Handling Post-Conviction Death Penalty Cases Pro Bono | McKenzie Edwards | Texas Appellate Law Podcast
Law Brief®: Rich Schoenstein and Marie Pereira Discuss High-Profile Verdicts
An Examination of the Death Penalty in America
Bill on Bankruptcy: Complaint Claims Judge Is a Bigot
Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down three decisions on a Thursday, each of them substantively important to the individuals involved, but all of them essentially involving the Supreme Court’s instructing lower...more
Defendant and his co-conspirators firebombed an informant’s house and killed several individuals. Six weeks into their trial on related charges, the Government disclosed that one of the defense attorneys previously worked as...more
Capital murder designates a specific type of homicide that may be punishable by the death penalty. But, it no longer exists in the state of Colorado. This change in the legal landscape is a significant development, and...more
Finding a career in the law and finding something you’re passionate about don’t always intersect. But McKenzie Edwards, a trial lawyer with Cleveland | Krist PLLC in Austin, has managed to do both. Starting in law school, she...more
Uh-oh: Government Shutdown Chances Increase. The Buzz continues to monitor the potential for a federal government shutdown. Last week, we noted a positive development: leadership in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of...more
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued three decisions: Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, No. 21-908: This case analyzed the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s prohibition of the discharge of debts that were incurred through...more
Legal Analyst Marie Pereira joins Rich Schoenstein to discuss the verdicts rendered last week in the trial of defamation claims against Alex Jones in Connecticut, and the trial of the convicted murderer responsible for the...more
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen is the long-awaited New York gun licensing decision that has been hotly debated since its filing. Especially in light of recent school shootings, that debate is likely...more
I’m currently in the wilds of Alaska, learning about the training of sled dogs. Nevertheless, word of the Supreme Court’s five most recent decisions has traveled northward. While none of these decisions is earthshaking, they...more
United States v. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443: This case concerns the death penalty imposed on one of the two brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who planted and detonated bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding...more
Kevin George v. McDonough, No. 21-234: This case, involving an agency’s authority to interpret the statutes it regulates, presents the following question: When the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) denies a veteran’s claim...more
The world of Fourth Circuit en banc review has provided much fodder for my postings on this blog (See, e.g., here, here, here, here). On Monday, the Court released another blog-worthy en banc opinion when it affirmed per...more
In this episode, Akin Gump Supreme Court and appellate practice head Pratik Shah and senior counsel Aileen McGrath review the 2020 Supreme Court Term and preview the big cases and topics in the October 2021 Term. Among the...more
In July 2020, the death penalty attracted national attention when the Trump Administration and the Department of Justice reinstituted federal executions for the first time in more than 17 years. Ultimately, the administration...more
Servotronics, Inc. v. Rolls-Royce PLC, No. 20-794: Whether the discretion granted to district courts in 28 U.S.C. §1782(a) to render assistance in gathering evidence for use in “a foreign or international tribunal”...more
In Washington: The Trump administration will no longer hold back the second dose of a coronavirus vaccine in order to speed up inoculations. The changes are a departure from current policy and align with a plan unveiled by...more
On December 10, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States decided United States v. Briggs and United States v. Collins, holding that three rape prosecutions under the pre-2006 Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) were...more
In Washington: The Senate headed out for the Thanksgiving recess with no coronavirus stimulus bill is in sight. During a press conference Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) suggested that there might be...more
We tend to think of “bias” as it applies to juries, but courts can have their own deep-seated practices. For example, judges will often prefer voir dire questions that focus on the juror’s own assessment of the influence of a...more
In courtrooms making tentative steps toward reopening to in-person jury trials, some of the parties have called for increased use of juror questionnaires, ideally filled out ahead of time either by mail or online. This makes...more
This eighth edition of Unprecedented, our weekly update on COVID-19-related litigation, follows what we hope was a restful and meaningful Memorial Day weekend. For the third week in a row, shutdown challenges, workers'...more
The protections afforded by the GDPR and the UK’s 2019 Data Protection Act (‘DPA’) are not naturally associated with efforts to frustrate and restrict the use of the death penalty internationally. However, the recent Supreme...more
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued the following four opinions: Rodriguez v. FDIC, No. 18-1269: The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), under its statutes and regulations, allows an affiliated group of...more
A newly-published study about the effects of voir dire in capital cases suggests that social scientists and the courts may need to reconsider a long-held tenet. For at least the past 35 years, the belief has been that jurors...more
Several years ago, I sat in a courtroom in Pennsylvania, assisting the defense in a capital murder jury selection. The process was involved, and potential jurors were interviewed one at a time after completing a comprehensive...more