» Entries tagged with "ineffective"
I May Be Amazingly Brilliant and Tall And Good-Looking But I Am Still A Nuts-And-Bolts Criminal Defense Lawyer Available To YOU 24/7
Over at a public defender, Gideon wrote yesterday about a fascinating overturned conviction: Michael Skakel has just had his convictions reversed and a new trial ordered by former Appellate Court judge Thomas Bishop, who was designated to preside over and adjudicate Skakel’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. The allegations revolve mostly around Skakel’s representation by famed celebrity lawyer Mickey Sherman, in that Skakel alleges that Sherman did a terrible job representing him. That “famed celebrity lawyer” was actually the subject of a post at Simple Justice in 2010 after he pled guilty to two counts of willful failure to pay federal income taxes. The post was about how being a celebrity comes at a price and noted how Mickey Sherman was alleged to have converted for personal use money intended to … Read entire article »
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
Why Do We Do It?
I can’t remember ever disagreeing with anything Bobby G. Frederick has written over at the South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog, but I definitely don’t feel the same way he does about something he says in this post. I really like the term “cause lawyer,” which I’ve never heard before, but I can’t say I agree with this: Defense attorneys, by and large, don’t do this for the money. We have to pay the bills and run an office, and compensation is good, but we do this because we love what we do and because we believe in what we do, whether it is helping people or whether it is fighting to preserve what little rights we have left as citizens. This might be petty, as I’m just disagreeing with his generalization … Read entire article »
Filed under: Practice in General, Professionalism
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