In the criminal justice system in the City of Billings, the public defenders represent two separate yet equally important groups: the humans, who are accused of crimes; and the canines, who bark too much.
These are their stories.
If you're ever on trial for your life, Andrea Lyon is a good name to know. She can say proudly that she has saved the life of an innocent man. As a public defender for over thirteen years, she took some 130 homicide cases to trial, including over 30 potential death penalty cases. Now she directs the Center for Justice in Capital Cases at Depaul University.
I've benefited from Andrea Lyon's example and dedication in person two times. She directs the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College, one in-depth (and cheap!) week of CLE in Ann Arbor. She was also one of the best instructors at National Criminal Defense College, two intense (and cheap!) weeks of p.d. boot camp in Macon. The finest thing she taught me was by example. I'm a lawyer "of size." She is, too, and a confident and prosecutor-crushing one to boot. For a fat cat like me, it's really invigorating to meet a mentor who's large and in charge! She showed me how to stand tall in the courtroom and throw my whole weight into forming a bulwark between my clients and their accusers. "If you want to get my client, first you're gonna have to come through me" is not a bad motto for an XXXL p.d. Thank you, Andrea.
Tom Lincoln of Macondo Law and The Best Defense has a morality story about a bright client in a bad bind, scrambling to keep one step ahead of the system and digging himself in deeper with every step.
Many, many p.d.s will relate to this debacle: the huge potential sentence if convicted, the client burning through previous attorneys, the unexpectedly lenient offer that the client rejects by saying, shave two more years off that and I'll take it, the client's magical thinking that the state's witnesses suddenly will be filled with love and will refuse to testify against him, the hiring another attorney behind appointed counsel's back on the eve of trial...
Don't need to be a veterano to see how this story turns out.
I.
The Orlando public defender who was jailed for contempt of court has been released after an appellate judge's order.
Thomas Mote said he was simply representing his clients vigorously in several cases. "I stand by my conduct. I feel that my actions were in advocacy of my clients," Mote said. "At no time did I ever intend to be disrespectful." Mote said he was "relieved and extremely thankful" to be free.
To Brother Mote goes the Public Defender Red Badge of Courage, with cluster. Salute!
II.
"And so long as our essential protections are safe, it doesn't bother me if courts in Alabama have the Ten Commandments hanging in the lobby. If I ever find myself in an Alabama courthouse, I suspect the decor will be the least of my problems."
The Honorable Bubba, age 15, named after the Honorable John C. "Bubba" Vehlow, magistrate judge.
Remember the guy who slashed his public defender with a razor blade in front of the jury?
He got 110 years to serve, and the State of Louisiana still isn't finished with him.
(Idaho fun fact: if you assault or batter "a justice, judge, magistrate, prosecuting attorney, public defender, peace officer, bailiff, marshal, sheriff, police officer, correctional officer, employee of the department of correction, employee of a private prison contractor while employed at a private correctional facility in the state of Idaho, employees of the department of water resources authorized to enforce the provisions of chapter 38, title 42, Idaho Code, jailer, parole officer, officer of the Idaho state police, fireman, social caseworkers or social work specialists of the department of health and welfare, employee of a state secure confinement facility for juveniles, employee of a juvenile detention facility, a teacher at a detention facility or a juvenile probation officer, emergency medical technician certified by the department of health and welfare, emergency medical technician-ambulance certified by the department of health and welfare, advanced emergency medical technician and EMT-paramedic certified by the state board of medicine, a member, employee or agent of the state tax commission, United States marshal, or federally commissioned law enforcement officer or their deputies or agents and the perpetrator knows or has reason to know of the victim's status," (whew!)
the penalty is doubled. So don't.)
My p.d. brother in Pocatello, Idaho, David Martinez, spoke well for himself and the cause to the local TV station. How can he defend "those people"?:
"I go through the cards and look at some of the cards I've been sent by clients through the years that say, 'You've made a difference in my life' and 'I've turned it around and you're never going to see me in the system again, but I thought I would let you know that what you did meant something to me.'"
On the other end of the country, Thomas Mote, 28, a p.d. who was named public defender of the year last year in Osceola County, Florida is doing 10 days in jail for contempt of court.
I'm duly impressed by both these guys.
I've left Idaho a few times before, but never have I done it when it looked so right.
Reflecting on the years since I've been back in Idaho, including the electoral event last Tuesday, and thinking on my long tormented relationship with home, I found this fine older article on Orcinus by David Neiwart, another Idahoan relocated to the Puget Sound. It begins:
"There's one thing about growing up in a place like Idaho: If you can't make friends with conservatives, you won't have many friends..."
As it goes on to make its point, I think, Well, I've made some friends! I told my wife the other night that I have a love-hate relationship with Idaho, and she came back with, "you don't love it!" She and my boy are the Idaho natives of the family; I had the bad fortune not to be brought to Idaho until I was almost 2, after being born in (horrors) Marin County, California, a fact that no true Idahoan will ever let me live down.
So let me go on record: I love my home state. I love the Sawtooths and the foothills. I love the way sagebrush in the desert smells after it rains. I love the horizons, the dirt roads, and the drives that are measured in hours, not miles. I love the stinky geothermal water that fills the hot springs and the radiators of the house where I grew up. I love the miles and miles of open range and public property, and all the critters therein. I love Redfish and the Salmon, so much that I've left instructions to dump my ashes there, so my molecules can make the grand tour from Stanley to the sea.
Proud enough? Yet I'm moving the family to a Blue state. Loving my home, it makes me more blue, not less, that Idaho and I need to spend some time apart, but I think we might have irreconcilable differences. Doesn't mean I don't love it. I suppose I'm trading colleagues who read Ann Coulter's Treason and look at me funny, for colleagues who learn I'm from Idaho and look at me funny. At the same time as I'll miss Idaho, I'm really excited to be moving to Olympia, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are cloudy all day.
I may have been ruined for the current style of play by the old Idaho legislature, of all things. Back when I was a page, and later an intern, I watched the senators address each other as "the gentleman from 12" and "the lady from 32," even if 12 was no gentleman and 32 was no lady. The R's still called my team the "Democrat Party," but otherwise respect was paid, and friendships were maintained across the aisle. I owe my Idaho upbringing the habits of not whining when we lose or gloating when we win, of not expecting everyone to see things my way, of knowing that decent people will disagree, and of not vilifying opponents. I wish I could say that I'm confident my five-year-old would absorb the same lessons by growing up in Idaho as it is now, but I can't. But he will come back to spend lots of time here, and he will learn to appreciate and be proud of where he's from.
(Bonus shout-out to colleagues in the South: after my wife pointed me to a scurrilous little website called "F*ck the South" (find it yourself), I thought back to the Southern spots that I love: Apalachicola, St. George Island, Panacea and Sopchoppy, Tally and P'cola, N.O., Memphis, Williamsburg, Peachtree City with the goofy golfcarts, Macon where I spent the two most formative weeks of my career. And I thought of my Southern colleagues in the p.d. and crim law realms, white and black, to whom I feel closer than to most East Coast and L.A. lawyers. Like the man said, "I say this to all of you who think it's funny and wise to say "f*ck the South." If you f*ck the South, you're f*cking yourselves." )
Man, filling in at Juvy is a delight! Respect, no brow-beating, well-managed docket. The only downside was that it finished early enough that I had time to come back downtown and do the rest of my afternoon adult felonies.
The helping professionals at Juvy are so very nice, they all just want to help my office's clients, and of course they can't help my office's clients unless they've convicted them first. A regular juvy deputy of mine was told once, "your role is not to go to trial here, your role is to help the kids." And if it's "for the children," why not? Why, today Juvy was so full of loving kindness that they had more than enough to share with a poor little eight-year-old! And naturally, now that he's in the juvy system, they may never want to let him go!
(Sometimes I get such a kick out of my compassionate conservative neighbors. They talk a good game about individual freedom and families first, but when it comes down, the talk extends only about as far as their own kids. Their kids get the benefit of the doubt, and Those People's kids get Juvy and juvy records. Makes me nostalgic for the live-and-let-live Idaho of my youth, when a wayward teen with a twelve-pack might, if caught by a sheriff's deputy, be stood over with a flashlight while pouring out every last can of beer behind the Boise North stake center, then be ordered to go straight home. Or so I've been told.)
Update: E-mail from one of my former juvy deputies!
If I was the quoted individual in your blog, what I remember being told was the absolutely brilliant "Your job is not to win. Your job is to do what is in the best interest of the child, and that is getting him help." When I later had a case dismissed on a technicality, she yelled "*ssh*le! Now she can't get the help she needs". I've always wanted to get the record on that case.
The New York Times and the Times of London both drop in on public defenders doing arraignments in New York City, in Manhattan and the Bronx.
The P.D. in the Bronx observes,"The thing is, if this happened where I grew up, in the suburbs around Boston, then it would get dealt with in the principal’s office."
Which is exactly how I'll feel covering Juvy tomorrow.
Thursdays are child protection days. Today it was 24 cases, 9:30 to 5:00 straight through, with 15 minutes for lunch.
The one glimmer of light: a woman got clean, got her kid back and got her case dismissed; the judge asked, "how does it feel?" and she said, "the sky's bluer and the grass is greener." I do the job for moments like that.
Yeomam Lawyer has a prescription for the rest of the party from out here in fly-over country, on abortion, on the Second Amendment, and on generally no longer treating us like we're the cast of Hee Haw. Read the comments too.
Can I say I'm going to stand and fight when I'm moving from a Red state to a Blue state? Public defenders in particular tend to know a few things about losing a round or two and coming back to fight another day, but I am looking forward come January to living in a state that went for the Democrat:
My current home county voted Bush 71.70%, Kerry 23.54%.
My new home county went Bush 42.63%, Kerry 55.67%.
I'm discouraged, but I'm not despondent. Growing up as a Democrat in Idaho helps, I suppose, as does knowing that people I love - my evangelical sister-in-law, my Knights of Columbus brother, my co-workers and neighbors - voted for the other guy. This job helps, too. Whatever the next four years bring, it's comforting to know that I always have a band of brothers and sisters in the public defender and criminal defense bar - Republican or Democratic, it doesn't matter - who will stand guard for the accused and the Bill of Rights. It's gonna be a bumpy ride, but it's gonna be all right.
Be like Joe! See you at the polls.
(and yes, that is a Catholic school uniform, and yes, Joe's parents are supporting the man on the sign, and no, no Opus-Dei-linking, General-R.-E.-Lee-sacralizing, silly-bowtie-wearing, Pope-Pius-IX-name-checking, neo-Confederate Federalist Society martinet has been deputized in my diocese to read us out of the Church for the way we vote. Ubi dubium, ibi libertas. Let freedom ring.)
(Had to get that out; Feddie's comments have been irritating me for months! See you at the Electoral College!)
Current opening in the exciting field of public defender management. Meet interesting people, hear interesting stories. Ideal candidate will already possess body armor and helmet. Prior experience in cat herding, groveling, and choas theory desirable. Serious inquiries only.
(PDF file here)
Update: Review the instructional video on herding cats before you apply, here or here.
