practice. I havemade widespread use of our investigators, and thank god for themhired a private psychologist to perform a competency evaluation on a client, concerned not about mental illness but about mental statushired a...