Just a misdemeanor

Those of you who practice in big cities will undoubtedly enjoy
Blonde Justice's meditation on misdemeanors. I certainly did.

Really?

It's one thing for me to spout off about how I wrote INDEFENSIBLE hoping to inspire a few people to either come and join the fight on behalf of the voiceless or to stay in the work, and another thing entirely to actually seem tohave had an effect.

It doesn't get any cooler than that.



Thanks.

Gutsy Former Prosecutor Takes a Stand...

Former DeKalbv District Attorney J. Tom Morgan has written a courageous opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In it he actually takes apart Georgia's absurd and grandstanding sex offender registration law, finally saying publically what everyone else seems afraid to say.

Congratulations Mr. Morgan. Outstanding work, and bon courage.


J. Tom Morgan

Nut-Job Judge Detains 5 Over Ringing Cell Phone

A judge detained and questioned a row of spectators when a cell phone rang for a third time in her courtroom, later ordering two people to serve community service for contempt of court.



When no one admitted having the ringing phones Wednesday, Lake County Criminal Court Judge Diane Boswell found three people in contempt of court because they initially refused to say who had the ringing phones.

Another Shameful Prosecution:

A man who served three-and-a-half years in prison on a conviction for illegally re-entering the United States was actually a citizen and never should have been deported in the first place.



In a case of mistaken status, Duarnis Perez faced a second deportation before the government told him he was in fact a U.S. citizen. Even after discovering his status, federal prosecutors fought to keep him in custody.

"In effect, the Government is arguing that an innocent man who was wrongly convicted should not be released from the custody of the United States,'' U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn wrote.

What asinine Assistant United States Attorney would make such an argument?

It's Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Lord a harvard law grad and Rhodes Scholar who by dint of such grotesque argument brings dishonor on both institutions. (That link is to her wedding announcement which detail her rather privileged background and her marriage to..you guessed it, another prosecutor.)

Backhanded Compliment..

Don't you just love how the press covers Public Defenders? They just can't seem to bring themselves to just say something nice.
Consider this piece from the Seattle post on the question of who will defend Mark Karr--the man now accused of killing JonBenet Ramsey.



"It's unclear whether John Mark Karr will have a legal "dream team" to defend himself against murder charges in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey. But he will probably receive a skilled attorney even if he cannot hire his own.

Unlike in many states, Colorado's public defender system is well funded and well respected for its work on complicated cases involving DNA evidence. Legal experts say any attorney considering an offer of representing Karr for free in hopes of cashing in on the publicity should think hard.

See what I mean?

Idiotic Republican Outsourcing

This is just classic. The republicans won't even collect taxes even from delinquents. Instead of hiring the revenue agents necessary to pursue people who owe the government money, they plan to turn over thousands of debts to private debt collection agencies.



"The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, represents the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies over time. Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money.

The private debt collection program is expected to bring in $1.4 billion over 10 years, with the collection agencies keeping about $330 million of that, or 22 to 24 cents on the dollar.

By hiring more revenue officers, the I.R.S. could collect more than $9 billion each year and spend only $296 million — or about three cents on the dollar. Privatizing government services is often promoted as a way to cut costs. But the government would probably net $1.1 billion from private debt collectors over 10 years, compared with the $87 billion that could be reaped if the agency hired more revenue officers, as Mr. Rossotti had recommended."

And they claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility.

Nebraska Man Arrested for 226th Time - New York Times

Ok, the headline isNebraska Man Arrested for 226th Time. The piece goes on to discuss Nebraska's petty criminals and the hundreds of arrests they rack up. But doesn't this just beg the question of what we're doing with these folks. Doesn't it make anyone wonder whether the constant arrests are the right way to spend our resources?

Federal Death Penaltyin Black and Blue

Although NY State has essentially abolished the death penalty, the feds persist. In fact, the federal Federal death penalty seems focused on New York with NY running second only to terrorist forum of choice VA in death cases. The interesting factoid: 95 percent of those the feds look to kill are members of minorities. Thus far Of the 37 capital cases in New York, 14 were resolved before going to trial. Of the remaining 23, none resulted in a death sentence. Maybe New Yorkers understand just how racially biased things really are.

Public Pretender

Here's another public defender blog worth looking at. Yesterday's entry: A chilling story about a guy arrested for a minor insurance infraction murdered while spending the night in a Minnesota county Jail.



Meanwhile in Florida, it turns out they're taping attorney-client phone calls, prompting a serious lawsuit we should all be watching.

A second reason to be rich...

Generally speaking, I'm not big on stuff. I live, perfectly happily, in a tiny studio apartment, (it's about 380 sq. feet in case you wondered what I defined as tiny) and have never owned a new car. Generally speaking, other than a new computer every few years, my consumption of durable goods approaches zero. There are several benefits of this predilection: first, I don't get overly attached to stuff because I just don't have it. Pretty much, you'll never hear me complain about something that's scratched or dented or broken. That's just how hit's supposed to be. Secondly, my reasonably modest income remains, by and large available for the infrequent but brilliant splurge.

Splurge you ask...Well let me tell you.

The first and only time I went heliskiing, I actually thought to myself, "if I had as much money as god, this is what I'd spend it on." In a single day I blew almost 500 bucks for 5 ski runs. It absurd. It was also the best 500 bucks I've ever spent.


My idea of heaven...


Worth every penny.

Anyway, other then heli, I hadn't had that many experiences that made my think--now this is worth being rich for, but I had a last night heaven help me, in a gorgeous dining room designed by one of my favorite architectsRichard Meier. There, I ate for the first time in my life, a raw kobe beef salad (one of the more exquisite things ever) and what was undoubtedly one of (or likely the) best steak of my life: Wagyu.


Here's the beef!

Now if, like me you're an adrenaline junkie, for god sakes, just pay the money and go heliskiing. And if, like me you love to eat, and you love to eat meat, All I can say is: Walk, don't run to the nearest purveyor of Wagyu beef and buy yourself a little bit.

You won't be sorry.

Another Review...

It's interesting to me that editors seem inclined to send my book to former prosecutors to review.

In any case, The Buffalo News has just published a review of the book titled Angry lawyer talks tough about his job in the Bronx. It is, indeed, by a former federal prosecutor who finds the description of some of the judges troubling.


The latest reviewer and his life of the same name

The book, he concludes, "proves an illuminating glimpse into what appears to be an overburdened system mired in hypocrisy, waste and, in Feige's eyes, injustice.

The author describes running from courtroom to courtroom, an uphill climb on a treadmill going faster and faster. He defends a crackhead, a murderer, a drug dealer and a guy walking a friend's dog without tags that lands him in jail for days because a judge (the one not known for legal brilliance) refused to listen to his explanation that he wasn't responsible.

All in all, "Indefensible" is a sad book. Sad because the seemingly righteous author vents such bitterness at his workaday world. Sad because such seeming incompetents have so much power over the fate of those who appear before them. And sad because a system that's supposed to provide justice for all apparently doesn't."

Thoughts?

Blonde Justice Reviews Indefensible...

It's always great to be reviewed by people you read. And I, like many others read Blonde Justice.



She's a snappy blogger with a fondness for pink, an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, and a genuine dedication to indigent clients. Who wouldn't read her? So it's with particular pleasure that I get to link to her review of my book. Obviously, I'm pleased that she liked it, but the things that delighted me most about her review were: 1. her feeling that it was a great read even for people who do our work everyday, and 2. that it managed to effectively explain why we PD's do the work. That, as much as anything else was what I set out to do. Basically, one of my goals was to write a book that would finally allow all of us to escape the endless cocktail party questions about "how can you defend those people?" by saying--"you know what--just go read Indefensible and you'll understand.

So thanks Blonde.
And yeah--get one for your mom!

Court upholds absurd contempt sentence for juror but calls it `harsh':

When Broward Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor sentenced a prospective juror to four months in jail last year for failing to reveal he had been arrested, her decision provoked allegations of racism and double standards in the judicial system. And rightly so. (see my prior posts on this subject here, here and here...)

Unfortunately, last Wednesday, the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach backed the judge and upheld Stacey Forbes' conviction for criminal contempt of court.

The appellate judges said that because the jail sentence was within the legal limits, they could not overturn it. However, they said it was 'harsh under the circumstances' and, listing cases where misbehaving jurors got lesser punishments, they suggested the judge could reduce the sentence.

She won't though.

For this and other loathesome misdeeds, Judge Eileen O'Connor in fact makes my list of worst judges--a subject, I'll be discussing tonight on Catherine Crier Live.

Stay tuned.

Chicago Reader: Book Reviews

What a nice Book Review: This from the Chicago Reader...


INDEFENSIBLE: ONE LAWYER'S JOURNEY INTO THE INFERNO OF AMERICAN JUSTICE | David Feige | This first-person account of David Feige's work as a public defender in the Bronx is sickeningly well-done for the first book from a guy who claims he never planned to become a writer. Realized with lip-smacking gallows humor, gut-twisting passion, and all the narrative swing of a top novel, this nonfiction trip through the meat grinder of criminal court feels as slaphappy as a vaudeville skit.

Feige, who defended the NYC indigent for nearly 15 years, takes the reader through a reconstructed double shift during which he juggles a dizzying number of cases. Though the narrative is organized around a single archetypal day, thanks to a snappy web of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and camera pans away from the narrator, he delivers a rich portrait of many more cogs (and wrenches) in the machine. The flow is so perfect, the ironies so rich, that at first I suspected Feige was making it up. But he tells tales on so many psycho judges that if he isn't put away for libel one can probably assume his facts are as taut as his prose.

Feige's explicit agenda is to underline the abstract idea of judicial fallibility with concrete examples. Lots of innocent people are arrested and go to jail, and as Feige illustrates, it's not always for obvious reasons like faulty witness memory. The system is so packed and constipated that judges and DAs try to keep as many cases away from a full jury trial as possible; even the innocent are sometimes advised to throw up their hands and plea-bargain, 'confessing' to crimes they didn't commit rather than cool their heels in the courthouse another day. (Readers of Steve Bogira's Courtroom 302 may find this familiar terrain.)

Feige's deeper point is more subtle but simple: criminals have life stories too, and the circumstances that push people to desperate acts can be as tragic as the crimes themselves. Skill aside, this book is an object lesson in perseverance and empathy from somebody who could have lived 'safe and sound in a life full of good choices' but gave his best years to the unsafe and screwed. -- Ann Sterzinger"

NGI and about time too.

Thanks heavens for today's NGI verdict in the Yates case.
As it turns out, there is still a little justice out there.


Andrea Yates

Meanwhile, my vote for most decent person: Rusty Yates.

As the Times reported: "Rusty Yates, who has sat through most of the retrial, said he was glad the jury accepted the insanity plea instead of sending Ms. Yates to prison. He talked about how the prosecution showed pictures of the couple's five children before their deaths to the jury, hoping to convince them prison was the best resolution for Ms. Yate's actions. Did they think our children want Andrea to be in prison? he asked reporters outside the courtroom. Did they think that we, her family on either side, want Andrea to be in prison? Is it of any public benefit for Andrea to be in prison? Is she a danger to anyone? It's amazing to me. I'm so proud of the jury for seeing past that."

Just Macon It...

After two days of eating and teaching, I'm already nearly spent. Tomorrow: Teaching impeachment to Group 'A'--the most experienced set of lawyers at the college. Should be lots of fun. Outstanding Low Country Boil tonight thanks to Macon's own pair of super lawyers: Frank and Laura Hogue.


The very tasty "Low Country Boil"

Meanwhile, I spotted a new BBQ place just outside of town on Eisenhower parkway. BBQ report soon...

Bakin' in Macon...

Damn have I eaten well the last few days. It's been a fried chicken jamboree, as I've eaten my way through Georgia. I started on Thursday night in Atlanta at a super swanky place called The South City Kitchen. It was superb--the fried green tomatoes being among the best I've ever had (with the exception, of course of the FGT's at the now defunct Blue Plate...). Then there was some lecturing, a lot of drinking and then, today, at a place called Cutts, in a tiny town in South Georgia near my pal Pete's lake house, I had (along with the aforementioned fried chicken) a squash casserole that rivaled anything I've ever eaten. Just astonishing. Brilliant.

Why are you in Georgia you might ask? Well, it's that time of year again...
The time when I cruise down to Macon, Georgia to spend a week teaching at the National Criminal Defense College. NCDC, for those who may not know, is one of the preeminent trial training programs for public defenders (and some private criminal defense lawyers). It's held at Mercer Law School. best known as the place that spawned Nancy Grace.

The law school is beautiful of course:



But it's also a baptist school with a dry campus in a town in the middle of Georgia that smells like wood pulp and sports temperatures that make a sauna seem like the Antarctic. Why would I ever spend my time in such a place? Well, first of all there's the fried chicken, second of all there is some mighty fine bar-b-cue, and then, of course, though it's tons of work, it's also loads of fun, and wonderfully righteous. For two magical weeks a summer (four if you count both sessions), while I stuff my face, Mercer is transformed into a true believer conference. And what could be better than that?

So for the next week or so, while I'm bakin' in Macon, you please understand that my sweaty posts will be hastily composed late at night or between classes with a belly full of BBQ.

Atsa Lobster!

BAR HARBOR, Maine --An eastern Maine lobsterman caught a lobster this week that looks like it's half-cooked.


The Lobster in Question...


Alan Robinson, of Steuben, ME promptly donated the lobster to the Mount Desert Oceanarium. Staff members say the odds or finding a half-and-half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. By comparison, the odds of finding a blue lobster are about 1 in a million. Lobster shells are usually a blend of the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Those colors mix to form the greenish-brown color of most lobsters. This lobster, though, has no blue in half of its shell. Bernard Arseneau, a former manager at the oceanarium's lobster hatchery, said lobsters also have a growth pattern in which the two sides develop independently of each other.

The oceanarium has received only three two-toned lobsters in its 35 years of existence, staff members said.

Gotham Gazette

My Old Stomping Grounds: Bronx Supreme Court

I just thought I'd like to this piece from the Gotham Gazette. July 17, 2006. It''s called A Public Defender's Case and is a Q & A I did for a book group. It really gets into some of the issues that INDEFENSIBLE deals with. And though I'm never thrilled with nearly verbatim transcriptions with their ummms and aaaahs and twisted syntax, this one does a decent job of explaining some of the core beliefs in the book.

Debunking the Death Merchant...

Been a long blogging break, in part because I've been busy with book stuff and in part because I was working on This piece for The Boston Globe.

This one has been long overdue. It debunks the nonsense Joshua Marquis, has been spewing about how the criminal justice system actually works.


Marquis

In fact, Marquis has been using numerological trickery to support his absurd claims that there are a negligible number of innocent people wrongly convicted. Remember Marquis is the guy who wants to execute juveniles and fry the mentally retarded. So far as I can tell, he has yet to come out and acknowledge anyone as actually innocent. The piece takes him apart.

My Friends are Funny...

My friend Tamara just e-mailed me the invite to her famous (almost weekly) dinner party...



She's funny.

In other news: I got a nice write up in Elle, a mention in something called booklist and am hard at work on a piece for the ideas page of the Boston Globe.

Judge Waives Elderly Woman's Jaywalk Fine

I've often said that more entitled communities would be up in arms if the police did to them what they routinely do to poor black folks. Now witness the brouhaha over the jaywalking ticket issues to 82 Year Old Mavvis Coyle.


Ms Coyle

As it turns out, a Motorcycle cop--office Kelly--give Mavvis a ticket for jaywalking as she shuffled across an LA street can in hand, groceries in the other.

We're right to be outraged (the ticket was $114). It's just that we should remember how often his happens to the voiceless.

A little satisfaction...

Some of you may recall my little issue with former prosecutor and republican candidate David W. Marston's review of Indefensible in the Baltimore Sun.



Well as it turns out, The Sun is committed to providing fair and accurate coverage as well as Correcting their errors. And indeed (A friend in Baltimore just tipped me off this) back on June 22nd, the Sun actually published a correction concerning a few of the facts Mr. Marston got wrong. I don't suggest this as a victory, but it is, at least, a satisfying comeuppance.

Jail Time for Ticket Bull***T

Another hat tip to SC for this one...

A frustrated motorist paid a parking ticket with a check which expressed his sense of unfairness on the memo line. "Bulls***t money grab" he noted for his financial records. He send in the check. And then...the cops showed up. He was being held in contempt of court.



Alas, though the ACLU was ready to rush into the breech, the ensuing free speech showdown never happened. Another check--this one without the offending words was tendered to the court.

Case dismissed.

When you know the judge...

So here's something hilarious: Judge "Sic" Ric Howard who I've attacked repeatedly on this blog as a pro-prosecution nut has his hands full with a high-profile case in which there is a confession that is absolutely clearly a violation of Miranda.According to this report, he's just delayed his ruling on the issue.

I don't know why he bothered. I'll tell you what he'll do: He'll supress, and he'll insure that the supression doesn't hurt the prosecution. Mark my words. Whatever he does, this will not be a dispositive issue. He'll do only what he absolutely has to while crossing the street to insure a conviction. If I wind up being wrong about this--I'll do something nice for Tom.

Judge Donates Kidney to Ailing Prosecutor - New York Times

A federal magistrate has donated a kidney to an ailing prosecutor who often appeared before him, solving a medical problem but causing perhaps a sticky legal one.The judge said he considers Walbourn a part of his family -- ''until death do us part.'' The prosecutor agrees.

''Both of our families have been through a lot together,'' Walbourn said.

Consentual Oral Sex Nets 10 Year Sentence

Thanks to SC, who sent me an article about the recent Georgia Supreme Court Decision that upheld a 10 year mandatory minimunm sentence for an 18 year old high school graduate found guilty of having consentual oral sex with a girl less than 4 years younger than he was.



The sentence is particularly tragic because starting Saturday, there will no longer be a 10 year mandatory minimum for such conduct. All of which makes me think that there's a point at which abstraction to legal generalities often just obscures the capricious ruination of otherwise valuable lives. And that seems to me to just be tragic.

The Blog | David Feige: Inside The Politics of Prosecution...

My most recent Huffington Post entry is about Garcetti v. Ceballos...


LA County DA Garcetti

Here's part of it...

In 1999, in the small-unincorporated community of Basset, not far from La Puente, Los Angeles County Sheriffs came across what they believed was a stolen and stripped pick-up truck. In a sworn affidavit used to obtain a search warrant, the deputies claimed that they followed some tire tracks from the truck up a "driveway" to a house where they discovered contraband. An arrest was made and People v. Cusky was born.

As Mr. Cusky's case wound it's way through the criminal justice system, Richard Ceballos, a calendar deputy in the Pomona Branch of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office decided to investigate the case. When he did, he discovered that the "driveway" was actually a street (which wouldn't have retained tire tracks) and the "house" was actually nine houses. Ceballos came to believe that the Sheriff's deputies had misled the court in order to get the warrant. He wrote a memo to his supervisors recommending that that Cusky's case be dismissed.

Instead, it was Ceballos who nearly was.

After a series of contentious meetings, Ceballos's supervisors not only decided to proceed with the prosecution, they removed Ceballos from the case. Rather than seeing his memo as the honorable decision of a prosecutor ethically bound to report misconduct, Ceballos's actions were seen as traitorous. He was accused of "acting like a public defender," and was demoted, denied a promotion and transferred to a distant office for what he described as some "freeway therapy." More than merely being the basis of Mr. Ceballos's lawsuit, the District Attorney's reaction to Ceballos's memo is an object lesson in the obstacles to doing justice even from within the prosecutor's office...

The rest of the post is Here.

Me and Cato...

Based on an e-mail I got from Dianne Blandford the wife of an incarcertaed small business man who is serving eight years for importing shrimpy lobster tails, I started poking around to learn a bit more about his case.


The Spiny Lobster

Among the things I came across was this article from the Cato insitiute called Begging His Pardon It concerns Bush's paltry use of the clemency power (the only executive power he seems reluctant to use) and lists several prisoners worth of clemency (among them Mr. Blandford).

Here are two I found astonishing

* Dane Yirkovsky--serving a 15-year sentence for possession of a single .22-caliber bullet.

In December 1998 he found this bullet while doing remodeling work for a friend who was giving him a place to stay in exchange for the work. Yirkovsky put the bullet in a box in his bedroom. Later that month, the police found the bullet while searching Yirkovsky's room after a call from his former girlfriend, who claimed he had some of her possessions. Because of Yirkovsky's prior convictions for burglary, federal prosecutors charged him under the Armed Career Criminal Act, although he had not threatened anyone and did not have a gun.

* Robert Blandford, Diane Huang, David McNab, and Abner Schoenwetter

Three American seafood dealers and one Honduran lobster-fleet owner are currently doing hard time for importing lobster tails that were the wrong size and that were packaged in clear plastic bags rather than in cardboard boxes. They ran afoul of the Lacey Act, a federal statute that makes it a crime to import fish or wildlife taken 'in violation of any foreign law.'

The U.S. government argued that they had broken Honduran law because some of the lobster tails—3 percent, to be exact—were less than five and a half inches long, and because a Honduran regulation required that the lobster tails be packed in boxes. Yet Honduran officials testified that no laws had been violated.

Nonetheless, Blandford, McNab (the Honduran national), and Schoenwetter, three small-business men with no previous criminal records, were sentenced in 2001 to eight-year terms.