I met one of my first clients, let’s call him “Raul,” on the first day I was let off the leash in my department, in mid-January.

Raul was an in-custody client, accused of negligent discharge of a firearm, carrying a loaded firearm in public, and attempted animal abuse.  The client wasn’t supposed to be mine, but the assigned PD told me he couldn’t bear to handle an animal abuse case, so he passed it on to me.

Lo-and-behold, Raul wasn’t some awful man - he turned out to be one of the most genuinely-good people I’ve ever met.  Given his lack of formal employment and ties to the community, and the nature of the charges, he wasn’t released O.R.  But, Raul was unable to post even the modest bail that had been set for him.   So, for 30 days, Raul sat in jail.

About a week before trial, my suppression motion was heard - after being uneventfully arrested, the local cops decided to search my client’s home sans warrant (using the “protective sweep” justification, Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325), where they found the gun and four spent rounds.

The test for protective sweeps under Buie is whether the police have a reasonable belief, based on specific and articulable facts, that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to the police.  Amazingly, the cop didn’t lie (about anything of import) at the suppression hearing, and no such reasonable belief of danger was ever alleged.  Suppression motion granted in its entirety!

You’d think this would have slowed the DA down at least a bit, but no dice.  He proceeded full-steam ahead.  Except for the part about giving me discovery.  Despite numerous informal requests and the DA’s insistence that everything had been turned over, I received two supplemental police reports the day before trial.

The same day, I also discovered that the DA had been interviewing government witnesses without any investigator, making no record of those interviews, and refusing to disclose the statements made in the interviews.   So on the next morning, which was the day of trial, I did what any sensible defender would do - I subpoenaed the DA as a witness in his own case!

The DA flipped out and called down his supervisor, who, knowing that I was a very young PD, tried to bully me into backing down.  Alone in the hallway, she pointed her finger right in my face.

“If you don’t withdraw this subpoena,” she said, “then just so you know, we’ll be asking for sanctions.”

“Sanctions?” I asked.  “You’ll have to get in line - your deputy has broken so many discovery rules in this case that he’s going to have his witnesses excluded.  And I’ve already suppressed your gun… so let’s go in chambers and talk about sanctions.”

And that is how Raul, on the day of trial, accepted the DA’s offer of an infracted disturbing the peace charge.  It’s also how I very sadly missed out on my first trial.

That new house with the pretty pictures… it’s gone.

I’ve moved… passed the bar… and been hired as a deputy public defender!!

I’m working in one of the general misdemeanor departments.  Monday through Friday, 8:30 - 5.  No free hours, no office days.  I have about 95 open cases at the moment, and I’ve only been around a month.

My first trial is coming up, and to make it easier, I won my suppression motion last week.  First suppression motion ever.  Suppressed the gun and the bullets!  How will the DA prove negligent discharge of a firearm when he can’t prove that the gun was loaded with live rounds?

As I’ve said many times before, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad constantly says things that discredit him in the eyes of the Western world.  Today, as I write this, he is speaking at Columbia University in New York City.  In response to a question about the execution of homosexuals, he proclaimed to the world that Iran doesn’t have any homosexuals.  This is patently absurd.

Perhaps it stems from some sort of internal Iranian policy that requires blanket denial of homosexuality, but it leads Westerners to believe that Ahmadinejad is either a liar or an ignoramus.   His answer provoked both laughter and groans from the New York audience.

In addition, Ahmadinejad was consistently unable to give straight answers to questions like “Do you or your government seek the destruction of the sake of Israel?” and “Are you supporting terrorism in Iraq?”  It became clear through his answers that Iran’s president was declining to directly answer.  But Americans are just as intelligent as Persians, and in such a situation where someone clumsily avoids answering questions, we will assume the worst and think that the speaker is simply to weak to directly answer.

Americans are told every day that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map,” and that it supports and arms terrorists in Iraq, and if those things are true, Ahmadinejad shouldn’t shy away from telling the truth!  Americans already think these things are true.   But if Ahmadinejad would simply answer straightly, he could use his answer as an opportunity to explain his positions on these issues.

As to Israel, a straight answer would give Ahmadinejad greater ability to explain why he might seek the end of Israel as a political entity, and why his reasoning has nothing to do with Judaism.  He could speak about the conditions under which Palestinians live, the daily disruptions of their lives, the apartheid nature of the place.

As to Iraq, Americans are already coming around on the issue.  They hate Bush, and they’re sick of the war.  If Ahmadinejad is opposed to the war in Iraq, he should say so!  Have there truly been American incursions into Iranian border territories?  If so, don’t be afraid to tell us.  I have a strong feeling that Iran’s ill-conceived domestic PR strategy is also polluting their president’s abilities to talk about international issues.

The Persian people are far from stupid - they have access to the internet, and international newspapers.  They are a very highly-educated population.  Ahmadinejad’s denial of homosexuality, for example, isn’t fooling Persians any more than it fools Americans.  It would seem that instead of becoming a regional leader, Iran’s government behaves in a very parochial manner, insulting its own citizens and making it the subject of ridicule and hatred abroad.

Welcome to our lovely new home! It needs a new coat of paint on the outside there, and our landlord seems willing to foot the bill - please suggest colors!

Here are some of the rooms: The Living Room

The kitchen:

The deck:

That staircase leads to a lower deck!

It’s pretty snazzy!!

One can’t just defend the public all day long!  So, this blog is going to transmute into something more than just a public-defender-related thing… it’s now just about me, and that will sometimes, perhaps even often, be about public defense, but no guarantees!

I’ve moved intracity.  Our new home is now the South Park neighborhood, and boy are we lucky with what we got!  Pics coming soon.

In other news, bar exam results come out in about 67 days, so that’s pretty exciting.  And one of my new roommates is the grandson of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun - how cool is that?

Sherri Jefferson, the former Georgia public defender who was held in contempt and sentenced for 30 days, has struck back and filed slander actions against both Mike Mears, Director of the Georgia Public Defense Standards Council, and Albert Murray, the Commissioner for the Department of Juvenile Justice.

In her Notices of Intent to Sue, Jefferson alleges that Mears and Murray conspired to slander her in an effort to prevent her from speaking out on the “abusive practices” of the Department of Juvenile Justice, which apparently include the illegal detention of several children for in excess of four weeks, and refusing in that time to ever let them see an attorney.

Tonight, I subscribed to my first bar exam review program, Adaptibar. It seems pretty cool so far - less expensive than MicroMash (its competitor in the world of computer-based MBE-prep) and more technologically-advanced. Among its many features is a timing analysis system that purportedly determines your temporal “sweet spot,” the amount of time after which you’re most likely to answer a question correctly.

However, it can sometimes yield funny advice.

“You answered this question in 1 minute 44 seconds. Had you answered 64 seconds sooner , then based on your prior performance, your chances of answering correctly would have increased from 33% to 100%. “

DAMMIT! If I’d only answered after 40 seconds, I would have been in the clear…

When I came to law school, I brought some books. I can’t say I’ve finished all of those, but I’ve bought many more over the past two-and-a-half years. So many, in fact, that when I moved last summer for an internship, I took a big box of books with me, most of which I never read that summer…

I’m reading Nostromo right now.

You know, getting through a few pages each night.  Nostromo isn’t exactly a page-turner, but it’s rather beautifully written.  It’s no Bridge on the Drina, of course.  But, I think I’d rather be re-reading American Psycho or something…

As if the legal situation at Guantánamo couldn’t get any worse, the DOJ is requesting court approval to further castrate detainee access to defense attorneys.

Among the DOJ proposals:

• Defense attorneys would be allowed to meet with their clients only three times;
• Intelligence officers and military lawyers would be allowed to read letters clients write to their attorneys;

And, of course, the U.S. continues to insist that nobody at Guantánamo has a right to an attorney in the first place, so we should be thankful of any concessions made…

See the International Herald Tribune article for the full story.

Sadly, I won’t be working as a post-bar at a particular next-county-over Public Defender’s office - that office seems to have bigger problems to worry about.  So, let’s see - you’re the head of a county’s indigent defense system that is understaffed, plagued with “unbearable caseloads” (ineffective assistance?) and accusations of managerial “incompetence”, causing you to lose veteran DPDs on a regular basis.

The solution: eliminate your post-bar program altogether. After four months of waiting for a definite answer from them, this Public Defender has decided that they’d be better off without summer post-bar interns… apparently nobody from that office read my post about public defender recruitment!