Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). An essential focus at the Trial Lawyers College is to replace verbal legalese droning at trial with painting word images, telling persuasive stories by re-enacting events, and talking from the first-person perspective of non-lawyers involved in...
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.).Too many monolingual people seem to think that if they speak louder or repetitively that ultimately they will be understood by a person who does not speak the speaker's language. Too many people think that if...
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.).Most people in my neck of the woods go to court without a lawyer for non-jailable criminal matters. However, even non-jailable convictions can come back to haunt people. For instance, a conviction for possessing a pot pipe...
Computer hard drive. (Image from Pacific Northwest Laboratory's website).On September 19, 2008, I went to sentencing with my client for this online copyright infringement case. Fortunately, the judge varied substantially below the sentencing guidelines, saying that they are excessive for my client's case, after having...
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.).Judges are generalists, at least where I practice law. They are expected to grasp and rule on a vast body of law. The law is too vast for even the most conscientious insomniac judge to be a walking...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology.Zippy the Pinhead is my favorite comic strip. Zippy spews non sequiturs, repeatedly proclaims "Yow!", and asks "Are we having fun yet?" in this overcommercialized society that tells people they won't be glad til they use Dial. Every...
Yin Yang T'ai chi works not only for trial battle, but also for negotiating an alternative to having a trial.The great thing about being fully prepared for trial is that it makes one not only ready to do better at trial, but also to do...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology.When administered properly, blood tests are more accurate than breath tests in determining a person's blood alcohol content (BAC). Nevertheless, in the state courts where I practice, police ordinarily choose the breath test over the blood test. The...
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.).When I joined the Maryland Public Defender's Office in 1991, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to fight the good fight, it turned out that my survival instincts -- developed all the more since early childhood by growing up...
Flowchart image from NASA's website. In 1980, I was introduced to Basic computer programming using a Wang computer that saved one's work on an ordinary cassette tape. Aside from the tape's making unusual blipping and beeping sounds when replayed on my audiocassette player, the class...
Image from public domain. In yet another example of the importance of pleading innocent when the risks of doing so are no greater than entering a guilty plea, on April 19, 2007, we won our client's drug paraphernalia case. Here are some details: The police stop...
The only way to know if a defendant will win is to go to trial. (Image from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.)). This month yielded another example of why it is critical to go to trial when the outcome from an innocent plea is not...
Practicing criminal defense is about bringing the client to harmony as much as possible at all stages of the case, including at trial and at any sentencing. Maryland's medical marijuana sentencing law (which I have discussed here) appears to be a strange compromise between those advocating...
A drug possession conviction requires probable cause to seize the alleged drugs; proof that the seized item constitutes illegal drugs; and proof beyond a reasonable doubt of knowledge, dominion and control over the alleged drugs. (Image from public domain.) When I started doing criminal defense over fifteen...
On December 1, I obtained a medical marijuana sentence in Prince George's County, Maryland, Circuit Court.Soon after Maryland's medical marijuana law went into effect four years ago, the Washington Post contacted and quoted me about the law, and I wrote this detailed published article on the...
