About the Blog
WHAT THIS IS... The main purpose of this site is to inform. There are a lot of solo and small firm practitioners out there who can't keep abreast of everything going on in the law, and this is mainly for them: it'll give you information on current opinions and legal trends that might be helpful in your practice. I'll give some analysis at times which I hope will prove stimulating. I'll also do my best to keep it interesting and entertaining.
WHAT THIS ISN'T... Caveat emptor applies here, big time. If you're not a lawyer, nothing here is intended to be legal advice. If you have a question, consult an attorney in your jurisdiction. You can send me an email if you'd like, but doing so does not establish an attorney-client relationship, and will not be regarded as a confidential communication. If you are a lawyer, then what you find here will hopefully be informative or thought-provoking, but there's no guarantee that it's right. I'm writing a blog, not a law review article.
WHAT IT COVERS... Mostly Ohio criminal law, with slight emphasis on the decisions of the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals, since that's where I practice. Sometimes I'll just tell you about a decision; if you've got a case involving whether a Miranda waiver was valid, it might help to know that the 2nd District just handed down a decision on that subject, and be able to look it up. Other times I'll explore a decision in detail, and how it fits into the law in that area, and what it might portend for future decisions. And sometimes I'll just tell you about a case or a person or an event that I found interesting.
HOW TO USE THE SITE... I post three days a week. On Mondays, I'll take a look at a recent US or Ohio Supreme Court case. Wednesday I'll do a recap of the 8th District criminal cases. Friday I'll do whatever I want: discussing a case, bloviating about some issue that's crossed my mind, or just recapping stuff I've found by surfing the web. You can read this each of those days. It'll take about three minutes, and it's like staying at a Holiday Inn Express: it'll make you smarter, although I don't offer a Continental breakfast.
You can use the Search button - it works just like Google, except it's limited to this site - to find posts on particular topics or cases.
WHO I AM... This is where I put the "about the author" stuff, while trying to avoid the usual tendencies in that regard, which run the gamut from sounding like a personals ad gone horribly wrong to making the author seem like a cross between Thoreau and the Unabomber. ("The writer lives with his wife, three dogs, and a llama in the mountains of Yakutsk.") For now, let's stick with this: My name's Russ Bensing. I practice criminal law, mostly at the appellate but also at the trial level. I've been doing this since 1975. I'm pretty good at it, and I love my job.