Two years ago, a judge appointed me to represent a man accused of aggravated assault. We don't have a public defender in our county, we have an appointment system. Experienced attorneys get assigned indigent persons and submit a bill to the county after the case is over.
Well. the trial is over and this was the result:
Headline should have read: Tea Partyer Gets 8 years for Attacking Obama Supporter, Despite Efforts of His Liberal Blogger Lawyer. That's right, I had to defend this tea partyer, who destroyed the nose of an Obama supporter with a pool cue.
The jury was sympathetic to the tea party - there were maybe 13 people in the pool who said they supported it and I got almost all of them on the jury - but the photos were horrible and the force used was found to be too excessive to be self defense.
There were some interesting moments during the trial. The victim actually turned down medical care after the incident because he was 25 and didn't have health insurance. While he was on the stand, I kept thinking - under Obamacare, you can be on your parents policy until you're 26!
I did not defend his actions by bashing the President; not only would that have been phony for me, it wouldn't have worked. Under Georgia law, there is no jury nullification, and you can't justify a physical attack with a political argument.
All in all, I tried very hard to just be a good lawyer, hold my nose, and leave the politics out of it. Before the jury came back and put my client in jail, Mr. Morgan told me I did a good job. I was satisfied that I had not let my politics infect my obligations as a defense lawyer.
After the trial, I helped out his longtime girlfriend, who was downstairs in another courtroom getting evicted. I hate seeing people get kicked out of their homes, even if they are republicans. As an atheist hippy, of course, I believe in Karma points.
One of my friends pointed out that by losing, I disqualified a Republican voter (convicted felons can't vote). But defense lawyers always feel bad when their clients are sent off to prison, even when they are of questionable political orientation and engage in violence. I don't know why.
Interesting day.
Well. the trial is over and this was the result:
Headline should have read: Tea Partyer Gets 8 years for Attacking Obama Supporter, Despite Efforts of His Liberal Blogger Lawyer. That's right, I had to defend this tea partyer, who destroyed the nose of an Obama supporter with a pool cue.
The jury was sympathetic to the tea party - there were maybe 13 people in the pool who said they supported it and I got almost all of them on the jury - but the photos were horrible and the force used was found to be too excessive to be self defense.
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| america is back! |
I did not defend his actions by bashing the President; not only would that have been phony for me, it wouldn't have worked. Under Georgia law, there is no jury nullification, and you can't justify a physical attack with a political argument.
All in all, I tried very hard to just be a good lawyer, hold my nose, and leave the politics out of it. Before the jury came back and put my client in jail, Mr. Morgan told me I did a good job. I was satisfied that I had not let my politics infect my obligations as a defense lawyer.
After the trial, I helped out his longtime girlfriend, who was downstairs in another courtroom getting evicted. I hate seeing people get kicked out of their homes, even if they are republicans. As an atheist hippy, of course, I believe in Karma points.
One of my friends pointed out that by losing, I disqualified a Republican voter (convicted felons can't vote). But defense lawyers always feel bad when their clients are sent off to prison, even when they are of questionable political orientation and engage in violence. I don't know why.
Interesting day.
25 comments:
Congratulations on maintaining your integrity. And for sharing. Unfortunately, the first image in your story does not display in either FireFox or Safari. I'm guessing it is an image to a newspaper headline, but I really can't tell, and the 'punchline' of your headline is lost as a result. Can you fix the image, and add a link in the text to the image source so I can see the article in question? (I live north of Atlanta but haven't heard of this story at all.)
Thanks.
cuaght you from dailyK to BJ
you good!
Wow, 8 years is a long time for breaking someone's nose. Is the convicted really that much of a threat to society? On the other hand, if you employ violence on another, I guess you have to be willing to accept the consequences.
Did he have an priors? I find it hard to believe that a 39 year-old with such poor impulse control hadn't been in trouble with the law before.
Fixed the image, iLarynx. Thanks
RE Anonymous's 2:09 PM comment - how much time served does an 8 year sentence usually mean in Georgia, assuming he keeps his nose clean in prison? Does the 8 years result from a general severity of the law, the extremity of the injury, or the assailant's prior record?
Are you really supposed to talk about any of your clients? Isn't there a thing called privilege?
WTF are you accomplishing by writing this other then showing us you are an unethical lawyer who is willing to publicly comment on his client's case?
Anonymous 209 and Warren - 8 to serve on aggravated assault in Ga means you must serve 65-90% of your sentence, depending on a screening process called parole success score. I think he will end up doing 6 years or 75%. And I did think it was harsh given his record. I got him a plea bargain that was much lower.
Anonymous 3:02 you are right that client communications are privileged. I really don't think I divulged anything protected. Everything I wrote about was part of the public trial. Re-reading it now I am sure of that. The paper was far more revealing than I was.
This isn't a privilege issue. Attnorney-client privilege relates to what a lawyer can be forced to disclose as evidence against his client. This is an attorney-client secrecy issue, which relates to how much a lawyer can reveal about his client in any setting. In New York, at least, client secrecy goes much futher than client privilege in requiring the lawyer to perserve the secret. In New York, a lawyer can be disciplined for revealing anything his client does not want him to reveal, or that might embarrass or harm his client. In any case, it requires prior consent of the client after full disclosure. Did you get that? I think you should really take this post down until you have prior consent.
It really doesn't matter if it was in the paper, at least under New York rules (we now have the Model Rules). If your client doesn't want you to talk about it, it is a violation to talk about it. And the only way to find out is by full disclosure and prior consent.
The original story had its headline changed from "Tea Party Member" to "Man."
Brighton, I found your blog through a link from Balloon-Juice, and I think I'll be back again.
This story is of particular interest to me. I'm a native of Toccoa, so this guy's from right up the road. Damn if he doesn't look a helluva lot older than 39 in that picture, though.
Thank you for doing your duty diligently, even when it's hard. Officers of the court upholding their oaths are one of the important institutions standing between us and barbarism.
So, Anonymous, you first start screaming about violation of privilege and then, in your next post, you say no, no, it's not privilege, it's something else ...
You just don't like it that Brighton talked about this case and it's clear you're reaching for some legal(istic) reason to get him to.
Maybe you should just go to another site if it upsets you this badly.
Thanks for the support, Patrick, but Anonymous 3:02 is right - our bar rules say that "Confidentiality of Information applies not merely to matters communicated in confidence by the client but also to all information relating to the representation, whatever its source." My point is that nothing in this post is detrimental to my client's interests or embarrassing to my client. As such, it does not fall within the scope of our bar regulations and is instead permitted under my first amendment rights. You've gotta admit - this is a pretty interesting story. I received more hits on this post today than on any other post in the history of my little blog. Except the one about legalizing weed.
Seriously, thank you for the thoughtful comment. Not many people care that much about the rights of criminal clients.
I'm still trying to figure out what bothered Anon @ 3:02 so much. Unless this post has been changed since 3:02, then the only reference to any communication between attorney and client was "Mr. Morgan told me I did a good job".
I guess I don't see how that violates privilege or secrecy; but, then again, I ain't a lawyer.
Brighton: You, sir, have been bookmarked.
(I do think it's ironic that I have to be exposed to corporate advertising while reading your socialist commentary.)
Keep up the good work!
This was your defense--portraying the guy as a tea party member and hoping a jury member sympathetic to the tea party would let him off? Or in other words, treating the jury like idiots.
(1) There was no such thing as the tea party when the fight took place.
The fight took place in January, a month before Santelli's call for another tea party, and two months before the first tea party rallys.
Don't you think at least one juror pointed out those facts in the jury room (blowing you entire defense out of the water)?
(2) It was a bar fight, nothing more.
Two guys went to a bar, had a few drinks, exchanged a few words, and got into a fight. Like who ever heard of that before? There was a bar fight between a Steelers and Packers fan last week? Does that make all NFL fans violent criminals? Or maybe it was just another bar fight--two guys walk into a bar, have some drinks, exchange a few words, and get into fight.
Portraying this guy as a tea partier was an insult to the jury and tea party members. This guy in no way represents the typical tea party member (in fact, he represents the kind of person that gets shunned and run off from tea party rallys and meetings). You alienated the jurors that were tea party supports and made them less sympathetic to your client.
Before you hurt your arm patting your self on the back, maybe you should take some time to contemplate the poor defense you put up for this guy. If you thought portraying this guy as a tea partier would do anything other than backfire with the jury then you are out of touch with reality.
Lawyers need to be able to see an issue clearly from multiple sides if they are going to fashion an effective case. You obviously can't, otherwise you would have never used this defense.
Brighton:
There was no mention by Morgan of an affiliation with the Tea Party during this court case. Morgan is simply a bigot – I suspect he is not political at all. You did not ask the victim if he was an Obama supporter (which he absolutely is not). This was a headline by a clearly agenda-driven editor, or writer, or both – no basis for the headline from the case at all.. A shame on what sadly purports to be journalism today – color me not surprised. I thought you provided an able defense in an indefensible situation.
. . . what that guy just said. He or she was obviously there. I never said the phrase tea party in court except during jury selection. I agree that the headline was sensational. We use that paper to line the cat box at our house.
1. This is not a First Amendment issue, since there is no state action.
2. A lawyer cannot unilaterally assert that matters such as these (that arose from the representation and go to the ultimate facts of the case) are not embarrassing or detrimental to the client. Only the client can determine that.
3. Patrick: I am not the same Anonymous who made the initial assertion about confidentiality.
Anon I respect your opinion on this. I do. But if the State of Ga takes my law license because I said something embarrassing about my client they are most definitely a state actor. And if they did it over this blog post, IMHO, they would be unreasonably restricting my speech as a journalist (blogger) in violation of the First Amendment. As far as what's detrimental or embarrassing, those qualities would be decided on an objective basis by the Ga Supreme Court should it come to that. I am unwilling to give my client unilateral censorship powers over what I have to say about my practice and my politics, and I don't think the law requires me to. I think we just disagree as to whether or not that is fair. BTW, I hang with lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, and all of them talk about cases and unusually difficult, weird, or nasty defendants all the time. Often before large groups. If this is a problem, its ubiquitous. Not an excuse, an observation. I still think you could be right. Peace.
Brighton:
Something you wrote in your opening comment puzzles me. You said that under Georgia Law there is no jury nullification. I thought that under the Constitution a juror had the absolute right, indeed the obligation, to judge the overall application of the law in question or the specific application of the law and had no obligation to follow the Judge’s instructions. The right to acquit even in the face of the evidence is a significant check on Government power and an important guarantor of individual freedom. If you choose to respond or to elaborate I would greatly appreciate it.
From the Other Side: A Georgia judge cannot tell the jury it has the right to nullification, and I can't argue it in closing. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. A jury can always vote not guilty in any case. Here's what the Ga Ct of Appeals said: "Early on, our Supreme Court stated in this regard that "[t]he jury are judges of the law in criminal cases, in this: that they have the legal right to acquit the prisoner, although the Judge may charge them, that if certain facts be proven, he is guilty according to law; . . . This concept of "jury nullification" has been moderated somewhat . . . It is now accepted that "the province of the court [is] to construe the law applicable in the trial of a criminal case, and of the jury to apply the law so construed to the facts in evidence. While the impaneled jurors are made absolutely and exclusively judges of the facts in the case, they are, in this sense only, judges of the law." . . . the trial court [is not allowed] to charge that the jury could disregard the court's instructions and, in effect, determine the law to be different from that given in charge by the judge. . . . From a practical standpoint, there is no way to review or control the manner in which a jury applies, ignores or misconstrues the law in arriving at a verdict of not guilty." IOW, if a jury nullifies, it's final, but the judge can't tell them they're allowed to do it.
Hope that helps
Thank you for taking the time to educate – I appreciate it. I understand why the Courts wouldn’t “want” to fully and properly charge a jury. I am stunned to find that they “cannot” and that a defense attorney cannot take advantage of a tool of last resort to avoid a miscarriage of justice - particularly in the area of victimless crimes. Not having any experience of criminal law or juries I naively thought that the constitution held sway – or that if it didn’t someone would defend it. Again, thank you for your time.
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