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Matching entries from Houston's Clear Thinkers
Scalding Scalia
Never one to avoid a lively debate, Harvard law prof Alan S. Dershowitz (previous posts here) lays the wood to Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in this Daily Beast op-ed over the extent of their rationalizations...
Worth a watch
For those of you interested in the vexing issues involved in application of the death penalty and child predator laws, the scene below from Boston Legal is worth ten minutes of your time (H/T David Feige). I don't agree with...
I wonder what she thinks about the guys over at the Masonic Temple?
Putting Chuck Rosenthal's troubles aside for a moment, does anyone else think it's time to clean house at the Harris County District Attorneys' Office?: Republican district attorney candidate Kelly Siegler told a judge last year that members of Houston's Lakewood...
In Cold Blood
As noted earlier here, I oppose the death penalty because of the way in which our criminal justice system administers it, but I have no philosophical opposition to it. Here is why....
The politics of destruction
In this International Herald Tribune article, Michael Oxley -- the "Oxley" of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance statute -- confirms the vacuous nature of the politicians who passed that destructive law and encouraged the destruction of Arthur Andersen and various Enron...
The ultimate risk of a wrongful prosecution
The US Supreme Court's strained relationship with Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals over death penalty cases -- which was previously discussed here and here -- is back in the news as the high court again takes up...
"A peep show of utter horror"
On of my favorite books of 2003 was Erik Larson's Devil in the White City (Crown 2003) (website here), the engaging tale of Chicago and the 1893 World's Fair, which has just finished an astounding 124th straight week on the...
Innocence as a distraction
David Dow, a University Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Houston, is one of nation's leading experts on the death penalty and the author of Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row (Beacon 2006) (previous...
The Fifth Circuit's latest skirmish with SCOTUS over death penalty cases
Although the conflict flies below the radar screen outside legal circles, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have been engaged in a caustic war or words (see articles here and here) over the past several...
Judge Gilmore blasts the Fifth Circuit
Don't expect U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore to be sending any holiday greeting cards to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals any time soon. In this unusually candid recusal order, Judge Gilmore accuses the appellate court of making an untrue...
The ugly case of Carl Wayne Buntion
Texas has no shortage of ugly death penalty cases, and one of the ugliest is that of Carl Wayne Buntion. Buntion had 11 felony convictions and had been in and out of prison multiple times at the time that he...
Tough client
Most of us lawyers have had difficult clients from time to time, but this WaPo article reports that would-be 9/11 bomber Zacarias Moussaoui redefines the concept of the difficult client. As we all know, Moussaoui pled guilty to six counts...
Criminalizing an executive's right to counsel
In the post-Enron era of criminalizing business, a business executive's attorney-client privilege with the company counsel of the executive has already become largely illusory (posts here, here here and here). Now, according to this Nathan Koppel/WSJ ($) article, the government...
Why I oppose the death penalty
I oppose the death penalty, but not on philosophical grounds. Rather, I do not believe that the state can implement the death penalty without making mistakes such as the one described in this haunting Sunday Houston Chronicle/Lise Olsen article. Until...
Fifth Circuit emergency operations
Several friends and fellow bloggers have asked over the past several days how the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (website currently down) is dealing with the destruction that has resulted from Hurricane Katrina, so I made a couple...
Judge Roberts and Rome
Over time, politicians will manage to stand just about any issue in American politics on its head. Houston played host to one of the most important speeches of John F. Kennedy's 1960 Presidential campaign. Conventional political wisdom at the time...
Don't let those facts get in the way of the agenda
As noted in earlier posts here and here, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore of Houston is currently presiding over a rather ugly criminal case in Houston against against three people accused in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants who were...
Judge Gilmore to instruct jury on Justice Dept. refusal to disclose death penalty analysis
Following on the matters addressed in this earlier post, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore ruled on Thursday that she will instruct the jury regarding the government's failure to comply with her prior order to disclose the basis of its decision...
Death in Texas
Sister Helen Prejean is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in Louisiana. She is America's leading abolitionist with regard to the death penalty and the author of Dead Man Walking, which was made into one of...
Judge Gilmore gets chippy with the Justice Department
U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore is currently presiding over a rather ugly criminal case in Houston against against three people accused in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants who were being smuggled into this country in the back of a...
Cheapening the death penalty
University of Iowa Law Professor Tung Yin observes persuasively that jury's assessment of the death penalty on Scott Peterson is not in the public interest....
SCOTUS whacks Fifth Circuit
In this extraordinary NY Sunday Times article, U.S. Supreme Court sources provide highly unusual and scathing public criticism of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' handling of appeals of Texas Death Row inmates....
Enron-related extradition of British bankers approved
A British judge ruled Friday that three British bankers indicted in the U.S. on Enron-related fraud charges could be extradited to stand trial in Texas. Here is a prior post that reports on the background of this case leading up...
Holman Jenkins on the sad case of Jamie Olis
As noted on this blog before, Holman Jenkins is one of America's most insightful commentators on business issues. In his Wall Street Journal ($) column today, Mr. Jenkins addresses the injustice that occurred recently in the 24 year sentence given...
Interesting Death Penalty Analysis
The NY Times reports today on an interesting study in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies that concludes that Texas, generally thought to be the death penalty capital of the U.S., actually sentences a smaller percentage of people convicted of...
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