An Opportunity for Hassle
When a door closes, a window opens. There is no word for crisis in Chinese, just danger plus opportunity. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. One man’s [insert bad thing here] is another man’s opportunity. Screw this, I give up. The saying I’m actually going for is something to the effect of this: sometimes opportunities are better left un-seized. No good? Oh well, good thing I didn’t quit my day job to become an motivational speaker. I think I’ll just defer to Thomas Edison, who is rumored to have said something about how most people miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work. I’m writing this because after I wrote about a potential new client’s family asking a question that removed … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients
The Numbers Game
Meeting prospective clients, I encounter varying degrees of knowledge about the process of hiring a criminal defense lawyer. Right now, most of my clients are referred to me by other lawyers. Referrals from previous clients come in a close second. Those two types of clients rarely ask a lot of questions for some reason. Occasionally, I get a referral with several degrees of separation. Those prospective clients tend to have questions. Lots of them. Often, the consultation feels a bit like a job interview. I try my best to be brutally honest. Whereas the majority of people only care that someone they trust told them to call me and that I have a nice office, suits that fit (more or less), and a bar number, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients
Better Safe Than Sorry
As a society, we lack the ability to deal with our problems without resorting to the blunt instrument of the criminal justice system. We must be failures as parents and as human beings in general, because we can’t seem to trust each other with even a little bit of freedom. We’re even suspicious of relatives, friends, and neighbors. Often, we’re especially suspicious of them. The only people we trust with our well-being are members of the fabulously wealthy, power hungry ruling class. When we get scared, they draft up oppressive, dangerous placebos we think we can’t live without. Nowhere is it worse than with sex crimes. We’ve criminalized everything, and we’ve ratcheted up the punishments. The system now hands out life sentences like it’s … Read entire article »
Filed under: Courts, Government Rants, Sex Crimes
Picking Issues
I saw this post on FourthAmendment.com over the weekend. The synopsis, for people who don’t like clicking on links, is that a federal court in Nebraska discussed how a defense lawyer doesn’t have a constitutional duty to raise every non-frivolous issue on appeal. The court quoted the Supreme Court of the United States about how experienced advocates trim weaker arguments on appeal and focus on the best issue instead. As far as the art of persuasion goes, it’s not bad advice. A shotgun-style approach is rarely the best way to approach trial advocacy. It dilutes the best points. It’s hiding a needle in a haystack for seekers who aren’t terribly inclined to search very hard and who don’t know they’re looking for a needle in the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Courts
Bias-Logic
When people hold a certain belief, they tend to view almost anything even arguably relevant to that belief as proof the belief is true. In the context of being a criminal lawyer, that often comes up when I tell clients I am going to move to suppress problematic evidence. I encounter resistance from them based on a kind of logic (I use the term very, very loosely) born almost entirely from their bias. The typical situation in which I encounter such logic involves a client who believes a witness is a liar. His unshakable belief in the witness’s dishonesty has led him to believe that every other bad thing the witness might say about him is convincing proof that the witness is a liar. He fails to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients
Understanding the System
The criminal justice system excels at creating frustrating situations. It might be the only thing it does well. I recently ran up against a situation that was not only frustrating, but also a perfect example of a Catch-22. To get a client released from custody, I needed to get her accepted into an approved rehab facility. She could only get into the approved rehab facilities by doing an intake appointment. The facilities only set intake appointments for people who are out of custody. Initially, I would encounter similar situations and become angry. I assumed they were caused by incompetence and thought the people in charge would fix it if they knew what they’d done. Although my anger began to diminish as I encountered those situations over … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Courts, Government Rants, jail
Fines
I have no problem with the idea of a court ordering someone pay restitution to a victim. Making an aggrieved party whole seems like exactly the kind of stuff a decent justice system should try to do. Probation also makes sense to me as a sentencing option. If we care about rehabilitation, services and some sort of supervision seem essential. I even understand the need for incarceration as part of the sentence in some cases. Although jail and prison terms are routinely and unfairly ordered to excess, I can see the logic in removing a dangerous person from society. I understand retribution and the idea that there may be a deterrent effect in taking away someone’s liberty. Also, when it comes to time, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Courts, DUI, Government Rants
Taking a Vacation
I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things after the longest vacation I’ve taken since I began practicing law. From planning the vacation, to preparing for it, to actually taking the time off and trying to enjoy myself, the experience taught me quite a bit. It drove home a lot of points about the nature of what I do. I should never view any non-work-related plans as concrete. As hard as that’s been for me to swallow, with my current practice, I know that it’s true. I represent a fair number of clients each year, and at any given time, many of their cases are at very different stages. I’m never at a point where I have no clients, so there’s always somebody who’s my … Read entire article »
Filed under: Clients, Practice in General, Solo Practice
Making Bad Law
I recently had an interesting talk with a prosecutor. I litigated a case against him a little while back, and I thought it had decent facts for a motion to suppress. The officer’s report clearly stated that he had completed the traffic stop, issued a warning, and told the occupants they were free to go before re-initiating contact and asking them, “hey, do you mind if I take a look in the car?” There’s an Arizona court of appeals case from last year called State v. Sweeney. In it, the court held that, after a traffic stop has concluded, an officer must have reasonable cause to initiate a second detention of a suspect. Based on the totality of the circumstances, the officer in my case didn’t have … Read entire article »
Filed under: Arizona Cases, Prosecutors, Search and Seizure
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