Tampering with Evidence Makes You Guilty… of Tampering with Evidence, not Murder. This is, for now, the final installment of the sad saga of Officer Slager’s shooting of poor Mr. Walter Scott. People are talking about how Slager must be guilty because he apparently...
Month: April 2015
A Perfect Storm of Bad Things: Tales from the Boston Bomber Trial
Well, I have resisted getting into the Boston Bomber case. However, it represents the perfect storm of many of the themes we’ve been exploring in recent posts: an impossible fact pattern, a Defendant who is universally reviled after killing or maiming a bunch of...
Questions, Questions!
People have been asking questions about the last few posts, and, of course, I can’t resist replying. The first thing I heard were questions about how I represent people when I “know” they are guilty. The answer to that is both simple and complex, as usual. The simple...
COPS GONE WILD
It’s a giant flood of bad cops, raining down from the internet skies. A veritable avalanche of bad behavior, much of it caught on tape. Bad cops on tape. By bad I don’t necessarily mean dishonest. Just bad. Take the case of the Tulsa, Oklahoma reserve deputy, Robert...
Everyone Deserves a Decent Defense
The Right to a Good Defense. Sorry if I am going overboard on the case of Officer Slager’s shooting of Walter Scott. I just can’t help it. If law school exams had been this interesting I would have enjoyed them much more. Real life is so much more interesting than...
I love the Witness Organization.
I LOVE the Witness organization. Founded by Peter Gabriel, their mission is to help people create valid and admissible videotapes of wrongdoing by authorities. How can that not be great? It is totally turning everything on its head. Watching the people watching us. In...
Cops Get Away With Murder… Or Not (the Fleeing Felon Rule)
Finally. A cop is being treated like any normal citizen. Well, almost. It took a real live caught-in-the-act video to make this happen. The common thread in the so-called “expert” analysis is that if Officer Slager had not been caught on tape he never would have been...
iPhones Cause Police Brutality
It’s official. Cell phones cause police brutality. Incredible how that works. Just start shooting video and there they are, beating people to death, sitting on their chests until they suffocate, even gunning them down. It’s like bad magic. Just kidding. Except I’m...