Love of justice

This post is some­thing I have been think­ing on for a while, but Laura McWilliams prompted me to post it with her Love of the Law, part 2 post.

I went into law school with a gut feel­ing that I could never defend crim­i­nals, and that if I went into Crim­i­nal Law it would be as a prosecutor.

Then I was intro­duced, through the eyes of cases skimmed dur­ing class and through the per­spec­tive of the Crim­i­nal Defense attor­neys I “met” through twit­ter, to the Crim­i­nal Injus­tice sys­tem of our country.

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Published on 07/02/2010 7:30 am.
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One man’s anal retentiveness is another man’s freedom

In my Mary­land Crim­i­nal Prac­tice class this evening, the pro­fes­sor men­tioned an unre­ported opin­ion of the MD Court of Spe­cial Appeals that was issued on Tues­day, May 24th.

Par­en­thet­i­cally, this is an incred­i­bly inter­est­ing and seem­ingly prac­ti­cal class that is taught by Judge Dana Levitz, a for­mer State’s Attor­ney and head of the trial divi­sion for Bal­ti­more County and for­mer Md. Cir­cuit Court judge who is now the judge who deals with the ini­tial incom­ing prayers for jury cases from the Bal­ti­more County Dis­trict Courts. I plan on devot­ing an entire post to Judge Levitz and his phi­los­o­phy regard­ing his cur­rent position.

The opin­ion, Clark, Dar­rell Mau­rice Jr. v. State, Docket 1393/08, was issued by Judge Davis. To (very briefly) sum­ma­rize, a first-degree bur­glary con­vic­tion which car­ried with it a 20 year prison sen­tence was vacated as a result of a slight, but incred­i­bly impor­tant, defect in Bal­ti­more County’s form first-degree bur­glary charge lan­guage.
The form lan­guage uses a short-form cita­tion to estab­lish the ele­ments of the crime, which I just learnt is per­fectly accept­able. How­ever, instead of cit­ing the statute within the charge, the cita­tion is recorded after the required con­clud­ing phrase of “against the peace, gov­ern­ment, and dig­nity of the State.”
The defense attor­ney moved to dis­miss the charg­ing doc­u­ment as defec­tive on this ground in pre­trial but the trial court refused, ask­ing how that could make any difference.

The Court of Spe­cial Appeals begged to differ.

Spec­u­la­tion as to how this will affect claims of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel and whether this would or would not be counted as being charged in terms of dou­ble jeop­ardy were bandied about in class, but the most impor­tant thing Judge Levitz wanted us to get out of the case is how ripe with pos­si­bil­ity charg­ing doc­u­ments are for defense attorneys.

Like I said, this seems like a prac­ti­cal class.

Published on 05/27/2010 9:00 pm.
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Abbot v. MD

Over a year ago, I helped a local attor­ney on a crim­i­nal appel­late case. I did some legal research and helped draft the argu­ments for the client’s appeal to the MD Court of Spe­cial Appeals.

In Octo­ber, I sat in the court­room after meet­ing the client and lis­tened to oral argu­ments on the case. I was still involved enough that I was mouthing answers to the court’s ques­tions from my seat against the wall.
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Published on 02/26/2010 9:35 am.
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Thoughts on Maryland v. Shatzer

The Supreme Court recently ruled that there is a 14 day time limit to a defendant’s Miranda rights.
Scott Green­field has writ­ten about it, as has Orin Kerr.

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Published on 02/25/2010 10:23 am.
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All letters look scarlet to the color-blind

Scott Green­field at Sim­ple Jus­tice adds to an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion regard­ing trans­parency in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.
The orig­i­nat­ing post came from Doug Berman who sug­gested the idea there should be reg­is­tra­tion for all con­vic­tions in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.
   The next sally came from Bobby Fred­er­ick who raises the very valid con­cerns of mis­takes and poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion.
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Published on 10/18/2009 9:30 pm.
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Just what Maryland needs.

This arti­cle in the Washig­ton Post (h/t @marylandmoment) describes how the Mary­land House of Del­e­gates have passed a bill to allow Mary­lan­ders to cre­ate trusts for their pets.

This is truly a ground­break­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion; pre­cisely what Mary­land needs. Crime? Hous­ing slump? Unem­ploy­ment? Reces­sion? Death penalty? No, let’s focus our efforts on an impor­tant topic — pet trusts. I had dogs grow­ing up, and they were part of the fam­ily; I shed tears when they died. There was no bur­ial or memo­r­ial ser­vice for them.

Do peo­ple need trust accounts for their pets? Maybe — accord­ing to the arti­cle, 39 other states already allow their cit­i­zens to cre­ate trusts for their pets. How­ever, when our state Sen­ate decides to put the issue of repeal­ing the death penalty to rest for this ses­sion by not repeal­ing the death penalty, why is our leg­is­la­tion spend­ing the time on pet trust funds?

Published on 03/04/2009 10:47 am.
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A thoroughly useless bill.

The Mary­land State Sen­ate has voted to amend the death penalty bill. I guess at the last minute they decided that the bill, instead of repeal­ing the death penalty, should not repeal the death penalty.

I think Sen. Raskin said it best:

Amend­ments say­ing that the death penalty can be imposed only with DNA evi­dence and with more than just eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony do not change cur­rent law but are merely “cam­ou­flage for the sta­tus quo.”

Why is our state leg­is­la­ture wast­ing everyone’s time mak­ing bills that serve absolutely no pur­pose whatsoever?

Published on 03/04/2009 10:26 am.
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