Reviewing the case to determine whether the evidence was legally sufficient under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979), the court considered the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court first noted that evidence of intoxication near the time of driving was probative evidence that the defendant had been intoxicated at the time of driving. The defendant admitted that he arrived home about thirty minutes before the officers arrived, and the officers testified the defendant was intoxicated when they found him there Furthermore, the court found there was circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s intoxication at the time of the collision, specifically his involvement in a single-car collision, the lack of skid marks prior to impact, and the defendant’s flight from the scene while driving nearly seven miles on a tire rim with a shredded tire.

As to the defendant’s claim that he became intoxicated after arriving at his home, the court found the jury, as the sole arbiter of credibility, was free to consider or disregard the defendant’s testimony that his consumption of three glasses of wine after arriving at his home was the cause of his intoxication. The court concluded that while each circumstance alone might not support a finding of legal sufficiency, “the cumulative force of the incriminating circumstances” was sufficient to support the conviction.

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

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

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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.

1. Download and complete the Third Year Bard Card Application. (Word, PDF)

• Review pages 1-5.
• Complete the student information section of page 6. Page 6 will need to be signed and notarized.
• Complete page 7. Page 7 will need to be signed by one of the law school deans.
• Page 8 requires information on the student and supervising attorney. Tip: You can find pre-fill most of the requested information for your supervising attorney by searching the Texas Bar Directory. Page 8 will also need to be signed by the supervising attorney.
• Complete page 10-12, and have the supervising attorney sign pages 11 and 12. Page 12 will need to be notarized.

2. Download and complete the Authorization and Release (Word, PDF) with the supervising attorney’s information. This will need to be signed by the attorney and notarized.

3. Mail pages 6-8 and 9-12 of the Bar Card Application, along with the Authorization and Release form and a check for $10 made out to the State Bar of Texas to the following address:

The State Bar of Texas

Membership Department

P. O. Box 12487

Austin, TX 78711

4. The turnaround time for third year bar card applications is anywhere from two to five weeks, so make sure you apply early.

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Although the publication rate per professor is a useful tool to compare one aspect of a law school’s ranking, the measure is subject to a number of limitations. First, it does not take into account how many times the published articles were cited, a measure that focuses more on the quality of articles written rather than the quantity. Second, the publication rates per professor measure do not reflect how many professors were actually published in a given time frame. Professors who publish a large number of articles increase the overall publication rate for the whole school. For example over the last year, Antonio Gidi of University of Houston published ten articles and Bernard Black at the University of Texas published fourteen articles.

The findings are subject to the limitations of the source data. The data for the number of papers published comes from the Social Science Research Network. While the SSRN has a majority of the scholarly works published, SSRN only publishes those articles made available by the authors for publication through SSRN. SSRN data also reflects the year in which the article was first made available through SSRN, not the year which the paper was first published. For the sake of consistency, the numbers used in the full-time faculty column were based on the numbers most recently published by the ABA through lsac.org.

One final note, while the publication rates are often referred to and are commonly used as one measure in deriving law school rankings, it is important to note that at least one in depth study concluded that there is little correlation between publication or citation rates and effective teaching.

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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.

The cost/earnings ratio (C/E ratio) reflects how much every dollar earned by a first-year associate cost the associate over the course of their law school career. Since C/E ratios reflect the cost of going to law school, the lower the C/E ratio is, the better. The Return Ratio is the inverse of the C/E ratio, and it reflects the how much each dollar expended in law school is worth on graduation.

While these numbers don’t reflect opportunity costs, the time value of money, or the cost of borrowing the money, they do offer an interesting glimpse into the economics of attending law school, and help in determining which schools offer the “best deals.”

Interestingly, higher cost/earnings ratios don’t translate directly to higher debt/earnings ratio. The D/E ratios, which I will discuss later this week, provide a better sense of the average cost of attending law school for students who use student loans to finance their education.

Sources and Assumptions: All the data used reflects 2007 figures, since that is the most recent year that a complete data set was available. Data sources include the school websites, Princeton Review, and U.S. News and World Reports.

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Nationally, Columbia topped the list with an average starting salary of $145,000. Duke, Michigan, Northwestern, and Chicago rounded out the top five schools, each coming in at $135,000.

To put the Texas salaries into perspective, making $75,000 in Austin is comparable to making $160,000 in Manhattan.

Prior to removing children from their homes, section 262.201 of the Texas Family Code requires a showing that (1) that there was a danger to the physical health or safety of their children, (2) that there was an urgent need for protection of the children that required the immediate removal of the children from their parents, or (3) that the Department made reasonable efforts to eliminate or prevent the children’s removal from their parents. As the court noted, the extreme measure of allowing removal of children before litigating these issues is only allowed when “the circumstances indicate a danger to the physical health and welfare of the children and the need for protection of the children is so urgent that immediate removal of the children from the home is necessary.”

In this case, while there was a showing that at least twenty females had become pregnant between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, the Department conceded that teenage pregnancy, by itself, was not a reason to remove children from their homes.

While the Department asserted there was reason to believe children were sexually abused at the ranch, the Department primarily relied on the “pervasive belief system” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (“FLDS”) that it was acceptable to marry and procreate with females as soon as they reached puberty, and that such a “pervasive belief system pose[d] a danger to children.” However section 262.201(b)(1) requires the existence of a danger to the physical health or safety of the child before removal. The Department was unable to provide evidence, other than the pervasive belief system, that there was danger to pre-pubescent children. There was no evidence of sexual abuse outside of the females identified as having become pregnant before the age of seventeen. There was also no evidence of physical abuse.

The court held that there mere existence of the FLDS belief system did not put the children at the ranch in physical danger. The risk that “children raised in this particular environment m[ight] someday have their physical health and safety threatened” was not enough the meet the legislative threshold that the danger be so immediate and urgent that it warrants removal prior to full litigation.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has not made any statements on whether or not it will appeal this decision.

Update: 5/23/08: The ABA Journal reports that the decision will be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.

Compare these to the best and worst law school attrition rates:

The highest attrition rates can be found at:
1. Whittier (51.5% 1L attrition, #161 in U.S. News)
2. Touro (37.4%, #171)
3. Golden Gate (36.9%, #174)
4. Western State (32.6%, not ranked)
5. Jones School of Law (32.3%, not ranked)
The lowest attrition rates can be found at:
1. Yale (0.0% 1L attrition; #1 in U.S. News)
2. Stanford (0.0%, #2 in U.S. News)
3. Ohio State (0.0%, #32 in U.S. News)
4. Arizona (0.0%, #38 in U.S. News)
5. Case Western (0.0%, #63 in U.S. News)

Sources: Above the Law, Tex Parte, SMS, and lsac.org