I lost a DWI jury trial yesterday. (Most lawyers wouldn't write publicly about their losses. Most lawyers don't seem to find the generalizable lessons in their losses that I find in mine.) I had argued to the jury that criminal court is the wrong place for common sense. The argument did not go over well—I got feedback that I seemed to think I was smarter than the jurors.

From 1791 to the present … the First Amendment has permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas, and has never included a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations. These historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar—including obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to criminal conduct—are well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise

"Enjoy the lawsuit I’m in the process of filing against you, psycho, arrogant, inferiority complex-ridden moron." -Matthew, then. "I was just trying to make a living. I didn’t intend to defraud anyone. I was desperate, and desperation knows no boundaries." -Matthew, now.   I have now removed Matthew's last name from my posts about him and their URLs. I cannot conveniently remove it from his demand letter,

Thanks to the several blog posts I've written about crooked lawyer-marketing company R.W. Lynch, I get about a call a month from some lawyer who signed a contract with R.W. Lynch before doing due diligence, and wants to know how to get out of it. Literally. The. Potential. Suing crooked marketing companies is not one of my fields of practice. If you know someone who would

I've got a case against a likely-soon-to-be-former member of the Smith County, Texas District Attorney's Office in which I'm challenging the constitutionality of Texas's revenge-porn statute, section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code. Court of Appeals? That's in the basement. It is one of several such appeals I have pending. I've had oral argument in the Waco Court of Appeals (not recorded) and Houston's First

At 12:15 there will be an "Award Presentation Honoring Sens. Whitmire and Huffman; Reps. Smithee and Herrero and the Honorable J. Keller." I googled those names, and the first thing that I found that they all have in common is membership in the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Committee. Hey. Let's talk about exoneration. Exoneration for actual innocence is politically palatable across the spectrum. Should someone who can

[Edited to add: I have been asked whether this is fictional. The dialogue is not. The first judge's comments can be found here and here. The interaction between the second judge and the mentally ill defendant is from this appellate opinion.] INT JUDGE'S CHAMBERS. We see a JUDGE, sitting comfortably behind his desk, talking to a REPORTER, who is taking diligent notes. JUDGE: Over the 36 years

I often say that free-speech law is the area in which lawyers' perception of their expertise most outpaces their actual expertise. Nobody but probate lawyers thinks they know probate law. But everybody thinks they know free-speech law (fire in a crowded theater!) and few people actually do. This is no less true of judges than other lawyers.Free-speech law has developed  a lot in 30 years; most of

The Fifth Circuit has ruled on the Harris County misdemeanor judges' 5-million-dollar appeal of Judge Rosenthal's injunction requiring them to stop using bail as an instrument of oppression by denying personal bonds to indigent people. The Fifth Circuit vacated the injunction, requiring two changes: To give the courts 48, rather than 24 hours to make an individual bail assessment; and Not to require factfinders to make a

12/13/2017 in Hong Kong, I realize that what I thought was the PIN for debit card is not the PIN for the debit card. I call Chase to get the debit card PIN. I make the call from my hotel room. I give Chase debit-card services all identifying information for my debit card, including mother’s maiden name. Chase debit-card services tells me they can’t send me my