MA: both sides now

From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette:

Jury duty an eye-opener for lawyer - Court system gains new respect

Somehow, his fellow jurors figured out on their own that John J. Roemer was a lawyer. Maybe it was the fact that the court personnel they encountered all seemed to know him, some even addressing him by his first name...

Mr. Roemer, a public defender in the Worcester office of the state Committee for Public Counsel Services for the last 20 years, said he walked away with a fresh perspective on the time-honored system of trial by jury...

Never before... had he been given the opportunity to sit as a juror... “I really wanted to learn what goes on in the jury room and this was the best training seminar I ever attended,” Mr. Roemer said.

He plans to share his observations with young public defenders in a training manual titled “Both Sides Now: What An Indigent Defense Lawyer Learned Upon Becoming a Gentleman of the Jury.”

A salute to the contract public defenders

There are 2600 private attorneys in Massachusetts who accept court appointments to represent indigent clients. Meet one of them:

Sometimes court is like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I'm the Black Knight in the scene where King Arthur and his companion, Patsy, are riding imaginary horses, clopping coconuts to imitate the sound of hoofs. They encounter the knight at a bridge, and he says, "None shall pass." A fight starts, and the Black Knight gets one arm chopped off, then the other. "Just a flesh wound," he insists. There is more fighting, and, one by one, his legs are cut off. Finally, there's nothing left but a stump of a knight. Arthur starts to cross the bridge, but the knight says, "Running away, eh? You yellow bastard. Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!"

That's an appointed criminal-defense attorney. That's what we do.

(In Minidoka County, Idaho, the p.d. contractor calls himself a "clean up batter" - different time zone, same pummelage.)

Update: Alaskablawg has an extended post inspired by the story about the Massachusetts private attorney here, saying, "The article is a fairly accurate reflection of the daily life of most public defenders/court-appointed attorneys." He's right; it is. Read it here.