Tuesday

Faith and Indigent Defense...

Greetings from Erlanger Kentucky,
Or more accurately, the Airport Holiday Inn herein Erlanger where the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy is having its annual training.


Yes there really are fake plants and a cute fountain...

Having just finished signing some books, and having about 45 minutes before my lecture on eyewitness identification I have a few seconds to sit back and admire the amazingly hard work that PD's around the country do.

Last night, the conservative governor of Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher showed up to give a short speech at the DPA awards banquet. To my amazement, the governor spoke compellingly about the need for indigent defense work and (and put his money where his mouth is adding 6.2 million dollars to the DPA budget). Fletcher told a story of a homeless man admitted to the ER years ago when he was an attending physician. On the admit slip, under diagnosis, someone had written: "Admitted for the dignity of humanity." The governor was quite clear that his interest in the subject was a matter of deep christian faith, and I found myself wrestling with the implications of that...

Quite interesting all in all.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Professed faith is so commonly paired with hypocrisy, particularly among the Christian leadership, that it's refreshing to hear of examples of things done purely for the dignity of humanity. Now would someone please let the prisoners at Guantanamo free? You know, for the dignity of humanity.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for coming!
We enjoyed having you.

Anonymous said...

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on the implications of Christian belief/theology and PD work. I'm both a PD and Christian and my faith is the central reason I do this work. They are inseparable in my mind. By the way I'm enjoying the book immensely.

Anonymous said...

I was at the conference and I refused to go listen to that idiot and his nonsense. He is under indictment himself. Maybe instead of pardoning all his partners is crime, he could look at some of the prisoners in the Commonwealth who were treated unjustly by our system. Just sayin'.........