@usflaw prof. mama. writer. lawyer. zealous advocate, always.
I think and write about crime, justice, love, work & family.
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Jan 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Important piece by @fmanjoo: never, ever waive your 5th Amendment rights.
"Anytime you’re asked to talk to the police about an incident you are involved in, there are just four words you need to say: 'I want a lawyer.'" nytimes.com/2023/01/25/opi…
I drill this into my students & my kids:
Cop: "No you wish to waive your rights and speak to me?"
"No. I want a lawyer."
Talking to the police when you are a suspect is never a good idea.
Not if you're guilty, not if you're innocent.
I want to talk about how appellate courts stacked with former prosecutors-turned-judges gaslight all of us with judicial opinions that explain away horrible misconduct by police and prosecutors (i.e. their own). An example:
Mr. Cato was convicted of murder & sentenced to 72 years in 2015 based on cross-racial IDs.
Perhaps bc the evidence was underwhelming, police & prosecutors committed misconduct during the investigation, at trial, and post trial, suppressing evidence & intimidating witnesses.
Richard Glossip will almost certainly be executed.
He is almost certainly innocent--even Republicans in blood-red Oklahoma think so.
The mind-twisting cruelty of the death penalty is too sickening in this case even for its most fervent believers. nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Glossip was convicted in 2004 on the testimony of Justin Sneed, who beat the victim to death with a baseball bat. In a 2007 letter to his lawyer, Sneed said "it was a mistake" & "eating at" him to say Glossip was the mastermind & he wanted to contact Glossip's lawyers & the DA.
Aug 7, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
“God put the right people to make this happen,” Mr. Ciria said. If a different district attorney had been in power, he added, he wasn’t sure he would be coming out now. @AnnieRosenthal8 in @politico tells the story of the SFDA Innocence Commission. politico.com/news/magazine/….
Joaquin Ciria, innocent, spent 30+ years incarcerated. @chesaboudin & I created the Innocence Commission to free ppl like him. We succeeded, together w/ @ArceliaHurtado@judgecordell@jacquewilson1 & Dr. Michael Meade. For too long, innocence-denying DAs have fought these cases.
Jul 23, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Researching Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip, I've come across some things that I am struggling to process.
Glossip, scheduled to be put to death on September 22, has attracted international attention.
Now it is Republican lawmakers who are arguing he is innocent.
The case against Glossip turned on the testimony of the actual killer, Justin Sneed. Detectives brought up Glossip 8x in the first 20 mins of Sneed's interrogation telling Sneed he was facing "the needle" and that "your bud Rich was planning on letting you hang by yourself."
Jul 22, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The movement by law profs to hold rogue prosecutors to account took a big step forward in NY. @danielmedwed@cynthia_godsoe, other law profs w/ @equalityAlec published 17 bar complaints outlining outrageous misconduct & urging the bar to act. But first they had to go to court.
That is bc NY prosecutors, including the Queens DA, said the law profs were breaking the law bc the complaints had to be kept secret. A federal judge rejected that argument--because, you know, the First Amendment--and now the law profs are publicly exposing grievous misconduct.
Jul 21, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Listening to former prosecutors hand-wring about how hard it would be to prosecute Donald Trump is hilarious to me.
Y'all would indict a ham sandwich and here you are drowning in evidence.
Let's break it down:
Obstructing a congressional proceeding. 1. The 1/6 congressional certification = official proceeding 2. Trump tried to stop it with corrupt intent.
Proof: Trump was told by his AG that he lost & there was no fraud. Trump pressured Mike Pence to stop the certification and then
Jul 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
BREAKING: @sfbos unanimously passes a resolution urging @BrookeJenkinsSF to keep the @SFDAOffice Innocence Commission intact and expressing concern that @BrookeJenkins "fired without notice" SFDA Innocence Commission member @ArceliaHurtado.
The @sfbos is diverse in all ways--including their opinions about @chesaboudin and who should be DA.
A unanimous vote to support the Innocence Commission and our work is, therefore, highly significant.
Jury nullification is a powerful weapon against prosecutors who go after women seeking abortions and anyone who tries to help them, as well as parents seeking gender affirming care for their children. Jurors have the right to say "No, not in our name," and nullify.
Too many jurors think they are in the box for one purpose: to convict. Especially if the facts match up with a law, however horrible the law is or how unfairly it is applied. But that's not true. Jurors have all the power. They just need to exercise it by saying no.
Jul 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A thing ppl will never understand about public defenders, including Justice Jackson, is that they could have been any kind of lawyer they wanted, including the fancy white shoe law firm kind that earned millions. They had that skill, but they didn't want that life.
They chose to do something different--fight against all odds for the underdog, for not-great pay. I don't think that choice makes public defenders lesser--I think it makes them greater.
Jul 5, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
After a string of horrifically botched executions, Oklahoma is preparing to put 25 people to death over the next two years.
At least one of them, Richard Glossip, is demonstrably innocent.
How clear is the proof that Glossip is innocent? It swayed Oklahoma Republicans. An exhaustive report from the Reed Smith law firm, commissioned by bipartisan lawmakers, concluded that another man (also convicted and who snitched for his life) acted alone.
Jun 22, 2022 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
The super-sad story of the California State Bar's craven decision to close my bar complaint against two prosecutors.
The "reasoning" of the decision--3 years after I filed--is speaks volumes, as I explain.
No wonder prosecutorial misconduct is an epidemic.
These prosecutors buried evidence that the cop who arrested the defendant was himself about to be charged by their office for far more serious crimes. They took him off the witness list to bury that info. When defense counsel smelled a rat, they blocked his motion for discovery.
Jun 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This @NYT piece is funny to me.
Reporters: There's tons of evidence, "but successfully prosecuting the potential charges [against Trump] could depend on establishing Mr. Trump’s intent." (!!!)
Um, yup. This is not an insurmountable hurdle.
Gotta prove intent in every case.🤦♀️
Reporters: "[Trump's] continued stream of falsehoods highlights some of the complexities of pursuing any criminal case against him, despite how well established the key facts are."
So: lying a ton = inoculation from accountability.
What kind of a message is liars-have-immunity?
Jun 16, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Thoughts on the @chesaboudin recall now that we have more data. 1. Chesa got more votes on June 7 than he did in 2019. 2. the margin of recall v. no-on-recall narrowed to 10 pts 3. v few ppl turned out to vote 4. the policies Chesa ran & won on are popular with SF voters.
And yet
Since the recall, we have been fed a nauseating diet of "think pieces" about how (1) SF has gone to hell (2) it is all Chesa's fault! (3) an abrupt carceral course correction is needed ASAP!! and (4) the progressive prosecutor mov't is dead!!! 😱💀
Jun 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
In the free speech/due process battles that are igniting the larger culture war it is hard to find anyone to like. On the right, we have laws banning the teaching of CRT and chilling educators who dare speak of the fact that . . . they are gay (!!!)
We have the ACLU ghostwriting the Heard's op-ed. The ACLU was emphatic that Heard's allegations were obviously true--despite the fact at the ACLU's raison d'être & the U.S. Constitution, require the presumption of innocence. This is no small thing.
No op-Ed, no lawsuit.
Jun 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This @nytimes op-ed urges women to stay in miserable marriages citing hers: "contempt settled on our relationship, caked and hard as dried mud" & "we stayed married sheerly as a matter of religious obedience & for the sake of our children."
Hell, no. nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opi…
Taking this advice degrades women and degrades marriage. Every human being, including women and their children, has a right to be happy. The idea that anyone benefits in a toxic "intact family" is false. The idea that anything is better than a "broken family" is false.
Jun 4, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
🧵I wrote about the historic exoneration by @chesaboudin & SFDA Innocence Commission & Ciria's lawyers in @sfchronicle.
A vote to recall the DA is a vote to put the Commission's work on the chopping block. Here is why: sfchronicle.com/opinion/openfo…
Most DAs pledge to take a hard look at wrongful conviction cases with internal units. But it doesn't happen. (Philly, Chicago, Baltimore, NOLA, and Brooklyn are exceptions). SF was no exception. Its internal unit, pre-Boudin, had exonerated exactly no one.
Jun 4, 2022 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
🧵about who the SFDA recall people are.
The @cwclub asked me to have a "civil discussion" with face-of-the-recall Brooke Jenkins on May 17.
Unbeknownst to me, the recall ppl bought most of the tickets in bulk. What happened next was wild.
As a kid, my parents took me to political events. So I took my 11 and 13 year old. But the event went off the rails. The recall crowd wasn't there to listen. They were out for blood. My blood, because well, I had the audacity to argue that Chesa should stay in office.
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