Hooray! Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

After considerable effort, the technologically dim Crab managed to migrate Crablaw Weekly from blogspot to www.crablaw.com. At first, the Crab began to think he was losing his matchhead-sized mind. The AOL browser managed to "store" the prior old, broken content and format from Crablaw's first incarnation, and refuse to display the new hard work. Imagine throwing out the trash a million times and it is still there, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Instead of cursing his server, the Crab should have cursed his browser. In the end, crawling sideways and blind, the Crab prevailed.



Now crablaw.com is up and running. Special thanks to Joe, JC and Craig for technical guidance and advice.



The next projects being considered are:



1) A toolbox page for lawyers that will be "behind" this blog page. It will include links and, if possible, calculators for useful lawyerly function.



2) A humor page for lawyer and other jokes.



3) A books page for useful books to help attorneys practice better and live (gulp!) happier.



4) Some Maryland-specific content dealing with Maryland politics and social life. (No, we don't mean that kind of social life.)



5) A page for families of attorneys to understand what attorneys go through and exactly what makes us such jerks so much of the time.



6) A resource guide for attorneys who are contemplating career changes or are experiencing professional setbacks.



7) A page for aspiring law students who want to join the profession or who want to get off the train.



Thanks for your interest! The Crab hopes to keep this page and this site in genera "bookmark-worthy" both personally and professionally to attorneys, law students and the Maryland community generally.

Radical Rights in Maryland's Constitution Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Most lawyers never look at state constitutional law. Why bother?

If you want to see a radical manifesto, however, read casually through the Maryland Declaration of Rights.

Article 1 That all Government of right originates from the People, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole; and they have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their Form of Government in such manner as they may deem expedient.

This is arguably a right of revolution.

Article 6 That all persons invested with the Legislative or Executive powers of Government are the Trustees of the Public, and, as such, accountable for their conduct: Wherefore, whenever the ends of Government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the People may, and of right ought, to reform the old, or establish a new Government; the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

This is definitely a right of revolution.

Article 23 In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction....

This principle was used in some instances in the 1800's to allow jurors to avoid convicting violators of fugitive slave statutes; even former Governor Glendening - hardly an anti-government agitator - approved of the powers of jurors to refuse to enforce an unjust law. The Court of Appeals has issued some case law on this topic of jury nullification; the Crab will not invest too much hope in the potential of this right to avoid the criminal prosecution of victimless crimes.

Article 41 That monopolies are odious, contrary to the spirit of a free government and the principles of commerce, and ought not to be suffered.

Tell this to your local cable company when they botch your service.

There are some admittedly less radical provisions which the Crab will survey in the near future. Just some food for thought while you are filling out your Maryland income taxes.

The Kevin Lindsey case Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Philosophically, the Crab believes in privacy, liberty, and restrained government and is a bitter critic of the careerist arrogance that characterizes some aspects of criminal prosecution. The Crab's highly opinionated hostility to prosecutors gets especially snippety concerning victimless crimes or what we in law school learned as mala prohibita or crimes that are only "evil" to the extent that the government decides to make them "evil", e.g. failing to display a license card on demand, possession of marijuana in one's own house, etc. The Crab knows that irresponsible defense attorneys and prosecutors negligently fail in some cases to prevent the conviction of the innocent. We owe reverence to Rule 3.8 of the Maryland Lawyers' Rules of Professional Conduct, which bars a prosecutor from prosecuting knowingly without probable cause. None of these libertarian concerns have anything to do with the Lindsey case.

The Crab does not generally call himself a religious person, er, crustacean. But whatever G-d exists must hear the cries and shouts for justice, for just retribution, of survivors of sexual violence and abuse, their families, their friends and those anonymous women and men of good will who ask, beg and demand from Heaven a simple explanation: why, why, why must sexual predators be permitted to walk free and spend their older years in comfort on their living room couches when the survivors of their crimes - often child survivors - bear untold pain and unearned shame not for committing predatory evil, but for being within the reach of someone who did?

The natural call by decent men and women for vengeance against predatory violence against the innocent does color the Crab's view of the Baltimore County sexual abuse charges filed and then dropped against principal Kevin Lindsey. So does the fact that the Crab's family, friends and professional acquiantances include many survivors of sexual violence. So does the Crab's personal and community involvement in the fight against sexual violence in Howard County and elsewhere. Above all, however, is the Crab's own 17-year friendship and acquaintance with the two accusers of Principal Lindsey, two women of sober disposition, conservative values and deep respect for law and order, two Marylanders not at all known by anyone for erratic conduct, two sisters who have risked a great deal by coming forth to lawful authority to point their finger at a tenured, protected educrat and shout, after 25 years, "I accuse!"

The Crab is not a perfect judge of character; he has been stone-dumb wrong about people on more than one occasion. Perhaps the Crab is wrong about these long-time friends who are, in this case, the accusers of Mr. Lindsey in the recently dismissed charges against him. Maybe the accusers are conspirators who, with malice and greed aforethought, elected to subject themselves, their husbands and their families to the meat grinder of criminal prosecution, and to distract themselves from their ordinary hobbies like hard-core child care and employment to spend hours upon hours retelling their stories to government employee after government employee. Or maybe they both are psychotic, hallucinating the same predatory conduct in the same building at about the same time by the same predator. Others have offered other theories, condescending in tone, about how both Lindsey and his accusers could be innocent of wrongdoing.

All of the foregoing is theoretically possible. Certainly Mr. Lindsey's defense attorney could and would have raised the foregoing theories and others, had State's Attorney Sandra O'Connor not blinked. Certainly Mr. Lindsey has been braying - literally, like an ass - the same theories on multiple media outlets throughout metropolitan Baltimore during recent weeks, for reasons that this tight-lipped criminal defense attorney cannot possibly fathom. Certainly all criminal defendants enjoy the constitutional right to an acquittal at trial upon reasonable doubt of guilt, and Lindsey's case is no exception.

Serious minded men and women, however, do not conduct their lives according to the standard of beyond a "reasonable doubt." We tend to use the standard of "preponderance of the evidence" - more likely than not - to make most decisions. If we think that traffic might well hit the west side of the Beltway in the morning, we do not wait for proof beyond a reasonable doubt before we decide how to commute; we apply prudence and get to work according to our best judgment. Similarly, we citizens need not have a court trial under constitutional rules to judge Lindsey guilty under the court of common sense; the constitution restrains the hangman and the jailer, not the applied common sense of the citizen.

A defendant (and everyone else, for that matter) is not innocent until proven guilty; he is guilty or not from the moment of his conduct, and criminal justice uses special rules to render acquittals and convictions. As a citizen with common sense and with uncommon knowledge of the character particularly of one of Mr. Lindsey's accusers, I have certainly reached my own verdict.

Most crimes do not get solved, let alone prosecuted. In my view, this was a crime that was solved but not prosecuted. Certainly, if Lindsey did not commit these crimes, he has suffered an injustice. But real people must decide what they consider reasonable. Is it reasonable that a man who had dodged criminal prosecution - guilty or not guilty - would start a public campaign to increase awareness of his own prosecution? After all, it is his "reputation" that he claims was sullied, but if he was slandered, he is "republishing" the slander every time he brays into an open mike. More reasonable to this commentator is the theory that like criminals who foolishly return to the scene of the crime, Lindsey cannot escape the crime scene in his own cerebrum. Enough gratuitous psychotherapy has been offered to the survivors by such clinical psychologists as Sun hack writer Gregory Kane and conspiracy theorist Lopez of 98Rock; my two cents are probably overdue.

In the face of the public pity party for Kevin Lindsey, this writer stands without exception and without apology in support of the accusers, even if the news media won't and the prosecutors can't. While I lack "knowledge" of the case, I am reliably informed and thereupon believe that Lindsey's accusers identified and spoke the truth about his crimes.

The Broken Mallets Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Oh, Marlboro.....



The Town of Upper Marlboro has so few dining choices, unless Ledo's Pizza floats your boat. There is a decent chinese retaurant on Main Street, but no different from any other small carry-out really. Marlboro as a county seat is a historical joke, dating back to the days when tobacco shipping up and down the Patuxent mattered. Geographically it is the equivalent of putting Baltimore County's capital in Parkton near the Pennsylania line. Marlboro the town has about 1000 residents; about that many people probably work in the CAB and the courthouse, either for the government or for private companies that make their living in those buildings (e.g. auctioneers, title searchers, etc.)



But there is no dining to speak of.



The Essex and Catonsville courts likewise are barren outposts, relics of the People's Court days when courts held session within police precincts. Brown bag it and eat in your car.



Downtown Baltimore has a few more choices, but the Crab does not have any places to recommend. Ellicott City has several good Chinese buffets and, presumably, excellent Korean food (which your culturally narrow Crab has not yet sampled.)



The Crab has had bronchitis for the last two weeks, and is crabbier than usual. Next time, he will try to be more upbeat.

Surplus Powerlessness Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

This essay does not deal directly with the practice of law, but it seems intuitively useful or applicable to many aspects of law practice and related fields.



I have known a number of friends within and outside the practice of law who, for whatever reason, seem to suffer from what I call surplus powerlessness. Every human being has limits on her/his abilities, power, reach, etc. Powerlessness is a fact of life, the ultimate powerlessness coming from the unpleasant fact that 100 out of 100 people ultimately die.



Some people suffer from a surplus powerlessness, however, derived from the sense of paralysis or meaninglessness, over and above any objective powerlessness. Sometimes the surplus powerlessness is connected to "real" powerlessness, and sometimes not.



An economic example: office workers in Bogota or Damascus have some objective financial powerlessness; they don’t make much money, even after a lower cost of living, compared to their counterpart in Brussels or San Francisco. Accordingly, they have fewer financial choices for their take-home pay. The office worker, however, may or may not have surplus powerlessness that causes an overwhelming sense of debilitation based on that comparatively low salary. Their wealthier counterpart in the industrialized economy may or may not have surplus powerlessness in the sense of isolation and meaninglessness as compared to a lower income worker in a developing country.



I mention money here because I believe that, in the U.S., many people live with a sense of meaninglessness. Nothing matters, except making some money. Oh, maybe keeping up, getting a few toys, living a commercialized view of the American Dream, and other middle-class pursuits are enough to keep us from making major career mistakes or quitting our jobs, but for a lot of us, there is no sense of purpose except "not screwing up" and "getting the paycheck." Military historians know that mercenaries do not make great warriors; crusaders, mujahadeen, snake-eating Army Rangers and commandos make great warriors.



Surplus powerlessness is not about money per se; it is about feeling debilitated without an objective basis. In my view, surplus powerlessness is related to meaninglessness. People who have an extremely strong sense of purpose tend to have less surplus powerlessness; indeed, fanatics often fight above their weight class, so to speak, when it comes to determination. George Patton had a lot of men and gasoline when he drove across Europe in WWII, but more importantly he had an overwhelming sense of purpose - his desire to personally shoot "that paperhanging son of a b****" Hitler and his belief that he was predestined by divine command to lead men successfully into battle.



Fanaticism has its problems - poor choices, poor judgment, lack of perspective, etc. Certainly fanaticism unchecked by the traditional virtues - temperance, prudence, equity - can cause tremendous damage. But fanaticism - or if one prefers, a steel-strong commitment to achieving a goal - is an antidote to surplus powerlessness and arguably to some generalized powerlessness.