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Judge Bill Harmon recently sat down and was interviewed by a staff writer with the Houston Chronicle.  The interview delved into his decision to step down from the district court bench which, in his case, meant that he dropped down one floor in the Harris County Courthouse to preside over misdemeanor court.  Judge Harmon also talked about judicial burnout, term limits and judicial qualifications.  His comments will surprise the judiciary and encourage the private practitioner.  (more…)

As many of you know, I have written about the growing number of abatement orders handed down by the Seventh Court of Appeals over the past several months.  It seems the primary cause of these abatements is the attorney’s failure to file in a timely fashion either the appellate brief or get the court reporter paid on time.  The abatement orders paint a pretty grim picture.  Some of the offending lawyers, judging from the language of the abatement orders, must intentionally wad up whatever correspondence which comes from the Court of Appeals and simply throw it away.  There can be no other explanation for the brazen manner in which many of these lawyers ignore the orders of the appellate court.  Of course, the dirty work is left up to the trial court when it is ordered to hold a hearing and make a new appointment on behalf of the unfortunate defendant, usually locked away in some TDC unit and completely ignorant of his or her attorney’s insouciance.  However, based on an abatement order issued by the Seventh Court of Appeals today, maybe the Court feels it’s time to ratchet up pressure on the offending lawyer in order to compel compliance with its briefing rules.  (more…)

Well, for those who were present at the 251st District Court docket call, I would say that Judge Estevez’s handling of the huge crush of cases on her docket was, in effect, the figurative shot across the bow.  It actually had the feel of Judge Robinson’s federal docket call and that’s ok.  You see what you get and lawyers with cases on the docket know what to expect in the future.  And I’ll say this too: the judge made it known that the rules will be enforced across the board uniformly, especially with those bond forfeitures being handed down.  What’s the moral from this morning?  If it’s written down on the docket sheet, I think the judge means what she says.  And another thing that I sensed even though it wasn’t tacitly pointed out.  Don’t think that blue jeans with a sport coat will be welcome in the 251st.  Maybe I’m wrong but if not, good.

I don’t mean to pick on the state of Alabama.  It’s a nice place.  I’ve been to Birmingham, Montgomery, Dothan and lots of other smaller communities along the way.  Its citizens are, by and large, good, decent, hard working folk.  But there are things manifestly wrong in the way it administers its death penalty cases.  Its post-conviction process is a classic example of just how broken the system is and even Texas, as dysfunctional as the Court of Criminal Appeals’ guidance over our own capital habeas construct has become, could learn from Alabama’s malfeasance. (more…)

I don’t know hardly anything at all about elder law but there’s no denying that the older I get, the more relevant it becomes and the older my mother gets, the more pressing it is as a real issue.  What is most obvious is that without vital documents, aging and incapacity can put families in a real bind.  (more…)

Last week, I received a call from a Dallas lawyer.  It seems that he had watched a webcast on disciplinary rules and procedure that I had participated in back in December of last year and had a few questions about the grievance process.  Boy did he.  (more…)

Hey kids, remember Brian Nichols?  No?  He was the rape suspect who is accused of escaping from an Atlanta courthouse after overpowering a guard (beating her literally senseless in the process), taking her gun and then killing the judge who was assigned to hear his case, the unfortunate court reporter who was preparing for work in the courtroom that day and two other people before being captured.  And remember what led to his capture?  The popular media and the conservative movement want you to believe that Nichols gave it up only after listening to his hostage tell him about the divine message of a popular Christian evangelical book The Purpose Driven Life.  It seems to many that Nichols’ escape,  his brutal murder of four people and kidnapping were all somehow ordained by God so that he might receive the holy word from this popular self-help book.  Well, that was a couple of years ago and now that we have Anna Nicole Smith and Gene Simmons’ plastic surgery on YouTube to obsess over, we are left with Mr. Nichols and what to do with this man.  (more…)

The more diligent readers of hacklawyer may recall, and if not you can access it below, my post on the notion that the concept knowing the difference between right and wrong is most likely the end result of the “sculpting” of human genes over hundreds of thousands of years.  Or, to express it in a shorthanded way, morality and the consciousness of empathy for others is something hardwired into our brains.  We can thank evolutionary biology for that fact.  Well, there is an absolutely fascinating piece on the same subject which discusses how many evolutionary biologists are now beginning to entertain the idea that the beginnings of morality can be traced to primate behavior and that these systems of restraint on certain behaviors among the primate population served as precursors of human morality.  Do yourself a favor tonight.  Take a few minutes and read all about it here.  Darwin led us to a mountaintop and pointed the way over 160 years ago.  His theories, like Einstein’s, continue to be proved right time and time again with the aid of advanced technique and science.

I’ve represented some of the most heinous criminals, some alleged and many in fact, over the past years.  The names of Robert Anderson, Elbert Brown, Ricky Moulder and Thomas Schumacher come to mind.  These men, and many others, were all charged with and convicted of terrible crimes, some simply unspeakable.  But I cannot say that they and the others did not have a firm grasp of what was right and wrong.  What I mean to say is that none of them were the product of physical child abuse or some organic brain pathology which rendered them incapable of fully appreciating the consequences of their acts.  What failed them?  What source of essential knowledge of right and wrong - parental teaching, religious instruction or legal influence - went wrong?  Or was it a case where one could argue that these men’s moral failures had a genetic component which proved susceptible to corrupting environmental factors, manifesting itself in anti-social behavior?  In other words, are people born with a certain kind of “moral grammar” hardwired into their neural circuits of their brains by evolution or, if you like, natural selection which can then be enhanced or corrupted by external influences?  (more…)

Okay, all you lawyers out there who are tape-recording your phone conversations and are curious about the legality of such, I think I can stave off that pending indictment.  (more…)