Scoplaw

Woah.

Cops in Avon Park, FL arrest a six year old who has thrown a tantrum.  The government charges her with a felony.

Yeah, I kid you not.  Nor, apparently, does the government.

**

I get asked a lot why I want to be a public defender.  How could anyone with their eyes open not want to be?  This country has amassed a dangerous amount of power and given it to small minded bureaucrats who produce absurd results in their handling of real, complex, human situations.  Just think about the story above.  Isn’t it something that seems right out of the cold war – but with the KGB cast as the villains suppressing the Russian free thinkers?  But it’s here.  It’s us.  Our teachers, police, and prosecutors have all collectively thought this must be the best way to handle a six year old.  And they do so with our implicit sanction, through the virtue of the discretion inherent in the positions they hold.  It's disgusting. 

While some people go abroad to fight human rights abuses, I’m happy to do it in my own back yard. 

But Just as seriously, I thought I’d post something I wrote as to why I wanted to become a public defender:

When did I decide I wanted to become a public defender?

I couldn’t honestly say when I wanted to become a public defender, that question implies a “before” and “after.”  Surely, as a child I didn’t know what a public defender was, how the justice system worked, or that there is dire need for people to represent the disenfranchised.   And yet, even as a child, from my personal experience I was aware of abuse, cruelty, injustice and knew that these things were wrong, de-humanizing.   A poet, Thomas Lux, wrote:

One child hears a falling through the leaves,
branches, and does not care what it is,
the other hears and knows a bird falls, and grieves
without knowing why or at what cost.

I’d like to be able to say that kind of childhood knowledge resulted in my adolescent befriending of the socially awkward, the outcasts, but while I did that, I also had my petty cruelties and my stoic/boot-strapping assumptions about the world, of which I am, even now, still ashamed.  But I still believe everyone has fundamental moral orientations and mine are turned toward compassion and the belief in humans’ power to care for each other as they seek redemption.  That fundamental belief led me to purse an MFA in poetry; I’m noted for writing poems which speak to disenfranchised and marginal voices, but in an accessible way.  My writing led me to Georgia, where I lived under the poverty line and pursued my muse.  Over 4 years there I witnessed racism and intolerance.  I watched Mexican immigrants cheated by their employers and “community activists.”  I saw friends dragged into court by police detectives who wanted to protect their cronies economic interests.  I watched government officials disenfranchise entire census districts.  During this time I weathered a number of personal crises, including becoming very sick and having difficulty paying for medical expenses.  When I recovered, I applied to law school with the goal of working on behalf of the disenfranchised.  I already knew some public defenders and thought likely that I would become one.  At the end of my first year I was near-completely certain I would.  And by the end of my second I was absolutely certain. 

I have many ambitions regarding living as a public defender.  First and most centrally, I wish to positively impact the lives of real people with real problems.  I know that I will often be the only person expressing support for my clients – in and of itself is a worthy way to spend my time on this planet.  I believe I have a balanced understanding of what this means. 

I know from my experiences in the Alexandria Public Defender and in the Criminal Justice Clinic that I will often lose, and that my clients will fail to take advantage of opportunities I manage to wrangle for them.  (However, it would be foolish of me to expect, as the courts often seem to, that the poor and the abused, the undereducated and disenfranchised, possess the organizational skills and cultural capital of the rich and the well treated, the educated and the empowered.)  I have heard my clients cry and rage, I have been with them while they hallucinate or mechanically assess their chances, I have heard their lies and their moments of leveling candor, and I have witnessed the most humbling dignity, even from the most afflicted persons.

Beyond my direct advocacy, I want to educate myself further as a public defender.  I want to be able to compassionately and persuasively tell the stories of the disenfranchised, not only to fact-finders, but to the public at large.  I view crime as largely driven by poor education, poverty, lack of opportunity, mental illness, substance abuse, emotional and sexual abuse, and a host of other social ills.  Many of these root causes could be addressed by a committed and caring society – but that commitment will not materialize if our citizens embrace the various televised myths of who criminals *are.*  Hence the need for public defenders to be ambassadors for their work and to call the public’s attention to an often unbalanced court system.

I know that there’s a place for many different personalities within public defending.  I honestly believe I have the right attitude; not a single attitude that all public defenders should adopt, but the right attitude for myself, which is a sustainable, transparent approach.  I know that as I’ve taken my first small steps with my own clients that it has served me well so far.  I also understand that I have a lot of growing to do within the role of public defender, that I have much to learn, and that as I gain experience I will change the way I do certain things.  That will be inevitable.  But I know my conviction to serve grows from who I am, and that has its own inevitability as well.

Dragons and the Parole Commission

Man.  Bloging’s been tough lately.  Either I’m in crunch mode or I’m recovering from crunch mode.  In random news I've been doing a lot of "secret project" writing.  I've been shaking the job tree.  I've been reading for 4 classes in addition to clinic (this takes up most of my time).   I got back on the bike and have been doing some commuting riding when possible.

But to book end these activities:

Crunch:

I had my second parole revocation hearing.  I don't want to say too much about this one.  It turned out OK, but involved massive prep work that wasn't used at all.

Recovery from Crunch

I rented Eragon.  It's awful.  Painfully awful.  The movie was execrable, despite decent CGI and not-bad performances from Malkovich, Jeremy Irons and some otherwise good British character actors.  The pacing was clunky and contrived, and the "high point" stirring speeches and heroic sacrifices seemed oddly rushed and contrived.  As there was no real sense of importance to these moments, they came off as bathetic. 

The book itself was a kind of patchwork monster – the basic superficial Tolkien racial-skeleton of humans/elves/dwarves/orcs, put through a farmboy cum messianic hero plot that seems, at times, a pastiche of Star Wars, The Belgariad, The Dragonbone Chair, LeGuin and some others.  Nonetheless the book worked.  If it wasn't always seamless (mostly due to the difficulty in joining the established archetypal elements that the book drew on – more on that in a sec.) at least it took itself seriously enough to try to tell a good story and to have that story make sense.  And for an 18 year old (?) author, it's an awfully impressive beginning, for all its heavy leaning on other works.  I’ll read Eldest if I can find a cheap copy and give it a chance to slip out from Tolkien's shadow. 

**
A quick thought on Tolkien (I did a post on TLOR movies and the Narnia adaptation a while ago).

Tolkien built his world from the ground up.  Sure, he ladled in what seems to be the entire western cannon from the Norse sagas to the Arthurian stories to Cervantes and the Song of Roland, but there’s a strong internal consistency to his vision. 

For example, the Tolkien elves are the perfect craftsmen.  They possess long life, refined senses, and an aesthetic that’s influenced by a close tie to the creating god (in Tolkien’s mythology the elves were the first born of the mortal children of the gods – they lived in the blessed realm and learned at the knees of the gods.)  What this means is that the elves are slow and subtle builders whose weakness is an attachment to the things they’ve made.  Elves don’t like change.  The elven king Feanor refused to surrender some things he’d invested a great deal of time and self in, even though it was inarguably for the greater good, a good that *directly enabled* him to make these things in the first place.  This and subsequent acts of possessiveness set the elves towards their doom of fighting Sauron, without the gods aid, in middle earth.  (I’m condensing here, but that’s basically it.)

Now, prior to Tolkien, we don’t have “elves” like this.  They’re just not there.  (Yes, there is the Nordic strain, with Freyr and all that, but that kind of elf is just as realized as Tolkien’s and just as alien to contemporary fantasy with, perhaps, the exception of Tad William's work). 

The point I want to get at is that through popular culture and post-Tolkien fantasy story, we get an archetype of “the elf” – tall, slim, straight hair, impeccably dressed in green and grey along a vaguely Celtic/New-agey aesthetic.  The elf becomes a stock element that a fantasy world ought to have, just like dragons and dwarves and a rural pastoral setting that produces unlikely heroes. And, like dragons, the elves begin to pick up fixed biological characteristics. . pointy ears, long life, and high aesthetic, just as all dragons must breathe flame and fly.  But issues of good and evil. . .well, *those* become malleable.  In many post-Tolkien fantasies dragons become misunderstood beasts, just trying to make it in the fantasy world as sharks and wolves do in ours.  Elves begin to become creepier, non-human, instead of being a kind of perfect human, or more accurately, a human perfected.  Perhaps some of creepiness draws off the celtic sidhe – the mischievous dark host who play cruel and deadly tricks on man.  But all to often in contemporary fantasy the elves seem to have lost their way – no one quite knows what to do with them, they’re either distant and stiff little do-gooders doling out gifts or almost vampiric figures lamenting the short lived humans around them who keep mucking up their nice digs.  You get a sense of this contemporary elf in Peter Jackson’s treatment of Elrond the bitter human-hater.  Ironic, because in the books, Elrond is Half-Elven – his dearly loved brother Elros chose the human half of their heritage and died young, while Elrond choose the elven half and lived long. 

In short, I’m suggesting it’s a problem.  A lot of bad fantasy falls in love with the surfaces of things.  The author thinks – hey, it’s great to have beautiful elves running about, speaking in antiquated languages, and hacking up orcs (gotta have those dehumanized enemy figures) with supernatural skillful sweeps of their enchanted blades; it makes for fantasy.  So we get that without any understanding of what an elf *is.* 

Now I’m not saying we need all bow down to Tolkien (I wish more authors *wouldn’t*, actually.)  But if you’re going to have elves, then have them be elves – elves from the bottom up, consistently acting like elves ought to act in your particular fantasy world.  Not elves for elves sake. 

Boxing

We got the left cross.  And we got the right cross.  We've got the cross if he comes in high and the cross if he comes in low.  We've got more crosses than the average rural Spanish town. 

Seriously - I'm working on another parole revocation case which, because it's ongoing, really can't be blogged about in any detail.  However I can say that my parole supervisor is one crafty crafty gal who keeps her eye on the prize.  And because of that we're getting prepped for all kinds of scenarios. 

Although it's fun to think about the issues in theoretical terms, parole hearings are actually pretty stressful.  As I've detailed before, there's significant time involved, the hearing is more informal, the standard is preponderance, and the ultimate fact finder asks direct questions and has subpoena power.  You don't have proof beyond reasonable doubt to fall back on and there's sometimes a pre-existing floor of liability you have to take into account (meaning that if there's an underlying law conviction your client has pled guilty to in a court of law, they will be violated as a matter of course by the hearing examiner, hence because your client may already be slated for revocation, you have to be careful which arguments you use to try to defeat a more serious revocation, lest the god of unintended consequences rear his unfortunate head.) 

So there are times when all your instincts say to bring out the sledge hammer but the uncertain footing and possible flying debris restricts you to tweezers.  Tweak. Tweak. Tweak. 

Ding.

I just got dinged from my first potential employer.  Which kind of sucks since I was in the final 10 candidates but was still not offered a fellowship.  It was my strongest series of interviews.  That means I have two completed (eh) interviews which I'm waiting to hear back on, plus two more final interviews awaiting. . .potentially. . .if I can afford to fly out and take them.  Which I suppose I must somehow afford.  So we'll see how much the much vaunted CJC reputation counts.  Thus far it's zero.  Or perhaps that's Georgetown.

Oh wait - and in series of sure to be uplifting moments, when clinic begins I will now get to hear a litany of all my clinic classmates who have already found jobs, to which there will be polite applause.  How exciting and motivating for me. 

Sheesh.  Off to read (literally) 16 cases for classes tomorrow, and prep a clinic exercise.  Rumors swirl that the clinic will be grading on a first year curve.  That'll be fun explaining to potential employers if I'm jobless, doing contract work, while trying to find a defender position somewhere. 

Some days it's hard to bother.

Trial Psychosis

The closer you get to trial, the better and better your case looks.  Clarence Thomas would break into tears if he heard it. 

So – as complied by the Scoplaw, Last Against the Wall, The Dapper Floridian and Let Them Eat Motions, the following motions seem increasingly appropriate to file for the attorney deep in trial psychosis.

Motion to Have Sentencing at Beginning to Clarify the Stakes
Motion for Prosecutor to Answer One Question from Client Truthfully, No Mater What Question Is, or Have to Accept the Dare Option
Motion for Court to Order Champagne in Light of Impending Victory
Motion for Court to Give Defendant Thumbs-Up Whenever Referred to by the Court
Motion for Case to Be Decided By Arm Wrestling Match Between Me And Prosecutor Right Fucking Now!
Motion for Court to Find Defense Way Way Victorious
Motion for Court to Play Rocky Theme as I Raise the Defendant's Hands Above his Head
Motion for Prosecutor to Get a Tat in the Image of My Hand on His Ass
Motion for Prosecutor to Only Speak with Downcast Eyes
Motion for Prosecutor to Accept Defeat Gracefully Despite Repeated Defense Taunting
Motion for Prosecutor to Nolle All Future Cases Involving Defense Attorney
Motion for Prosecutor to Apologize, Personally and Profusely, with Tears
Motion for Prosecutor to Drop on Knees and Beg Forgiveness
Motion for Court to Amend Constitution to Keep this Shit from Happening Again
Motion for Prosecutor to Reexamine Life of Locking Homeless Addicts Up

Some Napalm for your Candle?

Sometimes when you’re having a rough day, you get a positively affirming message that makes you smile and think, yeah, good people are moving about in the world.

For some people that means pictures of kittens and ”I heart you’s.”  For me it means an email from old friend, Dr. J, which contains a pic of him giving me the finger (while drinking coffee) and begins:

OK chief here's the deal, if I don't get an email or phone call from you the next time you are in CT so we can grab a beer and properly catch up I'm going to do things to your person that may be considered testable material within the intentional torts section of the bar, and I ain't talking IIED!

How can you not miss someone who calls you chief?  And has sniper training.

**

The day actually wasn’t so rough – but it sure was busy and nothing went as easy as it could have.  During my one free day (class randomly cancelled) I had: status to set a trial date, followed by lengthy client interview; Rosser letter finessing and needless worry over such;  filing said letter in court and with the DOJ; getting a rental car parking ticket at a broken meter; picking up my car (named C.A.R.) from the body shop to find most of the work done, some not done, and the would-be-thief’s blood still on the dashboard ; returning the rental and finding the rental car company had overcharged me; copying two sets of 200 pages of just received FOIA info on a jamming copier;  jail visit for Parole Client One, involving lengthy interview;  CTF visit (jail, basically) for Parole Client Two, involving lengthy interview, during which I picked up a bit of cred by using the phrase "smoking dippers."   

Or to sum it up, I put on my dress shoes this morning at 6am and took them off at 10 pm.  And I still have to prep for tomorrow’s classes.  Meh. 

(Most of my days aren’t like this).  At least I’m not on the hook to help my investigative partner stake out a gas station at 11:30pm in a sketchy part of town (which she is doing – this is not a hypo).

**

Did I mention I had a Robbie Burns Supper?  Haggis, whiskey, good friends, including The Historian, Bookwench, In Limine, The Cobra and others. 

Did I mention I went to my cousin, The Precise Spike's birthday party - he and his girlfriend share the same birthday, so they rented out a bar and took donations for a local animal shelter in lieu of gifts.  This is the first time I've met the GF, and must come up with a moniker for her (as I both like her and think she and the PS compliment each other very well; thus I hope she'll be around for a long while).

Did I mention I had lunch with my grandfather (Fighter Pilot) who was recently in town?

Probably not.  But I had and did and did. 

The candle, it burneth at both ends.  And then some.

How Busy Am I?

Well, I got stuck in an elevator recently.  I can’t remember what day it happened.  Lyco and I just had a conversation about when that could have been.  We think Friday is a good bet.  We were stuck in the basement of Whole Foods on P St.  with a nice young woman who knows a friend of ours.  After complaining we got $20 in gift certificates which was used to help subsidize our grocery run (some of it went into a Lyco-made stew for Bean and family – if you have a charitable streak, food for the newly arrived and their loved ones is a pretty good way to spend your time.)

So – what I have I been doing? 

A lot of emotional life-examining, which is at times necessary but draining.

The Client-Scramble, which is an amusing dance where I attempt to track down:

• People who have moved
• Numbers which have changed
• Clients who have gone AWOL
• Social Workers who are doing something besides responding to calls
• Programs that *sound* roughly similiar to what I've been told to hunt down. and
• never-in Lawyers who have the needed goods
• While sending out multiple e-mails and correcting small mistakes while they are still small.

Actually, a lot of it is spent on my parole case, which is fascinating but frustrating.  My client was arrested while on parole.  I don’t represent him in the underlying case, so I’ve got to follow that one and (hopefully) come up with some extra points for his parole revocation hearing.  The reason behind that is basically that parole revocation uses a lower standard of proof (preponderance of the evidence) than a criminal fact-finder (beyond a reasonable doubt) And the parole board is not bound by the decisions of the court in the underlying matter.  All that means that my client could be found not-guilty in the underlying matter (he could be a pure as a bar of Ivory soap) and he could still get put away for violating his parole on the very same set of facts.  Obviously, that sucks.  There are other things about the case that suck, but I’ll limit my immediate bitching. 

Seeing old friends and meeting new ones, a bunch of whom, including In Limine, Library in Kenya, The Navigator, just finished a run of  Into the Woods, with the only theatre company that has it’s own law school.  Also Paleobiology's and The Cool Hand’s birthday party.  It’s a busy weekend.  There was also some Rockstar action in there, including Jes and. . .Paleo's gal, the Very Blonde Rocker.  Man, monikers are tough today and that last one must change.  She's one of the good law school peeps, and has many easily monikered qualities. 

As a sad side note, "The Navigator" is a new moniker for an old friend, The Jude-Walker.  Jude, alas, succumbed to cancer, after being a fixure of our lives here at GULC.  She was a demurely harnessed service dog who was sparky and friendly when off duty.  Jude and the Jude-Walker sat in front of Surfer Dude and I during our first year Democracy and Coercion class.  We'd take off our shoes and give Jude  toe-massages which she seemed to like.  Jude seemed to be attuned to the emotional energy in the room and would always huff or sigh a big doggy-sigh at just the right frustrated pause.  Jude and I were also in small section together during the first year, and we had classes together every semester after that.   So.  She's missed.  "The Navigator" moniker is based on my friend finding me during the 1L year in the DC Metro.  I biked everywhere and was unfamaliar with the metro.  We were both going to a party.  She got me pointed in the right direction on a track, corrected my lefts and rights, showed me the correct (down not up) elevator, and pointed out that we didn't have to run because the other train of a double tracked pair was arriving.  Given that I could read the signs in the metro and she could not, it was an amusing and humbling experience. 

What have I not been doing? 

Deep reading for my other classes.

Job hunt organization and follow-up.

Keeping in touch with friends and family.

Fanning’s damn review.

Enough poetry.

Blogging.

Bike riding.  While not quite into Lee Adama territory, I’ve not done any kind of serious riding for several weeks now.  Cold, schedule, what have you.  Blah. 

Too Much, Too Young

2 points for naming the band.  Actually it should be “too much to blog,”  but I will attempt it anyway.   

Yesterday wrapped up the Equal Justice Works Fair in nearby MD.  Several hundred employers, about 8 times that number of students, speakers, chatter, and lots and lots of good conversations. 

First off, I want to thank Audacity and Woman of the Law for their advice and support.  We all know they’re awesome, given who they are and what they do, but they both took time out of busy schedules to tell me about their experiences and offer me insight into different programs.  Drop in to their blogs and give them some props.  Also, a big thanks to She Likes Lattes at the OPICS office at our school (that’s our public interest law office), and to the usual motley crew whose kind words and deeds and advice and humor and presence and example-through-presence support me in a very tangible way; Lyco, Seth, Scheule (where the hell is the new blog? edit: it's here), Tamboli, The Dapper Floridian, Handful of Dates, the Imbroglio, the Clinic Peeps, and dozens of others.  Lastly, thanks to everyone who takes the time to blog about PD hiring issues and PD life.  Woman of the Law recently pointed out the burdens of the PDs life, but it's people like her and Skelly who take that extra step and contribute something *else* to the world.  In fact, who knows how many law students, law clerks, judges, or potential jurors they've educated by simply posting about their day to day human concerns and what they find interesting? 

Of the ten resumes I sent out, I landed seven defender interviews, and talked my way into two more.

• State level PD, Appalachia
• State level PD, New England
• State level PD, New England
• State level PD, Southern
• City PD, Atlantic States
• City PD, NY
• State PD, Appellate division.
• PD Capital unit, Southern.
• A fellowship for a group that specializes in capital crime representation, trial and appellate, Southern. 

I figured I’d let things hang out, talk about the poetry a bit (which I usually keep under wraps), and be a bit more “cocktail” than I usually would be if I were seriously responding to questions.  I had the World’s Worst Headcold during the process, and took a cup of tea with me to all my interviews to keep my throat wet.  I apologized for that as a first order of business, but made it pretty clear that I wasn’t going to croak my way through an interview to keep up some interviewing convention.  Between the cover letter, the cold, the prior bad interview experience, and the sterling PI Law candidates who flew in from all over the country, I figured that it was time to roll the dice and go on a respectful offensive.  I think it worked.

All of the interviews seemed to go well.  There were some tough but good questions, and a shared feeling that we were all slogging through an exhausting process together.  I’d say there was a clear Mason-Dixon line split in interviewing styles and the type of information the various PDs solicited. 

Out of that bunch I got one “call me this week to set up a second interview, you’ll be speaking with Xperson and Yperson,” one “you’ll certainly hear from me soon, can you fly in to the second interview?” one “oh, no need to send additional documents, you can bring those with you when we interview you again; just have them ready to go,” one “I’m going to hand-walk your resume to the hiring director’s office,” one “and I’ll also willing to help your girlfriend find a job,” and 3 nice but not glowing responses. 

That has to be considered a successful 3 days I think.  I may not get a job offer out of it all (which is the ultimate goal), but I’m happy with how things have gone thusfar.

Key moments:

• One of the PDs took digital photos of their interviewees to help them remember faces later on.  I thought that was a great idea and posed “despondent mug-shot style” for the camera, holding my conference name card with both hands like an id plate.
• Responding to case load estimates with “Are you fucking kidding me? – You’re trying to do something about that, right?”
• Quoting Tolkien/Gandalf to capital defenders.  (Asked where my opposition to the death penalty came from, I said I was wrestling with a lot of religious issues when I was 8-10 and questioning the Catholic church.  I read The Lord of the Rings during this time.  Gandalf’s response to Frodo’s wish that Bilbo should have killed Gollum and thus prevented a lot of subsequent misery perfectly summed up what I was feeling: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”  That segued into a discussion about human subjectivity and how elusive and invisible objective justice is.  But I can blog about the death penalty some other time. . .)
• Talking about drinking with Vic Chestnut and Coleman Barks.
• Responding to a role-play fact pattern with, “Listen, I hear what you’re telling me, but I’m your lawyer, not your plumber.”  (Had to be there.)
• Running into my 1L summer boss and chatting with her.  She’s one of my role models for a humane and engaged public defender. 

Questions Regarding Emotional Investment

A lot of Public Defender types seem to be greatly emotionally invested in their work.  People who leave PD offices to do defense work elsewhere are often criticized as selling out.  Why?  Does this not assume that everyone one dollar over the magical “poverty” line is adequately protected/defended?

Shouldn’t “To Serve and Protect” be a PD motto?

A lot of law professor types can’t seem to break free of the case method.  Which, pedagogically speaking, serves a useful purpose for about 4 months of law school.  Slavish devotion after the fact is just plain lazy.

Case in point – our clinic keeps saying they’re cutting our reading so we can focus on things like working for our clients, getting jobs, etc.  However, I’m staring at an inch thick double-sided packet of fifth amendment and suppression readings.  Instead of an either/or, cut/read approach, how about having us read the major cases, then giving us a table of squibs listing holding, salient facts, etc.?  I mean if you can tell me “You know, I regret cutting X case since it stands for Y and has interesting facts regarding Z,” is it so much effort to just put that in handout form?  Does anyone retain squib 7 of 12 five weeks later?  Or do we have to search for and re-read it when the issue is raised or crosses our minds?

So why the blind investment in the method?  Is the assumption just that students will buy secondary materials, pool their resources, not do the readings, etc.?  Or is that not considered?  Seeing stuff like this makes me question content as well as form.

**
OK, off to work on a memo and an essay.

Heartfelt congrats to the Detroit Tigers, and best wishes on celebratory recovery to R.Fanning and "The Cobra" (my 1L supervisor at the nearby PD)!

Updating the Blog Roll, Not Blogging, Crim Law Blogging, Vegetarian Haggis.

Updating the Blog Roll

I’ve been trying to update the blogroll and clean up the site a bit.  If you’re not listed on the right hand bar, please let me know and I’ll add you.  You know who you are.

**

Not Blogging

Last night, at a birthday party for two Section 3 peeps, I was taken to task for letting my blogging slip.  Actually, I had a kind of incident that I wanted to sit on for a bit before blogging, and that post became my placeholder – I felt I couldn’t blog, even on unrelated issues, until I’d resolved that initial issue/post.  But it’s done and I’m back on track.  Anyone ever experience that kind of blogging quasi-paralysis?

**

Crim Law Blogging

This might be a good time to discuss blogging about the Clinic and legal stuff in general. 

First off, I’ve added a disclaimer to my blog’s right hand bar.  I won’t directly respond to legal questions beyond to say that you ought to go contact a lawyer who can help you.   There are lots of reasons for that response – but basically it’s because the law is a subtle and tricky thing that varies from place to place.  If you really need legal advice to help you make any kind of decision or advise anyone, you’re best off going to someone who is familiar in that area of the law, establishing a confidential relationship, and getting sound advice.  Think of lawyers like medical specialists.  You don’t ask your dentist about nerve trouble in your legs.  Sure, the dentist might know *something* about it, but what you really ought to be doing is talking to a specialist.

What you will find on the blog are my (mediated) reflections on my legal experiences, partially fictionalized and elided to shield my clients.  I think that sharing these reflections is important for several reasons. 

On the most basic level, I love to slay assumptions and myths, especially those that “professionals” perpetuate in an effort to cultivate some kind of mystique or create barriers between themselves and the unwashed masses.  I’ve long done this with poetry – the blog reflects that to a degree.  While I don’t doubt that poets need *some* ambiguity in discourse and some metaphorical reflection on what they do, I draw the line at what I think is smoke-blowing.  I like to challenge poetics – specifically, I like to see how well they’re put together and if they do what people say/think they do.  A better understanding of how things *actually are* can only improve what we bring to future processes – where we sink our resources and why, what we choose to value and why.  It’s a basic “kick the tires” philosophy.

As far as the law goes, there are a lot of assumptions and myths out there.  The law and legal processes are fertile fiction-making ground.  However, the problem with this is that the need for equity and justice is fundamental to our make up, some would argue it’s actually a biological imperative.  When there’s bad data fed into our need for fairness and equity, say, in the form of too many stories about X, our society often errs and creates injustice in the pursuit of justice.  This is especially true when we’re dealing with  situations/crimes that strike a deep emotional/moral chord within us. 

For example, our societal/collective emotional reaction to child molesters (whetted by all the media stories and hard vituperative commentary) *greatly exceeds* our emotional reaction to corporate criminals.   I’m not saying one shouldn’t be thought of as worse, but the fact remains that one is an easy emotionalized target in the mass media and one is not.  This ease in emotionalization means it’s relatively easy to write the TV show where the gritty cops struggle to save a small child from a monster.  It’s harder (although it’s been done) to write a script for a TV show that shows the diffuse harm created by someone destroying companies in the pursuit of the capitalistic dream.  There are no easy images for the mind to latch on to.  We haven’t invested our cultural and artistic resources in creating those kind of images, in mythologizing those figures.

Should we give a *relatively* free pass to someone who, by manipulating financial systems, destroys tens of thousands of people’s security and thus systemically creates the stressors which intensify the chances for depression, suicide, domestic violence (which could create a child molester) and substance abuse?  What about the “enablers” for those corporate criminals – those who tacitly encourage activity by, say, telling the right jokes, or who openly engage in shady but not illegal practices?  They’re off the radar, even though the collective harm they create is arguably far greater than the lone molester.

Consider the *amount* of coverage given to Carr recently, the sheer amount of human thought wasted on a wanna-be molester and his circle of acquaintances.   Our society is too complex for single issues to dominate public discourse. 

I think one way of reclaiming some of the public discourse or societal thinking space is to simply talk about issues.  I’d like to add my voice to the many who are already out there (see crim law blawgs on the right) to report on what I see, counter assumptions, broaden a few perspectives, throw some clichés under the bus.   

Blogging is a good way to do that.  Even if it’s only an audience of new 10 random persons a day, you have the chance to present your arguments to someone who may fully read through a post and do some thinking.  That kind of incremental change is worth my time.  Certainly, if any of those people are ever going to sit on a jury in their lives.

If lawyers, per The American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct, have a moral obligation to engage in public interest legal service, one aspect of which is educating the public about legal matters, then blogging seems a very important and effective way to do this.

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Of course, the problem with just openly blogging about my experiences in the criminal justice system and letting people make up their minds about what I’m relating is that there’s an issue of client confidentiality.

People need to be able to trust their lawyers – when only one person stands between you and the state locking you up, that person should have all the information they can about “things,” and that information should be sealed, locked, and sacrosanct.  Thus there are some things I can never blog about. 

So, unfortunately, many PD bloggers often settle for not writing about their client’s cases, or to linking to news articles about criminal law matters.  I’m not here to criticize that practice, although I do think it may be a bit more cautious than is necessary. 

I’m going to explore the ethics of blogging about client cases further and may change some of my practices in the future.  But for a first rough cut, I think I ought to worry about client confidentiality/trust, ex parte contact, unauthorized practice of law, admissions (which can be used against my client or myself).

Obviously, I can’t ethically reveal any embarrassing information about my clients.  Nor can I divulge their confidences.  Nor do I wish to divulge their identities.  So I should shield my clients on the blog. 

The odd thing about this is that so much of what I should be shielding (as an ethical matter) is public information.  While, anyone can go to (or call up) a courthouse and get information on pending cases, at least *I* as the client’s counsel, am not revealing it.   

I think that actively obscuring client identities, using their cases to talk about “that type” of case in general, and, of course, simply refraining from revealing problematic details, is a good fit.  I think I can go with “public” facts – i.e., whatever anyone in the courtroom could have seen or heard – but I think I have to be careful about selecting those as well, insofar as they might say anything about my trial strategy, or hi-light any information that could potentially come back to haunt a client, etc. 

So, what does that leave?  Mostly my impressions from my end.   Some general discussion about types of cases.  Should be enough.

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What does this have to do with Vegetarian Haggis?  Nothing.  Except I have some in my fridge.  Actually, it’s even Vegan, if you can believe it.  Mushrooms, nuts, quorn (great stuff), oatmeal, olive oil, black/white/red pepper and some of the more savory spices.  I made up a batch in the slow cooker, along with some potatoes and turnips, for no reason at all.  I got the fire, but the smokiness and richness is lacking. 

I also made some of my mock chicken soup – but not vegan since in involves egg whites.  It’s a lot of food but I need the fuel.  I’m riding some kind of cold/flu/achy thing.  The headcold element is small, but yesterday I had trouble climbing the stairs here as I felt sluggish and light headed.

Food + sickness + long week =s lots of reading, much catching up with Battlestar Galactica Season 2 (is my stomach tight because of sickness or plot-line?), and placating El Gato Perfecto with small bits of string and fur.

There's also endless legal stuff-a-tude, which will be the subject of my next post.