Starfish: The Obligatory End-of-Year Post

I really don’t want to do the whole “retrospective thing” on my year.  As other criminal defense attorneys have noted, things can sometimes be rough.  Besides, I get nervous about discussing my actual cases too much online.  Which would I focus on, anyway?

As Scott Greenfield pointed out, “We are engaged in a process that begs us to push back a tidal wave of misery.  And another tidal wave after that.”

But it seems that every criminal defense attorney — or anyone else who blogs — has to do the obligatory “end-of-the-year” post.

This is mine.

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They Know Not What They Do

Recently, a rather astounding ruling — astounding to those of us who practice criminal defense in the United States, anyway — came out of a courtroom in Santa Ana, California.

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The First Amendment: It’s Not Just the Law


Shut up!  I don’t like what you’re saying!

Increasingly, this is the approach Americans — Americans! — are taking to deal with speech they don’t like.  Whether this involves the hateful speech of would-be dictators, the words of electronic schoolyard bullies, or just folks with whom we disagree on government policy, the New American Way is to stop them from talking.  Extra points if we can protect our own speech while squelching theirs. 

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How Police States Are Born

It’s amazing how often history reports itself in things both small and large. 

I recently ran across one of the small things in this passage from Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here:

“Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut ‘Liberty cabbage’ and somebody actually proposed calling German measles ‘Liberty measles’?”  (Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (2005 ed.) p. 17, originally published in 1935.)

Can I interest you in some “freedom fries”

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Legal Fictions & Gangs

Gang Crime

A post by Gideon gave the final push for this post.  I’ve been thinking for a long time about “legal fictions,” particularly as they relate to gang cases.  Frankly, they irk me more than a bit.

You see, I’m what’s known as an idealist: I think the law should be understandable and it should mean what it says.  Some people think that makes me stupid; some think it makes me naïve; some (few) think it makes me a good guy.

I think it makes me an American.  True Americans are naturally idealists.

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Unbridled Authority

A reader from India left a comment here stating, among other things,

Am very impressed with citizens['] rights in your country….I should say cops in our country take us for a ride and just twist things as per their whims [a]n[d] fancies as we have no clue of our rights.

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