Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t

The Montana Federal Defenders just joined forces with Montana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers the State Public Defenders to put on the first ever joint defender CLE in Fairmont, MT. It was an very good two days of seminars and discussions, especially for those in attendance who practice in the federal courts. Here are a few (mostly superficial) things you might have learned if you had been able to attend:

1. Lawyers and depression: If you fight and struggle to be a high-paid big-firm lawyer you’ll only work your ass off and be miserable. Depression is the result of a disconnect between what you’d like your life to be and what it really is. If you’re a public defender (state or federal), you’re less likely to have this problem. Maybe.
2. The best description of depression ever comes from Hamlet:
   

   I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

3. “Desperado” by the Eagles can be a great song if you change the words to “Free Attorney” and take it from there. Thanks to North Carolina Federal Defender Louis Allen for that, as well as a very entertaining version of “Can’t Stand the Jail” sung to the tune of “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
4. If you’re a criminal defense lawyer and a reporter asks you about a case, “no comment” is telling the reporter and his/her readers that you’re hiding something. Always comment if the press asks, even if it’s to explain why you really can’t say very much. Balance the story. If you say nothing, the story will be whatever the prosecution wants it to be.
5. In Montana, you might have an ethical duty to report another lawyer who somehow misuses the media to influence a case. Very murky waters there.
6. Blood spatter can tell you many very important things about a crime. if you have a crime involving blood, make sure you get all available photos and have them analyzed by an expert for anything that might help your client. And if law enforcement did not take proper photos or preserve the scene, you might have something to litigate…
7. AquilaVision would like to convince every sheriff and judge in Montana that many many people awaiting trial should be released w/a shackle that tracks their every move in real time, updating every thirty seconds. And defenders should welcome this because then when your clients are accused of doing something they weren’t supposed to have done, they can prove their innocence!Super! Why don’t we all just get the shackle strapped on at birth and carry it for the rest of our lives!? Then we could all prove our innocence whenever we’re accused of a crime! Hooray for utopia and paradise!
8. The immigration consequences of any criminal conviction can be drastic and hard to minimize. If your client has no status and no way of getting status, he’s going to be deported if convicted of most crimes so your goal is just to minimize his sentence. If your client has status (e.g., a greencard or visa) or a way of potentially getting status, be very careful of the kind of sentence you get. Often a sentence of 364 days suspended rather than 1 year suspended could make the difference between deportation and not.
9. Federal terrorism prosecutors are all about precrime: If they wait for a crime to happen and then prosecute, they have failed. They instead will follow suspects and plots to let them go as far as they can and then arrest the suspects on whatever charges they can in order to disrupt the plots. This is why these prosecutors love “pocket charges” and why the fact that we don’t see more terrorism prosecutions doesn’t mean the feds are not doing anything to stop domestic terrorism. Hmph.
10. The Adam Walsh Act is about to affect federal sentencing guidelines for child pornography and other sex cases in dramatic and draconian ways. Some crimes will go from mandatory minimums of zero to 30 years overnight when the changes go into effect on November 2, 2007.

There was more, but those are some of the highlights. Thanks to all of the great speakers who presented and to the organizers for pulling it all together for us.