Good for Jeff Adachi

In "When children pay the price of a parent's incarceration", the San Francisco Public Defender writes:

In 2003, the San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership created a "bill of rights" that ensures children will be kept safe and informed at the time of the parent's arrest and able to maintain a meaningful relationship in the event that the parent is incarcerated.

Last week, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors passed a resolution, sponsored by Supervisor Bevan Dufty, supporting the children's bill of rights. "For me, this is a life-and-death issue," Emani Davis, whose father is serving a 110-year prison sentence, told the board at a hearing. "I would not be standing here today if it were not for the commitment of many, many people pushing for the maintenance of my relationship with my father."

Local agencies are already working to make the rights a reality for San Francisco children. Last year, through the support of the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the San Francisco Public Defender's office instituted a program to help incarcerated parents and their children obtain family services, working closely with a sheriff's program that allows prisoners regular contact visits with infants and young children...

I admire Jeff Adachi immensely, and we need more initiatives like this one. When I read this though, I thought about one missing element: the parents; parents who become criminal defendants, and the choices they make before they are arrested and incarcerated.

Would that my clients who are moms and dads would pause a moment to think about the effect of their actions on their children. I know, things like methamphetamine and alcohol can fry that parental circuit, but I wish that all of my clients who have kids cared as much about their well-being as Jeff Adachi so clearly does. In a better world, the care that Adachi shows for his clients' children would be more than matched by their parents themselves.

CA: p.d. can fight city hall

Longtime blog readers know that I think San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi is pretty damn cool. Still, it's always worth considering contrary views, like this one from Ken Garcia at the Examiner:

Public defender’s grandstanding masks office issues

Politicians grandstanding in public will almost certainly attract headlines. To that end, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi has been a busy man as of late.

Adachi claims he wants money — not necessarily more scrutiny — which makes his recent actions rather curious, because some stunts have been known to be dangerous to your health...

The Sandy

"Fun-loving, kitschy, irreverent and smart"?

Surely Blondie has blogged about this:


Actor Peter Gallagher Presents OC-inspired Public Defender Fellowship:

Gallagher presented the Sandy Cohen Public Defender Fellowship (nicknamed “The Sandy”) to help support a Boalt student pursuing an unpaid summer internship in that public service field. The fellowship was created by the OC at Boalt, and this year, Gallagher donated $2,000 to the fellowship, and FOX Broadcasting Company donated another $1,000...

This year's recipient, Ronnie Lin '07... “I'm a little more nervous than during our mock court arguments,” confessed Lin, who will work this summer in the San Francisco Public Defender's Office.

Hey, didn't I just see this guy somewhere?

Cultural exchange

A partner in a large San Francisco firm has been "loaned" to the San Francisco Public Defender's office, and is blogging the experience:

...I see this same client rummaging through the trash. My split-second decision was to walk straight past her without making eye contact in case Ms. Hyde was out. I'm almost past her when she calls out "are you my lawyer?" I thought about lying, but decided I had to stop and say yes. Thankfully she seemed to be on her meds that day. Instead of threatening me, she told me that she had completed 8 of her 25 hours of counseling...

Mutual opportunities for learning and growth here.

Tis pity she's a defendant

Dang, we p.d.'s don't even get respect from prostitutes:

(Sex workers)... picked up such practical tips as how to read a search warrant, how to have bail reduced and how to make sure a public defender actually defends them.

- from an article about "Whore College", held in San Francisco (of course).

Bonus verse: The article also quotes the excutive director of Standing Against Global Exploitation, Norma Hotaling, an old San Francisco surname. I think I learned this rhyme from my mom, who's a native of The City. It's about the 1906 earthquake:

If God had meant to smite the town
for being over-frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
and spare Hotaling's Whiskey?

Slanted and enchanted

The bad news is, I'm on-call this long weekend, and up past 1:00 a.m. tonight answering phone calls from DUI arrestees. The good news is, right now KCTS is showing San Francisco public defender / unreal renaissance man Jeff Adachi's movie, The Slanted Screen, and it's really good.

CA: you can take the boy out of BigLaw

A "litigation boutique" lawyer gets to play DA in The City, or, how some prosecutors talk about us when they think no one's listening:

The jury was waiting outside to be seated. I knew all their names. I had my peremptories ready. My witnesses were prepped. My opening statement was polished. I had just won a tentative ruling on a major evidentiary issue admitting the defendant's prior felony conviction for armed robbery. I was going to skewer him on the stand.

And...

The Public Defender pulled the "I'm pregnant, and I can't proceed." IN THE MIDDLE OF JURY SELECTION. Her doctor said that this was supposed to be her last trial--there was no medical emergency preventing her from going forward. She's just chicken. Chic-KEN!

This BigLaw boy isn't fit to shine Jeff Adachi's shoes, yet he's quite full of himself. Scroll around his site, and then click through to his firm bio, which states that he has served on the boards of directors of the ACLU of Northern California and the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom. Yeah, he's a real prince. Or maybe another one-syllable word that starts with "pr-".

(I haven't got the hang of LiveJournal netiquette, I suppose. If I (or anyone) can find an offensive and public post through Google, Technorati, or IceRocket, is it supposed to be off-limits because it's on LiveJournal?)

Update 12/17/05: In a blow for shame-based sanctions, the temporary prosecutor has taken down all his offensive public posts and is switching his journal to members-only, but not before he picked up a raft of new readers in the San Francisco p.d.'s office. I suspect that instant karma's gonna get you, Mr. Kuo.

Karma gets pretend prosecutor

Huzzah for shaming sanctions! Via Public Defender Stuff:

Judge Reprimands Temp Prosecutor for Personal Blog

When a temporary San Francisco prosecutor wrote on his personal blog about a misdemeanor case he was handling last December, he probably didn't think the judge would read it.

But Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow heard about it. And he didn't like what he read... (T)he judge... came down hard on ex-prosecutor Jay Kuo, calling his conduct "juvenile, obnoxious and unprofessional." Karnow also stated his intention to send his written ruling to the State Bar...

"... He sought only to celebrate himself, tout his prowess and to preen his own feathers, as it were, unconscious of other effect..." Kuo's actions were probably reckless, Karnow wrote, because the attorney should have known that his posts might, like private e-mails, eventually be "uncontrollably distributed."

Update: Here is a good overview of Jay Kuo's undoing, with more excerpts from Kuo's LiveJournal posts, from The Internet Patrol - "Blog Postings Cost Lawyer His Job When Read by Judge".

P.D.: charismatic, emotional, a bit ditzy

Here's an entertaining story from a San Francisco juror:

The public defender...was...charismatic, emotional, and, at times, a bit ditzy. She'd bounce around the room, futzing with her glasses, and changing topics every 15 seconds... sometimes losing track of where she was headed.

The crime was the really interesting part. The defendant, a gay man, let's call him Cranky Drunk, was waiting for a bus at 17th and Market when he spotted another gay man (Tiny Tim) wearing a jacket with what he perceived was a large cross on the back. He was so offended that a gay man would wear such "a symbol of oppression" in the Castro that he went up and started an argument with the guy...

I'd never heard of a gay man being charged with a hate crime before...

Click through to the post to read about Cranky, Tim, Officer Phooey and Doctor Evil, and the verdict.

P.S.: I'm wondering who left a law student on the jury.

The golden hammer

Mark McGoldrick is a California public defender, and writer and performer of The Golden Hammer: Wounds, Booze, and Forgotten Misconduct:

Come along for a ride through East Bay courtrooms where the funk of the street is processed into... what? Justice? Where we haven't a clue how often we botch the job, or how badly.

The Bay Guardian says:

...McGoldrick wins over his audience with unpretentious charm and quiet intelligence. His latest monologue weaves together three stories revolving around questions of justice and child sexual abuse...

Memory remains fallible and vulnerable, and justice is equally elusive. No doubt it's sometimes a relief for an attorney and his audience to be allowed to walk away with only a productive set of reflections.

Through July 31 at the Marsh in San Francisco. If he brings his one-man show to Portland or Seattle, I'm going.

You don't bring me flowers

Went to jury trial today on one count residential burglary and multiple counts of felon with a firearm. Verdict some time tomorrow. My guy left 5 years on the table, and knows he's facing some significant years more than that if he's gambled wrong.

So I'm pondering again just how to find the right balance in advising clients, whether it's to plead or go to trial, or to testify or not. A lot of my clients know what they're doing, and can collaborate pretty well in their defense. Other times, some clients and I spend less time talking about the case and more time playing ping-pong:

"The law says X." "No, the law says Y." "No, you're wrong, the law says X." "No, the law says Y, and here's this copy of it that I printed out for you off the supreme court website." "No, you're wrong, it says X ..."

It's a tape loop. It gets frustrating. After repeated go-rounds of this with the same individual, I'm afraid that my legal advice starts walking a thin line between, "I respect your autonomy and your choices as an adult" and "it's your funeral, bub."

Got me thinking of how they do things in San Francisco. Apparently, if you're an intern at the public defender office there and you get a not guilty, it's customary for your client to send you orchids.

Update: Guilty on all counts. Sentencing next week. The prosecutor has made a cunning offer: waive objection to the state's calculation of the offender score and waive appeal, and all remaining charges either will be dismissed or declined (not filed). It's a hateful game.

December seventh

Thinking today about the historical event of the day, one which relates to me and this site only in the most tangential way: as one of the unforeseen consequences of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor sixty-three years ago, here I am. Let me walk through this:

I called my mom tonight. In December 1941, she was a student at Lowell High School in San Francisco. The news broke in to the sunday Philharmonic broadcast. The next day, December 8th, high school boys were talking about enlisting. By spring, many high school classmates had gone, but not all to war. The Japanese-American kids were being sent to way stations and camps. My mom remembers driving down Geary Street seeing piles of furniture and belongings outside people's houses, seeing soldiers with rifles, and not being able to speak to friends as they were leaving.

Meanwhile up the coast, my dad already had joined up and was off to become a naval aviator by the time Western Washington's Issei and other Japanese-Americans were being rounded up. Many people from Seattle, Tacoma, Bainbridge Island, and even Olympia wound up here, not twenty miles from my Idaho desert home:
 

It's the Minidoka Relocation Center, or Hunt, Idaho, in its time one of the biggest cities in Idaho. Nearly ten percent of the camp’s population – about 1,000 internees - were in U.S. military service. Of the ten relocation centers, Minidoka had the most volunteers. 73 soldiers from Minidoka died while fighting for the United States.

The camp ran from August 1942 until October 1945. The site is now the Minidoka Internment National Monument. There's not much left out there, but for me the ruins and the outlines of the tarpaper shacks where people spent the Idaho winters and summers are still a fine rebuke to anyone who wants to speak up in defense of internment.

As for the personal story, the Navy trained my dad to fly multi-engine transport planes, R4D's and R5D's, everywhere from New Guinea to Oakland, which, being one bridge away from The City, is how he met my mom. I arrived 16 years and five kids after V-J Day.

We now resume our regular public-defender-related rambling.