New Look

Well, law-new-view has a new look. I will be making a few more changes, but for the most part, I think I am ready to go through the end of law school and into the bar. Other new features include the capacity to leave comments which never seemed to work with my last template, and searching all of my past post all the way back to the beginning of One-L.

I have been thinking a bit about the last year. It was a long and frustrating year. Was I worked to death as the saying goes? It did not really feel like it. I certainly did not spend as much time on law school as I did in the first year. On the other-hand, I can't remember a Sunday evening throughout the whole last semester where I was not working on either my legal writing or another paper. It was more relentless than anything else, and the fact that I had learned how get a lot more done with less work took some of the mystic out of law school. It was more like a problem that I simply had to work through. It was not especially engaging, but not yet entirely boring. I was law school's middle child.

Now a look ahead. I am looking for a new job, but I have not found anything that is both something I want to do and in the right location. I am commuting to Bellevue and working at the same firm I have been working at for the last year. I go back and forth with my feelings about work. Some days I really enjoy the work. I am getting much better at the work and it is still a lot of fun to settle a case. I have been there long enough now that I have worked on some cases from the very beginning when our clients were injured, through writing their demand and finally working out a settlement. I have a bit more independence now, and since I have been working full time, I have gotten to do some different tasks like draft complaints and edit interrogatories. I am looking for a job that will get me into court at least occasionally, but I am having the same problem I had last spring: lawyers do not call back. I interviewed twice at a firm, and then they told me they would have a decision in a few days. That was two weeks ago. I have called once and left a message with his secretary and also a voice mail. I still have not heard anything. At this point, I don't care if he offers me the job or not. I did want to work there, but that is simply rude and inappropriate. I already have a job, which removes some of the stress, but I simply want to know whether to tell my old job if I am leaving. Even if he isn't offering me the job, the lest he could do is return my phone calls and let me know.

Oh well, maybe I just don't understand how hard it is to be a lawyer and how your work is more important than common decency (add sarcasm yourself). I would like to think that even when I have my own firm, I will return phone calls. A week is understandable, two weeks and two follow up calls. . .???

Thanks blog for letting me vent my frustrations.

Quick Update

I am still in the middle of a blogging hiatus. Since the end of the spring semester, I have moved to Everett, gotten a puppy, and started working full time. I have a lot of ideas I want to blog about, but it will be a few more weeks until I have the time or stability to start writing again. Check back some time in June. Happy summer!

Note to Readers

Over the course of the next couple of days, I am going to attempt to merge all of my law school blogs into one blog so that all of the drama, the tears, the joys, the boredom can be found in the same place. You would think there would be an easy way to do this, but it looks like my new summer free time will be used copying posts from one blog to the next. We'll see how long that lasts.

Finished!

About 15 minutes ago, I printed out my Medical Liability take-home final. That means I am finished with the semester. I do not have the same sense of relief as at the end of my 0ne-L year. On the other hand, I am not completely exhausted. I have done a better job of striking a balance between my personal life and my school life (some times I think too good of a balance) and in a lot of ways, not that much will change. I have been working through finals, and now I will just be working full time. It is true that I am not taking classes this summer, and for that I am very happy. I need a break from school before I can face the last year, which by all reports is just an excuse for the law school to rob you of another $25,000.

Blogger's Life

For you faithful readers, you can tell I have been in a bit of a slump with this blog lately.  I am rethinking exactly what I want to accomplish here when I pick up with my 3-L blog.  I will blog a bit more to wrap up this year, then take a bit of a hiatus from thinking about law school, and will hopefully be back in the blogging business with a new look and new enthusiasm at the beginning of June. 



I would really appreciate from any of you who read my blog regularly any thoughts you might have on what works and what does not work. Are there topics you would like to see more of or topics I cover too much.  As law school life because lest, well, important, I am considering using this as more of a political/legal blog. On the other-hand, some of my best writing has been about the mundanities of law school. I would like to get more regular about my posting, which means I need to be more enthusiastic about the topics.  Any thoughts? 



In the meantime, I have been gathering some interesting reading on blogging that I will share with you:



A story on blogger etiquette

A story about a blogger journalist who is taken seriously.



An, somewhat related, the first supreme court opinion which included a hyperlink to a video. You can find it at this site, and the case is Scott v. Harris.



I have to get back to studying for my evidence final. 

Con law continues

I may be done with Constitutional Law of Terrorism, but that class just seems to live on.  John McKay is in the news again, and terrorism will be in the news long after this prosecutor scandal is over.  In some ways, I wish that class would just keep going on.  It was not unusual that there would be major news directly related to the topic of conversation for the day, such as a supreme court opinion or a major news development.  I have also never seen so much online discussion on a class website before.  It is rare if one or two people ever post in the TWEN discussion section, but for this class we had people posting several times a week and often in response to each other.  I think this indicates a need to continue having discussions on terrorism and the many constitutional issues it creates.  I'll have to see if there is some way to keep the discussion going. 

An all-nighter puts me three down, two to go

I pulled my first all-nighter of law school last night. It was probably avoidable, but I had too good of a weekend to regret anything now. In fact, I find that as I worked through the night on my treason and terrorism paper, I was enjoying law school about as much as I have all semester. This has been a very disjointed semester, and I have not been able to get excited about my work until these last minute spurts of engagement. I believe I have been writing about this two-L slump for a while now and today, on two hours of sleep, and two finals still ahead of me, I do feel I am being worked to death.

I had my appellate argument on Friday afternoon, which was probably the best part of legal writing all semester. After 15 weeks of working on the same case, all I had to do was get up in front of a bunch of wanna-be judges (local attorneys) and discuss the most important issues. It was actually quite enjoyable, which is just further proof to myself that I want to be in a courtroom. My forensics class wrapped up last Wednesday, and a few hours ago I turned in my paper for Constitutional law of Terrorism. All I want to do now is sleep. The worst thing is that my computer has been acting a bit weird for the past couple of days and now I am just hoping it will get me through the week. I don't really need any notes off of the computer because for the two classes I have left, I have pretty much stopped taking notes in class. I also don't brief cases anymore or make outlines and with Legal Writing II this semester, there were many a days when it was lucky if I had done the reading for evidence. I guess that means I have five days to learn everything for the exam.

I have had a hard time knowing what to write here lately. I think it reflects my general malaise with law school. I am in the process of looking for a new job right now, so I don't even really have much enthusiasm for my work. I am not unhappy there, but I am going to be moving north and I want to make the commute easier and maybe work for an attorney who gets into the courtroom more often. The key to the personal injury mill that I work at now seems to be to stay out of court. It works for her and I have leaned a lot, but it is time to move on. I am going to miss that job, but I have been bored there for a couple of months cranking out the same negotiation letters to adjusters. I still enjoy that game, but I would like to mix it up with some real court time, especially since I can qualify for a rule 9 (limited license to practice law under the supervision of an attorney) after this semester.

Again, I do not know what to write about. Maybe the lack of sleep is affecting me. I felt great all through the night and was really enjoying the mental puzzle of whether or not treason could be used as an effective tool in the war on terror. I will be posting my paper online here shortly if anyone is interested in reading it. I was actually quite pleased with the final product.

I am boring myself here, so I won't make you read anymore.

Some Legal Advise

I wanted to pass on some of the advise for law students and young lawyers that I have heard lately. As the semester wraps up, professors are attempting to teach us what we actually need to know for practice--something that might have been missed amidst the mass of information we had to learn during the semester.

At lease a half-dozen times in the past month, different people have given me the same advise, so it must be important: make nice with the clerks. I have repeatedly heard that your best friend in court is the clerk and the nicer you are to the clerks, the better you will get along. Several people have also said that buying them a Starbucks gift card at Christmas will go a long way.

Secondly, I have been told to do the hardest work first. This is not so much legal advise, but good advise for pretty much any difficult task you have in life. The difficult projects are always going to be there, so it is just better to get them done first.

Finally, the oft repeated phrase of my evidence professor: "the other side is smarter and better prepared than you."

Blame Game

In the wake of Monday's tragic shooting, lots of people have been quick to look for someone to blame. Could the police have done more? Could his professors have done more? Could the university have done more? It is not as if people did not try and help Cho Suen-Hui. Professors tried to speak with him and get him into counseling, his roommates tried repeatedly to get him involved in their life, and he was even committed to a mental hospital for some time (read a good summary of the details here.) I think when it comes down to finding someone to blame, I cannot find anyone but Cho himself. This kid was very very disturbed. People knew it, but he had learned a way to keep them away. His roommates and teachers eventually accepted that it was not possible to even get close enough to help, but no one imagined that he would be so violent.

Of course, in hindsight, you can always see things that could have or might have been done, but what strikes me, is that our culture has such deep respect for individual freedom that we pretty much let people be who they are unless they are causing other's harm. I am sure Cho is not the first English major who turned in disturbing writings. Some turned into famous writers. We live in a country that gives individuals the freedom to write what they want no matter how disturbing. We value this freedom so much that we allow students to keep writing such stories, albeit with concern. Of course, individual freedom does not extend to the freedom to harm others, but the fact that Cho was living in the dorms amongst other students shows how accepting we are of people who are clearly painfully anti-social, disturbed, weird. I wish someone had been able to get inside his head and alter the path of his life. It is clear that people tried, but if anything is to blame it is not that students are mean, bullying, teasing, and cruel as was cited for the Columbine shooting, but rather that students were too accepting. I saw an interview with Cho's roommate last night and he said he just kind of accepted that Cho was who he was and let him go about his business.

America has received a lot of bad press in the last six years, but when it comes down to it, we are the most accepting people in the world. You can be who ever you want to be in this country and that freedom is incredibly important to us. Cho did not understand this and it is his fault he felt so much anger. He is the only person to blame for these tragic killings.

2-L Dilemna

I feel a bit of a quandary right now. I don't feel the same enthusiasm about the law that carried me through my first year and part of the second. Maybe this is simply the 2-L doldrum before seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My 3-L friends are all talking about graduation. Yes, the terror of the bar exam looms silently over their graduation party plans, but there is an overwhelming sense of relief when they talk about law school. We, the 2-Ls, law school's middle child have only another year of school ahead of us.

Work has also not helped. I have only been able to work a day or a day and one half each week all year long. This places limits on how involved with work I can become. It feels like I go in, spend a few hours remembering what I was doing, do a little bit of work, and then am gone for another week. One thing I look forward to this summer is being able to work 5 days a week.

Until then, all I can do is just push through the next three weeks. I have to write a 25 page paper on treason and terrorism, give my oral argument for legal writing, take my evidence exam, and write a take home exam. If the end of this semester goes as past have, I will probably be blogging more frequently.

Apropos blogging. We had a panel of journalists in our constitutional law and terrorism class yesterday. One of the journalist made reference a couple of times to those uncredible bloggers. I do not claim to be journalism, but as a blogger for the past couple of years, I feel a bond with those other self-made publishers and it is interesting to see how those in traditional arbiters of information feel threatened by rogue writers. However, one thing bloggers could probably use is some editors. There should exist a consortium of bloggers who also function as editors for each other's works. The same logic applies for movie directors who produce their own movies. (did you see that horrible Kong!) Without editors, we tend to just ramble on, so I will stop now.

University Life

The Virginia Tech shooting today is horribly tragic. Maybe I feel more disturbed by this tragedy because I am still attending University. I have always enjoyed the quiet sanctuary of a University. There is still a piece of me that longs for the professorial life, and I spent almost all of the last 12 years in some way connected to a University. I cannot imagine how those students, especially those who live on campus, are feeling tonight. Even after the threat is gone, that sanctuary has been punctured. I do not know what is going on lately with these shootings. In the last couple of weeks there has been this shooting, the shooting at the CNN building, the shooting at the University of Washington, and a couple of months ago at the mall in Utah. Is this a trend? Or is it that we simple hear about these events immediately through the channels of modern media? My thoughts are with all of those who lost loved ones and friends and all of the students in Virginia.

Legal Writhing

My legal writing brief is due tomorrow, so I haven't been doing much more than that in the last couple of days. The problem I am up against now is that the school has placed an unrealistic page limit on our brief. I was looking through some Division II criminal briefs as examples and most of the briefs are over 30 pages and only cover two issues. We are expected to cover three issues and do it all in 25 pages. I know it is because the professors do not want to read more than that, but it is an unrealistic expectation. I realize that there is something to be learned by forcing conciseness and courts do not like excessive wordiness, but I definatly cannot get all my arguments covered in 25 pages. I have already cut two whole pages of text and have a page and one-half to go.

I'll admit it; I suffer from a specific writer's malady that makes cutting down tough. My ego is wrapped up with my writing, so when I cut out whole sentences, I feel like I am cutting something important out simply because I wrote it.

I should take some lessons from our new Chief Justice, John Roberts. In his first dissent for the court in Massachusetts v. EPA, he wrapped up his views in 14 pages. Granted, justices have more leeway in dissenting opinions because they do not have to worry about being binding. It is simply a place for them to say how the rest of the judges got it wrong, and he dismissed the case based on standing. Regardless of the merits of his global warming opinion, his writing style is wonderful. He is very concise and easy to read, especially compared to Steven's majority opinion. The other thing that worries me about Steven's opinion is the creation of a new basis for standing, a "special solicitude" for Massachusetts. Robert's called this "an implicit concession that petitioners cannot establish standing on traditional terms" Id at 44. The majority creates a new standing doctrine without citing any precedence. Maybe this is revenge by the liberal justices for the court choosing Bush as president in 2000, or as one blogger said, this case should be renamed Bush v. Gore's Movie.

Weekend Update II

Before the weekend gets too far away, I wanted to finish the posts I have been meaning to wright about it. On Saturday I celebrated my 30th Birthday. It was a great night. I invited a bunch of friends to come bowling with me (to get in the mood of the year I was born.) Even people who did not think they were going to bowl got on the rented shoes and rolled. There is just something so fun about knocking things down, especially when you throw in your friends and a bunch of pitchers. I must be getting old though, because I didn't end up in the gutter by the end of the night. I have learned recently that it takes a lot more out of me if I drink too much, so I have been taking it easy.

Also, now that I am getting older, I thought I should get a more clean cut hair cut. I had the barber chop off that mop that was growing on my head recently and I got rid of the mustache that was also taking us back to 1977. I almost look courtroom ready, but alas, I still have more than a year of school. It seems like too much school. I saw a friend from high school this weekend who started medical school the same time I started law school. He was out here during a break after finishing the first portion of the Boards. He is done with the classroom aspect of his education. What? Maybe you didn't read that right. Yes, in medical school, they understand that practical education is as important as classroom education. Law schools have not quite learned that. I think its because they don't want to give up that third year of tuition money, but from what I can tell, the third year is pretty much a waist. And it would be a lot more helpful if that year was used as part of a full year apprenticeship. I do not think anything will change any time soon, because the only people with the power to make that kind of change are people who have already completed law school and the bar exam. They simple do not have any motivation to make things more efficient.

I better get back to legal writing. I am going to a Mariner's game tonight, so that means I will not be getting anything done this evening. However, even at this late point in this semester, it is important to take a night off and to something fun.

We're number 2!

All of us who have legal writing this semester are under the thumb of our appellate brief. Our school prides itself on having a very good legal writing program. I have no doubt that there is some truth to that. We used to be number one. Even Harvard uses the textbook written by the professors in our department. But this year we fell a spot to number two. You can tell that some of the teachers and the administration had its pride hurt a little bit. When they sent out a school-wide e-mail with the new rankings, they included a rationalization for how we could have slipped a spot: the number one school hosted the major legal writing conference this year, so that must have been the reason they were number one. How else could Mercer University, who no one has ever heard of, have beat us?

It is probably good that they got a bit humbled. When you are number one, you stop working as hard. For example, I asked my legal writing professor to explain why you only put facts after the when clause of an issue statement. Her first response was: that's what the book you are supposed to be reading tells you to do. I was a little shocked. I know what the rule was, but I was still making the same mistake, so I was hoping she could explain it. Normally I like her hands off attitude, but it bugs me that I should be doing something simply because the book tells me to do it that way. However, in the end, that seems to be what legal writing teaches you: how to write the way you are supposed to write because we tell you what the rule is. It does not require thinking per se. It requires creative plagiarism.

Weekend Fun: Part 1

It was a busy weekend. Friday night was the mock trial competition. We did exactly what we wanted to do: good enough to put the experience on our resume but not good enough to qualify for regionals--i.e. third place. It was actually a lot of fun and got me even more enthused to get in an actual courtroom. It takes so much energy to do a good job at trial. Not only do you have to be very prepared and have thought of so much prior to even walking through the door, but you have to be constantly listening to your witness to make sure they give you the answers you want and to your opposing counsel to make sure they are not asking questions they should not be asking. My favorite part, however, was the opening and closing. I like the performance aspect of being in front of the judges. I like using timing and emphasis to keep their attention, draw them in, and hopefully see that your theory of the case is more reasonable than your opponents. I also had a really good partner, and my girlfriend did a wonderful job as a witness. At one point she had the whole panel of judges laughing at her character.

(if you read this post earlier today, I apologize for the strange " " that appeared in the text. I seem to be having some bugs with my blogging software)

random

I came across these two separate articles that seem to be related. Both speak about space junk falling from the sky, but neither of them mentions the other. The link? Fark.com



Space junk falls on airliner

Space junk falls in Somalia



The Gods and the internet must be crazy!

Is School Over Yet?

It is getting harder and harder to stay motivated for school.  I can only imagine how ready I will be for law school to be over next year.  A colleague of mine just came by and said he felt like he was living Groundhog day and my girlfriend woke up this morning and said in half-consciousness but full earnestness: "isn't it Sunday?"



For those of you who read this and who go to school with me, stop by the Men's Law Caucus table and buy some baked goods for our bake sale.  We are also selling those cancer bracelet things to support research for testicular and prostate cancer.  One student already came up and said she has a friend who had testicular cancer and how goes by the nickname "one-nut." 



In other news, the prosecutor  scandal keeps going on.  I  had the opportunity to go have some beers with McKay last week under the auspice of discussing paper topics for his class.   We did not talk about the scandal at all and it  seems like he is ready for this whole thing to blow over; although people at the bar were buying us beers, so I didn't really complain.  We mostly talked about terrorism and whether or not it is a serious problem.  I did not think there was much debate about that and most of the public debate was on how to deal with terrorism, but it seems some people do not think terrorism is that big of an issue.  At a different event this weekend, I was accused of being Dick Cheney, because I said the issues of terrorism and the law will be important and changing for most of my legal career.  It has taken over four years for some of the prisoners at Guantanamo to get charged and sit before a commission.  Considering that fact, I do not know how anyone thinks these issues will go away anytime soon.  This is an important and changing area of law exactly because terrorism exists now as a particular form of violence against civilians which has grown in our fast moving media environment.  Never before could a band of armed rebels bomb a nation's soldiers thousands of miles away from home and have the news reach millions of citizens within hours.  Terrorism, as we know it, is only possible because the means of communication allow terror to spread. 

Spring Break

This has been the least spring break of spring breaks. I worked for four days last week and spent the fifth working on my appellate brief for legal writing. I did get away to the beach last weekend with my girlfriend. It rained most of the time, but we did get to walk on the beach and had a jacuzzi in our room. It is always nice to get away for a few days and give your life some perspective.



Since my last post, the prosecutor scandal has only grown. Professor McKay has promised to spend some time this week in class answering our questions, so I look forward to having the same opportunity as the senate had without needing subpoena power. Professor McKay seems to have changed his stance a bit since the first time he talked with us at the begining of the semester. At that time, he claimed that he wished to simply step down quietly and was not going to make a big stink. I heard him on the radio a few days ago talking about how he believes the wrongdoing necessitates an investigation from congress or an appointed federal prosecutor. I want to ask him if this change of tone came about because of what he has learned in the last months or because of the media attention he has received. Even though he held a relatively important position as a federal prosecutor, being in every newspaper in the country brings a whole other level of fame. Did the fame change his mind about the scale of wrongdoing?



The political atmosphere right now is highly charged and it seems like we are surrounded by scandals. Politics has always been contentious, but with modern communication, we now know about every power struggle that takes place in Washington. The Valerie Plame/ Scooter Libby/ Dick Cheney drama just keeps going on, and this federal prosecutor "scandal" seems to be gathering steam for no other reason than that there is a general sense that there must be something more to this.



I have said this before, but part of a legal education is an education about politics. In my own experience with small scale politics at school when we established the Men's Law Caucus, I have learned that it is possible to make something feel scandalous simply because you believe there must be something more to it. What is it that excites us about a scandal such that we almost want the scandal to explode, expand, and become even more controversial. Does it make us feel more important? Where we once might have brushed a conflict with another off, when put inside a political pressure cooker and when we get some attention for what we are doing, the conflict is all of a sudden escalated to a scandal. Then we are involved in something that feels all absorbing and and essential to our identity. I am not sure this is always a good thing. It is easy to loose track of reason when we are too tied up in a scandal. Is it really the case that a scandal reveals some hidden truth? Or is a scandal just the magnification of a human conflict because of focused attention by a lot of people who previously did not care one wit? In the law, the court tries to even the playing field of opponents such that even controversial cases are subject to the same legal principles. A scandal seems to me to be a controversy where the public no longer evaluates with reasoned principles.

Prosecutor to Professor

In our Constitutional Law and Terrorism professor's own words, he was subject today to the "seemingly unbridled powers of the legislative branch." As pictured above, our professor, otherwise known as former U.S. Federal Prosecutor for the Western District of Washington, John McKay was called to Washington today to appear before a Senate Judiciary sub-committee. The most interesting part of his testimony that I watched this morning on C-SPAN was his comment that he and his fellow prosecutors would have stepped down quietly if it had not been for the Senate making a big stink. He also stated that he did not think there was a Federal Prosecutor, currently serving or in the past who would give in to pressure of the executive or a Senator and sacrifice their prosecutor's independence. While I am not sure I can fully believe that statement, human nature what it is, but I certainly know it is true for him. We have had guest speaker after guest speaker in his class that have all described Mr. McKay as one of the most brilliant, innovative, and ethical U.S. Attorney's to ever serve. These compliments were not simply bestowed by other government employees but by the lead federal defense attorney for Washington who stood repeatedly on the opposite side of the courtroom from Mr. McKay. I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to be one of his students and Seattle University is very lucky to have snatched him up for a professorship. I do not know what kind of deal they have, but the school should seriously consider making his position permanent.

Most Senate hearings are the same. Each Senator is given ten minutes. The first eight minutes they usually use to fill with their own thoughts in the form of a long winded question. Then the answer comes and in most cases, I am sure the answers have been mulled over long before the hearing. Remember that in situations such as the hearing today, you are looking at possibly four of the countries greatest criminal prosecutors. They are unlikely to fumble an answer. It is the same way with nominations to the federal bench or when Condoleeza Rice testifies.

One thing I have had further reinforced from following this story is that you should never get your information for the media. From what I have learned from McKay and from the assistant U.S. attorney that taught our class today is that McKay was fired for a political reason when he had a disagreement with a higher up in the department of justice. This in itself might be unfair and a loss for their office, but it is hardly unusual. He has a political appointment and people get fired all the time because they prove incompatible with a person higher up in the chain of authority. Now, on the other side of this issue is the change to the PATRIOT Act that allows the Executive to appoint temporary Federal Prosecutors indefinably, thus circumventing the Senate confirmation process. For this we really have the Congress to blame because they let this slip into the Act and are all upset now that the Executive is exercises the power that Congress gave it when the PATRIOT Act was amended. Yes, it sucks that the DOJ feels it necessary to get rid of their political enemies, but it is Congress that let them.

(I am going to be a little selfish here and say that this whole thing has worked out really well for me because McKay is now teaching. I also get the feeling that McKay is pretty happy with the teaching gig).

Read more about today's hearing.

Feeling Better

I am feeling much better today. I spent Thursday afternoon and most of Friday in bed again and by mid day Friday my fever had broken. I don't have my full energy back, but I no longer feel sick. All this means that I have to face law school again. I was able to get some work done while horizontal, but I am not sure how much actually stuck.



Mostly I read the trial transcript for the appellate brief I have to write in Legal Writing, which was pretty entertaining. It seems like criminal defense attorneys are the only attorneys who are pretty much allowed to blatantly lie in the court. The defendants were charged with methamphetamine manufacturing. Neither took the stand, but during his closing argument, the attorney for one of the defendant's kept going on that there were many other plausible arguments for the chemicals that were found in his small trailer. For example, he was a pack-rat on a mission to clean up the world, which explains why he had a mason jar full of coffee filters testing positive for psudophedrine residue. Also, it is equally as believable that the chemicals found that are normally used in meth production could have been used for cleaning rocks-a legitimate purpose; and my client could be a rock collector! Did the attorney really think the jury was going to buy that argument. I am sure the defendant was sitting in the courtroom and I doubt he looked like your rock collecting type. (come to think of it, isn't rock collecting a thing pot smoking hippies do? That association wouldn't help him though) Those two "other possible stories," which were supposed to raise a reasonable doubt in the jury came along in a string of possible stories, which would only lead me to think as a juror: "this guy is just making this stuff up."



Can you tell I am writing from the State's perspective? The interesting thing about the case, the real case, is that I am pretty sure the guy was cooking meth, but after being convicted by the jury, his conviction was overturned by the appeals court because of bad cops (improper search). This raises a question that we, as a nation and as lawyers, have been struggling with for a long time: why should we allow a criminal to get free just because the cops showed up at his place and entered inappropriately? On the other-hand, I like the idea of cops not being allowed to come into my apartment for no apparent reason. I guess in our constitutional balance we allow some guilty men walk so we don't innocent men are not charged and we can all be more secure in our person and possession.



Well, I better go start doing my research for this rather than just keep blabbing on. Happy weekend y'all.

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