So you’ve been accused of a serious crime. Congratulations. You now have the sacred constitutional right to a “speedy” trial. And by “speedy,” we mean somewhere between eighteen months and three years, give or take a few calendar pages. Blink and you’ll miss it. The right itself is proudly carved into the Sixth Amendment, which promises that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial…” and all the rest of the ceremonial language that sounds fantastic when read out loud in a courtroom. On paper, it is a masterpiece. In practice, it is a slow motion train wreck. So what’s the problem? Funny you should ask. There is no problem, at least not when the prosecution thinks they have an airtight case. Then everything moves like clockwork. Discovery gets dumped early, negotiations begin, and everyone pats themselves on the back. But when things are not so neat? That is when the real show starts. Discovery becomes a landfill. Mountains ...

  During World War II, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy expressed caution about war with the United States. His opinion was well documented: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” The other line you always hear, about a rifle behind every blade of grass? That one is pure translated sensationalism. A made up quote that refuses to die because it sounded good. But here is what matters. Japan never seriously considered invading the American mainland. Not because they lacked guts. Because they understood reality. A heavily armed civilian population is not a soft target. It is a nightmare. At the time, it was widely understood that Americans owned massive numbers of firearms. That fact alone made any occupation scenario absurd. You do not invade a country where the population is already armed and spread across a continent. Now fast forward to today. We have chipped away at that reality with laws li...

   Every criminal defendant who decides to play lawyer walks into court with the same cheerful fantasy. The truth will set them free. Justice will prevail. The jury will hear the facts and nod wisely. That fantasy lasts about five minutes. Courtrooms do not run on truth. They run on rules of evidence, procedure, and a jungle of objections that can strangle your case before the jury ever hears a single word of it. Here is the ugly reality. You might have iron-clad evidence that proves you are innocent. A rock-solid alibi. Scientific evidence. Witnesses who point to the real offender. Maybe even records showing the prosecution’s star witness is a career criminal and a professional liar.  None of that matters! Because before the jury ever hears a whisper of that evidence, you must get it admitted into evidence.  Simple, right?  Not exactly. Across the aisle sits a seasoned prosecutor who has spent years learning how to keep evidence out of the courtroom. He or...

I have been spending a great deal of time in downtown Los Angeles lately, moving back and forth between the Central Criminal Courts Building and the Men’s Central Jail. If you keep your eyes open in that neighborhood, you start noticing something everywhere. Young people, mostly Hispanic kids, walking around with backpacks full of spray paint like painters carrying their brushes. Look closely and you realize graffiti is not just one thing. There are really two kinds. One kind is careful, deliberate, and surprisingly beautiful. Real artwork. Colors layered on top of colors. Shapes and lettering that clearly took time, patience, and skill. The other kind is the territorial kind. The quick tags that mark the invisible borders of street gangs. That type is less about beauty and more about staking a claim. But the artists. The real ones. They treat the city like a canvas. Any blank wall, bridge column, or stretch of fence becomes an invitation. And sometimes they place their work in pla...

It is long past time for President Trump to pardon three people who told the American people the truth. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning. Let us remember the scandal they exposed. Our own government quietly built a surveillance machine that vacuumed up the phone calls, emails, and digital communications of millions of Americans. No warrants. No probable cause. Just a sweeping dragnet that stomped all over the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Apparently the Bill of Rights had become optional. This is the sort of mass spying Americans used to associate with regimes we congratulated ourselves for defeating. East Germany did it. The Soviet Union did it. Police states do it. But when Washington does it, suddenly we are supposed to nod politely and call it “national security.” Then along came three people who refused to play along. Snowden revealed the machinery. Manning exposed the inner workings of the war machine. Assange published the documents ...

  Yesterday before my LA criminal trial I’m working resumed, there was a violation of probation hearing for a black 19 year-old offender who was represented by the public defender.  He  was out of jail on his own recognizance     He was 6 foot four 260 pounds of failure and violence.     I don’t know what his original crime was other than it was violent.     He had a long rap sheet for other crimes.     He had failed recent drug test after drug test.     His appearance was that of a big bully. The judge read from social service and psychiatric reports that disclosed the following.     He had graduated from a Los Angeles public high school.     However, actual testing revealed that he only had a reading comprehension at a third grade level.     What’s the shocking?     No, it was another solid indictment of our teachers union and the public schools in Los Angeles.     Adding...