A New, Get Rich Scheme

Want to become a millionaire without actually working for it, or winning the lotto?  Sure, you say.  Who wouldn’t?  Well then, I have got a plan for you.  Check it out.

Step 1: Get falsely accused and convicted of a crime in Texas.  Just a tip, make sure it’s not a death penalty case.  You may end up getting executed.

Step 2: Spend a good part of your life in TDC.

Step 3: Get the Innocence Project to get your conviction overturned.

Step 4: Here’s where it’s all worth it, time to cash in!  As Texas provides the most compensation in the country to people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes.

Here’s the story that caught my eye this morning on the topic.

Exonerees to be millionaires

By JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press

DALLAS — Thomas McGowan’s journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.

“I’ll let my girlfriend pick out the rest,” said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.

He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week.

The annuity payments are especially popular among exonerees, who acknowledge their lack of experience in managing personal finances. A social worker who meets with the exonerees is setting them up with financial advisers and has led discussions alerting them to swindlers.

The annuities are “a way to guarantee these guys … payments for life as long as they follow the law,” said Kevin Glasheen, a Lubbock attorney representing a dozen exonerees.

Two who served about 26 years in prison for rape will receive lump sums of about $2 million apiece. Another, Steven Phillips, who spent about 24 years in prison for sexual assault and burglary, will get about $1.9 million.

The biggest compensation package will likely go to James Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder that DNA testing later showed he did not commit. He eventually could receive nearly $2.2 million but first needs a writ from the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals or a pardon from the governor.

Maybe it’s just me, but I did not like the tone of the article one bit.  It reads like the author is writing about some guys who won the lotto and these guys are lucky to get anything from the state.  These are guys who lost years of their lives, probably the best years, to a system that is supposed to protect the innocent.  And the AP words the story as life these guys have hit the jackpot and are set for life.

First off, 2.2 million bucks isn’t that much.  Not what it used to be at least.  It might be enough for me to retire on if I went somewhere with a good exchange rate.  But how do you put a price on losing 27 years of your life?  The headline is misleading as it is.  Yes, some of the exonerees will become millionaires.  But at a payout of 80K a year, you’d have to be wrongfully imprisoned for 12.5 years to become a millionaire.

And if you asked Mr. McGowan what he’d rather have, $1.8 million or 23 years of his life, I can say with 99% certainly that he’d say those 23 years.  The State of Texas is getting off cheap.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

There’s a lot of things wrong with the American justice system as it stands today.  This is a view of both people who are part of the system, and the general public.  Lawyers on our side of the bar see an increasingly pro-state mentality both from people and the government.  When soon to be Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is introduced by Sentaor Chuck Schumer by him touting that she votes for the government a lot as a selling point, it’s easy to get frustrated.

“She has agreed with Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time,” Schumer said. “She has ruled for the government in 83 percent of immigration cases, against the immigration plaintiff. She has ruled for the government in 92 percent of criminal cases. She has denied race claims in 83 percent of the cases and has split evenly on employment cases between employer and employee.”

On the mysterious side of civil law, the attorneys in the class action lawsuit against Ford for their Explorers that rolled over walked away with $25 million.  Consumers got a coupon good for either $500 off a new Ford SUV or $300 off any other Ford vehicle.  Approximately one million consumers were part of the class.  To date, 75 coupons had been redeemed.  Not 750,000.  Not 75,000.  Not even 750.  75.

Which leads to my next question, why on earth am I not a class action plaintiff’s lawyer?

I do have a point here, in case you’re wondering.  And it’s this.  Japan is having it’s first jury trial in 60 years.  That’s a long time ago.  It’s not really an American style jury trial either.

Six jurors are working with three judges to decide a verdict in the case of 72-year-old Katsuyoshi Fujii, who has been charged with murder.

Until now Japanese trials have been decided by a panel of judges.

Some might argue the system has it’s benefits.

In the past the justice system in Japan has been notoriously secretive, with a system of judge-only trials and private police interrogations.

Criminal trials currently have a 99% conviction rate, and there are increasing concerns that the system of judge-only trials and private police interrogations leads to false confessions and the conviction of innocent people.

I’m sure prosecutors dream of the day they don’t have to bother with those pesky juries or worry about such silly things as “Miranda” and “the rights of the accused”.  Express-lane justice, that’s the dream.

This was a bit of news that surprised me.  We all know there’s plenty of countries out there that don’t offer their accused the right to a jury trial.  Places like North Korea, Cuba, China and other totalitarian regimes.   As an ignorant American, I would have just assumed that a first world country like Japan would have a jury system.  Reading about the jury system on Wikipedia was quite interesting.  In Canada, the accused only has the right to a jury trial if the punishment is greater than five years.  India and Israel do not have juries.  In Germany, lay people act with professional judges to decide the verdicts.

So no matter how bad we think we have it in the USA, no matter how pro-government the sentiment is, everyone accused of a crime still gets their day in court.  From a speeding ticket to capital murder.  Whether you’re a homeless guy living on the streets or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you (in theory) are all equal in the eyes of the law.  Whether or not you actually have that equality is another topic for another day.

Now, that is not to say that as criminal defense lawyers, we should just sit back and think that because we have it comparitively good in here, we should just roll with the punches.  Not at all.  As criminal defense lawyers, it’s our job to keep the government in check.  Even if the defendants in the US have more rights than most other countries in the world, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be ignored.  It’s up to us to never take this rights for granted and to make sure the rights of our clients are preserved.

Bücher verbrannt, um die Kinder

Roughly translated, “burning books to save the children”.

Some citizens of West Bend, Wisconsin are looking to have themselves and old-fashioned book burning.  No, there’s not some new Harry Potter book turning the kids into devil-worshipers.  Instead, there’s books in the young-adult section that are explicit, and someone of them even are even “gay-affirming.”  Oh, the horror!

The strife began in February when West Bend couple Jim and Ginny Maziarka objected to some of the content in the city library’s young-adult section. They later petitioned the library board to move any sexually explicit books — the definition of which would be debated — from the young-adult section to the adult section and to label them as sexually explicit.

Ginny Maziarka, 49, said the books in the section of the library aimed at children aged 12 to 18 included homosexual and heterosexual content she thought was inappropriate for youths.

She and her husband also asked the library to obtain books about homosexuality that affirmed heterosexuality, such as titles written by “ex-gays,” Maziarka said.

“All the books in the young-adult zone that deal with homosexuality are gay-affirming. That’s not balance,” she said.

Naturally, the library didn’t necessarily appreciate it when Jim and Ginny Maziarka (who will be referred to as Ned and Maude Flanders for the rest of this post) telling them how to do their jobs and refused to move the books.

The library did not agree with the Maziarkas’ suggestions, and the couple appealed to the library board. Ginny Maziarka, a mother of four, began blogging about the issue and the local newspaper picked up the dispute, sparking the opposition.

By the time the library board met on June 2, each side had collected more than 1,000 signatures backing their position. Dozens of residents spoke at the meeting before the board — still including the outgoing members — unanimously voted to keep all policies the same.

The demand to move the books was always going to be problematic because no authority has determined that any of the titles are pornographic or obscene, Tyree said.

OK, so Ned and Maude didn’t get their way.  You’d think that would be the end of it, right?  Wrong.

Outside West Bend, the fight caught the attention of Robert Braun, who, with three other Milwaukee-area men, filed a claim against West Bend calling for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned, along with financial damages.

The four plaintiffs — who describe themselves as “elderly” in their complaint — claim their “mental and emotional well-being was damaged by [the] book at the library.”

The claim, unconnected to the Maziarkas, says the book “Baby Be-bop” — a fictional piece about a homosexual teenager — is “explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian.”

Braun, who says he is president of a Milwaukee group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union, said he singled out the book because it “goes way over the line” with offensive language and descriptions of sex acts.

Now we’ve really gone down the rabbit hole.  It’s one thing when Ned and Maude get upset and stir up some fuss with the library.  But now we’ve got a group of people suing for $120,000.  That’s $30,000 for each of these crazy old bats that saw the book in a library display.  But I’m guessing for the CCLU, it’s not the money, it’s the principle.  And that principle is burning books you don’t like.

That’s right.  You just watched this man advocate that people go to the library and either rip the books in half right there, or check them out so that they may take them home and burn them.

Here’s what I find so incredibly frustrating people like Ned, Maude, and Crazy Old Mr. Braun.  They want to to censor what they don’t like in the name of keeping everyone else safe.  That somehow these self-appointed arbiters of everything that is just and moral know what’s best for all 30,000 people in West Best, WI.  They go get everyone riled up, cause all sorts of trouble such as costing four library board members their positions for not bowing down to the Mob Of All That Is Moral.  But then they have the balls to go and say something like this:

“We want parents to decide whether they want their children to have access to these books … and we want the library’s help in identifying [them through labeling and moving],” Maziarka said. “It’s just common sense.”

Whoa there, Maude.  You can’t advocate moving books around that you don’t approve of, and then turn around and say you want parents to decide whether or not their children have access to the books.  Especially when you’re the one who indirectly brought the book burners to West Bend.  Here’s the deal, if parents in West Bend, or anywhere else don’t want their kids to read such books, that’s up to them.  It’s not your job to decide what’s appropriate for everyone else in town.

And the greatest irony of them all, if someone tried to force Maude to take down her blog, or tried to cut off Crazy Old Mr. Braun’s microphone, you know they would be crying censorship until they were blue in face.

But when they’re doing the censoring, it’s OK.  Especially if it’s for the children.

The First Rule

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

The movie Fight Club changed my life like nothing else.  Everyone has that one piece of art that moves them.  It could be anything.  A painting, photograph, song, movie, book or anything else that moves you.  Mine is Fight Club, really the book at the movie.  I first saw the teaser trailer for it when I saw the first of the Star Wars prequels.  I had no idea what the movie was about, but I thought it looked cool.  In the fall when Fight Club was released, I took a girl to see it as a first date.  I wanted to see the movie, she agreed since it had a shirtless Brad Pitt.  Everyone won.  She decided to stop dating me shortly thereafter.

But, the movie blew me away.  Even though it’s now 10 years old, the themes of the movie are still fresh today.  I’ve never seen or read anything that just hits home on being a male and growing up in this time frame.  About twice a year I either watch the movie or read the book, and I always get something new out of it.

The workers at the Corpus Christi State School obviously didn’t conduct their fight club with the same rules that Tyler Durden did.  Four workers are set to start trial tomorrow.  Two more are scheduled for trial sometime later this year.  The crimes they are accused of are pretty bad as well:

In March, Corpus Christi police announced the discovery of what they called a “fight club” case at the Corpus Christi center. Nearly 20 videos, dating to 2007, found on a cell phone turned in to police showed staff members forcing residents into late-night bouts, kicking to egg them on.

Which brings me to an issue I had never thought about before I became an attorney.  Care of the mentally disabled, or whatever the correct term these days is.  This had never come up on my radar because it never had any impact on my life.  Other than the short attention span of anyone raised on Nintendo, I don’t have any kind of mental disability, nor does anyone in my family.  Sure, there were kids at school or were and they were even in some of my classes, but I never thought about what was going to happen to them after school and they aged out.  That probably isn’t very sensitive, but in my defense, I was 18 and thought I knew it all.

Now that I’m a little older and realize the older I get, the less I actually know, this has been an issue I come across on a semi-regular basis; clients with some kind of developmental disability.  They’ve run the gamut from ones that are just a little slow to ones that are off their rocker.  But the common denominator is that there isn’t a whole lot being done to help them.

I want to help, but I don’t know how.  I make motions to get clients examined when I think there is a need to.  I’ve been fortunate that some of the judges where I practice have an interest in trying to help those with disabilities rather than just locking them up.  The problem for getting help is (like every other problem) money.  The people I’m talking about were 99% of the time going to be indigent.  People who have disabilities and a family with money are already being taken care of.  So it’s up to the government to foot the bill in a time when county coffers are shrinking.  Heck, even when things are good, I have a hard time believing there’s a ton of money set aside for treating mentally disabled people.  And Texas doesn’t seem to have the best track record lately.

In May, the Legislature approved a $112 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over widespread mistreatment found at the state’s 13 residential facilities for people with developmental disabilities, now known as state supported living centers. The agency’s civil rights investigation found at least 53 deaths from September 2007 to September 2008 stemming from what it considered preventable conditions.

As part of the settlement, the state plans to hire 1,000 more staff members for the facilities.

Last month, Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation aimed at improving oversight of the facilities that house nearly 5,000 Texans, including installation of video cameras in common areas.

Laura Albrecht, a spokeswoman for the Department of Aging and Disability Services, said that the agency continues making unannounced visits to the Corpus Christi facility and that cameras are being installed. She said the settlement with the Justice Department was “a big step that will certainly bring improvements and changes to the system.”

So how does someone with no real dog in the fight get involved?  Write my state reps, find some lobby group?  Any ideas on getting involved and trying to help change conditions would be appreciated.

Should I Go To Law School?

While getting a hair cut the other day, I was browsing through a back issue of The Battalion (the Texas A&M newspaper) and an article about law school caught my eye.  More Aggies are planning on taking the LSAT.  Ahh yes, another sure sign of a bad economy, law school applications are up.

The number of students looking to attend law school has increased, and the sour national economy may be the leading reason why, a recent survey of prospective law students by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions found.

Texas A&M is following the national trend, said Karen Severn, the pre-law adviser at A&M. She said the number of Law School Admissions Tests, LSATs, which are the tests students take in order to attend law school, has increased by 6.4 percent as compared to the previous year. Though the figure includes students who may have taken the exam before, the number of students who took the test in February 2009 as compared to a year ago has increased by 11.5 percent.

Kaplan surveyed approximately 1,000 pre-law students who took the LSAT and 40 percent of the students said that the financial downturn has been their motivation in applying to law school.

One main reason behind the economic aspect follows the idea that students do not want to join the workforce, which has reached a low point in the U.S. The Kaplan survey reports that students would rather “strengthen their knowledge, so they are more competitive when they graduate.”

The idea of riding out a bad economy by going to law school is a pretty seductive idea.  I know exactly how the line of thinking goes:

“OK, I’m about to graduate, the economy sucks and I have a political science degree.  I know, law school!  Lawyers make good money, I can spend the next three years drinking beer and/or stabbing my classmates in the back, and by the time the economy rebounds it will be time for me to take the bar.”

Here’s the first problem with that line of thinking.  You’re not the only person to think of that, at all.  You’re not being clever one bit.

Instead you’re going to saddle yourself with six-figures of debt to get yourself into an industry with one of the lowest rates of job satisfaction and has a business model that isn’t exactly stable right now.  Are you sure that’s the field you want to get into?

But being the helpful guy that I am, I have created a quiz for any college senior with a liberal-arts degree trying to figure out what to do with their lives.

IS LAW SCHOOL RIGHT FOR ME?

Do I hate myself?

1. Yes, with the burning fire of 1,000 suns.
2. Meh, I’m pretty cool.
3. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

Do I really believe I’m going to make as much as the law school promises?

1. Of course.  Law schools wouldn’t lie, would they?
2. No. I realize that a select few students skew the average
3. I’m not in it for the money, all I need is love.

Do I enjoy arguing over minutiae no one cares about?

1. Yes, and I’ll argue with you about why you should love it.
2. Uh, no.  You mean that’s what lawyers do?
3. Only if it involves Mother Earth

Have I ever spent any time with a lawyer?

1. Sure, he wasn’t too bad.  Kind of sweaty and mumbled a lot though
2. I’ve watched so many Law & Order reruns, it feels like Sam Waterson is my friend.
3. Just the one that helps me write Pollution Tickets for SUVs

Would spending three years with 100 type A, hyper-competitive people be a good time?

1. Sign me up, I’ll beat all of them!
2. Well, at least there’s beer.
3. No, but I will love all of them

Results.  If you answered 1 to most of your questions, go take the LSAT.  You’re perfect!  If you answered 2 to most of your questions, you’re really regretting that political science degree right now, eh?  If you answered 3 to most of your questions, you’re also perfect for law school, but everyone will laugh at you behind your back.  You might try Greenpeace instead.

Think of the Children: Hoosier Edition

I have never liked the idea of Sex Offender Registration Lists.  Mostly because I don’t understand the point of them.  I mean, I understand the point of the politicians who support them.  It’s a great way to look tough on crime without actually doing anything substantial.  And the sex offenders that have to register aren’t exactly a politically powerful group, I doubt they have much of a lobby.

My biggest problem is there’s no way to measure whether sex offender lists work.  Probably because other than have a website where you can check up on your neighbors, there’s no easily discernible goal of the sex offender registry.  The Think-Of-The-Children Crowd would probably say if citizens, namely parents, know where these sex offenders are living, they are better prepared to be able to protect their children.  It’s always for the children.

I understand where they are coming from.  If you have an 8 year old son, I can understand wanting to know if the guy next door likes 8 year old boys.  Personally, I’d rather know who in my neighborhood has been arrested for a home invasion or burglary of a habitation, but that’s just me.

Which is why this case (opens as a PDF) out of the Indiana Supreme Court is such a surprise.  The in the case, Wallace plead guilty in 1988 to one felony count of Class C child molestation.  He was given five years probation and completed his probation in 1992.  Indiana passed a sex offender registration act in 1994 and then amended it in 2001 to require anyone who had been convicted of certain sex offenses to register, regardless of the date.  Wallace never registered, and was eventually convicted for failing to register.  He challenged the registry as an Ex Post Facto violation.

The traditional rational to get around an Ex Post Facto challenge is that the registry is administrative and not punitive.  I’m guessing the guy who has to register on the list views it as punishment.  But he’s a criminal and we’re doing it for the children, so his opinion isn’t valid.

In the opinion, the Indiana Court runs through seven factors from Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 US 144, and (spoiler alert) determines that the sex offender registry as applied to Wallace violates ex post facto laws.

I believe this is what the talking heads on TV and the radio refer to as judicial activism.

I’m not expecting this to catch on around the country, and the ruling keeps the registry in place, this only applies to a small group.   Besides, the Do-It-For-The-Children lobby is way too powerful.  Everyone loves kids and nobody loves sex offenders.  But maybe, just maybe this can be a small step in the right direction in calming the sex offender hysteria.