I am also concerned how easy it has become to turn what are completely harmless activities into “crimes” these days because some lawmakers (or their constituents) disapprove of those activities and make nonsensical laws against them. A citizen who is unjustly accused of one of those activities could easily become a criminal defendant and then a “felon” because he/she didn’t have a good attorney to fight such a bogus charge.

Please understand, JT, Mespo, Deeply, PattyC, and everyone here who is a lawyer and/or law professor; I am NOT disrespecting lawyers in any way. Not the really excellent ones like you folks all are anyway. I have tremendous respect and admiration for the hard work you do, and which is often thankless.

The problem is that there aren’t enough of the stellar attorneys like yourselves out there to take all the criminal cases that come up. And as JT often reminds us, there are too many lawmakers who want to make “crimes” out of activities that have caused NO harm, injury or property deprivation to anyone. How does ANYONE keep up with some of the more ridiculous new “crime” statutes that are constantly being made so politicians can appear to be “doing something” to justify staying in office.

By “arming” ourselves with as much knowledge as we can, we can help ourselves more in the event that the terrible misfortune of being unjustly accused of a crime should ever happen to us. Of course, we hope that never happens, but we have no guarantees that it won’t. And if it ever does, I’d much rather be knowledgeable and prepared than clueless, panicked and confused.

In VA, we still have that insane — and in my view, totally unjust — 21-day rule which says NO new evidence can be presented that could exonerate a possibly wrongfully-convicted defendant. Isn’t that correct? And I understand that the rule in TX is 30 days, which is only marginally better. Aren’t there states out West and in other parts of the country that would probably love to see the right to ANY kind of legal defense for criminal defendants removed? You would know this far better than I do.

It is rather disturbing to me that some state and federal law enforcement officials don’t want to see inmates found guilty of any felony offense having access to any kind of legal assistance once their convictions are secured. Then again, there are probably some in law enforcement who would prefer that any criminal defendant be denied their right to legal counsel before trial as well. I have to wonder if the right to self-representation is also in serious jeopardy if an inmate may appear to be TOO good a representative, thus making those on the prosecution side decidedly uneasy.