Henry, a regularly contributing author, protesting economic disparity

As you know, my students wrote appellate briefs about a fictional Occupy situation.  They are now in the practice rounds of moot court (and doing really well, if I do say so myself).  Here is one of our regular contributors, Henry, practicing the opening to his oral argument and delving into a general protest about this country's economic disparity:

As you can tell, Ella the Dog (the primary author of this blog) tries to calm Henry down when he begins getting too dramatic -- let's use our case law not our emotions.  

Another case of error that cost a man twenty-five years of his life

By now, you've figured out that one of my major concerns with the death penalty is that we (as humans and society) make mistakes and that once an execution has happened, there is no way to fix that mistake.  Here is yet one more example of a dramatic case of an innocent man being convicted and sent to prison for killing his wife:  60 Minutes -- Michael Morton

What is interesting about this particular case is that the prosecutor of Michael Morton's case is being investigated for ethical misconduct and Brady violations.  There was potentially exculpatory evidence (turned out actually to prove Michael's innocence) that the prosecutor not only did not reveal to the defense but he also may have hid it.  Swell.

Several weeks ago, John Raley, Michael Morton's local Texas attorney who worked with The Innocence Project, spoke at the law school.  He gave a moving presentation, and best of all, Michael Morton was there in person for us all to see.

Thinking a little beyond the case, if Michael Morton had been tried once the Supreme Court re-permitted the death penalty, he would have received capital punishment, and he would have already been executed by the State of Texas.  A second Todd Willingham.  When will we learn?  

San Francisco's Unusual Ban -- No Tic Tac Toe for Chickens

I am brushing up on all of the podcasts I've downloaded, and this morning, while driving to school, I listened to This American Life's Poultry Slam.  I believe it was from Thanksgiving time, and it was wholly focused on poultry.  The first story was about a capital case defense attorney trying to argue that her mentally retarded and clinically insane client should not be executed because he could not understand what that meant  (in fact, he thought he was going to be reupholstered).  The State's psychiatrist who testified that the inmate understood what an execution meant explained her logic by saying that she played tic tac toe with the inmate and he won.  The defense attorney immediately thought of chickens at southern county fairs that play tic tac toe, and she tried to get the chicken admitted to rebut the psychiatrist's testimony.  Well, the defense attorney was not permitted to enter the chicken in evidence, in any capacity, and the inmate was not executed, but later, San Francisco actually developed a wacky little ordinance that banned chickens from playing tic tac toe because of the government interest in preventing animal cruelty.

Want to read more?  Check it out:  This American Life -- Chicken Tic Tac Toe


p.s.  the two other stories in the podcast are definitely worth hearing:  one is on Tom the Turkey, who terrorized Martha's Vineyard and was eventually shot by the police; and the other is on raising geese naturally for them to naturally produce foie gras.  

Raise an Al to the paca

Those who know me well enough so that I share my crazy outlandish schemes and dreams with them know that I yearn to have a couple of alpacas.  In fact, I've yearned for this ever since 2007, when I was first introduced to the idea of raising alpacas on farms in the US and experienced the cozy goodness of alpaca fleece.  Obviously, after my trip to Peru this summer, my love of alpacas was heightened.  When I came to OKC, I immediately went to the state fair, and while there, I signed myself up for an alpaca farm listserve.  Well, low and behold, I just found this Mo Rocca piece on CBS Sunday Morning's website where he interviewed an alpaca farm owner.  Check it out:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7403164n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

In addition, here are some pics of me with the Peruvian alpacas:

And for those who don't know the difference between alpacas and llamas, here are some Peruvian llamas:

I personally think the llama with the tri-colored face is the most beautiful.

Two new SCOTUS opinions for criminal defendants and attorneys

Ahh, the votes were tight:  5-4 in both opinions.  Just released are two opinions from SCOTUS that essentially widen a convicted defendant's rights to post-conviction relief.  If the defendant was not informed of a plea deal, or if the defendant can show that he (using he to mean all humans) refused the plea deal based on really bad advice from his lawyer, then the defendant might be entitled to PC relief based on ineffective assistance of counsel.  Oh yes.  The conservative justices authored catty dissents, as they are prone to do when they don't get their way.

Missouri v. Frye:  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-444.pdf

Lafler v. Cooper:  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-209.pdf

Examples of Good Writing: The Mercy Papers

A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Robin Romm's The Mercy Papers from the Oklahoma City Friends of the Library Book Sale.  The book is essentially a memoir of the last three weeks of her mother's life, as her mother died of breast cancer.  I believe her mother was 56 when she died, and Robin was not yet 30.  It was strikingly similar to my experience, except that her mother had known about and fought her cancer for 9 years, while mine knew about hers and fought it for 9 months.

While the book's overall writing showed a young author's work, and it could have been written better, it had some remarkably astute and well-written passages.  I thought I'd share those passages with you.  Some of the passages were chosen for their words, some for the images they conjured, and some for the perfectly honest portrayal of how I felt at that exact moment.

"My mother is the only person ever to love me selflessly and she is dying.  I need someone to drop everything, to come running." p. 71

"No one but my mother is here for me.  She is the only one." p. 73  (Written in juxtaposition to the household of people and dogs she lived in at that time.)

"Women stop their lives; they're programmed that way."  p. 74  (Struck me as particularly appropriate because, like the author and her mother's friends, I stopped my life and dropped everything I had to be with my mom in her last nine months.)

"We brush up against the end every day. . . .  The ticking of the clock has gotten so loud."  p. 74  (Discussing the anxiety of not knowing when death will come but knowing it is just around the corner.)

"If there's quiet, I will think only of my mother, whether she is alive, whether this time is just time I am not spending with her."  p. 75  (I took a trip in July 2009 to Martha's Vineyard and Maine, and during the whole trip I was overcome with thoughts of missing time with my mom.)

"But I need to go home."  p. 77 (The realization of her own stopping of her life to go be at her mother's side.)

"Her skin is going lifeless, though she still occupies it."  p. 80  (I remember my mom's skin turning very cold, clammy, and gray.  Although she was still alive, she was slowly slipping out of her body.)

"And I realize now, in the dark room, that I am not ready, that I will never be ready, that her death will change me even though I've understood that it's been coming for nine years.  And all the changes won't be hopeful . . . . Some of the changes will be only pain."  p. 83

" . . . because her movements and thoughts patterns are my own . . ."  p. 101

"And when my mom dies it will be crushing pain, a silence that will fill me and break me over and over again, daily, relentlessly."  p.101

"If we are going to use our tiny reserve of energy to strike up conversation with a strange, well, it might as well be with God.  No one else is useful.  Not that God is being very useful  -- up there punching buttons on his death remote, smirking away."  p. 124

"After she died, there will be hours and days and nights of missing her, of a pain that keeps us awake, gnawing at us.  It will have no answer, no antidote.  That will be our blessing."  p.  151  (In response to people telling her that death would really be a blessing.)

"My mother who is covered by a black bag up to her chin."  p.  176

"Now it would be the outfit I wore to my mother's funeral.  I would never be able to put that skirt on without remembering this moment . . ."  p.  184

"I knew about smell, the way it skips over your intellect, like the clicker with the amygdala, and indeed, it made me cry, though the tears felt jagged and unsatisfying."  p. 185-86.

"I am partly in that world.  But I have one arm in another place, a place beyond the wall, through that portal.  I can feel something creeping into the numbness.  A largeness.  A mystery."  p. 193

O-H-I-O --- so much to say

A friend of mine from college seems to be surrounded by people from Ohio.  Nearly all of her closest friends are from Ohio or have some strong Ohio connection.  We all happen to lean to the left side of the political spectrum, as well.  Accordingly, they found this clip, and they passed it on to her, and she gave it to me.  I'm outright laughing because it so clearly explains what happens in the political realm of that crazy sweatpant-wearing state (and let me clarify that when I lived there, I was one of the few liberals in the entire Cincinnati area).  Good old fashioned political mockery.  Check it out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr3ftmvO7Oc