Rick Horowitz Criminal Defense Blog

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Rick Horowitz

Latest from Rick Horowitz Criminal Defense Blog

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I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I was a kid, and one of my all-time favorite episodes is “Darmok.” from Star Trek: Next Generation, where we learn about allegorical speech, such as “Shaka, When the Walls Fell.” Perhaps it’s because language and languages fascinate me. Communication. How do thoughts get from one mind to another? And what happens when they don’t make the trip through space from one head to another intact; that is,…
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I’ve been writing a lot about race and racism lately, specifically relating to race and law. The focus of this article, though similarly about race and racism, is on how the issues are phrased, or framed: it’s about optics. Race Matters Our nation is interacting in various and sundry ways about race in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s, and the optics now are different. Where in the past, many (if not most)…
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If you’re reading the newsletter, and experiencing déjà vu, you’re not crazy. The following post appeared during my brief stint on Substack. Then I discovered Newsletter Glue, the WordPress plugin I now use to write blog posts, and then send them out as newsletters. This whole section of writing before the Introduction header only shows up in the newsletter, though I wrote it on the blog, when I imported the post from Substack. There will…
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I won a dismissal today. It happens. It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, nor even as often as I think that it should. But it happens. It’s one of the (few) high points to being a criminal defense lawyer. People come to you not because they want to come, nor because they like you — not even to chat and have a cup of coffee. Unless they’re colleagues coming, or calling, to commiserate,…
Well, this week’s post will be short, and sweet, and about a little website housekeeping where I have been creating a local coding environment. A number of terrible things have happened in 2020, not the least of which — and to my mind possibly the most horrible — was the recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I really hoped she would hold out until after January 2021. I do not know if Donald Trump will …
A couple of months ago, in a fit of experimentation, I started a Mailchimp newsletter as part of learning how to reach people. Then I heard about Substack, and I ported my newsletter over there, because Substack offered a nice clean easy-to-use interface, the ability for “newsletters” to remain up (essentially) as blog posts, and the promise that maybe, one day, I could add paid subscriptions to the newsletter. I mean, who knows? Maybe some…
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This is the second transfer from Substack.com. I got a little busy, as I’ve just signed on as co-counsel for a civil rights case in the federal court. Hopefully, I get my transferring done today, and the new article I’ve been working on. The post below is, of course, another older post, so when it starts by saying “as I write this,” it is referring to when I had been writing it. The article it…
I write not about the legal concept known as the “fruit of the poisonous tree” which has to do with suppression motions. This ancient doctrine makes certain evidence, because illegally obtained, inadmissible in court, but does not apply often anymore. Prolegomena to the Establishment of Violent, Racist Police Forces Our courts long ago gave up on the idea that any search that benefited the police and prosecution could be illegal. We now have both the…
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The coronavirus quarantine has been rough. I hear it’s been rough on a lot of people, but I’m not going to lie: it’s been rough on me. Among other things, I finally determined that the steady drumbeat of horrific, and frequently idiotic, Facebook posts required me to deactivate my account a few weeks ago. Yeah, required. Twitter may be next. But a couple days ago, I awoke to the possibility of hope regarding legalized racism,…
“Death to the Constitution!” “Long Live the Constitution!” Seems like these days, we can’t make up our minds. The same person on different occasions, depending on the circumstances in which they find themselves, will make both those statements. They want free speech. Then they don’t. They want police to back off on protesters. Then they don’t. They think we should let everyone live free. But then they don’t. The only things that seem clear are…