It’s been almost five years since Valerie and I moved back to Lane County, and I think it’s time I gave back beyond my day job. With a big family, we’ve used a ton of services in the Parks and Rec district here, including years of swimming lessons, daily walks on the bike paths and trails, gymnastics classes, you name it.

I’m running for one of three at large board seats for Willamalane. It’s a four year term, and the election is in May. It’s been five years since I served on the Roseburg Planning Commission before moving back home, and I hope I can meaningfully contribute to the Willamalane Board if voters would like to give me that chance. I already serve on my county bar board of directors and for a statewide training and advocacy group for defense attorneys, but I think it makes sense to do something that more directly impacts my family beyond legal organizations.

If you’re a voter in the Willamalane District and you’d like to share your thoughts, feel free to email me.

Here’s what ran in the Eugene paper last week, and here’s how the prosecutor decided to respond.

Well it should be an interesting month. Starting next week, I have two motions to suppress, a trial, a trial the next week, another motion to suppress, a trial the week after, and in the meantime, I need to get lots of other motions out the door so I’m ready for all these trials and motions. It’s rather exhausting, but I love it. It’s hard to complain, anyway, as I am immensely blessed. My kids are awesome, my wife is fantastic, we live in a wonderful city, we’re getting more connected with our church, and college football season has just started! What could be better?

I’m going to try to have all my sites more regularly updated. For more info, check my twitter feed, or the links to the right.

According to Black’s Law Dictionary, demur is a verb. It’s also a noun: demurrer. When I demur, it means I’m taking a swing at the charge filed by the prosecutor, hoping that the charge is somehow flawed in such a way that the prosecution cannot proceed. We don’t file demurrers very often in Douglas County, because the prosecutors here generally know what they’re doing, and can fix their mistakes if they mess up. Why should that make a difference? Well, generally, the remedy for a demurrer is a do-over. Sorry prosecutor! You messed up that charge, so we’ll just let you fix it and start over again! The timelines on demurrers are a bit fuzzy (they have to be done at arraignment, which occurs pretty early in the process, or “at such time that may be provided”, which I guess means whenever the judge feels like it, except for the middle of a trial.)

To put it succinctly : Filing a demurrer is usually incorrect because most things that are technically flawed and thus vulnerable to a demurrer can be fixed by the prosecutor. On the other hand, if you wait until the trial is underway, THEN your motion on a technicality, such as a motion for judgment of acquittal, may very well be a non-fixable problem for the prosecutor.

Here’s the thing: Just because filing a demurrer is normally incorrect doesn’t mean it’s always incorrect. Sometimes, cases are fatally flawed. Sometimes the grand jury voted the first time around to indict someone, but it was a really close vote, and if it had to go through the process again, the grand jury would toss the case out. Sometimes the prosecutor hates a case and is just looking for a reason to dump it. I think the fear in the criminal defense community is that if you demur to something, that crazy prosecutor is just going to re-evaluate their case and come back with three times as many charges. That might happen. But it could also be a good way to get a better deal than you would if you hadn’t filed anything.

And yes, I am filing a demurrer this week. Hopefully it does what I need it to. And if you’re a lawyer and you need to file a demurrer on your own, go read some articles by Ryan Scott on the topic over at Oregon Library of Defense.

Well I’ve been practicing law for 22 months, but after 20 trials, hundreds of negotiated pleas and a few dozen motions to suppress evidence, I haven’t gotten bored of it. I also haven’t written many blog posts. I’d like to blame that on the Oregon Library of Defense, a blog run by the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association that manages to cover all the new developments in Oregon criminal law as well as tactics and strategy for criminal defense attorneys. With a site like that out there, I’m not sure what the value of having my own site actually is. So instead of case updates, I’m going to focus this site on criminal issues on my radar, as well as notable wins and losses and what I’ve learned from them. I might also try to put a general primer on what to do if you are accused of a crime (short version: Don’t talk to the cops. Lawyer up) simply because by the time I get most my cases, they are seriously broken thanks to the knowledge disparity. The state knows exactly what its doing. People accused of crime? Not so much.

On the table for this week: Going to trial on charges of reckless driving and reckless endangerment. Also, preparing for trials on driving under the influence of alcohol (felony) and assault in the third degree.

It’s 8 a.m., and the sunlight is filtering through the east window by the kitchen, pink and orange and still rather sleepy. In a few minutes I’ll be waking up Charlie and taking him over to his grandparents for the day.

54 hours until I receive my bar results.

There’s something uncivilized about taking a 2 day, $1,000 test that determines your ability to practice law, then have to wait 8 weeks to be told whether you’ve passed or not, as you put your entire life on hold and wait.

I begin a job as a public defender in Roseburg on September 28, assuming that I pass the bar on Friday. Valerie and Charlie and I will begin a new chapter in our lives, as we look at buying our first house and finally put grad school completely behind us and start acting like normal people. It’s really exciting. But for the next 54 hours, it’s still a little worrying.