This month Lara Bazelon reviews Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison by Daniel S. Medwed.

This month Susan Elizabeth Reese reviews Trial Lawyer: A Life Representing People Against Power by Richard Zitrin.

This month Maneka Sinha reviews When Innocence Is Not Enough: Hidden Evidence and the Failed Promise of the Brady Rule by Thomas L. Dybdahl.

to Public Defenders

Nellie L. King writes about a case of apparent judicial indifference to threats against public defenders and their children that occurred during the sentencing phase of a case.

Defense counsel can put the heat on a law enforcement officer witness through a persistent and thorough examination. What will intimidate the officer most is being questioned about how he did his job. A careful examination of the officer’s conduct can soften the law enforcement witness into giving defense counsel details she never imagined she could get, or it can make the officer hostile and show him to be unprofessional and prejudiced against the client. Defense attorney Mary Stillinger includes examples from real cases to illustrate.

Some lawyers refuse to write their cross-examinations because they believe written crosses will stifle their creativity. Larry Pozner disagrees. “We win most of our cases through crosses we planned, not crosses we lucked into,” he says. “And a scripted chapter frees our mind to listen more closely to the answers and judge when an answer has provided a launching pad for additional areas of cross.” Pozner has yet to hear a valid reason chapters of cross should not be written.

Many lawyers believe that they cannot cite helpful provisions of the Justice Manual in support of their argument and against the government. It is true that courts invariably hold that Department of Justice guidelines and policies do not create enforceable rights, but nothing prevents lawyers from arguing that relevant provisions of the Justice Manual are persuasive authority.

Defense attorney Harold Gurewitz discusses Michigan’s use of a so-called one-man grand jury.

but Was It a Constitutional Violation?

Jurors conducted an experiment using extrinsic evidence. No harm, no foul?

McDonnell v. United States provided a small dose of clarity to the issue of “official acts” under federal anti-bribery law, but confusion remains regarding some issues, such as what it means to “exert pressure.” The ambiguity left in McDonnell’s wake means that criminal defense lawyers will be responsible for waging the fight to clarify the boundaries of corruption prosecutions.

Defenders start from the proposition that something went wrong with the police case.

But how do things go wrong?

Defense attorneys often point to “one big screw-up” or “one twisted cop” in telling the story of a client’s innocence to a jury. In reality, the best explanation of how things go wrong is usually an “organizational accident” – a lot of small errors that alone would not be enough to cause something to go wrong, but when put together can cause catastrophe.

What happens to our clients after sentencing is largely a mystery to defense attorneys. For most of us, our impressions of prison are created more by fictionalized media than actual knowledge. Our lack of familiarity with the corrections system makes us ill-equipped to prepare our clients for what they can actually expect on the inside. In this webcast, former federal prisoner turned professor Michael Santos speaks about what defenders can do to help prepare their clients prepare for prison and beyond.

This program addresses the unique DOJ practices and procedures that govern federal criminal tax matters, the primary statutes utilized by the government, and defense considerations and strategies.

Following the previous webinar Criminal Tax 101 webinar for novices, we provide a more nuanced and sophisticated treatment of the area, discussing topics that include: dealing with prosecutors at the DOJ Tax Division conference and other pre-indictment defense considerations; jury selection in criminal tax prosecutions; the use of expert witnesses in tax fraud trials; and legal issues relating to restitution in tax prosecutions.

In this webinar, we address the ethical implications of government surveillance and client communications. Defense lawyers regularly use phone calls, texts and emails to communicate with clients, investigators, witnesses and others associated with their cases. Many of these communications are privileged, yet government surveillance programs can capture and store them. We explore how this happens, and how defense lawyers can keep their communications out of government hands.