The Sloth Bear has been a p. d. for just a little while, but has developed some distinct likes and dislikes in clients:
Categorizing Infuriants
If you ever find yourself speaking with a public defender, try not to be any of these people...
How to best describe us criminal defense types?
"Turbo" from South Carolina says we're cause lawyers.
"Cynic" in Arizona says we're broken lawyers.
Here's one vote for acknowledging our own brokenness. I'm closer to Arizona, geographically and otherwise.
Something remarkable and sad from The Urban Monk:
Why I Watch People Die
I cannot escape the fact that not far away a man is being taken into a room, strapped down and killed. And he may deserve it or he may not, but he is there not for the lives he took, but because he was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I know that, and it terrifies me, and it will not leave me alone...
Good news from Legal Profession Blog:
Informal Attire Not Unethical
The alleged misconduct? First, the lawyer visited a police station to interview two officers wearing a t-shirt with "Let the f***ing begin" across the front. His intent was to "communicate to the police officers his general feeling that his client was at a disadvantage in the judicial system by virtue of the police misconduct..."
Horrible news from the Tucson Citizen:
Robert Hooker, county public defender, killed in car crash
Pima County Public Defender Robert Hooker died Tuesday evening after being hit head-on by a pickup truck involved in a race on a West Side road, a Tucson police spokesman said...
More from the Arizona Daily Star, KOLD, and KMSB.
Update: from Of Arms and the Law - "He was on his way home for his 33rd wedding anniversary..."
Update: More tributes, from John Wesley Hall, Jr., Sancho Villa, Daniel Patterson, and Blog for Arizona.
From Caminiqua and Davious:
A strong stand for public defenders!
Dana Hlavac, my boss, here at the Mohave County Public Defender's Office... recently took a stand against unreasonable caseloads for Public Defenders...
"Why are we so concerned about giving quality representation to criminals?" - a paraphrased quote from a public official...
See also from the Mohave Daily News:
Judge allows public defender to withdraw from 39 felony cases
From the Arizona Daily Star:
Online clues now helping to get convictions - Prosecutors use social sites like MySpace to aid cases
What you do online can haunt you later — especially if later involves standing before a judge in a criminal case. Prosecutors are starting to use photos and statements posted to defendants' personal Internet pages as evidence against them. And judges are using the information to justify tough sentences...
Logging onto Myspace.com, Facebook.com and Google.com is now considered de rigueur for police agencies and investigators who work for defense attorneys and prosecutors, said John Wesley Hall, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. MySpace and Facebook are social networking Web sites that let people post personal information about themselves along with photos, videos and music. "You find out all kinds of things about people that you never would have known about without the Internet," Hall said.
More and more attorneys are using the Web sites to investigate the credibility of witnesses, victims and defendants. "I don't think attorneys on either side can afford to overlook the Internet," said John O'Brien, an assistant Pima County public defender. "It's a whole new realm that attorneys didn't have to worry about 20 years ago..."
Public Defender Stuff carried this item out of Tucson:
County seeks big raise to slow lawyer exodus
Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall and the heads of the county's two indigent-defense offices are so desperate to stop their lawyers from quitting that they've asked the county for a 20 percent raise for all their attorneys.
So far this fiscal year, LaWall's office has seen a 17 percent turnover rate among her attorneys, and Bob Hooker, the head of the Pima County Public Defender's Office, has seen a 22 percent turnover rate. Isabel Garcia, the head of the Legal Defender's Office, says several of her attorneys are openly seeking new jobs.
A 20 percent raise would cost the county between $2.2 million and $2.4 million...
Also in the same paper on the same day:
Defense attorneys' suit dismissed -
Judge agrees with county in dispute over unequal pay
A federal judge has dismissed a three-year-old lawsuit against Pima County filed by 45 former and current county-paid defense attorneys who claimed they were being paid far less than prosecutors. The lawyers argued that by paying them less than their prosecutorial counterparts, Pima County breached their contract, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the rights of their clients... In their initial claim against the county, the attorneys were seeking $9.5 million in damages and back pay.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Pyle sided with the county, dismissing the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again. Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and Rick Brown, one of the attorneys who represented the county, said they were pleased with the judge's decision. "We all have better things to do," Huckelberry said...
(T)he county argued that prosecutors and defense attorneys are not "similarly situated." The judge agreed. Pyle noted the county's attorneys argued that prosecutors and defense attorneys not only do different work, but the county has a "legitimate interest in favoring the public's interest in vigorously prosecuting crime over the county's duty to provide indigent criminal defense, and that paying prosecutors more than public defenders is rationally related to that interest."
"Although the argument is an uncomfortable one," Pyle concluded, it is a rational one.
Poor criminal defendants weren't entitled to court-appointed attorneys prior to 1963, and even now they are entitled to get only "reasonably effective" representation, Pyle said. As a result, government entities "could legitimately conclude that its law enforcement obligations are of a greater priority than its obligations to provide 'effective' assistance of counsel to indigent public defendants..."
Pima County Public Defender Bob Hooker, who was appointed to his position after the lawsuit was filed, said he hopes the county is ready to move on to other things now. "I think a lot of circumstances that gave rise to these attorneys feeling the need to file a lawsuit no longer exist. If they do, then I'm not doing my job," Hooker said.
I love the quotation marks around "effective," and that's all I'm going to say about that (it's not wise to curse, particularly at judges).
The quote is from Hinds County MS public defender Tom Fortner, who is leaving Mississippi in a better state than he found it:
Public defender Fortner leaving - Legal champion for area's indigent moving to Arizona with family
Fortner is praised in legal circles for ensuring poor defendants receive fair trials throughout his 25-year career... "He knows more about public defense in Mississippi than anyone," said Andre de Gruy, director of the state Office of Capital Defense and former assistant attorney in Fortner's office. "He's the person that we've all been following for so long." Fortner lasted in a legal specialty that sees high turnover. Public defenders usually face the public's ire for representing their clients, who often are sent to prison.
Always looking to the ones who last; maybe they could give CLE's on how they do it.
Another morale-builder for the colleagues at the Pima County (AZ) public defenders office:
Judges asked for critique of attorneys: A new public defender submits a list of 17 areas in which to judge the work of attorneys before the county's Superior Court.
Judges are being asked to evaluate attorneys on ethics and integrity, interaction with the judge and other attorneys, creativity and imagination, management of court appearances, courtroom demeanor and appearance, strategy and tactics, trial skills, voir dire..., opening statements, direct examinations, cross examinations, use of evidence law and objections, motion practice and hearings, effectiveness of presentations, jury instructions, final arguments and quality of judgments.
Yes, their bosses are inviting judges to do this. Top management would be in the courtroom making these evaluations themselves, if they weren't so busy getting custom-fitted shirts and inter-personal skills training. Perhaps next in the pipeline will be a public defender popularity contest, to be voted on by prosecutors and cops. That'll motivate them!
Now to Arizona, for a story of prosecutorial (or County Attorney-al) intrigue:
Four former Pima County prosecutors are fighting to restore their reputations after they were disciplined for not sharing information about what they knew about the murder of Dr. David Stidham... Their appeal to the county Merit Commission is the first public venue for criminal and civil cases arising from the murder and has sharpened the focus on what the former prosecutors knew from their friend and former prosecutor, Lourdes Lopez, the ex-lover of Dr. Bradley Schwartz, the man accused of hiring a hit man to kill Stidham.
One assistant county attorney was fired, and three others were suspended and later resigned. The one who was fired made out pretty well, though; he moved on to a job in the public defender's office making nearly $10,000 more than what he was getting as a prosecutor.
He'll need the extra money if he plans to keep up with the new chief public defender's dress code, who recently
let his lawyers know that his favorite shirt maker was in town and they could get custom-fitted shirts at a good price. "I like to dress well," (he) said, "but I don't expect people to be a clotheshorse like I am, dress in $1,000 - well, I guess there aren't $1,000 suits anymore."
Back in October, I wrote about Justin Blair, a promising young Maricopa County criminal defense lawyer, who was shot and killed as an innocent bystander to a road rage incident.
His family and friends are asking, why was his killer out on the street?
The shooter was on felony probation for a drive by shooting in 2003. While on probation, he was later charged in a felony stabbing in 2004 -- yet he remained out of jail.
It was six months later, when Police say Alonso pulled out an assault rifle, fired up to 15 shots, striking multiple passengers in a vehicle he was aiming at and killing Blair who was riding in a car driving the other way.
Radoff said, "Justin was a lawyer, he swore to uphold the system, you know he would have defended Alonso given the chance and it failed him, it failed me, it failed Alonso."
This Phoenix TV station webpage has the article and a video clip.
A 29-year-old attorney, recently moved to private practice from the Maricopa County Public Defender, has been shot and killed by a stray bullet while driving home.
"While Justin Blair played poker with buddies on Saturday night, he kept thinking of his girlfriend, sending her text messages by phone saying "I love you. I want to marry you." When the game ended around 2 a.m. Sunday, he called to let her know he was on his way home with a friend."
"The Phoenix defense attorney and fiancé Toni Stallone were giddy with love, fresh into a new house and planning a life together. But a stray bullet early Sunday morning ended all their plans."
"I just want to know who did it," Stallone said, weeping softly, "and tell them to come forward and tell the truth. . . . Justin fought for people's rights - the underdog. Now it's time to fight for his. He used to tell my son, 'You do what's right no matter how hard it is.' "
"A bullet through the windshield killed Blair, 29, instantly. Glendale police say the shooter was in a red pickup truck, firing at a Jeep Cherokee in an apparent road-rage dispute that erupted near 57th Avenue and Bethany Home Road. Three passengers in the Cherokee were wounded. Blair and his friend were innocent victims, traveling in the opposite direction."
