Flawging at straws

Once upon a time a Texas blawger wrote for the sake of writing. His posts were informative and you could walk away with a bit more information tucked in that file cabinet in the back part of your brain.

Then he began letting his law partners contribute to his blawg and the drek began flowing.

The blawg in question is Liberty and Justice for Y'all. The blawg was the brainchild of Brandon Barnett. At some point he seems to have lost steam. Maybe it was the workload. Maybe it was he just ran out of things to say.

The other day a new post appeared on the blawg. It was written by his partner Jason Howard and I'm willing to bet that Mr. Howard was formerly employed as a prosecutor. I would also imagine that his former job is a major marketing point for Mr. Howard.

Why that matters to you, the client, is because when you look to hire a criminal defense attorney, you try to find one whom you believe knows not only the law but more importantly the procedure. 

Seeing as how the criminal justice system in Texas is adversarial (meaning two sides pitted against one another), wouldn’t you want the benefit of having an attorney that knows both sides rather than just one?

Of course you would.  Here’s why.  Defense attorneys that previously worked as prosecutors are going to be able to better recognize the value (or lack thereof) in cases where other defense attorneys without that experience would not.  In short, prior prosecutors know a good case for the state when they see one.  More importantly, they know when a case is dog $&*%.

I don't know how to break this to Mr. Howard, but even those of us who have never made a living trying to deprive our fellow citizens of their liberty know a bullshit case when we see it. If Mr. Howard has forgotten, one of the skills we were taught in law school was to recognize the arguments on both sides of the case. Anticipating the other side's arguments is the best way to build your own case.

And it doesn't take being a former prosecutor to do that.

Let's face it, the real reason a defense attorney highlights the fact he worked for as a prosecutor is to give the impression to a defendant that the attorney can cash in some chits with the DA. I know people in the office. They're my friends and my drinking buddies. I can trade my friendship for a sweet deal for you.

Attorneys that have always worked as defense attorneys don’t have the benefit of seeing firsthand the perspective of prosecutors.  Instead, they often can’t see past the defense side of the case.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not so short-sighted that I think the only good defense attorneys are ones that have been prosecutors.  I'm just saying that there are a lot of advantages to hiring a prior prosecutor.

Nope. You just happen to have worked side-by-side with a number of the folks wearing the black hats. You've had more contact with the judge and you've laughed at more bad jokes because, well, he's the judge. You're reaching out for that desperate defendant who's looking for a miracle and who'll be more than happy to hire someone who promises to sell out his friends and former colleagues for that special deal.

Brandon, you still have a chance to save your blawg. Please don't allow it to become just another vapid marketing attempt. You have a voice. You have a perspective. Let's hear it once again.

New in the blawgosphere

There's a new blog in town. Mark Godsey, a lawprof at the University of Cincinnati Law School, is the editor of The Wrongful Convictions Blog. The blog contains an unbelievable amount of material regarding exonerations, junk science and the innocence movement.

Mr. Godsey has quite the team of contributors working beneath him providing this treasure trove of information.

I encourage y'all to, as Joe Bob Briggs might have said, check it out.

What twisted webs we weave

In the end all you have is your name and your credibility. Once you've besmirched those two things, you have nothing left.

The internet, the blogosphere, the 24-hour news cycle and satellite and cable television have made it easier to obtain information -- but they've also made it easier deceive the public.

Thanks to the miracles of the internet, I was able to time the release of blog posts while I was on Edisto Island in South Carolina last week. Not knowing when I'd get the chance to update the blog I wrote a week's worth of pieces in the days before we set out.

Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old American student studying in Scotland, used the internet to perpetuate a hoax. I'm sure it didn't start out that way. He created an online persona that he used to comment on other blogs about the situation in the Middle East. This online persona, in his words, then took on a life of its own. He developed a back story of a half-American, half-Syrian lesbian struggling to come to grips with culture, religion and sex.

First came a Facebook page then came the blog. Then it all snowballed.

Journalists, academics, activists and others began following the saga of Amina Arraf. No one questioned whether she was a real person. No one questioned whether the events depicted in the blog even occurred. I mean, it's the Internet -- why wouldn't it be true?

Then Ms. Arraf was tossed in the clink. An online campaign protesting her arrest and demanding her release was born. Newspapers, both print and on-line, ran articles about her detention.Then someone decided to do a little fact-checking.

The gig was soon up.

Was Mr. MacMaster right or wrong? I don't know. He "misled" people who followed his tale of Amina online. But how does that differ from any work of fiction you pick off the shelf or any television drama you sit down to watch? He never asked for money. He never asked for anything. He created a story that people followed because they found it interesting.

Now Mr. MacMaster is a pariah. There are a lot of journalists and other so-called experts who have egg on their faces because they took what they read on the internet as the truth. Mr. MacMaster has apologized for the hoax -- my guess is he's more sorry he got "caught" than he is for creating the story.

Has he harmed the cause of those seeking change in the Middle East? Does this mean that journalists might begin checking their facts before publishing stories? Will we begin taking what we see on the internet with a healthy grain of salt?

In the meantime, Mr. MacMaster walks away with both his name and credibility sullied.