When I was a public defender in Philadelphia, my office mate used to come across me reading transcripts from court hearings I had done and kid me. I thought I was being conscientious, working to make myself a better lawyer. He thought I was being vain. Testimony from every preliminary hearing we did was automatically transcribed in advance of the …
David P. Baugh was one of the speakers at a Virginia Trial Lawyers Association CLE I attended yesterday. Baugh is perhaps best known for defending the free speech of a Ku Klux Klan member in a trial that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Virginia v. Black, and, surprise, surprise, he turns out to be a dynamic and …
Many years ago, as a student at the University of Freiburg in Germany, I went with an American friend to West Berlin to sightsee. We went to a bar one night in which we were taken for some money by the bar’s establishment. The two of us were so embarrassed by the whole thing (we couldn’t believe we had fallen …
I have written a number of posts over the last couple of months about the Donald E. Gates case. As you will recall, Gates was convicted of a crime he did not commit and initially spent 16 years in jail in large part due to the false testimony of former FBI analyst Michael P. Malone. In 1997, after the government …
I have written a number of entries over the last couple of months about the case of Donald E. Gates, a man who was imprisoned for 27 years for a crime the evidence now shows he did not commit. Gates was convicted in large part on the basis of false testimony by FBI analyst Michael P. Malone. Donald Gates, as …
This guy has his eye put out in an accident. He can’t afford a glass eye, so the eye doctor puts in a fake eye made of wood instead. The guy is very self-conscious about his wood eye, but finally his friends talk him into joining them at a dance. It is time, they say, for him to get back …