Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Trivializing racial injustice

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Earlier this month in South Carolina, George Stinney's name was finally cleared . Mr. Stinney was fourteen years old when he was strappe...
Thursday, December 18, 2014

Killing the frog one degree at a time

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The other day I was leaving the Montgomery County Courthouse up in Conroe after court and noticed a state trooper behind me. As I turned ont...
3 comments:
Wednesday, December 17, 2014

On torture, war crimes and hypocrisy

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So Democrats in Congress are up in arms about revelations that our government tortured inmates as part of the War on Everything Terror. It...
Saturday, December 6, 2014

The end of the season is nigh

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Today the college football regular season comes to a close. The end of the season will also bring us a brand new playoff format to determi...
Friday, December 5, 2014

Talking heads are missing the point

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Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner by putting him in a choke hold on a Staten Island sidewalk. But Mr. Pantaleo faced no legal sanction for ...
1 comment:
Thursday, December 4, 2014

Update: 5th Circuit halts scheduled execution

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Based on my specialized knowledge of this process, I now conclude that the death penalty as a form of punishment should be abolished becaus...
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Execution Watch: 12/3/2014

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"[T]his has been like a slow-moving train wreck since 1995."    -- Kathryn Kase, attorney for Scott Panetti On Wednesday night, ...
Thursday, November 27, 2014

Something to think about while we gorge ourselves

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In 1975, in Cleveland, Ohio, Harold Franks, a money-order salesman, was murdered in a robbery. Ronny Bridgeman, Wiley Bridgeman and Ricky Ja...
1 comment:
Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Passing the buck, Missouri-style

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Enough. The Grand Jury didn't choose not to indict Darren Wilson. The St. Louis County District Attorney made that decision. For the u...
1 comment:
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Sending in the stormtroopers to quell dissent

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Back on August 9 of this year, Ferguson (MO) police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. The kill...
3 comments:
Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The end of the road?

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Six years ago today The Defense Rests  made its first appearance in the blawgosphere. Since that first humble post on the need for PR bonds ...
14 comments:
Monday, August 4, 2014

Road songs

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No deep insights today. Just a few of my favorite road songs...
Friday, August 1, 2014

Taking credit where credit wasn't due

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Michael Phillips was arrested for the 1990 rape of a 16-year-old girl. Mr. Phillips, who maintained his innocence, entered into a plea agree...
3 comments:
Thursday, July 31, 2014

Vultures holding Argentina hostage

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Back in 2001 Argentina defaulted on its debt obligations due to a cratering economy. Over the intervening years the government reached agree...
Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Just looking for an excuse to affirm

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In 2012, Milton Kay was driving in Orange, Texas without wearing his seatbelt and without having a current registration sticker on his winds...
Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Where it's worse to smoke a joint than beat up your wife

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Last week Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was suspended for two games without pay for an incident in which he knocked his (now) wife...
Monday, July 28, 2014

Usurping the power of the jury deep in the Heart of Dixie

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In 2010 Courtney Lockhart, a US Army veteran who served in Iraq, was convicted of the 2008 carjacking and murder of Auburn University studen...
Friday, July 25, 2014

Another day, another botched execution

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On Wednesday there was yet another botched execution . This time it was in Arizona. This time the victim of the state's callous disregar...
1 comment:
Thursday, July 24, 2014

The failure of mass incarceration

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Think mass incarceration works? Just listen to this...
Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Sleeping is not necessarily operating

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In every DWI case a defense attorney must assess two issues - first, was the client intoxicated and second, was the client operating a motor...
Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Judge declares death penalty unconstitutional in California

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Earnest Dewayne Jones was sentenced to death in California for raping and killing his girlfriend's mother in 1992. He is one of more tha...
Monday, July 21, 2014

Perry pulls a 180 on immigration

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Once upon a time Gov. Rick Perry had a sensible position on immigration. He knew, as did most Texans, that Texas has a unique relationship w...
2 comments:
Friday, July 18, 2014

A little side trip on the way to Georgetown

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Yesterday was a big road trip day. I had to be out in Sealy in the morning and then in Georgetown (north of Austin) in the afternoon. So, af...
Thursday, July 17, 2014

Bigfoot and jurors

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One of my guilty pleasures is watching Finding Bigfoot on Sunday nights. If you haven't seen the show it's about four bigfoot "...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Keeping it weird in Austin

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Well, just when Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg thought everything had died down after her DWI conviction, she managed to ...