Overall, less than two percent of all criminal cases went to trial in 2010. However, trial rates were much higher for capital murder and murder cases, which went to trial in 21.3% of the cases and 18.2% of cases, respectively.

Seventy five percent of the cases that went to trial, were tried before to juries. Overall, defendants were convicted in 76.4% of cases that went to trial before a jury.

Other interesting tidbits from the report include:

• Felony assault or attempted murder cases increased 113 percent.
• Felony and misdemeanor drug offense cases increased 153 percent.
• Other felonies increased 115 percent.
• The highest conviction rate for felonies was for felony DWI cases, at 84.8 percent.

The complete Annual Report for the Texas Judiciary for Fiscal Year 2010 can be found here: http://www.courts.state.tx.us/pubs/AR2010/AR10.pdf

As the amount of scholarly material available on the web increases, so to does the need to an efficient means to find, sort, organize and cite the material. Below are twenty of the best tools available on Firefox that researchers can choose from to build a customized, highly efficient research tool.

Part I: Find What You Are Looking For.

1.  Use Firefox Quicksearch

Setting up a quicksearch allows you to run searches from the address bar using very simple customized search commands instead of visiting a search engine or installing a toolbar to run searches.

For example, I’ve set up a quicksearch for Google, so that all I have to do to run a Google search is go to the address bar and type in “g searchterm” and hit enter.

Example:

Typing in “g olympics” and hitting enter

results in:

Adding thumbnails next to your Google results is covered later in the story. You can skip directly to it by going to Tip #12.

Creating a QuickSearch is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Visit any webpage that has a search field that you commonly use. (For example, go to http://google.com)
2. Right click on the search field. Choose Add a Keyword for this Search…

3. The Add Bookmark dialog will appear. Give the bookmark a name, e.g. “Google” and create a keyword e.g. “g” and click “Add.” The Keyword is going to be the command you use to run the search so keep it short and make sure it is something that is intuitive to you.

Now to run a quicksearch, all you have to do is go to your address bar and type in the keyword and search term to run a quicksearch. If you set up the Google Quicksearch described above, try typing in “g olympics” in the address and then hit enter to see your results.

2. Find in Tabs

With the advent of tabbed browsing came the need to be able to sort quickly through open pages. The Find in Tabs extensions allows users to search multiple open tabs at once. It displays all occurrences of the search terms from your open webpages in  a display pane that also highlights the search results in context, making sifting through search results a breeze.

3. Resurrect Pages

Resurrect Pages allows researchers to bring webpages back after they have shed their ethereal coils. When a webpage is not longer available, either because the content changed or the website no longer exists, Resurrect Pages searches caches and archives that mirrored the content while it was available, so that in many cases you can still retrieve the information you were looking for. Resurrect Pages searches the best caches including Google, MSN, and Yahoo Caches, CoralCDN, the Internet Archive.

4. BugMeNot

BugMeNot allows users to bypass registration at many free websites. This is a great way to skip registering for news websites merely to read archived articles.

5. BlueOrganizer

BlueOrganizer creates “smart menus” and “smartlinks” based on the page you are visiting to offer helpful features that aid in research. For instance, it recognizes book names, movies, individuals, and songs to find more information about those items quickly and effortlessly.

6. Surf Canyon

While Google is often a researcher’s search engine of choice, there are times when you don’t find what you are looking for on Google. For those times, there is Surf Canyon. It adds top search results from Yahoo, MSN, Craigslist to your search results. The additional results remain hidden under a bull’s eye icon and can be easily displayed and hidden again by clicking on the icon. Surf Canyon can also find the most relevant results from deep in your search results and bring them to the forefront.

7. Customize Google

This add-on removes Google ads from search results, suggests topics as you type, and allows you to quickly search other engines like Yahoo, Technorati, and Ask Jeeves.

8. Update Scanner

If you have a page you want to watch for changes, Update Scanner will notify you of changes made the to the page. It highlights the changes made to a page since you last visited the page and can notify you when the page changes.

9. Breadcrumbs

If you have ever found what you were looking for, only to lose it again because you forgot to bookmark or print out page, you will understand just how useful Breadcrumbs is. Breadcumbs can search through the pages you recently visited so you can find the result you were looking for without retracing your steps by running the original search over again.

10. Read It Later

Read It Later is a tool specifically built for those pages you want to get back to to finish reading, but aren’t certain you want to bookmark just yet. Read It Later offers a simple interface that makes marking a page to read later as simple as clicking a check mark at the end of your address bar. Once you’ve read the story, click on the checkmark again to remove the page from your to-read list. You can also have your to-read list delivered to you as an RSS feed so it is accessible wherever you are.

11. Highlight All

This add-on highlights every instance of a given word or string of words on a webpage. To use Highlight all, hit F8 to enable the extension, and then select any word with your mouse, all other occurances of the word on the page will also be highlighted. This is an excellent way to focus you initial read of a long document when you are going through a large number of search results.

12. GooglePreview

GooglePreview adds a thumbnail image next to each of your Google search results so that you can quickly determine if the page is worth a further read.

13. Cooliris (Formerly PicLens)

Cooliris is to image and video searches what the iPhone is to phones. Cooliris offers an amazing interface that allows you to sort very quickly through hundreds of images and supports sites including Google Image Search, Youtube, Flickr, and Picasa. It is hard to imagine an interface that beats coverflow on Macs and iPhones, but the CoolIris interface does.

Check out the demo:

The interface is so good, that in response to user requests, CoolIris has even come out with a PowerPoint plugin and instructions for users of Keynote to add CoolIris functionality to desktop presentations.

Part II: Save, Organize, Annotate, and Cite Your Search Results.

14. Iterasi

As previously mentioned, Iterasi allows you to save dynamic webpages for future reference, even after the content of the original page has changed. Since I posted my review of Iterasi, Iterasi has added support for Mac OS X, and a scheduler which automatically archives webpages on a regular basis. In a conversation I had with Alex Williams, the Director of Product Marketing for Iterasi, I mentioned the availability of short permanent URLs to access the notarized pages would be a feature I thought users would really appreciate so they can more easily use Iterasi for citations in professional publications. I am happy to report that the most recent version of Iterasi offers this new feature. This is a company that is listening to what users want and responding quickly. Keep an eye on this add-on for additional features in the future.

Scheduler Tool Unveiled:

15. Zotero

Zotero allows you to “collect, manage, cite” your research sources. What is great about Zotero is that it not only organizes saved webpages, and search results, it also allows users to add external material like files or documents to the organized structure.

16. Delicious Bookmarks

Delicious Bookmarks lets you to save bookmarks and tag the pages so you easily find them later. The bookmarks are available from any computer with access to the Internet by logging on to your Delicious account, which make it an ideal took for users who research from more than one location. Delicious bookmarks also allow you to find the most popular pages for any tag and access your bookmarks  from any computer.

17. Fireshot

At its most basic level of functionality, Fireshot allows users to capture images of the pages they are visiting. Unlike taking a screenshot using your operating system, Fireshot can take a picture of an entire webpage, even when portions of the page are not visible on the screen. Fireshot also features a built-in editor that allows you to crop the pictures, annotate them, and save them for future reference or to share with colleagues.

18. Diigo

Diigo allows you to highlight, annotate, and save annotated webpages for future reference. While registration is required, and it adds a toolbar to your browser, pages 2 and 3 of the registration process can be skipped and the toolbar can be hidden.

19. Clipmarks
This allows you to save portions of webpages for future reference, print only the parts of pages you want, and email portions of pages to yourself or others. It is the perfect tool for printing or saving multiple non-continuous sections of a page.

20. PrintPDF

If your computer does not already have the capability of “printing” a file to PDF format, PrintPDF adds the capability to save webpages as PDF files directly from your browser.

If you have a favorite Firefox plugin or tip for researchers, or if you agree or disagree with the suggestions, leave a comment. Thanks!

[ratings id="756"]

Top Marks by Category:

Career Services Office: Southern Methodist University

Students Felt Prepared to Practice on Graduation: Baylor University

Collegiality: University of Houston

Technology: Southern Methodist University

Teaching Quality: Southern Methodist University

Library Services: Texas Wesleyan

Faculty Accessibility: Texas Tech School of Law

Student Diversity: Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law

Click for full-size image

Most Influential Professors:

SMU – Gregory S. Crespi

Texas Wesleyan – Aric K. Short

Texas Tech – Gerry W. Beyer

University of Houston – John Mixon

South Texas – Geoffrey S. Corn

Baylor University – Larry Bates

St. Mary’s – John W. Teeter Jr.

Texas Southern – Fernando Colon-Navarro and April Walker

Overall Rankings:

1. Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law (103 students responding)

2. Texas Wesleyan University School of Law (72 students responding)

3. Texas Tech University School of Law (164 students responding)

4. University of Texas School of Law (246 students responding)

5. University of Houston Law Center (153 students responding)

6. South Texas College of Law (126 students responding)

7. Baylor University School of Law (113 students responding)

8. St. Mary’s University School of Law (76 students responding)

9. Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law (79 students responding)

Check out the complete story and the law school deans’ responses at Texas Lawyer.

Section 951 of H.R. 4137: A loan forgiveness program for state or local criminal prosecutors as well as state, local, or federal public defenders which will allow for the forgiveness of $10,000 in students loans per year, up to $60,000, provided the attorney commits to at least three years of continuous service as a prosecutor or public defender. Federal prosecutors were not included in this forgiveness program because there already a Loan Repayment Assistance Program for federal prosecutors, although the forgiveness program for federal prosecutors is available only to a very small number of applicants.

Section 110: Colleges and universities will be required to publish the cost of textbooks as part of a drive to encourage “institutions of higher education to implement numerous options to address college textbook affordability.”

Section 401: The Pell Grant will be increased to $9,000.

Section 482: The Free Application for Federal Student Aid will reduced in length by at least half.
Bill Tracker:

On a related note, my thanks to Bryan Jepson for getting me a signed copy of Justice Scalia’s new book during my visit to D.C. last month.

Plaintiff has a great deal to say,
But it seems he skipped Rule 8(a).
His Complaint is too long,
Which renders it wrong,
Please re-write and re-file today.

The Seattle Times reports that the title alone covered eight pages, and it took another 18 pages just to identify the parties. The lawsuit includes 37 pages of quoted emails and a 224-page “odyssey” listing the claims for relief.

Sources: Seattle Times and ABA Journal

In the majority opinion written by Justice Scalia, the Court held that the individual right to possess a firearm is unrelated to service in a militia, and instead, was a right to bear arms for “traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” In reaching its decision, the Court examined the language used in the Second Amendment, which provides: “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The majority noted that the operative clause used in the Second Amendment was the “right of the people to keep and bear [a]rms.” The Court determined the phrase “right of the people” referred to an individual right rather than a collective right. In dissecting the phrase “keep and bear arms,” the Court found “arms” traditionally referred to “weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.” The majority also determined that the most natural meaning of the phrase “keep arms” was “have weapons.” The Court went on to note that every time the phrase “keep arms” was used in the founding era, the phrase referred to an individual right unconnected with militia service. Having addressed the operative clause, the Court went on to address the prefatory clause “[a] well regulated [m]ilitia being necessary to the security of a free [s]tate…” The majority found that the phrase “well-regulated militia” referred to every man who was physically capable of bearing arms. The majority also pointed out that “a militia” was distinguishable from the phrase “organized militia,” and that the phrase “well-regulated” meant only “the imposition of proper discipline and training.” The majority went on to note that the “security of a free state” referred to the “security of the polity” rather than the security of each of the several states. Having addressed each phrase in the pertinent portion of the Second Amendment, the majority concluded that the Second Amendment created an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Majority: Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito

Dissent: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer

[ratings id="308"]

Majority: Kennedy, Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter

Dissent: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito

Full-length opinion.

Sources: Reuters, SCOTUSblog

More information: Oyez, SCOTUSwiki: amicus briefs

Boumediene: a lesson in drafting dissents.

Oral Arguments

The Brief:

• Use paragraphs intelligently; signpost your arguments.
• Use words that guide the reader
• Make it interesting

The Argument

• Appreciate the importance of oral argument, and know your objectives.
• Have your opener down
• Be cautious about jokes

Never tell prepared jokes. They almost invariably bomb. In Roe v. Wade, an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas, who was arguing against two women lawyers, led with what he probably considered courtly Southern humor:

“Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, it’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word.”

No one laughed. Onlookers said that during an embarrassing silence, Chief Justice Burger scowled at the advocate.

• Never postpone an answer
• Learn how to handle a difficult judge
• Beware invited concessions

The unduly accommodating lawyer—a frequently observed creature, especially in appellate courts—has given away many a case.

Read the entire excerpt here.