a public defender

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The mainstream media seems to have reported on Philip Russell’s hearing over the weekend. Here are stories from the Greenwich Time, the Courant and the Connecticut Post. The story everywhere, however, is the same.

If prosecutors are allowed to pursue cases against defense lawyers caught in similar predicaments, their ability to defend clients could be compromised, said Hartford defense lawyer Moira Buckley, who addressed the court on behalf of the defense lawyers group.

“To me, it betrays a mentality that I find kind of frightening,” she said.

The prosecutors dropped this nugget:

Prosecutors argued that Russell did not face any such charge because he did not “knowingly” possess the pornography — a standard that was not met in this case because the church sealed the laptop with tape and Russell did not try to turn on the computer to see if the images were indeed of naked boys. But by trying to take the computer apart, Russell tampered with evidence and violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, prosecutors said.

“One thing Mr. Russell did that he can’t do is he destroyed it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Jongbloed said.

Oh. So he wasn’t in trouble because he didn’t knowingly possess anything illegal. So…if he had not destroyed the computer and it had been turned over, he wouldn’t have been prosecuted under the theory that he should have known that it possessed pornography. Yep.

Indeed, the judge almost made that argument:

[Judge] Nevas fired back that “a lawyer certainly could see that an official proceeding would ensue. He knew this computer contained images of children engaged in terrible acts.”

Nevas also maintained that, under state law, certain people like doctors, teachers and clergymen are required to inform law enforcement authorities of evidence of child abuse.

Here’s the bottom line:

Robert M. Casale, Russell’s lawyer, said after the hearing that a conviction would send a message to all defense lawyers: “By virtue of the case of the United States against Philip Russell, you’re all conscripted to be agents of the government. And if you don’t act in that capacity, we’ll prosecute you.”