The pressure to close an unsolved murder case is great, and it’s even greater when police have a 26 year-old case and a suspect they *want* desperately to convict but are held back by a disappointing lack of evidence. That didn’t stop prosecutors in Toledo, Ohio from charging a 68 year old priest with the […]

Just a follow-up on the last post regarding the challenges facing Chris Herion in his “Donations” (read “Bribery”) case below. After Herion filed a motion to recuse the entire Benton County bench from presiding over any hearings in the case, he got into a nasty on-the-record argument with the judge. The judge threatened Herion with […]

It’s hard to believe that this story, getting attention across the nation, is happening in my backyard. I first heard about it when Attorney Chris Herion (pictured above) posted a rather lengthy message on a local listserve describing the whole ordeal he encountered in the course of representing clients charged with DUIs. What he discovered […]

I’ve talked about it here and seen it in action in my own practice. The “CSI Effect” is entrenching itself into mainstream public perceptions of the criminal process. With DNA exonerations becoming as newsworthy as tomorrow’s weather, and the utter saturation of crimeshow television, public expectations have set the technology bar high: if you don’t […]

In what can only be described as the height of prosecutorial arrogance, Federal prosecutors in Washington state decided that their right to seize the assets of suspected drug dealers reaches right into the mouths of the accused. Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis were awaiting trial and hadn’t been convicted of any offense […]