Fresno Never Overreacts
One of the more significant and interesting traditions in Fresno that has survived from days of old involves driving or strolling down Christmas Tree Lane. For the past 89 — yes, eighty-nine — years, folks living in the section of town known as “Old Fig Garden” have decorated their homes with elaborate lighting and Christmas scenes for the enjoyment of all.
A Tuesday night stabbing on Fresno’s Christmas Tree Lane, which took place near dozens of strolling families, is prompting event organizers to re-evaluate the long holiday tradition.1
But, hey, it’s only an 89-year-old tradition and someone just got stabbed!
I have a better solution. Keep Christmas Tree Lane open. We’ll set up metal detectors at each end — leaving the side streets unguarded, of course — make everyone take off their shoes before entering, and grab their genitals. Especially those of children and old ladies in wheelchairs.
That way, everyone will feel safer and we can keep Christmas Tree Lane.
- Jim Guy, “Stabbing mars tradition” (December 15, 2011) The Fresno Bee, p. A3. [↩]
Smoke Bomb
This morning’s newspaper brought the welcome news that the Fresno County Board of Supervisors was going to consider transforming their illegal local ordinance into a probably-legal local ordinance.
This would have been a move welcomed not only by local patients who grow their own medicine, but also by concerned citizens who think that in times when government budgets are limited, money should not be spent on unnecessary lawsuits. Read more
Scaretistics
One thing local law enforcement is really good about is scaring people. (Arguably, it’s what they’re best at.) Usually, this is justified on the basis of the department’s need for money. It’s even possible sometimes that law enforcement believes the bullshit they feed the public.
For example, recently Fresno passed a set of local ordinances intended to override the state laws concerning the possession, growing, and use of medical marijuana. Ostensibly, the target is dispensaries, but the ordinance — about which I shall write more in another post — is fairly broad in its application. The end result is that marijuana — medical or otherwise — is essentially illegal to grow, or use, anywhere in Fresno County. Whether or not you will be arrested for using it in accordance with California state law is unknown at this time, but the ordinance itself makes it illegal.
And why? Because medical marijuana is associated with an increase in the commission of crimes in Fresno. Read more
A Diet of Rehabilitation
Let’s have a conversation about how to obtain something that we all want: safety. (Well, okay, if you really want to have a conversation, you’ll have to leave a comment below.)
First, though, I want to talk to you about something simpler. Let’s talk about how we achieve certain other goals, like — oh, I don’t know — let’s choose “losing weight.” Summer is coming on and I know a lot of you — especially, but perhaps not exclusively, a lot of you female types — will be trying to figure out how to fit into the latest bikini fashions.
What you’ll want to do is to go home from work each night, sit down in front of the television, and eat a bag of chips, a full tub of Rocky Road ice cream — two if you realize just how small the marshmallows are — and then maybe a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Don’t forget all the side dishes, including the biscuits with the butter and honey.
Oh, that sounds sooooo good!
First, We Kill All The Lawyers
A lot of what goes wrong in America today is the fault of the lawyers.
Pick Your Fight
I’ll let you in on a little known secret: I used to be somewhat well-off.
Seriously.
Sometimes people will ask me how I became a criminal defense lawyer. I tell them the truth: I used to have a high-paying job. I got tired of it. Decided having (enough) money was just too much for me, so I decided to go to law school and become a lawyer instead.
Great Job! You’re Fired!
If there’s one thing the San Joaquin Valley of California hates more than anything, it’s a good defense attorney. In Kings County, it’s long been rumored that if you do your job — your actual job of defending clients — you will lose your right to defend indigent clients. If you represent people for money in that county, you will find your ability to practice severely limited by the court. So far, I’ve not heard of one case where this caused a problem for the Fifth Appellate District Court, so if the rumors are true, I guess it’s constitutional.
The courts — and no doubt the attorneys I’ve seen counseling their clients (plural) en masse about plea agreements in the foyers of the County courthouses — would say I’m mistaken. I heard it wrong. They fight like hell. Like hell they fight! Like hell.
Now federal prosecutors in Fresno say what’s good for Kings County is good for the King.
There’s just one problem: the defendants are police officers.
And if there’s one thing the San Joaquin Valley of California loves more than anything, it’s a police officer.
Avoiding An Unfortunate Death
Frankly, the title of this post is a little bit of milquetoast, considering the heart of the topic I want to mention. I picked the title as a kind of play on words, but, again, the heart of this post is anything but play.
This blog hasn’t gotten my full attention. It is something of the poor stepchild to my older, more-established law blog. Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review is my real baby; it’s where I pour my heart and soul. In fact, I’d never have set up this second blog if it weren’t for the fact that I got lucky and managed to buy FresnoCriminalDefense.com when another local attorney apparently let registration on the name lapse.
Originally, I intended to have Fresno Criminal Defense focus on more “local” issues — at least through Central California — and have Probable Cause be my blog for every other kind of legal blogging. Unfortunately, I’ve found that sometimes writing about local issues can get me into “sensitive” areas where I could potentially cause more harm than good.
I don’t want Fresno Criminal Defense to fade into nothingness, which it will do if I don’t find more to blog about here. I want to avoid its unfortunate death.
The Thin Blue Pencil
I don’t usually read articles by Internet marketers — I’m with the group that believes Internet marketers are primarily people who didn’t make it in some other line of work, so they transmogrify into “experts” who try to tell others how to do what they couldn’t do — but I ran across this article recently by Gal Baras on the importance of social networking.
Gal notes,
These days, networking is synonymous with a successful business. Networking is also the key to a good social life. No matter how big our office, how colourful our flyers, how powerful our computers or how many degrees we have, it is the quality of relationships we establish with ourselves, our family, our friends, our customers, our suppliers and, more than anything else, with people we don’t know, that will determine our success in our personal life or in business.
And as a story in yesterday’s Fresno Bee demonstrates, what’s true in business and our personal life is also true in law.
How Cops Think
Scott Greenfield, the New York criminal defense attorney with the Simple Justice blog, provides today two interesting examples of how cops think. Or don’t, as the case may be.
Fresno County Sheriff Mims provides her own example.
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