The Real Deal

I’m going to start this post with the words “when I was in law school…” and hope that they don’t inspire a collective eye-rolling and a quick click to another link. Sort of the way selective hearing kicks in when some old-timer starts a harangue about dissolute modern youth with “when I was a youngster, I had to walk to school in the snow . . . for five miles . . . and it was uphill both ways . . . .”

At any rate, this is a passionate plea for those budding soon-to-be lawyers to PAY ATTENTION IN YOUR CRIMINAL LAW CLASSES!!

Not all that long ago I was as guilty as the next 1L or 2L of paying really rapt attention in the classes that I figured would be my bread and butter after I graduated, and paying enough attention in the other ones to get good grades. Followed by massive mental “information dumps” after the final exams.

I knew I wanted a career in criminal prosecution, and I knew that I would be drawn to appellate advocacy, so I leaned forward intently and absorbed as much as I could, and committed to memory as much as my fading hard-drive of brain cells could assimilate.

As for the rest—trusts and estates, contracts, civil procedure, secured transactions—I figured that if I ever had a legal problem in those areas, I could always hire me a good lawyer.  

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Seventh Circuit Cleans Up the “Other Bad Acts” Mess (a Little)

I’ve blogged on a number of occasions about the messy state of the law relating to the admissibility of “other bad acts” evidence (e.g., here and here).  Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) indicates that other bad acts may not be used against a criminal defendant to show bad character or a propensity to commit crime.  However, the Rule includes a number of exceptions, and courts have not only tended to interpret those exceptions expansively, but have also recognized an additional exception for evidence that is “inextricably intertwined” with proof of a charged offense.

Given the expansively interpreted exceptions set forth in Rule 404(b) itself, the inextricable intertwinement exception seemed to me an unnecessary and confusing addition to the law.  The Seventh Circuit has now indicated its agreement with that view.  

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Going the Distance

I brought a chocolate sheet cake to work the other day.  I’d asked for an “outer space” theme for the decoration, and the cake decorator at my favorite bakery didn’t disappoint.  There was a quarter moon, and a sky full of stars, and even the planet Earth in blue and green frosting, showing the Western Hemisphere side of things.

The reason for the celebration was to mark the ten-year anniversary of my joining the staff of the Sheboygan District Attorney’s office as a state prosecutor.

The “outer space” theme was to mark the fact that in those ten years, I’ve driven more than 130,000 miles back and forth from home to office.  If you look that up, you’ll find it’s more than half the distance from the earth to the moon.

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “going the distance”!  

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