To what, posting when you have no clue what you’re talking about? Nah, thanks pal, I think you’ve used up the SDMB quota for this month.
I found it a little hard to believe that a direct answer to the posed question pre-existed in some remote corner of the web, reachable only through the miracle of google, but I was prepared to be amazed. Unfortunately it’s just another case of some lazy mope dodging a request to proffer a direct answer in his or her own words.
Listen people… cites – particularly internet cites from unverified sources – are there to support the statements that you yourself make. They aren’t neatly wrapped answers all unto themselves. Please avoid looking like an idiot.
Thanks! Your pal,
W.
And jebus, the answer is obvious and doesn’t involve even the most remote knowledge of constitutional law. It’s a fucking logic question a 5th grader could provide a direct answer for - and it ain’t the answer Beryl the Barrister is hinting at.
[sub]psssst…you guys will still clue little ol’ me in, right??[/sub]
spooje:
The answer I was looking for is one which, I would humbly suggest, is one that any actual attorney with any degree of criminal practice under his belt would know instantly. It’s not an obscure point of criminal law. It’s a very basic question that you must answer in nearly every single case you take: is there a lesser-included offense of the crime my client is charged with (or, if you practice on the other side of the room, "Is there a lesser-included offense I can charge if I want to?).
What you do with the information depends on the particular case, of course. But knowing the analysis, and the seminal case, is so key that I rather suspect most criminal attorneys can recite the rule, and the case style, in their sleep.
The case is Blockburger v. US, 284 U.S. 299 (1932). It is the “seminal case” because it laid out the rule for determining if one offense is, or is not, a lesser-included offense of another for the purposes of double jeopardy. Blockburger teaches us the “same elements” test: two offenses are different for double jeopardy purposes if each requires proof of an element that the other does not.
To answer my question, one should simply repeat the above paragraph, and add to it the application to our hypothetical case: mopery requires proof of three elements; dopery requires proof of two of those same three elements. Therefore, dopery is a lesser-included offense of mopery, and the acquittal on the mopery charges bars a subsequent retrial for dopery based on the same act.
There are, as I say, certain principles and cases that a criminal lawyer spouts reflexively. If I had mentioned racial discrimination in the use of challenges for jury selection, and asked a criminal lawyer to discuss, I guarantee the first case out of his or her mouth would be Batson. It’s not something that comes up every week, but it’s an issue that raises its head often enough that you know it without looking it up. In the same vein, if I mention ineffective assistance of counsel, Strickland leaps to mind. And every criminal lawyer can lay out the basic prongs of the analytical tests those cases mandate. Hell, I can do it in my sleep, and I haven’t practiced in years.
I trust the contrast between my “test question” and Beryl_Mooncalf’s “test question” is apparent.
Someone asked me via e-mail why I was letting an obvious poser get under my skin to this extent. There are two reasons.
The first is that it wasn’t obvious to me that the flaws in Beryl_Mooncraft’s answers were immediately apparent to the reader in the GQ thread – especially the lay reader. Given my interest in accurate legal information being offered in GQ, and my ire when a non-lawyer offers up mistakes, I was that much more incensed when the bullshit was coming from a source that claimed a law degree and hinted at an active practice.
That’s the noble reason. The ignoble second reason? He (or she) really pissed me off with the arrogant attempt to “grade” my work. Don’t grade my work, you idiot, when you have no idea what you’re talking about!
Thus we arrive, inevitably, in The Pit.
- Rick
Thanks!!
BTW, it WAS obvious that Beryl_Mooncalf was dodging and had no idea, even to me.
Thanks Beryl for reminding me of one of the first threads I participated in when I signed up for the SDMB a couple of thousand posts and almost four years ago.
In a thread on conditions in a Last Will & Testament (which got a bit scrambled in the message board conversion from UBB to VB), I and my fellow lawyers (Bricker among them) discussed in some detail the Rule Against Perpetuities and some of its interesting quirks like the fertile octcgenarian and the precocious toddler. Ahhh, memories.
Beryl, god but you’re being a jerk. In the linked thread, you held yourself out to be expert in areas in which your are not, as Bricker and Jodi, inter alia, have shown more than capably. And yet you open this thread, in which you further embarrass yourself. I suppose that to that extent, the harm has been effectively limited, but at this point I’d question any of your comments on any legal issue.
Like you, I am an attorney, but I choose not to comment on areas outside my practice - and even those that were within my practice, but at which I’m rusty. It’s just too easy to do harm.
Real lawyers are my friends.
In fairness, I was the OP for this thread, “calling Beryl out,” as it were.
Still, the wisest course for him, or her, would long ago have been to simply say, “I was mistaken,” and withdraw from the field.
– Rick
Duh. I was so focused on Beryl’s sur-rebuttal (read: shuck-n-jive hijack) that I forgot about the OP. :smack:
What this thread needs is for Henry B to show up and defend Beryl with his sterling “Is he lying” defense, buried in a haze of unintelligible English.
He gave me an “A,” so neener neener 
True, but nobody has mentioned the “H” word yet.
Hitler?
Homonculus?
Ho?
Hibiscus?
Hampster?
Jeez, what kind a’ lawyers are youse guys?
Habeas corpus.
OBVIOUSLY.
Habendum?
Haeredum appellatione veniunt haeredes haeredum in infinitum? (Or does that get shot down by the rule against perpetuities?)