Samuel Leibowitz August 14, 1893 – January 11, 1978 While reading an article in Thursday’s New York Times (4/4/13),I flashed back forty years deep into my public defender days. Alabama...
Category: Criminal Defense
The Dade County Bar Association’s Bench & Bar Conference
On Friday morning (2/8/13) I had the pleasure of joining a Bar panel discussing criminal law issues. The panel had the grandiose title of “Criminal Law with the Legends” (usually...
The Business of Persuasion (Part 2)
This is a continuation of my thesis that business books on persuasion, selling and marketing are the almost perfect guidebooks for trial lawyers. This is not to mean one must...
Cross-examine Like a Psychopath
I came across a new book called The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton. A catchy title even for...
Authenticity
My last post on the presidential debate focused on the disastrous, lackluster, non-performance by Obama, but now I want to dissect the performance of Mitt Romney who has been declared...
Final Argument: Tone (Part 3) – The Presidential Debate
Trial lawyers start working on their final argument from the first day on a case and keep working it until they get up on their feet and start talking. They...
Final Argument: Tone (Part 2)
Can you expect to persuade an audience or a jury by scowling like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did at the UN yesterday?
The West Memphis Three (Part 2)
Damien Echols has written a book about his experiences with the criminal justice system and death row to excellent reviews. He has been doing the interview circuit and tonight I...
“Get Me Giesler”
I took a pilgrimage of sorts today. Nothing arduous like hiking to Jerusalem or Mecca. From my LA house, I drove down the street to Sunset Boulevard, and took a...
Bending the Rules
“Hard cases make bad law” is a tired lifeless legal cliche but it works to describe the Jared Loughner case. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. noted in Northern Securities Co. v....