Public defender, politics follower, nerd stuff enthusiast. He/him. I'm tired of this shit and want some damn lemoncakes, stat.
Nov 14, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I've been thinking about Patrick's posts on here about guns and gun control, so I think now is a decent time for me to ramble about the subject for a bit.
I don't generally work murders or gun assault charges on my current docket, but I hear about my colleague's homicide cases.
May 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I've been working my way through Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast. As I finish up with the Spanish American wars of independence, I was hoping the Twitter hive can answer my nagging questions, or at least point me in the right direction.
#1: Why was federalism so much stronger in South America than in North America? It isn't clear to me why Pennsylvanians and Virginians would want to be in a unified state together but Venezuelans and Colombians would not.
May 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I think this one is finally going to drive everyone on public defender Twitter insane
Prosecutors historically have been more than happy to turn tragedies into crimes and then prosecute grieving families to the fullest extent of the law.
May 5, 2022 • 10 tweets • 1 min read
We need to be specific about what overturning Roe will mean in deep red states. First and foremost, it means you'll see women being criminally prosecuted for getting an abortion after being raped.
It will mean women, abortion providers, and friends or family that help arrange illegal abortions will be charged with murder.
May 5, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Leftie shitposters and #resistance accounts have done a much better job of predicting the behavior of the GOP over the past six years than supposedly levelheaded centrist journalists.
I don't know how much of that is self-deception on the part of the pro-complacency crowd, but its effect is to facilitate GOP radicalism.
May 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There was a stretch of time after Obama was elected but before Obergefell where it was obvious how threadbare the legal arguments against same sex marriage were but the conservative legal movement kept trying to find something that made sense.
#1: standalone drug paraphernalia. It's a crime here to possess drug paraphernalia, which a very broad category of everyday objects that become contraband if you intend to use then to ingest/package/distribute/etc illegal drugs.
Jan 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It is not a recent trend; it's just that opponents of reform like to pretend that it is. Every prosecutor everywhere declines to prosecute most of the crimes that take place in their jurisdiction
Yglesias is right that we should change some of the statutes that criminalize harmless behavior or give cops discretion to harass certain classes of people, but there's nothing wrong with elected DA's declining to prosecute bad laws.
Jan 3, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I watched a bunch of movies this weekend so why not tweet about them to see if anybody else did?
#1: Shiva Baby: very funny and it pushes the social anxiety built into the premise to excruciating places. 👍
Aug 4, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is a good example of how the conservative legal movement uses language that obscures what their actual position is.
When they say they oppose frivolous lawsuits, what they actually mean is that they want tort and civil rights claims against businesses, law enforcement officers and other entities they like to be harder to bring regardless of the merits.
