» Entries tagged with "innocent"

Guilt v. Shame

A witness and I each had pretty remarkable breakthroughs at the same time earlier today. We both suddenly understood things we’d never really considered. When she had her revelation, she shook her head in disgust. On the other hand, I just thought yet again about how ridiculous our justice system really is. To say the witness and I have different backgrounds would be an understatement. We’re generations removed, and even if we shared a birth date in the same year, it would hardly even begin to bridge the cultural gap. On top of that, she’s mostly deaf and entirely mute. An ASL interpreter did not work out, and her writing is very difficult to understand. The “interview” today involved a pen and some paper. … Read entire article »

Filed under: Government Rants, Uncategorized

Crappy Outcome For Doody

I was quite proud of myself for writing a whole post about Jonathan Doody’s case a couple of months ago without making a single poop joke. Trying to write two was tempting fate, so please forgive the title. Anyway, the combined tireless efforts of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and its lying admitted-serial-killer pal and star-witness Alessandro Garcia finally paid off when they were able to convict Doody, who may be innocent, after a Ninth Circuit reversal, a mistrial, and five days of jury deliberations well over two decades later. They must be proud. We can now all rest assured that this punk kid won’t ever be at large: He may look like a sad, middle-aged man who has spent every moment of his adult life in prison because … Read entire article »

Filed under: Arizona Cases

Great Expectations

Part of my fee agreement explains how my fee in each case is based in part on a variety of considerations, one of which is the expectations of the client. Many of the other listed factors, like the urgency of the matter and the necessity of declining other work, once seemed far more important to me. Over time, they have come to pale in comparison with client expectations. For the client who wants to walk, beating the main charge but being convicted of a lesser is a massive disappointment. It doesn’t matter if they’re avoiding a murder conviction in favor of a lesser charge or just beating the part of the DUI charge that would have made it a felony. Any conviction is a failure. It’s the same … Read entire article »

Filed under: Clients

David DeCosta Revisited

After this post generated a deluge of negative comments attacking me and protesting the case against David DeCosta, I responded with this post. That didn’t help matters, and the angry comments continued. Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice chimed in here, and Jeff Gamso at Gamso – For the Defense discussed the situation in this post. As the battle raged on with comments and emails of widely varying civility and rationality, I began reviewing the police reports in DeCosta’s case. Initially, I dreaded the idea of going over them. I was expecting to find overwhelming evidence of DeCosta’s guilt. After all, almost everyone who was asserting his innocence did so by criticizing me. People who try to make their case by personally attacking their opponent usually don’t have much of a case. … Read entire article »

Filed under: Uncategorized

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