|
Sunday, December 31. 2006
Here is a chilling New York Times video of Saddam Hussein being led to the noose, and having it fitted around his neck. Saddam Hussein repeatedly defecated on human rights. However, “the test of a government’s commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders." Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program. I have railed against capital punishment repeatedly. Capital punishment is barbaric and inhumane. On this video, one is left to wonder whether the executioners were well-trained and well-experienced through none other than Saddam Hussein's former regime or trained by people from that regime. Jon Katz. ADDENDUM: TalkLeft has uploaded a video of the entire hanging of Saddam Hussein. This video is even more chilling and disturbing than the New York Times video. It shows Saddam Hussein being dropped through the floor, shows his face after being executed, and includes audio of celebratory voices. LiveLeak says this hanging video was taken by a cellphone.
Friday, December 29. 2006
Underdog will return with new blog material the first week of January 2007. Meanwhile, I invite you to view our archived blog entries, including our July 2006 archives. Jon Katz.
Thursday, December 28. 2006
Underdog will return with new blog material the first week of January 2007. Meanwhile, I invite you to view our archived blog entries, including our August 2006 archives. Jon Katz.
Wednesday, December 27. 2006
Underdog will return with new blog material the first week of January 2007. Meanwhile, I invite you to view our archived blog entries, including our September 2006 archives. Jon Katz.
Tuesday, December 26. 2006
Underdog will return with new blog material the first week of January 2007. Meanwhile, I invite you to view our archived blog entries, including our October 2006 archives. Jon Katz.
Monday, December 25. 2006
Here is a recent video of United States Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Scalia discussing Constitutional interpretation. Each Supreme Court justice sets his or her own limits on what to discuss in public, where, and for how much money (if for any money), in part taking into consideration the extent to which the justice might be seen as prejudging issues to be presented to the Supreme Court. Late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger apparently was very private, probably too inaccessible to the public, which has a need to understand the workings of this only branch of government comprised exclusively of un-elected members. Longtime Justice Scalia seems to be among one of the most publicly visible and gregarious justices outside of the august surroundings of the Supreme Court. Being in the Washington area for two decades, I have attended several Supreme Court oral arguments, and have briefly met three of the justices. I recount here the ecstasy of meeting the late Justice William Brennan when he received an NACDL award. I have met Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a couple of gatherings. I recount here my 1988 meeting with Justice Antonin Scalia. In 1989, I heard now-Justice/then EEOC Chair Clarence Thomas talk at a quarterly meeting of the American Bar Association's Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section. He was introduced as a likely nominee to the District of Columbia federal Circuit Court. Late Justice Thurgood Marshall resigned two years later, and Justice Thomas replaced him on the Supreme Court after hearings more heated than Robert Bork's. Not long after Justice Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the twentieth century's narrowest vote, of 52-48, I bumped into Senator Joseph Lieberman in my neighborhood supermarket parking lot, and thanked my former senator for voting against Thomas. He passed on making any comment beyond the statement represented by his vote. One day during the heated controversy over his ultimately-failed Supreme Court nomination, I saw Robert Bork in a car passenger's seat near my law school. I was so stunned to see this man whom I so vehemently wanted off the Supreme Court that I could not think of anything more clever than to ask "How are you?" to which he answered "Fine, fine." Then again, perhaps that was in line with my later practice of t'ai chi, to know the opposition and to keep the opposition within arm's length. Jon Katz.
Sunday, December 24. 2006
Read the chilling direct and cross examination of William Calley, and this account of the My Lai courts martial, American commanders are said to have told Desert Storm soldiers "No My Lais." Among the many important lessons of the My Lai massacre for criminal defense lawyers are the following: First, power is at risk for abuse by anyone -- including police, and including criminal defendants who actually committed violent crimes -- and at greater risk of abuse the greater is the power. Second, no matter how vile the alleged crime -- even if one's client actually committed the act -- the criminal defense lawyer must zealously defend the client without reservations. To leave the work to less competent lawyers leaves all sorts of injustices to result, many of which will reverberate far beyond the specific trial and the specific defendant. Jon Katz.
Sunday, December 24. 2006
Thanks to Grits for Breakfast -- constantly a source of information for our blog -- for making it known not only that the Texas prosecutor's association's chatroom is available to the entire public, but also for pointing to a chilling discussion of the incorrectly narrow, and sometimes uninformed, definition that so many prosecutors have of the Brady/exculpatory evidence that must be revealed to the defense. For any reason that the above-described Brady chat becomes non-public, I have re-posted it here. The problem here is that in too many jurisdictions, prosecutors are given the discretion to self-police themselves about the discovery material they are required to divulge pursuant to governing laws and court orders. That is like having the foxes govern themselves while watching over the henhouse. Many prosecutors are so overloaded with cases that their workload alone can fuel non-disclosure of evidence that they are required to disclose. The prosecutorial discovery disclosure path can become more rotten as it is walked. I write more about prosecutorial disclosure of evidence here, in the Jencks and Brady contexts. Jon Katz.
Friday, December 22. 2006
This is the first time we are announcing job openings on the Underdog Blog, because who better than our readers might know ideal paralegal and bilingual receptionist candidates to assist our ongoing fight for the underdog? Our staff is expanding, and these positions are open immediately. Full details are at http://markskatz.com/jobs.htm . Happy holidays to all. Jon Katz.
Friday, December 22. 2006
When dealing with co-defendants' lawyers, I have had experiences running from the very positive to the very negative. The very positive side includes a lengthy four-defendant federal felony trial where all lawyers whose clients did not plead guilty at all times worked together well and got along personally, and never did anything to undermine the others' case. A more negative experience involved a co-defendant's lawyer in a drug felony trial who told me he did not care about the outcome of his client's case because the court would not let him out of the case despite his client's stiffing him on his fee. He anticipated this would be antithetical to my values, but told me his view, nonetheless. Whether or not this attitude affected his performance, the lawyer proceeded to ask the police numerous open-ended, non-controlled cross examination questions that risked eliciting -- but fortunately did not elicit -- damaging answers for my client. Then, there are the co-defendants' lawyers who will not return a phone call once their client has signed a snitch agreement with federal prosecutors. (I criticize the snitch system here). Even a criminal defense colleague with a particularly big heart once told me that there still might come a time when he's not returning my calls if he represents a co-defendant who decides to snitch against my client. Such lawyers have nothing to lose for their clients by just returning the phone call and apologizing for not being able to discuss the case further. What happens if the co-defendant's plea deal falls through, and the co-defendant's lawyer then needs the remaining co-defendants' lawyers' input on strategizing the case? How will that lawyer feel if the response is silence, or a delayed response? My response might be to tell the lawyer that s/he's lucky that I don't believe in penalizing the defendant for the lawyer's previous non-responsiveness. Worse than the unreturned phone call, though, is finding out that the co-defendants' lawyers are ganging up on one's client. Just because a colleague is a criminal defense lawyer does not mean s/he will ever put his or her interests in collegiality ahead of what s/he perceives to be the client's interests. What if the non-responding co-defendant's lawyer is in a community where s/he inevitably will be on future cases with the lawyers whose calls s/he does not return? Refusing to return a co-defendant lawyer's call -- on the basis that one's client will snitch -- is myopic, of no benefit, and not collegial. In his December 17 blog entry, Little Rock lawyer John Wesley Hall details the collegiality among criminal defense lawyers in Arkansas. He talks of a co-defendant's lawyer who called to wish John luck on the remainder of the trial -- after the co-defendant entered a guilty plea mid-trial, and did not testify against John's client. Such small words can go a long way for the remaining defense lawyer, particularly from a colleague who shared the experience fighting the case. Also of note is the willingness of John -- who has shown me kindness and collegiality before -- to say that his client was found guilty. The point is not to give up as a criminal defense lawyer after a guilty verdict, but to fight as skilfully as possible for every client for an acquittal on as many counts as possible, next to fight for the most favorable sentence, and to learn from both the victories and defeats to become a better lawyer. When the criminal defense lawyer fights skilfully and effectively at trial, if the client is found guilty, at least the client knows s/he did not go down without a fight. When a defendant pleads guilty, often in the back of the mind is the question whether the outcome would have been more favorable had the defendant gone to trial. Jon Katz.
Friday, December 22. 2006
Until consent searches are outlawed, bravo to the three of five Madisonville, Texas, city council members who passed a law requiring written forms as a prerequisite for "consent" searches. This follows an earlier such order by the Austin, Texas, police chief. The article is here. Thanks to Grits for Breakfast for covering this item. Bravo, also, to the American Civil Liberties Union for continuing to fight to put more teeth into this Madisonville law, including informing people of their right to refuse searches. Jon Katz.
Friday, December 22. 2006
This follows up on my previous railings against the legalized snitch bribery system. Grits for Breakfast has discussed the topic many times, as well. Here is a disturbingly sobering video about 15% of Hearne, Texas's young black males arrested in 2000 on drug charges made on reliance of the snitch evidence of a "schizophrenic, cocaine-addicted, criminal-turned-informant" who later confirmed he provided fabricated information. Sadly, although the prosecutor dismissed then-pending charges that relied on the informant's information, it refused to help reverse convictions of people who had already entered guilty pleas from such fabricated evidence. These were guilty pleas entered under the real risk of much harsher sentences if wrongfully convicted at trial upon such lies from the informant. Jon Katz.
Thursday, December 21. 2006
Following up on yesterday's blog entry entitled "Marijuana as the nation's biggest cash crop," Hit & Run's Jacob Sullum predicts that the excise tax revenue from legal marijuana would not be very significant, since legalized marijuana will be cheaper than illegal marijuana. As one commenter to Mr. Sullum's posting points out, though, legalization may lead to higher marijuana consumption, which might narrow the annual total revenue gap between sales of legalized marijuana and illegal marijuana. Likely to further narrow this revenue gap will be the production of industrial hemp, which now must be imported from other countries. Jon Katz.
Thursday, December 21. 2006
At a bench trial several years ago, a judge emphatically confirmed how much reliance he puts on witnesses who emphatically and -- seemingly credibly -- state "that's the one" who committed the crime. Such an assertion flies in the face of the Supreme Court's logical confirmation 37 years ago that "The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification." U.S. v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 229 (1967). DNA evidence confirms that misidentification too often continues to result in wrongful convictions. For instance, "[a]ccording to the Innocence Project, 183 people nationwide have been exonerated through DNA testing, and eyewitness misidentification was a factor in 75 percent of those wrongful convictions." What to do? We need vigorous and capable criminal defense at every turn, regardless of the defendants' ability to pay. We need to eliminate such abysmally low-paying court-appointed criminal defense systems as Virginia's. We need to refuse to sweep the injustice of misidentification under the rug. Jon Katz.
Wednesday, December 20. 2006
Marijuana legalization activist Jon Gettman -- who was part of our expert marijuana cultivation team for our recent medical marijuana victory -- asserts that marijuana is the United States' biggest cash crop. Jon's report is entitled "Marijuana Production in the United States," and is available here and here. The Los Angeles Times article and video are here. Jon Katz.
|
