Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Entries tagged with "rights"
I Hope It's Just The Water
I tried to get through my 1:00 p.m. meeting on Thursday early enough to catch some of the most recent contempt proceedings in this case. You can get additional information about what’s going on here, here, here, here, and here, but I’ll give you a single, run-on-sentence summary of what people are reporting happened: one of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s goons brazenly looked through a defense attorney’s privileged and confidential file during a video-taped sentencing, committed misdemeanor theft stealing papers from the file, and had another henchman make copies before returning the stolen papers to the file, then got caught and perjured himself in subsequent contempt proceedings all the while lucking out with absurd decisions from two judges and a seemingly underwhelming show of outrage from multiple defense … Read entire article »
Filed under: Government Rants
Jury Trial Shenanigans
The US Constitution says you get an impartial jury “[i]n all criminal prosecutions.” The Arizona Constitution says you get an impartial jury “in criminal prosecutions.” A misdemeanor is a criminal prosecution, so you get a jury trial, right? If you agree, it probably means you haven’t had the good fortune of spending three years in law school. Those three years are essential if you want to learn the super-important lawyer skill of looking at something really clear and interpreting it to mean something different from what it obviously means. The most important lesson lawyers-to-be learn in law school is that constitutions, statutes, and rules don’t always mean what they say. Sometimes, they don’t even mean what they mean. Nowhere are those important law school lessons more impressively … Read entire article »
Filed under: Arizona Cases, SCOTUS Cases, US Constitution
Death Penalty
I often get questions from family and friends about cases in the media, especially death penalty cases. I don’t want to discuss the merits of whether or not we should have a death penalty; instead, I want to focus on process itself. People almost universally get upset over the cost and time of such cases. No doubt it is frustrating to hear about someone who committed a heinous crime and received expensive legal representation for free, and I certainly think that the system could be streamlined. I’ve heard numerous times that “we all know he (or she) is guilty, why can’t we just execute them immediately” or “why do we have to pay for their defense.” While the complete answer to the question would … Read entire article »
Filed under: Death Penalty
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