Awkward Family Photos: Law School Edition

Since I'm a firm believer in the premise that you shouldn't make fun of others unless you are willing to make fun of yourself, I will share the following awkward memento.

This is an awkward screen grab from an even more awkward video from my 1998 Criminal Trial Advocacy class at UH.  In this exercise, I'm trying (and failing) to learn how to admit a photograph into evidence.

My sponsoring witness is David Cunningham.

The pained looking judge on the bench is George Murphy.

I think I would rather pass a kidney stone than watch how bad I was back then, but I have to give major kudos to Dave, George and (not pictured) Judge Belinda Hill.  This was really a wonderful class that gave some very real and very practical advice to aspiring trial lawyers. 

It's been 21 years since this picture was taken and I'm honored to be able to say I've gone on to practice alongside (and in Judge Hill's case, in front of) these great lawyers. I'm also glad that I apparently got over the nervous habit of slapping my hands to my sides while talking as if I were some sort of spastic penguin.

I just wish someone had told me and Dave to go ahead and shave our heads back then.

Tonight's Reasonable Doubt (5/19/11)

Please join me and Todd Dupont for tonight's Reasonable Doubt at 8:00 p.m.  Our guest will be defense attorney Norm Silverman.  As always, you can watch it on live streaming video by clicking here.

As a side note, there is no truth to the rumors that Norm, Cunningham and I are starting the Three Bald Guys Law Firm, despite what the picture indicates.

By Reader Request -- "Deferred Adjudification"

Okay, so I'm nothing if not responsive to Reader Requests.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail suggesting that I do a post on how many different ways people mispronounce "Deferred Adjudication" in court.  I've heard it mispronounced a couple of times over the years, with the most common way, obviously, being "Deferred Adjudification".

As a side note, if you want to mess with a seasoned prosecutor or defense attorney's head, wait until they just finished a bench conference with the judge, walk up to them, and say, "Um, I can't believe you just pronounced that deferred adjudification."  They will deny it, get very embarrassed, and then spend the next fifteen minutes wondering whether or not they really did that in front of a judge.

Trust me, I did it to Denise Nichols once when she was my Three in Judge Davies' court.

But I digress.

There are obviously numerous terms in our system that get blundered by (usually) Defendants, but also by police officers, witnesses, lawyers and judges.

My personal favorite was in a misdemeanor DWI trial, opposing counsel repeatedly spoke of the "Horizontal Glaze Nostalgius" test.  (For you non-lawyer folks, it's the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test and it is a staple of any DWI case.  Lawyer humor.)

So, fire away with your favorite mispronunciations here if you've got some.  They are usually pretty funny.

Since we are on the topic, though, I have to confess that it wasn't until 2008 (when I was a District Court chief) that David Cunningham was kind enough to point out to me that the phrase was "for all intents and purposes" and not "for all intensive purposes" as I had been saying for the previous 36 years of my life.