Recent Articles

Why isn't anyone else responsible

August 25, 2010 14:44

Scott Greenfield recently talked about a case in Missouri where a defendant was finally released after they concluded State officials didn't have jurisdiction to prosecute the burglary of a  post office. Unfortunately, it took the State more than 15 years to recognize this - oops....

What have we learned from exonerations? - apparently nothing

August 15, 2010 15:44

Michael Green walked out of a Harris county courtroom several weeks after spending 27 years for a rape he didn't commit. The story was a familiar - a bad eyewitness identification, disproved by DNA evidence. The story is familiar because most of the exoneration involved bad ID's. That's not...

What happened to "fundamental fairness"

August 11, 2010 13:33

I've been working on a brief involving the disclosure of an informant's identity. The Supreme Court set forth the law on the issue back in 1957 - in a a case called Rovario v. United States. This post is not a discussion of the law - instead, it's a comment on how much things have changed over the...

Gaming the system - it doesn't work

July 27, 2010 13:37

Every criminal defense lawyer has had clients who think they know more than anyone else, and refuse to acknowledge reality. For reasons I can't explain, they are usually the clients who are obviously guilty - and there is no defense. There are multiple eyewitnesses, or physical evidence, a...

Bradley to Governor - Mission on target,

July 24, 2010 18:41

As expected, the Texas Forensic Science Commission meeting yesterday has been extensively. I believe the initial strategy was to delay, and hope interest in Willingham would die down. Thanks to the efforts of numerous groups, that has not happened. Apparently the governor's office finally realized...

Attacking the principles of breath testing

July 18, 2010 20:39

This is my second post on articles from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Journal. An article that jumped out immediately was "Paradigm Shift for the Alcohol Breath Test" by Michael P. Hlastala.  Breath testing was developed to determine a person's blood alcohol level. All...

More problems with fingerprints

July 18, 2010 18:31

I'm one of the newest members of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and was anxiously waiting for my first journal. It arrived several weeks ago - in 2 volumes - and I started looking at the articles. Most are highly technically - but there are a few that deal with criminal justice issues....

Who accredits the accreditors?

July 16, 2010 13:31

I was going to talk about the ridiculousness about the recent memo from the Texas Forensic Science Commission.  Basically, the memo says they don't have jurisdiction to do anything. They concluded that they do not have "discretion or power to investigate any and every complainant alleging...

What to Expect on a McLennan County DWI

July 01, 2010 15:24

You might think a DWI is a DWI no matter where you get it. To a certain extent that is right, but a post several weeks by Robert Guest started me thinking about  the differences in handling DWI cases among different counties. Robert was talking about DWI cases in Kaufman County, and Imuch...

Why innocence shouldn't be in the hands of politicians

June 14, 2010 23:52

I'm sure it was a nightmare, and the source of more than a few sleepless nights. The lawyer's client admitted a murder - a murder someone else had been convicted of, and was serving time. For obvious reasons, the client didn't want that admission disclosed - the lawyer - Thomas O'Toole -had no...