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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 LawCriminal JusticeProsecutorsTrials & LitigationStatesTexasPrivate 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…



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