A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write a sonnet, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-- Robert Heinlein

I can:

• Change a diaper,
• Design a building,
• Write a sonnet,
• Comfort the dying,
• Take orders,
• Give orders,
• Solve equations,
• Pitch manure,
• Cook a tasty meal, and
• Fight efficiently.

I don't know if I can:

• Die gallantly (I'm in no hurry to find out),
• Plan an invasion (maybe a small one),
• Butcher a hog, or
• Set a bone.

I can, however:

• Repair electronics,
• Design a website,
• Rebuild an engine,
• Sing a song,
• Edit a movie,
• Train a dog,
• Tell a joke, and
• Build a campfire.

Perhaps more to the point of this website, I can:

• Investigate a crime,
• Write a brief,
• Pick a jury,
• Cross-examine an agent,
• Try a case, and
• Negotiate a plea if necessary.

Most of what I know, I didn't learn in school. In high school they don't teach me to tell a joke; in college they didn't teach me to train a dog; and in law school they didn't teach me to cross-examine a witness.

You can learn the theory of trying a criminal case from reading books and hearing lectures and watching other people do it, but the only way to learn to do it well it is by doing it, then doing it again and again and again. It's as much an art as a science; as much an emotional endeavor as an intellectual one. The books and professors can tell you never to ask an open-ended question on cross-examination, but they can't teach you to recognize when the moment is right to break that rule. You can learn a prosecutor's staccato cross-examination (ineffectual against anyone the jury likes) from watching prosecutors do it, but you can't learn to get inside the skin of the witness and get him in "yes mode" so that he'll say whatever you want him to.

I took all of the trial advocacy classes I could in law school, and I attend lots of continuing legal education courses every year, but I learned more from my first jury trial (it was a federal bank robbery case) than from all of the classes I ever took.

I have continued my formal education by studying at the Trial Lawyers College. I have also trained to direct psychodrama, which is a tool I use to help tell my clients' stories at trial.

I also read voraciously. I like to read fiction, especially historical fiction, and legal nonfiction. I often have three or four books going at the same time. I just finished reading Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, by Dominic Streatfeild (St. Martin's Press 2002), an outstanding overview of the history, production, and politics of cocaine. (I am compiling a drug war bibliography for those who are interested in learning more about the problem of the war on drugs.) Next I will either finish Clive Barker's Imajica or start in on Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Also on my "to-be-read" stack are a couple of works of historical fiction and a couple of biographies (some might say revisionist biographies) of Abraham Lincoln.

This page is a work in progress. If you'd like to discuss Federal criminal defense, by all means contact me.

--
Mark.