More prison doggies

From tonight's CBS news:

Nine Colorado prisons have enacted a program which allows inmates to train dogs... (T)hese canines have helped in the rehabilitation of the prisoners...

CO: heartbreaking loss

From the Daily Camera:

Public defender Cary Lacklen remembered as 'ferocious advocate' - Lawyer spent more than 30 years in public defender's office

Defense attorneys and prosecutors in Boulder and across the state have been left reeling by the death last weekend of Cary Lacklen... “He was the epitome of a public defender,” said Karen Pereira, the office manager for state Public Defender’s Office in Boulder. “He was the person who championed the poor. I don’t think there will ever be another like him...”

CO: “I haven’t had a client yet that I thought was unredeemable”

From the Speakout section of the Rocky Mountain News:

Equal justice in Logan County and much more - The story of a public defender

Public Defender Mike Boyce’s demeanor is sure, his smile disarming. His deep intrepid voice is only slightly contradicted by his visibly shaking hands, “there is something wrong when you don’t get nervous, a lot of it is caring about your client,” he continues “if you’re not nervous, if you’re completely at ease, there is something wrong...”

Mr. Boyce’s compassion reminds me of a quote by the famous German author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming...”

CO: RIP Bryan Shaha, "an ultimate class act"

From the Greeley Tribune:

Former head of Greeley public defender's office dies after long fight with cancer

Bryan Shaha fought like a bulldog for his clients. That's how Mike Zwiebel describes his longtime friend: a lawyer who pulled out all the stops to defend those who couldn't afford to defend themselves.

Shaha, 65, died Wednesday after a bout with cancer... After a stint with Colorado Rural Legal Services, Shaha moved to Greeley and the Colorado Public Defender's Office, where he was deputy state public defender before heading the Greeley office. He worked in private practice for five years beginning in 1979, still defending the accused, and later returned to the public defender's office. "There was no ego," Zwiebel said. "It was never for his own glory..."

Update: from the Denver Post, Defense lawyer went to bat for defenseless

The one thing Bryan Shaha couldn't stand was injustice - whether it involved meatpackers or inmates on death row. So Shaha, who died Oct. 24, three days before his 66th birthday, spent almost all his legal career defending those who could count on no other defense...

CO: lawyer's drug client turns narc's confidential informant

From the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Attorney accused of taking meth as payment - May lose license if he is convicted

A Colorado Springs attorney was arrested on suspicion of drug possession last week after allegedly taking methamphetamine as payment from a client. Criminal defense attorney Terrence McGannon, 49, faces four to 12 years in prison and the loss of his license to practice law if convicted...

According to a police affidavit, an informant that day told a detective... that McGannon, his attorney in a drug case, had asked him for meth as payment for his legal fees.

CO: Kaplan kudos

PD Stuff and others are marking a mile-high transition:

Public defender to step down - Highly respected David Kaplan joining local law firm

David Kaplan will step down on Nov. 1 as Colorado's state public defender. Kaplan is so well liked that when his appointment was announced in 1999, cheers went up in the Denver public defender's office...

Coincidentally, this also happened to me in Twin, but on news of my resignation...

CO: itching like a man on a fuzzy tree

An interesting description of how methamphetamine makes your body feel, from the Montrose Daily Press:
With proper treatment, motivation, meth addicts can kick habit -

“Pretend you have hundreds of mosquito bites and just drank five extra-large lattes.”

CO: mentally ill, in jail

Mental Block - County inmates battle system, own demons:

Wearing a screaming-orange jumpsuit and shackles around his ankles, Dave describes what it is like to get anxious, to experience massive mood swings, to reach euphoric highs then hit crippling lows as an inmate in the Douglas County Jail. "I can't sleep," he said, shifting in his bright blue chair. "Thoughts race through my head. I make terrible choices. Impulsive."

He is not alone. About 70 percent of the inmates housed at the Douglas County Jail show signs of mental illness...

It's disheartening, as is this quote:

"Many [with mental illnesses] stay incarcerated longer because they don't navigate the public defender system well... It's a problem nationally. The problem is not that they are huge criminals who need to be incarcerated for a long time, they just don't navigate the system as well as their counterparts without mental illnesses."

God be with you til we meet again

Greetings from Denver, home of one of the outstanding public defender programs in the country, and until this past Saturday, of my brother Mike.

I saw him yesterday and knelt by his open casket, and it was comforting to remember, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." It's a promise I hope for, some days more shakily than others, but that my brother believed in to the marrow. The deacon had his back to us while we said a rosary, but I could see him wiping away tears. It was gratifying to learn how well he'd known my brother, as did the monsignor, who remembered my brother in the homily today.

As we waited for Mass to start today, my heart broke all over again seeing the tenderness and grief of my parents and sisters. Somehow, through the incongruity or the sentimentality of it, it eased my heart greatly to hear the pianist playing a hymn from my default culture, "God Be With You Till We Meet Again". We lowered him down at the foot of the Front Range under a beautiful Western sky. Hail and farewell, Mike.

(Bonus links for incorrigibly hard-hearted and cynical public defenders go to two Warren Zevon songs: "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" and "Keep Me In Your Heart". I admit that I thought of the first song first, but I felt the second song today. Cancer is a bitch, but in Zevon's death and in my brother's, maybe there's something to all this this talk about redemptive suffering.)

Happy birthday, pdinvestigator.net!

Colorado public defender investigator Greg Worthen and Public Defender Investigator Network have my warmest wishes for their first blog - anniversary.

(And I say that not just because Greg mistakes my goofy posts for news!)

Good-looking site, excellent resource for our side. Nice job, Mr. Worthen.

Go public defenders

Okay, so I'm linking to this for two main reasons:

1. good news on the appellate front out of Colorado; and

2. the novelty of seeing this happy phrase in print - Go Public Defenders

That's right. Go Team - Go Us.

Update: read the good news on CrimProf Blog.

Send lawyers, Herradura, and handguns

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of tequila and handguns.
- Steve Briggs, "The Colorado Lawyer," October 2004

(thx to Tony Valdez)