Hello Dog readers!

I'll be cleaning up the blog and winnowing posts down to the hardcore criminal law topics (and some of the really good posts on other topics).  This will take some time.  But for now, enjoy The Dog's posts, starting from the early days, as I bring them back online!  

Anything you say (or don't say) can be used against you

We all know that people confess to the police because they think they're helping themselves.  Sometimes these confessions are true and sometimes they're false, but in both cases people confess because they are (wrongly) convinced that doing so is in their best interest.  For example, the police often minimize the event by saying, "If you admit your involvement now, everything will be okay and it's not a big deal; but if you keep lying to us by denying it, then you'll really be in trouble."  Or, sometimes the police present the classic false dichotomy: "You have only two choices: (1) You did this, you meant to do it, you're a monster, and you're going to prison for the rest of your life; or (2) You didn't mean to do this, so-and-so is really the one who did it, you're involvement was minimal, and if you help us out we'll take care of you and you'll be just fine."

Convicting Avery: The Bizarre Laws and Broken System behind "Making a Murderer" (Prometheus Books)

My new book, Convicting Avery, is now available.  You can find the book at retailers everywhere, including at amazon.  The book has received several positive reviews, including those from the New York Journal of Books, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Blog Critics.  Enjoy!

Thank the Marquette Warriors for March Madness

Only fifteen teams have won multiple national titles.  In this year’s Final Four, Oregon will be going for its second, North Carolina for its sixth.  But March wasn't always Mad, and the tournament wasn't always “the tournament.”  When Oregon won its first title in 1939, the Big Dance was anything but: it was an eight-team field played in a tiny gym with only a couple thousand fans in attendance.  And for many decades, the NIT was the more prestigious tournament.  The NIT fielded more teams and better teams, and it was played in a high-profile venue at Madison Square Garden.  Well into the 1970s, getting much-desired media coverage and good recruits depended on getting into the NIT and being seen in New York.

Dirty Little Secrets (of Law Review Publishing)

The vast majority of law review articles are written by law professors and professor-wannabes.  And among this group, prestige is the most important thing when placing an article.  Many professors admit that few people will ever read their writing, but their colleagues will read their CVs.  Therefore, a publication in the Duke Law Journal means an article is really good, the Washington Law Review means it's okay, the Hastings Law Journal means it barely earns a passing grade, and anything below that, well, many professors believe their work is better left unpublished than to associate it with journals of schools ranked below 60 in the US News & World Report.

Remaking a Murderer (by Bill Lueders)

Fans of Making a Murderer should be sure to read Bill Lueders new article in the Isthmus, Remaking a Murderer.  In it he discusses the four books on the subject, including my soon-to-be-released Convicting Avery (Prometheus Books, April 4, 2017).  For other reviews of my book see Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.  And stay tuned for my forthcoming guest blog post on the Criminal Element blog, as well as one more Avery-related column at the Wisconsin Law Journal.  

Is the Wisconsin State Bar’s conflict of interest self-imposed?

The Irreverent Lawyer just wrote about the current bill in Arizona that would turn their bloated and pricey state bar from a mandatory organization into a voluntary one.  One of the problems with these mandatory bars, he explains, is that they have an inherent conflict of interest.  And by separating the lawyer regulation function from the trade association function (in which membership would become voluntary) the conflict of interest disappears.  That is, a voluntary bar, separated from the lawyer regulation function, would no longer be torn between serving the general public and working on behalf of its membership.  But in Wisconsin, the lawyer regulation function (OLR) is already separate from the mandatory bar (although the bar seems to keep its fingers, to some extent, in the lawyer regulation pie).  So given its separation from the OLR, why does the Wisconsin State Bar consistently work with the OLR and against its own membership?  The bar does claim to also work for its dues-paying membership, so it does operate under an obvious conflict of interest.  Yet, given its supposed independence from the OLR, it seems that the Wisconsin State Bar’s conflict of interest is self-imposed.

State Bar of Wisconsin seeks donations to honor executive director’s “service”

I recently got an email from the Wisconsin Law Foundation (an arm of the state bar) signed by the bar’s president.  The bar is seeking donations so it can host three separate send-offs to honor its retiring executive director (E.D.).  Donations correspond to increasingly hierarchical titles.  For example, a $250 donation buys me the title of American Counselor, whereas $1,000 buys me the far more prestigious title of English Barrister.  (The titles of “landed gentry” and “aristocrat” are apparently not available.)  Donors’ names, along with their newly acquired titles, will appear on the party invites for all to see.  From what I can tell, the donations fund the three retirement parties and these parties, in turn, “will focus on raising support for the good work of the Law Foundation.”  So I’m not sure if the bar will hit up the party-goers for additional donations or if there will be some sort of raffle — the email isn’t entirely clear.  Equally unclear is how much we lawyers have been paying the E.D. for his years of “service” that the bar is so eager to celebrate.    

Bill would protect free speech on UW campuses

I used to think that the only constitutional rights in danger were those associated with criminal law.  A classic example is the Fourth Amendment.  When a defendant moves to suppress physical evidence (typically a small amount of marijuana) in a criminal case that was set in motion by an illegal search, courts will bend over backwards to find that no Fourth Amendment violation occurred.  And even when they are forced to concede that the defendant’s rights were, in fact, violated, they insanely conclude that the defendant is not entitled to suppression of the illegally obtained evidence.  (For more on this mind-boggling state of affairs, see this article.)

"Fourth-Tier" Legal Education

A common trend among law schools was to hire professors who had very little or no experience practicing law, but who had graduated from elite law schools.  Then the trend became hiring JDs who also had a PhD — preferably in the field of economics.  Then the trend became hiring candidates with PhDs only.  That’s right: law professors who never went to law school.  And unfortunately, the lower ranked schools, in a desperate attempt to keep up their peer-reputation scores in the US News law school rankings, followed suit and copied the trend.  In a 2012 essay titled Three Rules for Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, I argued that these fourth-tier schools should instead go in the opposite direction of the elites: