Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t

Things sound pretty bad for public defenders in Missouri:

Beginning in 2008, Missouri State Public Defender offices across the state will accept only the most serious of the cases referred to them.

Otherwise, the public defender system can afford to contract out 3,000 cases to private attorneys. After that, cases will be refused by the public defender system, and left to the courts to decide what to do.

It’s not quite the “nuclear option” — the decision to take no more cases — that the state Public Defender Commission considered, but narrowly rejected, earlier this year after a consultant described the Missouri public defender system as being in a crisis. But it comes close.

The system’s crisis was described in a 2005 report commissioned by the Missouri Bar as the 47th lowest funded state public defender system in the nation and “on the verge of collapse.”

In the last three months alone, the Boone County public defender’s office has received 1,134 new cases, 378 cases a month, or an average of 31 new cases a month or one new case a day for each lawyer, Deputy Director Cathy Kelly said.

It sounds like taxpayers and legislators in Missouri don’t care much about the constitution. You can’t care about the constitution while at the same time you refuse to provide the resources necessary to defend those accused of crimes.

I’d love to see that report saying MO has the 47th lowest funded state public defender system in the nation. What’s the lowest funded? What’s the best? Where are the top 10 best funded systems? What is life like there? [tags]MO, funding, caseloads, budgets, crisis[/tags]

It’s apparently been a big news day for public defenders. In what has to be something of a nightmare for the PDs, shots were fired into the offices of the Indianapolis public defender. Can’t you just imagine a PD’s office swarming with cops? Yikes.

Meanwhile, a “loony lawyer” in the Bronx who apparently kicked his client twice in open court while the man was in shackles is being investigated again. Apparently David Feige wrote about this in his book, indefensible, which I highly recommend. (I read it last year, but I don’t remember that part.)

Closer to home, homicides are way up in Twin Falls, Idaho, putting a big strain on the public defenders there.

With an ever-changing cast of inexperienced deputies, Public Defender Marilyn Paul will handle six murder cases this year, working more or less alone.

Paul did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but 5th District Trial Court Administrator Linda Wright said “Her office is always busy. It’s just got to be a hair-puller.”

Down south, Georgia’s relatively new system of statewide criminal defense is under attack with at least one person ranting that the state system is not working and should be dismantled:

“I would like to call in a Rant about the Public Defender’s office and the article that the staff may be furloughed. I think that it completely needs to be given back to the counties and the state needs to stay out of it. We had a better system, at least in the Tifton circuit, before the state got hold of it.”

Meanwhile, in Florida, one public defender is running a clothing drive for the benefit of his clients:

Public Defender Bob Wesley is holding his annual clothing drive, seeking donations of suits, jackets, skirts — any sort of professional attire that might allow criminal defendants to wear something other than a jumpsuit or raggedy clothes when appearing before a judge and jury. IThe office will collect clothes Saturday December 22, 2007 from 10am to 2pm in front of the courthouse 435 North Orange Avenue. They are especially in need of men’s clothing in smaller sizes. And if you doubt the value of this effort, consider that I know some judges make clothing donations themselves.

Kudos to Mr. Wesley. What a brilliant idea!

Great discussion of police use of tasers on the Diane Rehm Show last week. Click over to listen to the audio of the show and learn that tasers have been involved in over 200 deaths. Some police departments are using them indiscriminately and without proper training. Plus, you can buy one for yourself on the street. Terrific. [tags]tasers[/tags]

Coming out of hiding to link to three articles on Billings Municipal Court and its supervised probation and pre-trial supervision practices. The first attempts to give a big picture overview. The second focuses on one person who was subjected to the injustice of pretrial supervision for a misdemeanor DUI charge. And the third examines who is making money from the court’s regular practice of requiring citizens to pay for “supervision” for a multitude of misdemeanor offenses.

This isn’t the first time this court has received this kind of criticism (see also), and it won’t be the last.

Kenneth Hollar of Billings has the perfect solution to treating drug and alcohol addiction in Montana. Instead of building treatment programs….

What should be done with drug and alcohol addicts, both rich and poor, is to confine them to a camp in a remote part of Montana, provide them with adequate food and medical treatment and work the hell out of them for about 12 hours a day – six days a week doing something that was productive. Furthermore, deny them the right to have contact with the outside world. Each Sunday they would have the right to attend camp church and to have only their family visit them for several hours. In other words, just make life plain miserable for them.

If this were done, the word would get around and there would be very few drug and alcohol addicts in Montana.

Oh yeah. Perfect. And if that doesn’t work, just lock them up in a deep dark hole and forget about them. It’s all very simple, really. Don’t you just wish politicians would listen to good common sense like Ken’s?

Inmates in Illinois’ Cook County prison have figured out a good way to call their friends and loved ones for free—they just get unsuspecting folks to forward all their calls.

Cook County prison inmates posing as Sheriffs are scamming St. Louis households with calls that start with a request to aid someone who has just been in an accident by calling a number that starts with *72. The prefix activates call forwarding, allowing all incoming calls to ring at an alternate number; the calls are then billed to the victim.

Very smart. I’m surprised to hear this works because my understanding has always been that all calls from jail/prison begin w/a recording telling the recipient of the call where the call originated. Apparently that’s not true everywhere, or perhaps it depends on whether the person is using a calling card….

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.

Read the comments to this story about a man recently convicted of his 10th DUI. The prosecutors read these comments they apparently take them seriously because they are becoming more and more difficult to deal with on such cases as a consequence.
[tags]DUI[/tags]

In case you want to follow along w/the ongoing trial wherein Billings Police Officer Steve Feuerstein is suing the city of Billings:

• Feuerstein helped supply drugs
• City begins case in police lawsuit trial

Fun! I especially like Sgt. Mark Kirkpatrick’s admission that he “occasionally” shoots at cats along the highway on his way home from work. Character at issue, anyone?

What makes the news report my just be the tip of the iceberg…

What happens when a city cop sues his employer? You get leads like this:

Billings police officers have given false testimony in court, white-washed wrongdoing among their ranks and violated policies on dangerous pursuits with impunity because they belong to the “club,” a 20-year veteran of the agency told a District Court jury Tuesday.

“The club is the ones who get better treatment than the rest and do what they want without consequences,” Officer Terry Bechtold said during his testimony on the second day of the civil trial between Officer Steve Feuerstein and the city of Billings.

What!? You mean law enforcement officers are not saintly superhumans who can do no wrong!? I am shocked! Shocked!!!

And then you get lists of wrongdoing by individual officers like this:

Bechtold gave a laundry list of officers who he said escaped punishment for policy and ethical violations because they are among the favored “elite” within the agency. His list included:

• Detectives Blake Richardson and Mark Kirkpatrick “gave false testimony” in court, Bechtold said.

• Lt. Mark Cady had to repay the city after receiving money for a bogus online college degree.

• Sgt. R.D. Harper violated the department’s pursuit policy by hitting a suspect car with a patrol car.

• Deputy Chief Joe Bryce “covered up” an investigation into wrongdoing by an officer.

• And Chief Rich St. John took no action when given a list of officers who were accused of misconduct.

“He just shoved it under the carpet like they normally do,” the officer said.

We are so getting the transcript of this trial. I imagine it will come in quite handy the next time any one of these officers—hell, any officer in the BPD—tries to take the stand.