Mighty congratulations to Scoplaw, newest hire of the Miami - Dade County Public Defender.
RJ's law school blogging has been great, and in the practice of law, he's definitely going to be the anti - Charley Demosthenous. Just be careful down there, Scop; I hear the Justice Building can get pretty turbulent.
From KPVI:
Verdict: Guilty for Brian Draper
After deliberating for four and a half hours, the jury in the Brian Draper murder trial has convicted the 16-year-old of First Degree Murder and Conspiracy to Commit First Degree Murder.
Draper's defense attorneys argued their client thought Torey Adamcik was making a movie and he did not know Cassie Jo Stoddart was going to die. They also argued Adamcik was the one who killed Stoddart and not Draper. Their defense was that Draper only stabbed Stoddart after she was dead because Adamcik threatened to kill Draper.
The ultimate piece of evidence against Brian Draper was a videotape he made with Torey Adamcik on the night of the murder...
More from the Idaho State Journal.
Yom HaShoah starts tonight, a solemn time of Holocaust remembrance.
In other news, on Tuesday night my adopted town's city council may vote to adopt Rafah, the Gaza town where Olympia native Rachel Corrie died, as our new sister city. From the Olympian:
Olympia looks at Rafah for sister city
It seems that no potential Israeli sister city is invited.
In still other news, we're back from Idaho only to come home to swastikas in Lotus Land. Also from the Olympian:
No motive given for suspect's racist graffiti
Residents find hate messages sprayed on cars, mailboxes
Update 4/18/07: while the Olympia City Council may have said no to Rafah ties, there's always the sister city relationship between Dayton and Pyongyang.
Here is a rarity - a blog post mentioning a public defender in a mental health / involuntary commitment / civil hearing, from med student 6YearMed:
Public Defender: "Dr. PsychoBabble, could you state for us Ms. X's diagnosis?"
Dr. PsychoB: "Borderline Personality Disorder..."
Ms. X: "He's a liar!! He's a liar, judge!! And he is not my doctor! And I hate him! And I like DUCKS! YELLOW DUCKS! And that doctor called me names.."
On our way to and from the Wolf Education and Research Center on the Nez Perce nation, we passed over Lawyer's Canyon, named for Hallalhotsoot, or Lawyer. He was born near here in Nez Perce territory, and died the year before the Nez Perce war.
His father greeted Lewis and Clark. As he watched his country being invaded by European - Americans, Lawyer believed that resistance was futile, and sought to negotiate in the treaties of 1855, 1858, and 1863. The American negotiators proclaimed him head chief of the Nez Perces when he was not. When Old Joseph walked out of the 1863 talks, Lawyer was browbeaten into signing the treaty on behalf of all Nez Perce people. For his pains the settlers named a creek and a canyon after him, broke their treaty commitments and decimated his country. As historian Alvin Josephy said:
"Despite the accommodating role he had played, the Americans had repaid him with only small and niggling favors, and in his later years he had lived close to want. ... He had presided over the destruction of the cultural pride, dignity, and heritage of large numbers of Nez Perce."
From Capital Defense Weekly:
Contemptible: juvie public defender sentenced to 30 days for defending her client
Standing up for one’s client’s is a lawyer’s duty. Building a record for appeal is good lawyering. Apparently doing both in Georgia can get you in jail. Sherri Jefferson, an Assistant Public Defender in the Brunswick Judicial District, was sentenced to thirty (yes 30) days for her conduct in a delinquency hearing.
Granted, contempt happens. Granted, trial courts sometimes do wacky things. Granted, finding a public defender in contempt won’t get it noted here, or much of anywhere, as rarely are such findings upheld on appeal.
A split panel, 4-3. on appeal in In re Sherri Jefferson, 2007 Ga. App. LEXIS 391 (Ga. Ct. App. 2007), upheld...
Three books in our area of interest are covered in a recent New York Review of Books:
The American Prison Nightmare
Bruce Western makes a crucial point at the start of his important book, Punishment and Inequality in America: "If prisons affected no one except the criminals on the inside, they would matter less." But with more than two million Americans behind bars, the impact of mass incarceration is impossible to contain. Their fate affects the taxpayers who support them, the guards who guard them, the families they leave behind, and the communities to which they return...
Like Bruce Western, the authors of Confronting Confinement emphasize that few of the problems inside prisons truly stay confined. Ninety-five percent of those who go in also come back out. The problems that arise inside prisons, the authors write, go home "with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each day's shift..."
Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, who understand the vastness of the jailers' reach, follow the story out of the cell and into the voting booth. Locked Out examines how the disenfranchisement of felons shapes American democracy — hardly a hypothetical matter in an age of split electorates and hanging chads...
From Historic Poplar Lawn Association:
Time for the Public Defender's Office to Go!
Everyone has a right to an attorney. Granted. But having a Public Defender’s Office in the heart of our neighborhood is ludicrous...
Perhaps they can tell me why a Public Defender’s office SHOULD be on one of the better streets of this neighborhood? Perhaps legal aid should have a Kiosk in the park as well, so any of the druggies, drunks and whores who frequent Tulip Alley and the park can deal with their legal representation right on the spot!
Greetings from Whitman County, Washington, more precisely, from the Whitman County Library in Colfax, where I've just seen something remarkable: a person in black and white striped clothes, tops and bottoms, with "WHITMAN COUNTY JAIL" clearly printed in red on the back, circulating through the stacks, not bothering anybody.
I love being back on the Palouse (sadly, Ferdinand's is closed on Saturdays, but I'm guessing that my old law school will be open).
Bonus link to one definition of trusty.
Greetings from Grant County, Washington. I love this place: it's given the blog so much material.
Fun fact about Moses Lake: out in the middle of the desert, you might look up to see a big old Japan Air Lines jet swooping in or taking off, training JAL pilots. This would explain all the Japanese restaurants.
Another fun fact: a sign on I-90 claims that Grant County produces more potatoes than any other county in the United States. Now my wife is a fiercely partisan Idahoan, with a nose that can detect a potato processing plant at 20 miles. When she saw the sign proclaiming Grant County spud supremacy, she used not one but two expletives. That was probably the wrong time to announce that the best potato I've ever eaten was in fact a Watato.
I'm going back to Idaho for a week, so posting may be scatter-shot.
Bonus links and courage under fire citations go out to fellow Idahoans IdaBlue, Idaho - Hum, Idaho Rocks, the Mountain Goat, F-Words, and the indispensible 43rd State Blues.
Update: more about the photo above from Rob's Idaho Perspective -
I originally thought this was an April Fools joke, but it does not appear to be. The story has a picture of a person sitting behind a "no shooting" sign with a rifle shooting ground squirrels (not surprising). The story goes on to explain that numerous endangered birds have been killed in the area (also not surprising), some private cattle that are still allowed to roam in the area have been shot (somewhat surprising), but the most amazing of all - that national guard vehicles are regularly hit with gunfire in the area.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
Gator Barbie is pre-med and in her spare time she works on fund-raising drives for a number of worthy causes. Gator Barbie wants to become a Pediatrician Barbie so she can make all the sick children of the world feel better.
Seminole Barbie is pre-law and in her spare time she does beer bongs with the Florida State offensive line. Seminole Barbie wants to become a Public Defender Barbie so she can work fulltime for the football team...
The living hell that is law school:
Busy, law school, y'know, all that. I have been busy not going to trusts and estates and getting myself another job, since the handy Public Defender's office in a great New England state decided to place me in an office almost 2 hours away from my beach house...
Our loss I guess.
Check out Jail Guitar Doors:
Jail Guitar Doors is an independent initiative set up by Billy Bragg with the aim of providing musical equipment for the use of inmates serving time in Her Majesty's prisons. It takes its name from the b-side of the Clash's 1978 single "Clash City Rockers"...
This concept is bound to catch on here in the land of Nirvana: liberate some of Paul Allen's guitars from the EMP, call Death Cab and Modest Mouse, K Records and Sub Pop - we can make this work, people!
Bonus links: "Jail Guitar Doors" apparently is also the name of a Japanese Clash - inspired band.
This one's for my Ohio colleague, whom I once called "Dennis Kucinich":
Presidential primary year 2004, at the caucus I attended, before ultimately switching to John Edwards (where I still am) I signed up for Dennis Kucinich, only to find it was just me and the locally famous teepee - dwelling ex-hippie activist standing up for the little guy. This time and this place, there were about 100 times as many ex- and current hippies in attendance, in an overflow crowd along with Greeners, labor guys, and a few drivers of expensive Swedish cars. The congressman spoke well for his causes, and I enjoyed the sensation of feeling like a moderate in a left - of - center land.
Something you may not have known about the Montana public defender system: the state capital may be in Helena, but by law the main office must be in Butte.
It fits. I like it.
