One of my favorite blogs — indeed perhaps one of the only two I consider “must-read” blogs — is Gamso for the Defense, even though whenever I read it, it makes me feel a little like a loser driven by a gnat’s brain.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I am a loser driven by a gnat’s brain, and I don’t know more than one other person who knows me — maybe two now, after my recent conversion of Jaguar Bennett — who thinks that of me.

But anyone who reads Jeff Gamso will, no doubt, forgive me for feeling the way I do.

At any rate, a post I have read several times over the last couple of days brings me back to an idea that has troubled me for as long as I’ve been exposed to the criminal justice system — so at least since law school. It’s something I think about pretty much every day of my life, even if only for a few minutes each day; not a day goes by that I don’t think of it.

And that is the question of judicially-created differing standards for prosecutors and defendants in criminal cases, along with the most significant way in which it presents: when evidence matters.  [Read more...]