criminal defense lawyers

If, hypothetically, a prosecutor were to start a semi-regular series of posts, consisting of the same 4 or 5 questions, posed to and answered by individual criminal defense lawyers (and, of course, linking to the CDL’s blog or website), what should those questions be?

Once upon a time I thought I could keep track of all the criminal defense blogs out there. Then I thought I could track Texas defense lawyer blogs.

Now I can’t even keep track of the CDL bloggers in Austin, but here’s a list of the ones I know about:

Been Around Awhilers / New Kids On The Block

July 23, 2009 could have been a very good day for Houston lawyer Andy Nolen.

On that day, one of his clients, “jerry k.”, decided to give him a token of appreciation, a review on Yahoo local of all Nolen had done for him:

THIS GUY IS GREAT.

Got to court early and stayed like 3 hours with my family.

All the listservs are abuzz (Austin, Texas and national criminal defense lawyer association listservs, that is).

The Supreme Court has just handed down Arizona v.

Gant, which from the non-binding syllabus portion reads:

Why do so many criminal defense lawyers, who are solo practitioners mostly, insist on getting a DBA or incorporating as “The Law Offices of [John Smith]” plural? Instead of “The Law Office of [John Smith]” singular?

Radley Balko asks if any criminal defense lawyers out there have ever heard of such a thing. 

Prosecutorial discretion is immense. And it starts with the decision on whether someone should be prosecuted in the first place. Now submitted, for your approval, the stupidest prosecution yet, at least in terms of “your tax dollars at work”.

From the charging instrument filed last week (cause number 08-po-00237-MHW-1 for federal criminal defense lawyers with access to Pacer):

I’ll be following up fellow Austin lawyer Todd Smith’s latest Blawg Review with one of my own over at my DWI blog, so please… all you criminal defense lawyers out there in the blogosphere write up a little something something about DWI and make sure to email it to me or submit it here.

So Western Justice’s quote of the week – or is that quote of the month? – is currently:

“In my courtroom, day after day, I have seen the dregs of the community—and some of their clients, too."

I’ll admit it’s a bit amusing.

 Everyone loves a good lawyer joke. Seems to be coming out of the mouth of a black robe, so I tried to do a little investigating and figure out where the quote came from.

It’s the question criminal defense lawyers get asked regularly, by friends, family members, strangers on the train, etc.

The Houston Chronicle – or should I say reporter Mary Flood?

– asked Mark Bennett “The Question” in this morning’s paper:

Q: What do you tell folks who ask how you can defend people accused of crimes?