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I’ve already been asked about it several times. For the criminal trial lawyer, the Casey Anthony verdict was the result that made it difficult to counsel clients on whether to accept a negotiate plea rather than risk a trial against an overwhelming case. Several colleagues have told me that clients have balked in the face…

There’s an old bright line rule about whether judges should mention the appellate process to juries. The subtext is that you shouldn’t do it at all. The literal rule is that you shouldn’t do it in a way suggesting that the defendant is going to lose the trial. The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed on old…

I stopped blogging several weeks back. You won’t have to look hard to see a gap in the rate of posts on this blog from July until a few days ago. And if you look at the post I did earlier in the week, you’ll see something worse than no blog at all. You’ll see…

The Supreme Court has granted two petitions for certiorari and one application for discretionary appeal so far this month. Below is an overview of each case Bunn v. State In its Order granting Cert., from September 6, 2011, the Court notes that it is particularly concerned with the following issue: Does the Child Hearsay Statute…

Leave this blog right now and run, don’t walk, over to the Appellate Record and read Kendall Gray’s blog post on what distinguishes appellate lawyers from trial lawyers. A presentation he gave to visitors to his firm from China inspired this post. It provides the simplest explanation of the key differences between the two types…

Two recent cases from the Court of Appeals demonstrate the need to put the appellate record together in a reasonable time period, the need to respond to post-trial motion regarding the record with the statutory time frame, and to be vigilant that the record stays together as the case moves its way through the court…

At the risk of being annoying about it, I want to commend another Steven Pressfield blog post to you. This one is titled Worthy Thoughts and Unworthy Thoughts. Mr Pressfield has been on the road lately, and he has had to work hard to focus on things that matter. Instead, because he is not working,…

Last week, I had a post-conviction motion in a county where I never practice. The motion is under advisement, so I won’t go into the particulars about it or what happened at the argument. I write today about the things I did before the hearing started and I plan to do those things even when…

I returned from vacation pleased to find in my in basket at the office a copy of Ryan C. Tuck’s article from the Georgia Law Review on the confusing state of the law as it relates to ineffective assistance of counsel in Georgia. The article is titled “Ineffective-Assistance-of-Counsel Blues: Navigating the Muddy Waters of Georgia…

  Above the Law has a good recent post on the use of video arraignments and how judges find that the process makes them feel safer. I don’t know whether video Arraignments make the process any safer or not. But the process certainly makes the process more efficient. In fact, many of the rituals of…