Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Archive
Should Be an Interesting Race
Tom Horne officially announced his candidacy for attorney general last week. No surprise there. Andrew Thomas will probably make his official decision soon. No surprise there either. What’s surprising is what I discovered reading about the race in this article. It looks like there’s a third lawyer seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general. That lawyer is none other than Tajudeen Oladiran, whom you may remember from this motion. I usually don’t pay much attention to elections, but with Taj and Andrew Thomas both competing for the GOP nomination, I think I may start following the race. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
A Lie or Just Misleading?
In previous posts, I complained about having to trust prosecutors to set up victim interviews. In case you don’t feel like clicking on the links, I’ll summarize: in Arizona, defense attorneys have to ask the prosecutor to ask the victim if he or she wants to talk to them. As I discussed in those posts, there are a lot of problems with that. I recently encountered a situation that highlighted one big problem. The victim in one of my domestic violence cases has recanted. She is very eager to tell everyone, myself included, that she lied about what happened and wants the prosecutor to dismiss the charges. I know for a fact she told the prosecutor she wanted absolutely nothing to do with the case and … Read entire article »
Filed under: lawyers, Prosecutors, Victim's Rights
A CPS Nightmare
The prosecutor scratched the charges because my client was not guilty of the crime. This wasn’t one of those maybe-she-did-it-but-we-can’t-prove-it cases. The sum of information available about what happened should have made it obvious to anyone with half a brain that my client did nothing wrong. She did not assault her daughter. My client’s innocence notwithstanding, some of the folks over at Arizona Child Protective Services, either lacking half a brain or bored with nothing to do, decided to meddle. “We just want to get your client’s side of things,” they said. I found out about the meeting exactly one business day before it was set to happen. I don’t represent people in dependencies. I attended the meeting with CPS because I never trust the government … Read entire article »
Filed under: Government Rants
Case against DeCosta Dismissed
The case against David DeCosta has been dismissed. Here is the story, and here is the minute entry. I haven’t seen the state’s motion to dismiss, but Arizona Criminal Attorney Russ Richelsoph tells me the state moved to dismiss without prejudice because there was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction.” I summarized the facts of the case here, but Mark Bennett explained it best: DeCosta was set up by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Phoenix Police Department, and he was almost certainly factually innocent. When I found out the criminal case against DeCosta was dismissed, my first thought was “it’s about damn time.” My second thought was “what’s he going to do now?” In my daily practice, I see how destructive criminal charges can be. I … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
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