Monday Morning Jumpstart
Posted on
August 13, 2007 by
Gideon
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A new week, a new set of reading material:
- Justice Demands Defense: A commentary piece by Norm Pattis in yesterday’s Courant about why the Cheshire accused need zealous representation.
- Blonde Justice is saying goodbye to civil service and heading to the private sector. We wish you well, Blondie!
- Malum In Se writes about non-English speaking defendants being treated differently by both the prosecutors and his own office.
- Mark Bennett gives us six witness rules and commenters add more. I wrote about this a few months ago.
- Robert Guest criticizes MADD’s mad policies.
- The Defense Perspective continues its series on the unforeseen consequences of conviction.
- CDW has a quick look at the week that was.
- Scoplaw has a great post on what “loss of liberty” really means.
- Here’s a piece in the Courant about how the new underage drinking law has the hidden consequence of an automatic license suspension. I recently discussed the new DUI law, which has similar consequences.
Have a great day!
Image license info here.
Sphere: Related Content
Loading ...
The melodrama of Morm Pattis’ piece is ridiculous. I’ll tell you what–if I were a defense attorney, I’d lose a hell of a lot more sleep worrying about an innocent man charged with a crime than losing this death case. The arrest of an innocent man is more of an injustice than the execution of these animals.
And calling citizens a “lynch mob” because they think that people who commit crimes such as these deserve death is patronizing. These animals do not deserve to live. That does not make me a believer in lynch mobs, just someone like John Stuart Mill.
Off topic–Gideon, your thoughts: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/9DBF1253BDC0C24B8825733600550B10/file/0615069.pdf?openelement
Norm’s piece does what a criminal lawyer is supposed to do. He stands detached from a horrific crime and reminds us that our system demands that everyone, from the most doubtful to the clearest, be tried before convicting. There’s no line to be drawn where we place those defendants undeserving of a fair trial, regardless of how evil we perceive them.
It’s the horrible cases like this that test us, not the easy ones. Norm knows that. Others would prefer to save their sympathies for the people who are easier to feel sympathetic about. But that’s not the defense lawyer’s job. And that’s Norm’s point.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting that these guys do not get tried in a court of law. So ol’ Norm is setting up a straw man.
And then Norm goes into the lame-o arguments that those of us who think that these guys should be executed are members of a wannabe lynch mob. Whatever.
Yeah, we know that these guys have rights. We want them dead after they have been afforded their rights.
“Yeah, we know that these guys have rights. We want them dead after they have been afforded their rights.”
So let’s have a trial before we lynch them?
What do you have to be afraid of? Try them. If they’re convicted, sentence them. If they’re sentenced to death, execute them. It’s not like they’re walking the streets in the meantime. A civility of a society is judge by how it treats its worst. There’s nothing to fear from letting the system, including the defense lawyers, do its job.
Did I say I was afraid of anything? I am perfectly happy to let the defense lawyers do their jobs–I just don’t buy into the idea that the job of representing these animals is all that big of a deal. Once again, I would think that having the freedom of an innocent client entrusted to me would be far more important than figuring out the right amount of mitigation BS to fling at the wall in the penalty phase.
And I disagree with that hackneyed statement about how we treat our worst. In my view, worrying over whether some murder should have a sex-change operation (at taxpayer expense) is a measure of moral weakness not strength.