Check this story out, if you want your head to explode with exactly how ridiculous people can be sometimes.

For those who’d like to keep their heads intact, here’s a summary: Father and daughter in Houston go out for a few drinks over Thanksgiving. Rather than drive and endanger their fellow motorists on their return trip, they opt to take a cab. After consuming their drinks, and enjoying their evening, they call the cab company to request that one pick them up and take them home. They proceed to wait outside of the bar for the taxi.

Police officer decides that they ought not be on the street, tells them that if their cab doesn’t show up in ten minutes, they’re under arrest for public intoxication. They tell him the cab company said twenty minutes, and walk to the corner so they can see when it arrives. Police officer decides that enough is enough, and hauls ‘em in.

Holy wah, as our friends in the upper peninsula of Northern Michigan might say. At least they didn’t get tasered, I guess.

Labels: dwi, stupid arrests

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

This is neat. Craig Watkins is the Dallas County DA whose “conviction integrity units” have worked with groups like the Innocence Project to ensure that everyone incarcerated in Dallas is actually guilty. (There’s a great Wall Street Journal piece on the man here.)

Anyway, he was on The Colbert Report last night to talk about his work, and it’s funny, as Colbert’s interviews usually are, and Watkins comes off better than most of Colbert’s guests usually do. But he really cuts to the significant point very quickly, which is something I’ve heard debated a lot (in reference to Roman Polanski, most recently, but it hardly began or ended with him) – basically, if we know someone is guilty, why does it matter so much if things are handled by the letter of the law?

And the answer – as most attorneys surely know, but most laymen feel is a subject of worthwhile debate – is that, if you can’t trust that the system is functioning fairly in cases where there’s no real debate regarding innocence, then it’s really, really hard to have faith that it’s functioning properly when there’s a genuine dispute. Watkins uses OJ as his example, but it’s a debate that I had with some fellow non-lawyer friends regarding Polanski a few weeks ago.

(A little background, if you ignored the circus: Roman Polanski, accused of, among other things, raping a teenage girl in the 1970’s, fled the country after he entered his guilty plea in response to a sentence that wasn’t what he expected. The judge in the case has been accused of impropriety, and since Polanski’s re-arrest two months ago, the fairness of the original proceedings have come into question.)

My friends, all of whom are good and moral people who are repulsed by Polanski and the accusations against him, which he’s never disputed, don’t get why it’s such a big deal if the judge inserted himself into the plea bargain process, offered a very light deal, and then started asking reporters and prosecutors if he should maybe up the sentence a bit. “The guy raped a teenager,” they say, “And we all know he did it. Who cares if the judge got a second opinion and then decided to give the guy what he really deserves?”

It’s convincing, because all of that’s true. What Watkins has had the courage – both in his actions as DA, and even on Colbert last night – to point out is that it’s more important that we get it right when someone is guilty. If we (and by we, I mean the people on behalf of whom the state seeks justice) can’t work within the legal framework we’ve established to convict someone whose guilt is never really in doubt, then what hope is there that a person who’s guilt is anything but a foregone conclusion will get treated legally and fairly?

I don’t know a ton about Watkins – just what I’ve read in various media and on the occasional blog, really – but we’re definitely lucky to have him advancing this argument.

Labels: craig watkins, innocence, innocence project, presumption of innocence, public perception, roman polanski, what prosecutors do right, wrongful convictions

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

There’s lots of talk about Tiger Woods right now. After a “minor car accident” on his own property, he’s gone back and forth regarding speaking to the police, and finally hired Orlando criminal defense attorney Mark NeJame, who’s advised him to keep his mouth shut – as any good defense attorney would do.

I thought it was interesting that a lot of the talk about the fact that Woods hired a defense attorney made mention of a 2003 article that described NeJame as “Orlando’s own Johnnie Cochran”. It reminded me of the Chris Rock joke about Cochran and Kobe Bryant – people said that Kobe shouldn’t have hired Cochran because it made him look guilty, and Rock’s joke is that, yeah, maybe, but at least then you get off, and you’re the guilty-looking person who goes free, rather than the innocent-looking guy in jail.

That perception, that by hiring Orlando’s Johnnie Cochran equivalent, Woods must have done something wrong, isn’t an accident, I don’t think. I don’t think that it keeps getting brought up by coincidence – there’s a strong push to suggest here (as in most cases) – that Tiger Woods has something to hide by hiring this guy.

That’s my take on it, anyway, but I am but a guy who works in the office. The office is full of smart attorneys, however, so I talked to Kristi Couvillon, one of those smart attorneys, for her take on it.

“A lot of innocent people haven’t hired attorneys for that reason and some of them have found themselves convicted,” she said. “I think an innocent person has more reason to hire an attorney, not less. Honest statements can be misconstrued and used by law enforcement as statements of guilt, and it would be so much worse, to me, for that to happen if I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Which makes sense, especially if you’re high in the running for title of “most famous person in the world”, like Tiger Woods, and people would get a thrill out of seeing you brought down. The stakes are pretty low here, for sure – Woods probably faces misdemeanor charges, at most, though that’s just my speculation based on some media reports – but that only makes it more interesting that there’s this rush to tarnish his image (especially considering how squeaky-clean it is) right now, what with the “he hired the equivalent of Johnnie Cochran” bupkis and all. If there’s a clear interest in convicting the guy of something in the court of public opinion right now, that’s probably all the reason he needs to defend himself with an attorney. I wouldn’t be talking to the police right now, either.

Labels: hiring a lawyer, in the news, presumption of innocence, public perception

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments