Judging Crimes
"A view of the bench from the trenches," from the standpoint of a longtime prosecutor in a state with a high violent crime rate.
Author: Joel Jacobsen is an assistant attorney general representing the prosecution on appeals in New Mexico and prison wardens in federal habeas corpus actions. He says he has prosecuted 50 murder cases.
Blawg Related Categories: Appellate Practice • Criminal Justice • Prosecutors • Judiciary • Prosecutor
Recent Posts from Judging Crimes
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378. Bigforest
Well, obviously Sonia Sotomayor is going to be confirmed. As some Republicans have belatedly realized, once they allowed people like Newt Gingrich to make her ethnicity and gender the chief issue, they assured her confirmation,…
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377. Otherworld pt. 2
Jeffrey Toobin has a profile of Chief Justice John Roberts in this week's New Yorker, revealing that George Bush's judge-pickers knew what they were doing when they named Roberts to the court. In the course…
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376. Otherworld pt. 1
Post 375 linked to this article about Justice Souter's lachrymose farewell speech to the Third Circuit conference. The article contained this weird passage: Without lawyers and the lawyers who go on to be become judges,…
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375. Replacing the 69-year-old virgin
The problem with finding a replacement for Justice Souter is that it matters so much. If only our Supreme Court justices were judges! In one of the more sanctimonious pieces of nonsense to come out…
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374. Your dishonor
The mass media has a simple rule of thumb for measuring the newsworthiness of any story about the judiciary: it's not news unless it's been done to death already. That's why you hardly heard about…
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373. Oh, well, that's okay, then
In New Mexico Territory, an Army colonel faced a court of inquiry - the equivalent of a grand jury or preliminary hearing - looking into his conduct. It seems that he marched his troops into…
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372. Linkages
CQ Press used to be Morgan Quitno but that's not where the name's Q comes from. CQ, as opposed to MQ, had something to do with Congressional Quarterly once, but apparently no more, unless the…
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371. "I just violated that sealing order."
The manuscript of For the Sake of Argument was sent off to the publisher earlier this month and came back copy-edited a little over a week later - a bit more quickly than in the…
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370. Good riddance, Chief Justice Taylor
From a fatuous Slate article I learned that Michigan's Chief Justice Clifford Taylor was ousted by the voters. Taylor was a contemptibly bad judge, already featured twice in these hallowed pixels. (See post 216 and…
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369. "Trust us"
California's Proposition 5, which would do all sorts of strange things to the state's Penal Code, changing the way Californians actually live, has predictably been overshadowed by Prop 8, which has only symbolic importance for…