The First Amendment is Silly?

Here’s an article that ran in the Killeen paper today about our local law enforcement’s view of the first amendment (Hint: the Sheriff thinks it doesn’t apply in Bell County). I gave a few comments to the reporter, and a few of them ended up getting printed:

‘It’s political silly season, and this fits’
By Justin Cox
Killeen Daily Herald

Appeal results in published opinion

One of my recent appeals has resulted in the Third Court of Appeals siding with my arguments, and agreeing to publish the case. The case is Christopher Daniel Burke v. The State of Texas, Cause Number 03-08-0035-CR. The opinion is dated August 14, 2008.

The issue was whether a trial court could order a defendant to pay court appointed attorney fees in an amount to be determined at a later date (presumably when the attorney got around to submitting a bill). The Third Court agreed with my argument that the trial court cannot fail to set an amount. The Court held that the amount does not have to be stated in front of the defendant while he is standing there in court at his or her sentencing hearing, but it does have to set the amount at some point before the judgment becomes final.

The result of this earth-shattering opinion is that the court can file a judgment nunc pro tunc to correct the amount of court appointed attorneys fees owed by a defendant, so long as it does so before the judgment becomes final.

HTML version here. PDF version here.

Client gets probation, I get on the news

Local NBC affiliate, KCEN-TV, interviewed me today regarding one of my clients. You can read the text of the story, and watch the video at:
http://www.kcentv.com/news/c-article.php?cid=12&nid=1236