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A regular reader of hacklawyer (OK, I confess, he’s my brother - I have him on special retainer to pump up my web stats) has requested how I would have handled Roger Clemens and specifically, would I have permitted him to roam the halls of Congress - smiling, backslapping Republican lawmakers, posing for photos, giving sworn testimony, etc.  Well, let’s see.

For starters, if I’m Clemens’ lawyer, then I am cognizant of one, his bulldog personality which means trouble insofar as getting him to listen to advice and counsel and two, that these allegations of steroid and human growth hormone use are not something that cropped up overnight before the release of the Mitchell Report on December 13.  Remember that baseball insiders were well aware that these allegations had been dogging Clemens for some time.  Assume further that prior to his sworn deposition and public appearance, I am also aware of the totality of McNamee’s proposed testimony and that of Andy Pettitte.  The latter is the real problem here.  You see, there’s absolutely no reason for Pettitte to hurt his former teammate and no reason for him to lie or confabulate.  Besides, by the time Clemens sat down under oath and began his deposition, everybody knew what Pettitte had sworn to and publicly confirmed. 

Given that, it would have been my advice to take one of two approaches: gut it out and take the Fifth, as unpleasant and as guilty as that makes Clemens appear (thereby avoiding the very real probability of a criminal referral and possible prosecution) or come on out, admit that you used it to try to prolong an already storybook career and apologize for the sin.  Our culture is a “therapy and confession” one, meaning that we are quick to condemn but even quicker to forgive and forget.  Can you say Marv Albert?  And if Clemens had come out and said, “Yeah, I did it, I regret it and I want to put things right,” I can guarantee he would be already in the clear (no pun intended), free from any criminal investigation and the darling of the baseball press hacks at spring training as I write this.  Instead, Roger took some bad advice from a lawyer who I think is way out of his league on this one.  I have no doubt that Roger himself is calling the shots on this too.  His judgment is not exactly state-of-the-art.  So, he’s Pete Rose redux and if things keep going like they are, he’ll end up like Rose.  And that is not a pretty sight.  To see just how Roger’s wall of denials is quickly crumbling, check out Murray Chass’s column in today’s New York Times sports section, ”Chipping at Clemens’s Credibililty, Piece by Piece.”  It makes for lamentable reading.  Personally, I will be surprised if Clemens isn’t indicted for perjury or at the very least, making a false statement under oath. 

OK, that would have been my advice.  And I would have been fired and replaced with you-know-who.  As they say at the barber shop and the track: Next! 

Common Core, which describes itself as a new research and advocacy organization which intends to push for more teaching of the liberal arts in public schools, released the results of a survey which do not bode well for No Child Left Behind, possibly Bush’s only achievement spanning his two terms. In the survey, 1,200 17-year olds were called by phone in January and asked to answer 33 multiple-choice questions about history and literature that were read aloud to them. The questions were drawn from a test that the federal government administered in 1986. Here’s what we have: (more…)

It’s a rare occurrence down south in the placid halls of the Court of Criminal Appeals whenever the Court elects to look at a case on its own motion but that is exactly what happened this morning in Littrell v. State, No. PD-1555-07, a case out of our own Amarillo Court of Appeals.  The Court has requested that the parties brief the following question: Do appellant’s convictions for both felony murder and aggravated robbery violate the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy? (emphasis added)

What caught my eye and curiosity about the case was the absence of any mention in the body of the court of appeals’ opinion that Appellant had been charged, tried and convicted of felony murder as opposed to straight murder.  (more…)

By all accounts, Patrick Lett had been a model soldier, having served seventeen years in the U.S. Army, including two tours of duty in Iraq.  He excelled in the regimented way of life that the armed services offer.  But when he entered into the vargaries of civilian life, things went awry.  Within months of returning to his home state of Alabama, his fiancee left him, his father grew sicker by the day and he struggled to support three children from a prior marriage.  Then he began to drink.  Money problems soon followed.  Enter his cousin, a street-dealer in crack cocaine.  If Lett would simply make a few deliveries to clients, he would pay for the needed repairs on the ex-soldier’s car.  Foolishly, Lett agreed.  He made seven such deliveries.  Unfortunately, one of them was to an undercover agent. (more…)

Back on September 24 of last year, hack posted a blurb titled “1967, a very good year,” (filed under Items of Interest). It has long been my opinion that 1967 was a truly seismic year in terms of groundbreaking movies, not to mention memorable rock. Since I’m sitting here on Oscars night, it is fitting that I pick up this thread started back in September and speak to some additional films that I flat out forgot. What makes this even more timely is the recent publication of Pictures at a Revolution, Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris, illustrated, 490 pp., Penguin Press, $27.95. Mr. Harris captures the willingness of innovative, young directors and gambling producers to push the envelope during this seminal year. And no one movie better illustrated this spirit of change than the furor which surrounded the release of Bonnie and Clyde, a film that nearly ended up being stored away in the vault for good, if not for the decision by Jack Warner to let the show go on. The rest, they say, is history.

The book also makes note that the five top nominees for Best Picture that year each represented the both the passing of a era (Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? and Dr. Dolittle) and the coming of the new age of provocation and innovation (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde). The Graduate was also important since it proved that a canny director like Mike Nichols could take familiar, well-used hit songs by Simon and Garfunkle, which he repeatedly listened to while helping to edit the film, and put them to use to construct a memorable soundtrack at the last moment. It truly was a fortiutous stroke of genius.

Indeed, I just can’t think of another year in which so many incredible films were released so close together and which, like a large stone thrown into a calm pool, produced ripples of change which grew ever-widening with each passing year thereafter. There has been talk of this year being such a strong one for good, American films. That may be, although as I write this, it is beginning to look like No Country For Old Men might very well sweep Best Picture and Best Director. Let’s hope not. For my money, it’s Michael Clayton and not just because it’s about the best lawyer movie I’ve seen in the last several years. Director Tony Gilroy somehow elicited the most naturalistic performances out of each member of he cast. The Acadamy’s failure to award Tom Wilkinson for his performance as the deranged trial lawyer should be the basis for a congressional investigation. Let’s hope for the best for the rest of the night.

I marked my words and so did my officemate.  Back when David McCoy (just think, now I don’t have to preface it with an obsequious “Judge” anymore) was indicted for abuse of official capacity and theft by a public servant, I told her that the case would never go to trial.  Instead, McCoy will enter into a brother-in-law arrangement with the State where he’ll quietly resign from office, fork over some dough for the trouble and walk away from the business for good with his tail between his legs.  In return, they’ll drop the indictments and everybody’s happy.  I said it then and sure enough, this morning, as they announce at the track, the results are official and here are the payouts: McCoy forfeits his law license for good, steps down as the judge of the 100th District, pays a paltry $20,000 in restitution in return for dismissal of the indictments with prejudice.   

McCoy’s lawyer, Bill Kelly, of course, had to go ”on record” that his client had done nothing wrong and wasn’t about to plead guilty to ”anything.”  Uh-huh.  And my mother’s a pushcart and your client is the King of England.  Hey Bill, if he’s really not guilty, why not go to trial and show us?  I’d be the first to carry the guy out on a sedan chair in total victory. 

I hear tell that today, Thursday, Pat Murphy, Assistant Potter County D.A., dismissed an indictment halfway through trial in the 47th District Court and did so by making the announcement, in full view and hearing of the jury, that he could not in good faith continue the prosecution in light of the state of evidence.  By all accounts, he did the right and honorable thing.  Who says that prosecutors don’t get their stroke on hacklawyer.net?  Well done Pat.  By the way, defense lawyer Jon Waggoner was the recipient of this fortuitous windfall for his client.  

Bowing to pressure from religious conservatives, the State Board of Education in Florida voted 4-3 to depict Charles Darwin’s seminal work on the origins of the human race as “merely a theory” although the study of evolution will be required course work in public schools.  The compromise requires teachers explain to their students that the vast body of scientific evidence, collected and cataloged over the past 100 years, has yet to prove “conclusively” that life evolved over billions of years.  It, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, is relegated to “ideas.”  But don’t worry - Newton’s law of gravity will still be taught as fact as will Galileo’s ”theory” concerning the composition and arrangement of the solar system.  So the four cowards who voted in the majority can at least concede that Joshua did not actually stop the earth from rotating on its axis to lengthen the duration of the day to finish the battle without fear of eternal damnation.  Never forget that fanatics are forever busy and need feeding.

Over the past few years, I have come to appreciate a pretty good cabernet sauvignon from a poor one.  I’m no wine snob like Miles in Sideways but I trust my taste buds when it comes to a good cab that doesn’t have to run over $20.  One of those that you could always bank on for a nice taste was anything coming from Sterling Vineyards out of Northern California.  So it was with particular sadness that I came across the obituary for Peter Newton.

He was the founder, along with Michael Stone, of Sterling Vineyards near Calistoga, California.  Newton was part of the first wave of vintners who transformed Napa Valley into what it is now, the premier winemaking region of the country.  Sterling, organized in 1964, didn’t produce its first bottle of wine until 1969 and soon it became known as one of the premiers wineries for cabnernet sauvingnon and chardonnay.  Newton was also one of the first vintners to plant merlot in the region, a grape many experts believed was simply too “tempermental” to be worth the trouble.

Sterling Vineyards was considered one of the most beautiful wineries in the world.  It was modeled on a Greek monastery, set atop a hillside and only reached by an aerial tram.  It had three bell towers which were fitted with bells from St. Dunstan-in-the-East, London, destroyed during World War II.  Eventually, Sterling Vineyards was sold to Coca Cola in 1977 and then later sold to Seagram.  It now owned by Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines.

Newton was born in London in 1926 and then he, along with his family, then moved to Sussex during the London blitz of 1940.  He earned a law degree from Oxford and later was hired as a journalist with The Financial Times out of London.  In 1959, he was transferred to San Francisco to serve as the paper’s West Coast correspondent.  The next year, he founded Sterling International, a paper trading and manufacting concern.  Although Sterling Vineyards went through a number of hands after 1977, Newton held on to Newton Vineyards until 2001 when a majority share was sold to luxery-goods company LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. 

He is survived by three children from his first marriage; a brother, Kenneth, of South Fawley, Oxfordshire, England and six grandchildren.

“The Senate Democrats are like volcano worshipers.  If Liberman blows, their whole island sinks into the sea.”

Bill Curry, former adviser to Bill Clinton, on the rocky relationship Senate Democrats, whose majority - their chairmanships, their fancier offices, their power - hangs on pure whim (since they exist as a majority by only one vote), have with feisty Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman.