Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Archive
No Warm Fuzzies Here
The work of a criminal defense lawyer is often thankless. You can put your heart and soul into something, and at the end of the day, you may be the only human being on earth who knows what good you’ve done, what difference you’ve made. When it looks like you’ve messed up, however, it rarely escapes notice. You’ll get caught. You’ll get called on it whether it’s your fault or not. I got to experience some of the thankless nature of the job yesterday morning. My first hearing was a change of plea. The client is already serving a prison sentence, and he has a couple of years left to go. There’s a decent constitutional issue, so I convinced the prosecutor to make him an … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Courts, Practice in General
We're Insane
My brother sent me a link to this CEPR study about the cost of incarceration a few weeks ago. After reading the entire thing, I was speechless. The topic of the study seemed so familiar, yet the numbers were so much more stunning than I ever could have imagined. I scoured blogs to see if someone else had posted about it, yet I found only one article. Let me know if I’ve missed others. The statistics are incredible: we now incarcerate 240% more people than we did in 1980; in 2008, one out of every 48 working-age men was in prison or jail; non-violent offenders make up over 60% of the prison and jail population; drug offenders now account for about one-fourth of all offenders behind bars. Those are just some of the numbers that … Read entire article »
Filed under: Government Rants, jail
Wasted Anger
I keep thinking about something I saw in court a little while ago. The judge, a former sex crimes prosecutor with a temper that makes her unpopular among attorneys on both sides, decided to take a page out of Judge Judy’s playbook and dramatically castigate a defendant at sentencing. “I’m very sorry, and I will not let it happen again,” the defendant said. The judge attacked before he could even finish, asking him why things were going be different this time. She threw his priors at him when he tried to explain. She rubbed in the fact he was on probation when it happened. She expressed her disbelief by rolling her eyes, and she made sarcastic remarks. His pleas fell on deaf ears. She … Read entire article »
Filed under: Arizona Statutes, Courts
Marketing to Bikers
I follow Susan Carter Liebel on Twitter. She’s the creator of Solo Practice University, a website that’s supposed to be “the #1 web-based educational and professional networking community for solo lawyers and law students.” Yesterday, I noticed she put up the following with a link: “Adam Gee teaches you How To Market To Bikers in his newest class.” Intrigued, I clicked the link. I couldn’t find anything about the content of the course though, so I went to Adam Gee’s page at SPU. There, I saw the following under his syllabus: Marketing to Bikers: Developing a Motorcycle Practice * Indirect Marketing Techniques * Direct Marketing Techniques * Blogs, social media and books I think SPU is a great idea, and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Bikers' Rights, Clients, lawyers, Marketing
Celebrate Scott Greenfield Day
I’m not posting this because Scott Greenfield gave this little blog the extreme blog makeover that put it on the map, or even because he’s defended me previously. Those aren’t my reasons for posting; those are the reasons why I should feel like a jerk for not posting sooner. Anyway, today has been declared Scott Greenfield Day. Although it may be over for those of you in the Eastern Time Zone, there are still a few hours left to celebrate Scott and his fantastic blog, Simple Justice, everywhere else in the US. If you don’t read it regularly, you should. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
New Website
June 23rd, 2010 | 1 Comment
We apologize for the past 24 hours of broken links, repeated postings, and disappearing comments; we just updated our website and are still working out all the little glitches. Hopefully everything will be sorted out and back to normal soon. If you come across something that’s broken, please let us know right away. Thanks! … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized