Criminal Law

FL: life after Shirk

Posted on December 24, 2008
From JaxDailyRecord.com:The next phase for WhiteAfter 34 years in one office, it?s not an easy question to answer. Public Defender Bill White has had the ?What are you going to do next?? question following him around since Matt Shirk was elected as the next Public Defender for the Fourth Judicial Circuit in November...

KS: new p.d., with much to have to overcome

Posted on December 23, 2008
Interesting character study from the Wichita Eagle:br /br /a href="http://www.kansas.com/690/story/638833.html"span style="font-weight:bold;"Single mother perseveres to earn law degree/span/a - grit and effort anchor her lifebr /span style="font-style:italic;"br /Latina Alston is not yet 30...

OR: buttswatting and the karmic wheel

Posted on December 20, 2008
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Eyes of a child

Posted on December 16, 2008
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Altitude sickness

Posted on December 16, 2008
I just went from the westside a href="http://briannicholson.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-am-leaving-olympia-washington-in.html"Grocery Outlet/a direct to a href="http://www.bayviewthriftway.com/"Bayview Thriftway/a, and I swear it made me dizzy.

WA: "fighting inmates isn't in my contract"

Posted on December 15, 2008
Colleague Lord Erskine wonders:What's a normal job like?(H)e noticed me edging away from the guy as... other security staff moved up behind him. Of course I was; I don't need to be added to the long list of defense lawyers who've been punched out by their clients...

WA: pummelage

Posted on December 13, 2008
The latest in the cavalcade of violence against criminal defense lawyers; up in Snohomish County, this colleague never saw it coming:See also the Everett Herald, Everett man charged in assault on Lynnwood lawyer - Everett man allegedly punched his former attorney

"The 5 little interns of the county?s PD..."

Posted on December 13, 2008
A bit of doggerel from Jaime the P.D. Intern at Red Red Whine:I'm more than a little punchy and can barely keep my eyes open. So, in this totally delirious state, I give you The Public Defender's Tale based upon my time at the PD?s office. Yeah, kind of like the Canterbury Tales, but Chaucer I'm not...

ID: D.I.Y., 83702

Posted on December 13, 2008
A time-travelling broadcast sent from my home town in the era of Mutant Pop, courtesy of YouTube and Save vs. Death:Punk in Boise, Idaho (1985)A "trip into Boise's cosmic counterculture" unfortunately entitled "Pretty in Punk"... (T)hese kids must have been brave as hell...

UT: what role did AG play over DP counsel pay?

Posted on December 12, 2008
From the Salt Lake Tribune's Vault blog:A Little Sunshine For Death Row?The State Records Committee meets today to settle a tug-of-war over government documents that might reveal whether the Attorney General's Office influenced the pay of public defenders working on death-row appeals...

Calling all commentators

Posted on December 09, 2008
Marketplace, that relentlessly perky radio show with a business slant from American Public Media, wants to know "how the current financial crisis is affecting the work of legal professionals." Have your say at http://tinyurl.com/mktplclegal (that is to say, here)...

UT & VT: "for great justice!"

Posted on December 05, 2008
Vermont v. Brillon news, from Provo's answer to Pravda:Speedy Trial Law may Bring Greater JusticeAnxious to fulfill its duty to protect the people of Utah, the Attorney General's Office is asking the Supreme Court to fix a speedy trial rule that could allow criminals to avoid prosecution...

"No offense..."

Posted on December 03, 2008
By David J. Barend, from Exhibit A Boston:What It?s Like Defending ?The Guilty?: Thoughts From a Criminal Defense Attorney?I just don?t see how you can represent these people. I mean, what if someone killed one of your relatives? How would you feel about that???That depends...

Live from the courtroom

Posted on December 03, 2008
A moment ago:Judicial person ( to juvenile's parent): "Your behavior is not appropriate."Juvenile's parent ( to judicial person): "Neither is yours!"And the parent left the courtroom, not even in handcuffs.

A public defender dog story

Posted on December 02, 2008
What happens when your pup doesn't know the code to your parents' house alarm, from Preaching to the Choir:3 cops greeted us on our driveway. (I'm such a PD, my first instinct on seeing the cops was to tell them they couldn't come in to the house!) They insisted they wanted to go in first and clear the house, but I insisted all they would find was a 16 pound cocker spaniel...

WA: "it's going to be more expensive in the long run"

Posted on December 02, 2008
From the Olympian:County workers fight for jobs - Speakers say cuts will be detrimentalSix speakers told Thurston County commissioners Monday that proposed job cuts to balance next year's budget carry serious ramifications. The commissioners are considering a proposal to lay off more than 7 percent of the county workforce ? nearly 90 full-time-equivalent employees ? because of rising costs and lagging revenue...

A budget-balancing proposal

Posted on December 01, 2008
From your friends at Kansas Defenders:If the state doesn't want to pay for indigent defense, it needs to prosecute fewer people (or at least fewer poor people)...

Purissima Olympia

Posted on December 01, 2008
We three went downtown today to admire the singing Christmas tree. This is the only holiday concert I've attended where the carols contained the word "Beelzebub" (the kids started the show with a medley of Queen tunes. Seriously.)

WA: new RPC 1.8 (m) - the air up there, state bar version

Posted on November 26, 2008
Yodelling Llama and I went to the same CLE, and both were a bit chagrined to learn that most contracts for conflict defender services in this state are now considered unethical:Now, I suspect this result of RPC 1.8(m) is an unintended consequence of poor drafting, and no one should really be too worried about losing his license just by getting paid to provide indigent defense services...

WA: "Re-elect Justice Sanders" campaign begins

Posted on November 25, 2008
The story unfolds, from Adam Wilson of the Olympian:Justice Sanders says he didn't heckle A.G. during speechAlthough the rumor that Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders heckled U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey just before he collapsed is making its rounds on the blogosphere, Sanders says that's bunk...

FL: perils of politicians as public defenders

Posted on November 24, 2008
Out of Jax, Fla, political follies and fallout at the courthouse, and fun lawyer quotes too, courtesy of Channel 12 and Channel 4: Public Defenders Featured In Oscar-Winning Documentary Fired"I believe Mr. Shirk and his cronies, if they work to their maximum potential and use all of their talents, may achieve mediocrity," McGuiness told First Coast News...

Life in the therapeutic state

Posted on November 21, 2008
Heard today in juvenile drug court..."We're here to support you, even if that means we have to lock you up."... as my long conversion from drug court agnostic to drug court atheist continues.Bonus link goes to Drug Court Justice: Experiences in a Juvenile Drug Court, by Kevin Whiteacre, Ph...

WA: manicure, pedicure, judicure

Posted on November 19, 2008
I'm still bummed out about work seven different ways, but today the Public Defender Crisis? was good for a bitter little laugh. From Nicole Brodeur in the Seattle Times:Short-order justice is served Among the trims in King County Executive Ron Sims' proposed 2009 budget is a reduction in the number of public defenders ? those who fight in court for those who can'tIf Sims' cuts go through, each half-time lawyer will be responsible for 725 of the expedited felonies...

Volunteers

Posted on November 19, 2008
From the AP:Ethics dilemma for lawyers when inmates seek deathJohn Delaney faced the toughest moment of his legal career - his condemned client wanted to drop his appeals and die by injection, an act Delaney opposed and had been trained to try to prevent...

Planning your next CLE?

Posted on November 17, 2008
Consider holding it in your state capitol building:It's where I spent Friday, courtesy of the Washington Defender Association and OPD. Funky acoustics, uplifting surroundings.

Hit points

Posted on November 17, 2008
Like me, the dark public defender of the Sith has been down. But then he got some good news:I've been promoted to a level 3 attorney. Someone asked me what this means and I explained that a level 3 attorney has +1 damage against a level 2 attorney in direct battle, and has immunity from a level 1 attorney...

"The picture is not pretty, and it's about to get uglier"

Posted on November 17, 2008
From Legal Ethics Forum:The Growing Public Defender CrisisSee the comments, too. I propose a new model rule: it shall be presumptively unethical for any member of academia to call any lawyer "public pretender."Via The Faculty Lounge.

Gideon strumpet

Posted on November 17, 2008
Scott at Simple Justice sticks up for the Rodney Dangerfields of the bar:The Vast Mystery of Public DefendersThere is no mystery surrounding public defenders. The only mystery is how lawyers outside the practice of criminal law have managed not to notice these problems for decades, and how PDs have made Herculean efforts to fill the void we've left for them...

Nation's in recession and what do we get?

Posted on November 15, 2008
Gideon's calling for a different sort of bailout.The Great Fringed One weighs in at Gerry Spence's blog.

Juvy blues

Posted on November 14, 2008
Light linking and posting this week. At the moment I'm extraordinarily bummed out about juvenile justice, and not just because Apache County, Arizona is prosecuting an 8-year-old for premeditated murder. This week I'm feeling like a collaborator, not in the pop psychology team-building sense, but in the Vichy French sense...

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