Actual Innocence and Alfred Brown

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced yesterday that she was asking attorney John Raley to lead an independent investigation into the "actual innocence" of former-Death Row prisoner Alfred Dewayne Brown.  It was a wise move for a couple of reasons.

For starters, Raley is a highly respected attorney who has dealt with claims of factual innocence on previous occasions, most notably, the case of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife, Christine. As most of you know, Raley's work on that case led to the exoneration of Mr. Morton, which, in turn, brought Christine Morton's actual killer to justice.

More importantly, it keeps the Ogg Administration from potentially being boxed into a decision that would not be well received by the Harris County Defense Bar.  As I've noted before, Ogg is in a tight spot with this.  If Ogg declines to declare Brown factually innocent, it isn't going to sit well with the Defense Bar. Ogg would be put in the awkward position of acknowledging that Brown is legally not guilty but not deserving of the money paid out to those proven factually not guilty.

Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg characterized the Raley investigation as an unnecessary delay to Brown's desired compensation, asserting her belief that Brown has already been proven factually innocent . . . more or less.

That standard [for a legal finding of actual innocence] is roughly similar to the one that led the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to toss Brown’s conviction due to constitutional error. An inmate must show that the constitutional error at trial “probably” resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent and that no reasonable juror would have voted to convict in light of the new evidence.

Um, maybe in the same sense that Sesame Street is "roughly similar" to The Wire.  Both deal with life on the streets in an urban area, right?

Brown's case was overturned based on a Brady violation when the D.A.'s Office realized that the defense had not been provided with a copy of telephone records that supported Brown's alibi by his girlfriend, Ericka Dockery.  The D.A.'s Office agreed that Brown deserved a new trial and the Court of Criminal Appeals signed off on a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

I'm not sure why Lisa is insinuating that the Court of Criminal Appeals practically made a finding that there was a constitutional error at trial that "'probably' resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent."  That is not the case.

In fact, whether or not Alfred Dewayne Brown is factual guilty is very much up for debate.

I've spoken with a couple of the prosecutors who handled the Brown case after it came back from the Court of Criminal Appeals.  Without hesitation, they will gladly state unequivocally that he deserved a new trial.  There is no debate that the evidence withheld by Rizzo was exculpatory and should have been turned over to Brown's defense counsel during trial.

But they will also tell you that they fully believe that Brown is factually guilty.  So will every HPD Homicide investigator that worked on the case.  I don't know enough about the details of the case to form my own opinion on Brown's guilt or innocence, but I will say that there can be a tremendous difference between legal innocence and factual innocence.

There can also be a tremendous variance in the strength of alibi evidence.  Some alibis can unequivocally exonerate somebody.  Others are less definitive.  The people who I've spoken to about the phone records that supported Ericka Dockery's story acknowledge that they were evidence of an alibi, but they were far from definitive.  They say if Rizzo had just turned over the phone records, he could have easily explained them away at trial.

Despite Brown and Falkenberg's protestations to the contrary, Brown's factual innocence isn't quite the no-brainer they portray it to be.

I'm going to hazard a guess that D.A. Ogg was a little concerned about Brown's innocence herself.  Having watched how she has handled this case, as well as others, I believe that she would have loved nothing more than to declare Brown factually innocent while lambasting the "toxic culture" of previous administrations.  She certainly had no problem notifying the press of other shocking developments on the case.

But I found this paragraph in Falkenberg's column to be very interesting:

But if Raley does not find Brown “actually innocent,” Ogg said she may have decide whether to charge him again in Clark’s murder. She chose Raley, she said, not to pass the buck, but because she felt the case needed an independent, fair review by someone outside the DA’s office.

Ogg leaving the door open to the idea of re-prosecuting Brown is shocking to me. There's no chance in hell that Ogg doesn't know the facts of the case.  She may not have the time to delve into it as deeply as she feels necessary, but I guarantee you that she has more than a passing familiarity with it. I have no doubt that she has formed an opinion on what needs to be done.

I'm not accusing her of "passing the buck;"  to the contrary, my guess is that she wanted a credible voice such as Raley's to support whatever decision is ultimately made.

That's just smart politics.

LaGrappe's Trial Socks

I ran into my friend and fellow defense attorney, John LaGrappe, on Friday in the basement of the parking garage. 

If you don't know John, he's a big personality and also one hell of a trial lawyer.

He was in trial on Friday, but had to take his boots off for the metal detector.  When he did, all of us in the vicinity got a look at John's lucky trial socks.

Who in the hell goes barefoot with boots?

A 4-year-old's Views on Self-Defense

As a blogger on serious matters, I generally try to avoid writing funny stories about my kids.  Sometimes, I find that unavoidable.

This afternoon, I picked my 4-year-old up from after-school care and his counselor told me that he had gotten into a fight with another 4-year-old.  She told me he wasn't in trouble, because he was defending a friend.  Naturally, I asked him what happened.

ME:  Smith, what happened?

SMITH:  [Other kid] hit me and pulled my hair.

ME:  What did you do?

SMITH:  I told him that was not acceptable.

ME:  "Not acceptable?"  Who told you to say that?

SMITH:  [My teacher.]

ME:  That's very good, Smith.  What happened then?

SMITH:  I punched him in the forehead.

Services for Mark Vinson

The services for our friend, Mark Vinson, have been released.

There will be visitation on Tuesday, May 1, 2018 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the American Heritage Funeral Home Chapel located at 10710 Veterans Memorial Drive, Houston, TX 77038.

A Celebration of Life will be held at the same location on Wednesday, May 2, 2018 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. with a Repass from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Mark Vinson

The CJC Community was shocked and saddened yesterday to learn of the unexpected passing of longtime former-prosecutor and defense attorney, Mark Vinson.   It is no exaggeration to say that Mark was an icon at the courthouse who was very loved and respected.  He was 79 years old.

Mark was a Vietnam veteran who served in the United States Army, before retiring as a Major.  He then attended law school and joined the Harris County District Attorney's Office in 1983.  During his lengthy tenure at the D.A.'s Office, he served as a teacher and mentor to many prosecutors for several decades, and he was known for being a skilled trial lawyer.  Mark was also highly regarded as a fair, honorable and friendly prosecutor.

After his retirement from the D.A.'s Office in 2005, he practiced criminal defense and was an adjunct professor at Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law.  Mark never stopped mentoring younger lawyers.

I never had the pleasure of being directly supervised by Mark, but I knew him and highly respected him.  He was a classic example of the gentleman lawyer who represented everything good about there was about our profession.  He defined collegiality and believed in fighting hard in the courtroom, but respecting your opponents outside of it.  Everyone he saw, he greeted with a smile and a firm handshake.

Mark's passing was a tremendous shock to all of us because he was the picture of health.  I saw him last week, and he didn't appear to have aged a bit.  Quite frankly, I was shocked to read that he was 79.  I thought he was younger than that.  Former Harris County prosecutor and 9th District Court Judge Phil Grant saw Mark in his court in Montgomery County and posted this picture.

Mark's obituary can be found here.  He lived an amazing life.  As of this writing, I do not know about his funeral arrangements.  I will post them as soon as I know something.

My condolences go out to Mark's family.  I hope they know that he was a very loved and respected member of our courthouse family, as well.

I'll Take Dumb Comments for $1000, Alex

Yesterday, the lawyers that practice in and around the Harris County Criminal Justice World were all abuzz about the attack on Danny Lacayo by one of his clients, Luciano Olivarez, during the felony male jail docket.  Danny is a very well-liked colleague who is highly respected by judges, prosecutors and his fellow defense attorneys.  We were all very relieved to know that his injuries were not serious and we hoped that the incident might lead to some changes in the way the jail dockets are handled.

The focus of yesterday's incident shifted slightly in the afternoon when the Houston Chronicle published an article by Keri Blakinger about the incident.  Although the PD's Office and Danny had not given a statement for the article, the president of the Harris County Deputies Organization Union, David Cuevas, was apparently more than happy to talk.

In response to learning that the Harris County District Attorney's Office had filed felony charges of Assault on a Public Servant against Olivarez, Cuevas "questioned whether prosecutors would have filed similar charges in the case had a jailer or deputy been the target."

"Our union will be monitoring the district attorney's office as to whether or not they'll be accepting charges when this happens to other public servants that are not public defenders," said union president David Cuevas.  "We want to make sure that there is not a double standard." 

Cuevas's statement was laughable for a host of reasons.

First off, I'd like to know exactly what "monitoring the district attorney's office" means to him.  Was he planning on setting up shop at D.A. Intake to monitor all incoming calls?

Second, the very idea that the D.A.'s Office under Kim Ogg (or any of her predecessors, for that matter) is reluctant to file Assault on a Public Servant charges on behalf of police officers is absurd.  Those cases are filed every single day at a very high frequency.

Cuevas might as well have questioned whether or not the Ogg Administration was still accepting charges on murder cases.

Police officers and jailers have dangerous jobs that lead them into dangerous interactions with suspects.  Nobody has ever disputed that.  When a suspect reacts violently and attacks a police officer or jailer, those charges get filed.  Period.

I've seen charges of Assault on a Public Servant filed against people for punching an officer in the bulletproof vest.   I've seen mentally ill suspects who were flailing their arms get charged if they made skin to skin contact with a police officer.  Trust me when I tell you that in almost 19 years of practicing in the CJC, I've seen the word "assault" stretched to some pretty great lengths when it comes to public servants.  In my time, I've seen hundreds, if not thousands of Assault on a Public Servant charges filed against people who have attacked police officers and jailers. 

This is only the second incident I remember charges being filed where a defense attorney got attacked. 

Cuevas's statement implying that somehow the D.A.'s Office prioritizes the safety of defense attorneys over the safety of police officers and jailers was just silly. 

And kind of offensive.

The Powder Keg

Prior to the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, each court in the Harris County Criminal Justice Center held a docket every day of the work week.  These dockets were (obviously) held in normal courtrooms, where there were holdover cells for the incarcerated defendants.  Attorneys who were speaking with their "in custody" clients, did so through glass partitions.  If a defendant was brought out of the holdover into the courtroom, they were handcuffed.  If a defendant had acted with particular aggressiveness, they might find themselves in leg restraints before being allowed outside of the holdover.

After Hurricane Harvey rendered the CJC unusable (yet again), one of the biggest challenges facing the Harris County Criminal Justice System was determining how to get incarcerated inmates their day in court.  There were rules and regulations that had to be followed.  Locations had to be secure and there had to be adequate personnel to guard the inmates.  The Civil Courthouse was fine for defendants who were out on bond, but it was not equipped to handle inmates.  There are no holdover cells attached to a civil courtroom.

Ultimately, it was decided that the vast majority of the "in custody" cases would have to be held at the actual jail.  The female felony jail docket is held daily on the 4th floor of the Harris County Jail located at 1200 Baker Street.  The misdemeanor jail docket is held across the street in "Little Baker."  The felony dockets for incarcerated males are held in the basement of the Harris County Jail located at 701 N. San Jacinto.  While the female and misdemeanor dockets are generally pretty safe occasions, the felony male dockets are a completely different story.

The felony male dockets are a disaster waiting to happen, and lawyers who practice there got a small taste of that danger this morning.

To understand what happened today, one must understand the layout of the basement of 701 N. San Jacinto, as well as the procedures followed for each docket.  Each weekday, the 22 District Courts, as well as the Reintegration Court, take turns having a jail docket for male inmates with charges pending out of the respective courts.  Two courts will hold a docket in the morning and two will hold a docket in the afternoon.  Based on the normal cycle, this allows each court to have a jail docket every six business days.

In the basement, there are essentially four rooms used by the lawyers and court personnel.  Two of those rooms function as actual courtrooms, where lawyers can approach the judge, and defendants can be brought for pleas (or any other matter requiring judicial attention).  The third room, held in 701's infamous law library,  is where prosecutors bring their files and meet with the defense attorneys.  This place can look like Grand Central Station during a busy docket.

Attorney Vic Wisner, exercising in the Law Library.

The fourth room is where attorneys and their clients meet to discuss cases, and that's where things get dangerous.

The attorney-client meeting room holds roughly around thirty male inmates.  It is actually a converted "pod" with two tables placed inside of it so that inmates can do paperwork, if need be.  Around the perimeter of the room are plastic chairs for the inmates to sit in while they wait to talk to their attorneys.  The room is extremely overcrowded.

None of the inmates in the room are secured by handcuffs or leg restraints.  Although they are all told to sit down and wait for their attorneys to come speak with them, there are no physical restraints on them.  There is nothing there that would prevent them from getting up and walking across the room.

There is nothing there to prevent them from fighting with each other.

There is nothing there to prevent them from attacking one of the lawyers who enters the room.

The deputies who are in charge of securing the inmates, sit in chairs outside of the meeting room.  In short, it is a windowless room with one door for an entryway.  It is filled to capacity with inmates charged with felonies ranging from theft to drugs to sexual assault to murder.  And every day, civilian attorneys wade into this room, filled with inmates, with the hope that none of the inmates feel like attacking anyone.

The potential for something terrible happening is tremendous.  It only continues to operate under the optimistic belief that each and every one of the inmates will follow all of the rules and not lose their temper.

But, here's one thing you quickly realize when you become a defense attorney -- you often find yourself being the messenger of very bad news.  Whether it is telling the client what the evidence is against him or just conveying the plea bargain offer from the prosecutor, defense attorneys have the unpleasant duty of upsetting their clients on a daily basis.  The vast majority of those clients take the news in stride and understand that is how the System works.  

Others don't.  Some will become quite angry over the news they receive.  Some will lose their minds simply over the length of a reset.

Oh, and did I mention that a decent amount of the inmate population in the meeting room has some level of mental illness?

Today, a mentally ill inmate attacked Public Defender Danny Lacayo in the holdover.  Danny had just told his client that his case was going to be reset and placed a pen on the table for the client to sign his paperwork.  The client became very agitated and Danny quickly picked up the pen, moving it from his client's reach.  The client then punched Danny in the face.

Danilo "Danny" Lacayo

Fortunately, Danny is a pretty stout guy.  He stood up and walked out of the room before the situation escalated further.  He said the punch hurt, but mostly he was relieved that he had the wherewithal to move the pen. Ultimately, someone told the deputies outside the room what had happened and they removed the defendant from the meeting room.

The situation could have been far more tragic.

To my knowledge, this is the first physical assault on an attorney in the meeting room, but there have been several close calls.  Earlier this week, a male inmate began losing his temper with his female attorney.  She was able to escape the room before it turned physical.  Every lawyer that works a jail docket worries about what would happen if the situation truly got out of control.  

It will get out of control one day.  It isn't a matter of "if."  It's a matter of "when." The quarters are too close.  There are no safety protocols.  The jail is understaffed.  The inmates are angry.

The whole situation is a powder keg, waiting to explode.

Portrait Unveiling for Judge Poe

There will be a portrait unveiling for former Judge of the 228th District Court and Current United States Representative Ted Poe on Friday, April 20, 2018 at 11 a.m.  The event will be held on the 17th Floor of the Civil Courthouse in the ceremonial courtroom.  The address for the courthouse is 201 Caroline, Houston, TX 77002.

Judge Poe is a legendary part of the Harris County Criminal Justice System both as a prosecutor and later as Judge of the 228th.  I am very proud to say that I tried my first murder case in front of Judge Poe and I still have the souvenir he gave me when the trial was over: a note from the jury requesting to hear the prosecutor's argument again.

Even though I hadn't talked to Judge Poe in years, he was nice enough to get tickets for me and my son to tour the United States Capitol last Spring Break.  It was great to see him. 

Whether you practiced in front of him or not, I highly encourage you to attend Friday's unveiling.  Judge Poe truly is a legend and an icon of Harris County History.  

You might actually hear a good War Story or two, as well.

Dan Rizzo and the Alfred Dewayne Brown Case

It's not easy being Dan Rizzo these days.

After retiring from the Harris County District Attorney's Office some time during the Pat Lykos Administration, he probably thought that he put all of the uncertainty and acrimony of being a prosecutor behind him.  While most prosecutors who leave the Office make some effort to keep in touch with one another, he kind of faded into oblivion.

He hadn't been gone all too long before he found himself in the crosshairs of the Houston Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg, who was working on a story about the potential abuses of the Grand Jury system.  Initially, the story Falkenberg was working on dealt with how Rizzo and a member of the Grand Jury had used the Grand Jury's power to intimidate a potential alibi witness on a capital murder case.

It just so happened that the case where that occurred was the State of Texas vs. Alfred Dewayne Brown, which Rizzo not only presented to the Grand Jury, but also prosecuted at trial.

The case itself was a bad one, but it didn't grab as many headlines as some other capital murder cases in Harris County.  At least, it didn't until Falkenberg's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation.

The allegations were that on April 3, 2003, three men robbed a check-cashing business where a woman named Alfredia Jones was working.  One of those men, Elijah Joubert, held a gun to Ms. Jones' head during the robbery, but Ms. Jones was able to notify her supervisors of a robbery in progress.  Because she alerted a supervisor of what was happening, the Houston Police Department dispatched patrol and Officer Charles Clark was the first to arrive on the scene.  When the police arrived, Joubert is believed to have executed Ms. Jones by shooting her in the head.  A second person (allegedly Alfred Dewayne Brown) shot and killed Officer Clark.

A third person, Dashon Glaspie, acted as a lookout and he named both Joubert and Brown as the principal shooters.

As noted in Falkenberg's original articles, Rizzo used the Grand Jury to bring in Alfred Dewayne Brown's girlfriend, Erika Dockery, as a witness.  Dockery had initially attempted to alibi Brown, but the transcripts from that Grand Jury meeting ultimately led her to recant the alibi testimony.  Before doing so, she was threatened with a multitude of things -- from charges of aggravated perjury to never being able to find employment.  Dockery not only recanted her alibi, but testified against Brown in trial, testifying that he admitted his presence at the check-cashing business at the time of the murder.

However, Dockery's original alibi of Brown actually had some corroborating evidence in the form of phone records.  Those records as (also) reported by Lisa Falkenberg were never admitted into evidence.  They were ultimately found in the garage of Homicide Detective Breck McDaniel.  Those records are what ultimately led the Harris County District Attorney's Office to agree that Brown was entitled to a new trial.  When the Court of Criminal Appeals granted that new trial, the D.A.'s Office decided that there was no longer sufficient credible evidence to retry him.

As I noted in a blog post last June, Alfred Brown decided to seek compensation for the time he spent on Death Row.  The trouble with that was that he had to be found "factually innocent" for the compensation to kick in.  Under Devon Anderson's Administration, that was going to be an uphill battle for Brown.  The Anderson Administration as well as the Homicide Investigators on the case believed that Brown was factually guilty, although they didn't feel they could prove it at trial.  What I wrote back then was that it put District Attorney Kim Ogg in a difficult position -- if the D.A.'s Office were to agree that Brown was factually innocent, it would be damaging to relations with HPD.  If she refused, it would be damaging to her relationship with a Defense Bar that looked to her to be a progressive and open-minded District Attorney.

A couple of things have changed since that blog post.  First off, D.A. Ogg has proven that she isn't really all that bothered about upsetting the Houston Police Department.  More importantly, however, was Ogg's revelation last week that an email had been discovered from HPD's Breck McDaniel to Dan Rizzo, notifying him of the corroborating phone calls.

"I was hoping that it would clearly refute Erica's claim that she received a call at work," McDaniel wrote, later continuing: "But, it looks like the call detail records from the apartment shows that the home phone dialed Erica's place of employment on Hartwick Street at about 8:30 a.m. and again at 10:08 a.m."

To put this into context, prior to the e-mail revelation, Rizzo had been able to maintain that he didn't know that there were phone records in existence that corroborated Erika Dockery's alibi of Alfred Brown.  It was a mistake. A miscommunication.   McDaniel's e-mail clearly shows that Rizzo was informed of it.  He just chose not to disclose it to the defense.  He also lied about it later.

And because of that e-mail, Rizzo is now joining the ranks of vilified ex-prosecutors at the levels of Charles Sebesta and Ken Anderson.

As well he should be.

I knew Dan when he and I were both at the Office.  He was a Division Chief and far senior to me.  Although I didn't have a personal problem with Dan, I didn't trust him.  I thought he was a dishonest guy.  I can think of at least two different scenarios where he lied to me personally.  The reason I knew that he was lying was because he contradicted himself.  They weren't on big issues.  They were pretty minor, but the guy couldn't keep his stories straight to save his life.  He just wasn't bright enough, quite frankly.

If you were to ask me if I thought Dan would downplay or neglect to mention some exculpatory evidence on a case, I would tell you that it wouldn't surprise me if he did.  It wasn't that he was evil.  He just suffered from tunnel vision.  He regarded the phone records in question to be an inconvenient piece of evidence that would distract from his firm belief that Alfred Dewayne Brown was one of the shooters.  He didn't think that it proved Brown's innocence, so therefore it wasn't exculpatory.

He was wrong about that.

Whether or not those phone records conclusively prove Brown's innocence or are something that could still be explained away is an argument that I will leave to someone more familiar with the case than I am.  But the records are most definitely exculpatory.

Exculpatory evidence is evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial that exonerates or tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to prove guilt.

The Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association today called for Rizzo to be prosecuted for Attempted Murder for seeking the death penalty on Brown.  That earned a big eye roll from me.  They know that is never going to happen and to pen a public letter to the D.A. advocating for it is just grandstanding.

But an investigation should be launched into whether or not Rizzo should hang on to his law license.  If proven to be true, his actions are no different than those of Sebesta or Anderson.

If his actions were no different, then the consequences for those actions should be no different, either.

10 years of Blogging

The other day I was browsing the internet and checking out some different blogs when I noticed that Scott Greenfield was celebrating his 11th year of legal blogging at Simple Justice.  First off, congratulations to Scott for writing the best legal blog on the web for 11 years.  He publishes several well-written, scholarly and insightful posts a day.  I am in no way, shape, or form comparing my blog to his here, but it did make me realize that I just passed my 10 year blogging anniversary and had failed to notice it.

My first blog post on this site was January 8, 2008.  Since then, I've written over 1200 posts, had almost 19,000 comments, and 3.5 million page hits.  Although the posts are all mine, some of those comments and page hits actually came from other people!  Looking back at some of my posts, a lot of the topics and a lot of the writing are cringeworthy.  Others are not so bad.  Every once in a while, I find one that I'm actually proud of.

I started the blog when I was a felony chief prosecutor in the 339th District Court under Judge Caprice Cosper.  I was married to a fellow prosecutor and we had a two year old son.  That seems like a different lifetime ago.  Today, I've been a defense attorney almost as long as my career as a prosecutor lasted, I've divorced and remarried, that 2 year old is now 12 and has a 4 year-old younger brother.

Blogging grizzles a man, I tell ya.  Makes him fat, too, apparently.

This blog began anonymously, shortly after the beginning of the e-mail scandal that would ultimately cost then-District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal his job.  The racist and sexist e-mails from our leader had led to a complete backlash against the District Attorney's Office as a whole.  We were getting slammed in the Chronicle and every other media outlet.  At one point, when picking a jury I started asking potential jurors if they already had decided that they hated the State because of who our elected D.A. was.  The answers were distressing.

The public perception of prosecutors had flipped from the "good guys" to the "bad guys" in the space of a few e-mails, and it just seemed to get worse every day.

So, I started writing in a small attempt to push back against all of the negative attention we were getting.  It started slowly at first -- like dipping a toe in the water to see how cold it was.  I didn't want to announce whether or not I was a prosecutor or a defense attorney, because I didn't want to get fired for what I was writing (that worked out well in the end, let me tell ya!)

But how do you publicize your blog without blowing your super secret identity?

Simple -- you just casually mention it to the most talkative person you know and then wait thirty minutes. (Thanks, Alexis Gilbert Bruegger!) By the end of the day, word of an Anonymous blogger was all over the CJC.  It was both exciting and terrifying.

And then came Mark Bennett.

Mark had been running his blog Defending People for some time before I wandered into the blogging neighborhood.  I enjoyed his articles and reading them very much made me want to write, as well.  I had a feeling that once he got word that there was an anonymous blogger out there, he would engage.  I was correct about that.  Mark absolutely engaged the anonymous blogger.

And then he threw out an ultimatum:  tell me who you are privately, or I'll find out on my own and out you publicly.

Well, shit.  That backfired.

So, I gave Mark a dollar.  Told him he was now my attorney and confessed my secret identity.  True to his word, he kept it a secret until I got fired went public.  Over the past ten years, Mark's writing has gone on to be recognized on the national level for some of the great work he's put together.  I've kept my writing on local topics for the most part.  I've semi-jokingly said that my blog was The National Enquirer compared to his Wall Street Journal.  But I would be very very remiss if I didn't point out that this blog would have never existed if it weren't for Mark.

And, of course, Pat Lykos.

During the 2008 election, this blog went nuts with comments on the D.A. race.  In the aftermath, when people would ask me if I was surprised that Lykos fired me, I would always respond, "Not really. I mean, I did compare her to a Bud Lite Lizard."  Politics are such nasty things.

The biggest misconception that I think people have had about my outlook on the Lykos Administration was that I just missed the "Old Guard Ways" of the Holmes/Rosenthal days.  That seems to be the standard refrain from people who disagree with what I write.  They forget that Lykos was an extremely controversial judge who brought her self-aggrandizing and paranoid tendencies to the D.A.'s Office.   And man, those tendencies gave me so much material to work with.

I think that's why I'm so disappointed with the way that Kim Ogg has been running the Office lately.  Lykos took over like an enemy combatant and she wasn't wrong when she thought the rank and file disliked her.  Kim listened to Lykos too much when she took over, but she didn't need to.  The prosecutors didn't hate her like they hated Lykos.  At least, they didn't until she fired about 40 of their co-workers.

But I digress.

Over the years, this blog has had highs and lows.  The motivation to write has ebbed and flowed and the readers and commenters have done the same.  At times, I've thought of scrapping it because it served no real function anymore, only to have something come up that made me really motivated to write.  I've made some amazing friends through the blog and I've made some pretty angry enemies.  I hope that, on occasion, I've helped effect some positive changes here and there, but who knows?

In the end, I keep writing this blog for (more or less) the same reason that I started writing.  I think that the Criminal Justice World is the most fascinating aspect of American domestic life.  It is a convening of heroes and villains, tragedy and triumph, brilliance and profound stupidity, hilarity and bereavement.  I can't imagine being involved in any other profession.  Only those of us who practice within it (not just write about it from the outside looking in) can truly understand what it's like.

This blog just tries to show that to the outside world.  I know I may miss the mark on conveying that effectively more often than not.

But for the past ten years, it sure as hell has been fun trying.