Blog Posts

Glassdale, Idaho -- Margaret Shipley is fighting state officials for the return of her son. She does not deny that he touched his privates in public. Indeed, she admits he was most likely masturbating. But, she points out, Rayford Shipley is only twenty-six months old. Why, she asks, did child...

It started as an inspiration and has metamorphosed into a conviction: If the state is to be represented in each and every criminal prosecution by prosecutors, experts and investigators wholly funded, then why aren't defendants? We've begun a journey toward the goal of equal justice for all by...

Each year the criminal codes of both the federal and state government grows. The result is that increasing number of Americans face the devastating impact of a criminal prosecution. The burden of defending against a criminal charge falls most harshly on the middle class. Unable to qualify for a...

I can't tell what's going on at Gerry Spence's Trial Lawyers College. Of course, I haven't tried all that hard. Spence is stepping down and settling into the sunset. At 81, that's expected. Whether the college can survive without his charisma is an open question. Watching folks try to fill his...

It was inevitable, really. A new edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of mental Disorders is in the works. And with it will come yet new diagnoses and disorders. The tiny corner of psychic life reserved for the reasonable person just got smaller....

Terry Harrington is now a free man. And he is probably a millionaire. He owes that to a woman named Anne Danaher. According to Harrington's legal advisers, however, Ms. Danaher shouldn't be paid a dime. Shame on the legal advisers.
The name Terry Harrington might not mean anything to you. You...

The contrast between the law's soaring ideals and the more prosaic reality of paying the bills intersect at the moment the attorney-client relationship is formed. Yet in all the great and not so great fiction about lawyers and the law, fees are almost never discussed. Indeed, even the celebrated...

Blawgosphere purists are in an uproar about the practice of some lawyers who use ghostwriters to write material for their blogs. I don't see what the big deal is. Does anyone really protest when a newspaper prints unsigned editorials? It's the masthead that matters.
I confess to a wayward...

I was standing on line in a courthouse the other day, waiting for my turn through the metal detector. These waits never really bother me. Courthouses can be violent places. I appreciate the job done by judicial marshals to protect my back.
But then someone waltzed by. The marshals said hello....

Three Washington State teenagers have been charged with sexting, sending nude photographs of themselves to one another using the Internet. If convicted, the three will be added to the legions of those required to pose as a sex offender. Since when is curiosity a crime? And do we really need to...