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Recent Blog Posts
Chuck's Apology
This came out today, in response to the events I discussed here:
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Chuck Rosenthal Friday, December 28, 2007 713-755-5810 Statement by Chuck Rosenthal Recently some Harris County District Attorney inner office emails have been released in the media. I understand that I have said some things that have caused pain and difficulty for my family, my coworkers and friends. I deeply regret having said those things. Moreover, I am sorry for the problems I have caused anyone. I also understand that sometimes things happen for a purpose. This event has served as a wake-up call to me to get my house in order both literally and figuratively. Charles A. "Chuck" Rosenthal Harris County District Attorney
I commend Chuck for owning up (not the best apology, but not bad for a politician), and hope that "get my house in order" means "stop punishing others for violating morals that even I (being, after all, human) can't follow" rather than "redouble my efforts to hold myself to the moral standards that I impose on others less fortunate."
Lawyers Appreciate... The U.S. Constitution
My friend Scott Greenfield has tagged me for the Second Annual Lawyers Appreciate Meme, which started at Life at the Bar.
I appreciate the U.S. Constitution.
The Founders knew - from direct experience - that government is a threat to freedom. The saw that government was necessary, though, or at least inevitable. So, rather than leave the form of the government to chance, they created one, making it as weak as they thought it could be while still performing its fundamental duties, and wrote down how it was supposed to work. The Constitution is the leash the Founders put on the beast of Government. (Not a strong enough metaphor....) It's the pentacle the Founders drew on the floor before summoning the demon of Government.
Not all lawyers appreciate the U.S. Constitution. For every lawyer arguing for an interpretation of the Constitution that would preserve human freedom, there is a lawyer on the other side arguing for an interpretation that would diminish human freedom to the benefit of governmental power.
Okay, but why the RIGHT ear?
I am not one inclined to judge the morals of others. Who a prosecutor is lusting after (committing "adultery in his heart", as Jimmy Carter might say) is not something I consider to be my business, or anyone else's, except...
Except that the prosecutor in question is the individual who orders the DA's office's policy not to agree to less than 10 days in jail for any person (hooker, hustler, or john) charged with prostitution. The prosecutor in question? Elected Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal (who, incidentally, describes the path to lethal injection as "the pipeline").
According to an article by the Houston Chronicle's Brian Rogers, Chuck is fighting in federal court to keep secret his emails (from his county email account, which would make them generally subject to the Texas Public Information Act), in which he kanoodles virtually with his executive secretary, with whom he had an affair in the 1980s. (Chuck says that he told his current wife, whom he married in 1991, about the affair before hiring Stevens as his executive assistant when he took office in 2000.)
Practical Blawgosphere Wiki
Don't forget to check out the Blawg Council Wiki and add to the catalog of blawgs. Someone had the right idea with CrimLaw - he added it to the catalog page for prosecutors' blawgs and created a page describing it (though, now that I look at it, the creation of a page describing it may have been a happy accident - the PHPWiki software interprets a word with a capital letter within it as a link to a new wiki page).
Why Try the Unwinnable?
I closed yesterday's post on justice and winning by asking, "Sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) we try cases because we have nothing to lose: the inevitable result of a trial is no worse than the result of a plea. If we have no hope of winning, why do we try those cases?"
We're not trying these cases for justice, and we're not trying them to win (though arguably there's always a chance that the prosecutor will screw something up and we'll win, which is something to hope for). Sometimes the goal is just to make it costly and difficult for the government to put the client in a box.
When we try an unwinnable case, not only do we make it harder for the government to box that client, but we also tie up the government's resources, making it harder for the government to put other humans in boxes.
Plea Plead Pleaded Pled? Please!
My fellow blawgers:
When a person admits her guilt in court, she does not plea guilty. She pleads guilty, entering a guilty plea. "Plead" is a verb. "Plea" is a noun.
After a person has admitted his guilt in court, he has not plead (or "pleaed") guilty. The past tense of "to plead" is "pleaded" or "pled."
Logical Extreme
Something that should cheer those who hold that "The Sun rises and falls on the sole question of the client's interest" and feel that "if serving the client harms another, so be it"....
Here, if the federal government is to be believed, is a lawyer who doesn't just pay lip service to the notion that the client's interests are paramount, but truly "without hestitation and in a moment... would sacrifice another for the sake of [his] client."
Practical Blawgosphere Wiki
Several denizens of the practical blawgosphere have started a wiki for the practical blawgers. Please check it out, and begin editing it to add other practical blawgs, and other fields of practice, to the catalog. Editing instructions are here.
Justice?
Gideon wrote:
Maybe I'm naive, but I thought it – what we do, this side and the other – was about justice. Righting wrongs. Then why, for some, is it about winning and losing?
What this side does is different than what the other side does. The other side has (but of course doesn't always follow) an ethical and legal mandate to seek justice. We have an ethical and constitutional mandate to zealously defend our clients.
The nature of justice is something that I spend a lot of time meditating. There are different sorts of justice. For example, there is restorative justice (making things right) and retributive justice (evening the score). Cleaving justice on another plane, there is substantive justice (making things right or evening the score) and procedural justice (regardless of the result, making sure that fair rules are followed).
If you accept that procedural justice is justice, then yes, criminal defense is often about justice. Part of our job is to seek procedural justice by making sure that fair rules are followed. When I say "fair rules" I mean rules fair to our clients. The other side, being the government, is not constitutionally entitled to fairness. Nor is the other side, being a non-living creature, ethically or morally entitled to fairness. So we seek procedural justice and, if we get it, our clients get all possible breaks.
I'm Back
Bennett & Bennett are back from seven days in Paris.
A few of the things the French do exceedingly well:
Food and drink.
Subterranean transport.
Historic preservation.
Clothing.
Something the French do less well:
Technology.
While the hotel at which we stayed in the 7th Arrondissement provided, in theory, a high-speed internet connection, that mostly-theoretical connection didn't work well enough to stay online for long enough to do more than just check email. And while I had planned to have GMail forward emails from our answering service to SMS on my French cellphone, I discovered that this was a non-trivial undertaking, and that my French - limited mostly to cognate words of Spanish - was not up to the task of explaining what I wanted to the cellco's customer service reps. Even in league with the hotel's concierge and the sales guy at the cellco store across the street, I was unable to make the email-to-SMS connection.
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