MojaveJoe

Lawyer interested in Florida sentencing.

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

@MatthewStiegler @OrinKerr Refreshing. See also “AND BAD MISTAKES? I'VE MADE A FEW”: SHARING MISTAKES TO MENTOR NEW LAWYERS, 77 Alb. L. Rev. 499

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

I’m reading Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and I have to wonder whether Pauline Kael did too. They both have (or had—sad observation) a charging forward, take it or leave it, I’m-not-afraid-of-you style. A style that says, “I’m not trying to be eloquent—I am eloquent.”

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

If Florida doesn’t have the worst state bar association in the U. S. of A, then I pity, pity, pity the state that does.

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

At p. 22:
[A] series of descriptive be-clauses is jolted by an abrupt intransitive conclusion.
Her ringlets are dark, her skin very fair. She is not mourning deeply. Her smile is smug, her fine eyes inviting and she did not wait long for a husband. Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Virginia Tufte is 102 years old and she wrote a great book: Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Homage to Dionysios Solomos.

What I think about when I think of Florida’s judges: whether in that soul of theirs, in which Satan’s malevolence seethes, there was ever the smallest desire for good.

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Federal inmate prison handbooks are depressing as hell: e.g., https://t.co/kgggnT4pNa

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

“Chief Justice Roberts in his annual reports likes to describe the American legal system as the envy of the world. Nonsense.” Richard A. Posner, What Is Obviously Wrong with the Federal Judiciary, Yet Eminently Curable Part I, 19 Green Bag 2d 187, 188 (2016).

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

“If [Appellant] doesn’t want to avail himself to the due process of the greatest criminal justice system on the face of the earth, that’s his call.”Greene v. State, No. 4D19-2856 (Fla. 4th DCA May 5, 2021).

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

A life sentence is a death sentence ‘reduced by one step.’ “It appears that those versed in the law advise reducing death by one step to distant exile.” The Tale of the Heike, Book Two, p. 66, Royall Tyler, trans.

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Jones v. Miss. cited: A. Campbell, Law of Sentencing (3d ed. 2004). If you are not familiar with it, seek it out. “As the law of sentencing continues to evolve, the concept that sentences be backed by reasons will someday be recognized as a fundamental facet of criminal justice.”

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Reading the penultimate paragraph in Jones v Mississippi (majority opinion) I immediately wrote in margin, “What planet are you on?”

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Book that might help one understand the Florida Supreme Court (though I’m having a hard time seeing any bright side):
https://t.co/RqzBE7xmrP

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

@OrinKerr FWIW Florida’s appellate judiciary is 97% white (2 of 69 are African American). The all-white FSC denied review of a case challenging racial disparity In sentencing on Juneteenth 2019. Coincidence, I’m sure. Delancy v. State, 2019 WL 2518402 (Fla. June 19, 2019)

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

@OrinKerr The comma after ‘and’ stands out like a stubbed toe.

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Full Moon in Paris (1984). If Maurice Chevalier were holding an umbrella of Cherbourg in one hand and an escargot-stuffed croissant in the other, he would still be no match for the Frenchness of this movie.

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

As Bill Shakespeare said:
Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children’s sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock’d than fear’d; so our decrees,
dead to infliction to themselves are dead

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

The 15th circuit bench and bar does not cover itself with glory when they let this go on for four years (Judge Bryson JQC complaint)

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

@floridalawwoman Florida’s appellate judiciary is 97% white (2 of 69 are African American).

[MojaveJoe @MojaveJoe]

Tracy K. Smith: “Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” https://t.co/LbVBvSsH02