Defending People

This blawg is about the art and science of criminal defense trial lawyering.

Author: Mark Bennett is a Houston criminal defense lawyer.

Blawg Related Categories: Constitutional Law • Criminal Justice • Prosecutors • Trials & Litigation • States • Texas • Private Defense

Recent Posts from Defending People

Would a Group of Lawyers Offering this Service be a “Cover Band”?
I wrote last December about cover, and a problem that arose because the lawyer whom I had asked to cover for me hadn’t been diligent. Today I learned (H/T A Public Defender) that in L.A.…
From the Harris County Sexually Oriented Enterprise Regulations
“Semi-nude” means “any state of dress which opaquely covers no more than a human buttock, anus, male genitalia, female genitalia or areola of a female breast.” Can anyone tell me what that means? I think…
Wednesday Lagniappe
Those of you who stop reading the comments here when they degenerate into a serious discussion of the fine points of Texas constitutional, statutory and case law will have missed this ingenious bit from frequent…
Ego
A Harris County prosecutor today (perennially gruff but a marshmallow on the inside) took umbrage at my public statements that until very recently I hadn’t seen a Harris County prosecutor conduct a voir dire that…
The Trick Question: Prosecutors’ Questions Answered, and Answers Questioned
The discussion of prosecutors’ pet jury selection question, the “One-Witness-Rule” question, continues. Prosecutor SC asks: “People who would require more than one witness to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt (for reasons Biblical or…
More on the “One-Witness Rule” Trick Question in Jury Selection
Prosecutors respond to my post on the single-witness-rule voir dire question. Seeking Justice says that it “sounds like an effective question to discern which jurors have opinions about the burden of proof that are contrary…
The Dubois, Wyoming Blawgers’ Convention
When I learned that Hostis Civitas and MacLitigator were both spending July at Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College in Dubois, Wyoming (joining Underdog and In The Moment in the world of TLC-lawyer-written blawgs), I had…
The One-Witness Rule
One question that prosecutors in Harris County are overly fond of asking jurors is this: If we only present one witness, but based on that witness’s testimony you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the…
Untitled 8
John Wesley Hall brings to our attention a new article: Fred Zacharias, Fitting Lying to the Court into the Central Moral Tradition of Lawyering, 58 Case West. L. Rev. ___ (2008). Professor Zacharias focuses on…
Another Odd Victory
Today a Harris County jury gave my 26-year-old client six years in prison for stealing $780,000 worth of material from his employer, 3M. The prosecutor’s last plea offer was 15 years. Six years is not…