LA: one judge's solution for New Orleans' indigent defense crisis - put a p.d. in jail

Via The Legal Reader, from the New York Times:

Judge Sends Public Defender to Jail

The chief judge in the city’s juvenile courts had a top public defender arrested Tuesday in a bizarre escalation of a fight over changes in the city’s troubled program for representing indigent defendants.

The judge, David Bell, was upset that no public defender was in his courtroom when he was ready to start this morning, and he drove to the defender’s office and waited outside for Stephen Singer, the chief of trials, to arrive.

The judge took Mr. Singer to his courtroom, where he found him in contempt for not being prepared to provide representation and ordered him jailed for 36 days, three days for each of the 12 items on Tuesday’s docket. Mr. Singer then spent about five hours in jail before a state appeals court stayed the order...

“I wasn’t … very nice to work with,” he said, laughing riotously

From the TNT:

Work burnout - Feed the spirit or get used to the taste of ashes

Your job is a drag, your co-workers are baboons and your favorite movie is “Office Space.”

Ever considered that you might be the one with the problem?

"Nice people who commit monstrous acts"

From Alternet:

Transforming Fear into Power: The Politicization of Child Sexual Abuse - Politicians trying to gain points are pushing laws to "get tough" on child sexual offenders. But a new movement has a better idea -- work with offenders instead of ostracizing them

For years, CASA's staff had responded to phone inquiries for help from perpetrators, or potential perpetrators, with a quick and cold, "I'm sorry, we don't do that here. Good bye." After... a partnership with... Stop it Now!, a national prevention organization, CASA became more aware of services for perpetrators.

The MA-based Stop it Now! has been working for years to dispel what it considers the dangerous practice of demonizing child sex offenders. "The stark truth is that more often than not, people who sexually abuse children really are 'nice people' who commit monstrous acts," reads one of its monthly newsletters. "Our wish to place them squarely in one camp or the other is perhaps the greatest single barrier that prevents us from recognizing the behaviors that lead to sexual abuse."

CASA's programming more closely reflects the realities of (child sexual abuse): young people under 18 years of age perpetrate 29 percent of assaults; and almost half of the perpetrators were identified as family members, and only 10 percent were strangers... CASA is doing more to counsel families where one child is victim and another child is a perpetrator, a key priority for many who know the issue well...

I am finding this dynamic especially challenging, working with young sex offender clients, taking into account their families, parents and younger siblings in particular.

Pre-Gideon public defender comics

Now available on E-Bay: Public Defender #10, April 1957.

The suspect seems to have been caught at the scene, but at least back then, you could wear handcuffs and smoke at the same time.

Why can't our generation have a public defender's comic book?

Rational choice theory

Submitted without comment, an op-ed from the New York Times:

Free-Market Justice: an econometric study of how effective public defenders really are...

Among the findings:
The average sentence for clients of public defenders was almost three years longer than the average for clients of private lawyers...

(W)hen we removed the control for the seriousness of the crime, public defenders performed relatively worse, not better (five years more incarceration versus three years more)...

(M)arginally indigent defendants who choose public defenders tend to be guilty...

Prescription:
a less drastic solution than spending more on public defenders... the remedy may simply be to tighten the mechanisms we use to determine indigency...

The author:
Morris B. Hoffman is a Colorado state trial judge and a fellow at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research.

The paper he co-authored, "An Empirical Study of Public Defender Effectiveness: Self-Selection by the “Marginally Indigent”" is here (pdf file).

P.D. blogs are winners

The 2006 Public Defender Blogger Awards are up now at Public Defender Stuff.

This has been a great idea of Greg's to spread the word and build up our p.d. blog community. May there be twice as many public defender blogs to read by the end of this year.

Thanks everybody, and cheers.

It's permanent, a tattoo

Liz at "I Speak of Dreams" not only has been nice enough to link to my recent tattoo posts, but also she's found some tattoo aficionados I missed, plus one bonus piercings enthusiast, 192 on her facial area alone.

WA: “there was blood on the lockers”

You may have heard: on Wednesday morning before class started, Samnang Kok, 17, was shot and killed inside a Tacoma high school. Police arrested Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, on suspicion of first-degree murder.

The Tacoma News Tribune has a page of over a dozen links to stories, photos and videos and more information about school violence in the South Sound.

GA: ex-p.d. on ex-client - "I hope he doesn't ever see his freedom"

From WTOC: Hostilo Looks Back at Hostage Standoff, Forward to Kidnappers' Trial

A local attorney held hostage last year looks to get back to work as his kidnappers get ready for trial. After a year to gather his thoughts, Michael Hostilo has refocused on law and trying to keep his kidnappers off the streets forever...

Despite a year away from work, he still can't put the ordeal behind him yet. He waits to testify against accused kidnappers Robbie and Connie Brower in their trial this month...

As a public defender, Hostilo had represented Brower in court. A decade ago, Brower faced charges in Chatham County of beating a man half to death with a hammer. In court he proclaimed his innocence, but asked for his hammer back. Convicted and sent to prison, Brower blamed his fate on Hostilo...

"That's probably going to follow me for years. I don't want that to be my legacy, being held hostage in Statesboro by an indigent client," Hostillo confided...

Downward mobility

From p.d. GTP:

Previously Well-Off People Drive me INSANE!!

You know I can handle the schizophrenics who look like they're about to attack me any minute. I can handle the lewd cat calls, and I can even handle the arguments I sometimes get in with clients who don't trust me and don't trust the system... But, I cannot for the life of me handle the few clients we get who used to be well-off but have now fallen on hard-times and have to come on down to the dreaded public defender's office where we only have cheap bad attorneys of course. *grits teeth*...

WA: lower prison collect-call rates

From the Olympian:

State's inmates get a break while keeping in touch

After a day's work in the woods, Cedar Creek Corrections Center inmate Cory Delosh likes to place an occasional telephone call to Puyallup.

"Let my mom know I didn't cut my leg off with a chain saw," joked Delosh, 21.

Collect calls placed by Delosh and other inmates... now cost much less as part of a new state Department of Corrections program...

I knew Cory. In the picture accompanying the article, he looks happier now.

WA: four-legged witness assistant

In the name of parity, I expect one of these for our side. From the Everett Herald:

A lick of help for victims - Service dog comforts witnesses in county court cases

Enter Stilson. Stilson, a 2-year-old Labrador retriever mix, put his head on the woman's lap. The woman calmed down. Stilson did his job. Later, after the woman read her comments to the judge, Stilson sat at her feet, easing her nervousness during the remainder of the court hearing. The dog, a well-trained service animal, is the latest addition to the prosecutor's staff...

You object! Me, I just want equality of arms (and dogs). King County had the first doggie; Trial Ad Notes has the story.

I'd put our public defender service dog next to the stand when our witnesses testify, to help them stay on task maybe. I wouldn't choose a lovey-dovey dog, but one of your heel-nipping herding breeds such as my shepherd-heeler.

Things I learned at juvy today

1. We had an officer show up for court in a short sleeve shirt, and wearing full-length sleeves. Same cop. One arm looked like Speed Racer, the other was anime - esque too. OPD seems very broad-minded. Apparently when the officer is on the beat downtown, the tats are an icebreaker with the hip kids and the street people. Lesson: tattoos can help you in your job.

2. If you're a foster kid and you misbehave, before calling law enforcement, at least one group home will first try sending you to a De-Escalation Room. Lesson: if the prosecutors had one of these rooms at the main courthouse, I might still doing adult cases.

David 43, Goliath 42

Fiesta Bowl congratulations to my hometown team.

Boise State 43
Oklahoma 42 (OT)

My. Oh. My.

All is quiet on New Year's Day

Take a moment to read the beginning of the year thoughts of John Wesley Hall, Jr., "a rumination on where we fit in to the criminal justice system and with a little about quality of life.":

I can't remake the facts, but I might be able to control the damage or even win. None of us has the luxury of representing only the innocent or prosecutors prosecuting only the guilty. We lose at trial. It is part of the job...

If I can get a few lawyers to better understand the fabric of search and seizure law and they become better lawyers and better serve justice, then this blog has been successful...

Oh yeah, no cases today.

His blogs are Fourth Amendment.com and Law of Criminal Defense. They will benefit you professionally and personally.

Happy 2007

Happy New Year (and don't forget to vote! Click below)