Rick Horowitz Criminal Defense Blog

Subscribe
Visit Blog
By: Law Office of Rick Horowitz

Blog Authors

Rick Horowitz

Latest from Rick Horowitz Criminal Defense Blog

One of the hard parts of defending people is knowing the hard parts of defending people, because when it comes down to it, the deck is stacked. And the stacked deck does not favor people accused of crimes. The system, however, thrives because it is unfair. Our courts are overloaded. Our prisons packed. And that seems to be the point. Like a casino, the odds favor the house. This has always been such a hard…
In 2013, James DeMonaco riffed off an old Star Trek episode to come up with “The Purge,” a dystopian movie about a seemingly “law and order,” crime-free America — crime-free because once a year, all crime was legal, including murder, for 12 hours. The legal apparatus of The Purge is supposedly not racial. Yet the first movie in what has become a franchise involves a family targeted for destruction because they rescued the original intended…
https-rhdefense-com-wp-content-uploads-2021-01-tennessee-bureau-of-investigation-priorities-jpg
Some people believe criticizing cops is a constitutionally-protected activity in a constitutional republic like the United States of America. And, technically, they’re right. But too many don’t take into account the power of the thin blue skin. Constitutional protection doesn’t mean much if the cops being criticized are not themselves protectors of the Constitution. And most aren’t. The Thin Blue Skin Police in Dickson — how appropriate — Tennessee arrested a man for using Photoshop…
iStock-1069549440 (1)
UPDATE: A Capitol police officer has died as a result of the insurrectcionists’ activities. This alters whether justifiable force was used on Ashli Babbitt. (See below.) When I first heard of GoFundMe, I thought about how to use it to raise legal defense fees. Ultimately, I felt an attorney soliciting donations might run afoul of the ethics rules, though, of course, there’s nothing to stop a private individual from trying it. It seems to work…
I’m going to tell you right now: this is a rant. It’s about some young punk kid who — appearing to be fresh out of his first or second year of college, at best — says he’s an “engineer,” which makes him a doctor, I guess. So he doesn’t wear a mask when in a public grocery store. And, as tempted as I was, I did not put my fist through his blowhole. Why do…
https-rhdefense-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-12-screen-shot-2020-12-03-at-2-42-41-pm-1024x605-png
Tulare County Superior Court — not known for its lack of redneck law-and-order anti-science mentality — goes where Fresno fears to tread. It seems Tulare County judges have decided survival is more important even than railroading people into prison. They suspended criminal jury trials until 2021. They did the right thing, not only to protect themselves and the public: coronavirus makes jury trials unfair. Cases of the Hoax Virus — which has so far killed…
The herd mentality. Oy. Although I have strong political opinions, and I used to blog about them regularly on a website I created called Unspun, I don’t like doing strictly political rants here. And I’m not really going to break that rule too much right now, although I do want to talk about the Herd Mentality. But we’re going to consider it mostly in the context of criminal defense. Because, after all, that’s what I …
I have been working on a suppression motion the last week, so naturally, I keep running up against the “Totality of the Circumstances” doctrine, which, when you dig in, is really a Totality of the Circus Dances. The only real rule is to make sure you achieve the result that allows evidence against accused people in, whether legally, or illegally, obtained. Unless for some reason, you’re not in the mood. I mostly deal in felonies.…
https-rhdefense-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-10-shaka-when-the-walls-fell-jpg
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,…
https-rhdefense-com-wp-content-uploads-2020-10-black-kid-white-kids-use-binocular-optics-of-racism-1024x693-jpg
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)…