I’m reading Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory, which is sort of a dual biography of Pat Tillman and history of Afghanistan. (Do I know how to party, or what?) Tillman was the Arizona Cardinals safety who left the NFL after September 11th to enlist in the Army. He was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire while serving as an Army Ranger. Fascinating dude, totally worth reading about.

One thing that you may not know about Tillman is that he was charged with felony assault when he was seventeen. It was a dumb mistake – he was out with some friends, and one of them left the group to try to start a fight with another group of boys. He succeeded, and being a shrimpy fella, proceeded to get a pretty decent beatdown. After a minute, Tillman and his friends returned, and the other boys took off.

Tillman misread the situation, and pounced on the largest of the boys who was running. And he beat the heck out of him, giving him a concussion and shattering his teeth. A few weeks later, he was charged.

He was also offered a scholarship from Arizona State University, which would be retracted if he were to be convicted of a felony. The judge, over the objections of the prosecutor, apparently reduced the charges to a misdemeanor, to which Tillman pled guilty. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 250 hours of community service, and he was allowed to keep his scholarship.

The boy that he beat up – one of his friends talked about that in the book. At the time, she had been furious. But when Krakauer found her, she was more reflective, and I thought it summarized very nicely what we believe, and what we do, here at Sumpter & Gonzalez:

She lamented that her only personal knowledge of Tillman revolved around one of the most regrettable incidents in his life. “What I take from Pat Tillman is that you are not who you are at your worst moment. After what Pat did to Darin, it seems like he really turned his life around and became quite an honorable person.”

When dealing with juveniles, this is especially true. But it’s really the case for everyone we deal with. When people ask me if I feel weird working for a firm that represents a lot of people who are guilty, that’s what I remember: They’re not what they’ve been charged with. Even if they did it – there’s more to a person than the worst thing they did in their life. If you reduce them that way, you have fewer opportunities for heroes like Tillman.

Labels: football, holistic advocacy, juveniles, pat tillman, public perception, second chances, standing up for people

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We wrote a couple months ago about the APD bait car fiasco. A couple – who had previously called the police about a suspicious vehicle parked in front of their house with the keys in the ignition – had been told that they shouldn’t worry about it. They decided after a few weeks to break in to make sure that there wasn’t a “body in the trunk”, because there were some pretty strange elements there, like a woman’s bikini top, men’s work boots, a length of rope, and broken glass. They investigated – remember, after the police told them that it was no big deal – and were arrested shortly thereafter. Surprise! That was a bait car! They were just trying to see who’d break the law if a car with the keys in the ignition and a heap of suspicious attributes was sitting parked in front of their house for a couple weeks!

Anyway, yesterday, all charges were dismissed in the case. The couple in question can go about their lives more-or-less the same as they did before this nonsense occurred – and it is nonsense. The “more or less” comes into play because, despite the dismissal, they do still have to pay attorney’s fees, both for defending the charge and for the expunctions that they’re now seeking in the case. And it’ll be awhile before those charges are actually expunged, so here’s hoping that neither of them need to find a new job or a place to live in the meantime. But at least we know that, if we leave our cars parked with the keys in the ignition in front of a strange house for weeks with broken glass and various items that sure make it look like maybe somebody was killed and their car was dumped, the police will – well, not actually investigate, but they’ll be happy to arrest anyone who enters the vehicle in an attempt to make sure that everything’s okay. What’s inconveniencing a couple of people to the tune of a few thousand dollars in the face of security like that?

Labels: APD, bait cars, expunctions

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We took a little time off from the blog as I tried in vain to learn how to create a Wordpress theme from a Blogger template – a process that requires greater coding skills than I possess – and with that project shelved, we’ll just be using Blogger as our host for the time being. (If anyone reading this knows how to enable RSS on a blog that refuses to offer the option, email me, please.)

Anyway, as we get back in the saddle, we’ll start with a round-up of some of the stories that we missed.

Florida criminal defense attorney Brian Tannebaum put together a thoughtful post on whether or not it’s a good thing for the defense to appear on the news, as it relates to the alleged Letterman extortionist’s attorney. That lawyer opted to show up on the Today show, where his basic argument for his client was, “He was a journalist for 20+ years, so he’s obviously too smart to have done this”. It didn’t exactly wow Matt Lauer or Ann Curry, and the whole thing made his client look like he had no real defense. Which brings up a valid point: Does it benefit you, the attorney, to go on the news, or does it benefit your client? If being on TV helps you, but not your client, you may opt instead to pay for some commercials.

Robert Guest, a defense attorney from Dallas, talks about something I’d found myself discussing with friends in the wake of the Polanski arrest: Why it’s more important that a suspect’s rights aren’t violated when we’re all pretty sure he’s guilty. Guest’s example is Hughen v. State, a case in which a suspect was interrogated after requesting an attorney, because the police insisted that he should sign a form that they assured him wasn’t waiving his rights, which he did. In that case, as in Polanski’s, it seems very likely that the person in question was guilty of the crime with which he was charged. While the issue in Polanski’s case involves ex parte communication between the judge and the prosecutor, the basic issue is the same – defending the rights of people who probably did the thing they’re accused of means that we’re all safer if we’re ever accused. Because if the state can’t make its case without violating a suspect’s rights when they’re right, what do you think they’re going to do when they’re wrong?

I was born in Indiana. I claim Texas as my home state, and I’m proud of it. I’ve never exactly been ashamed of Indiana, but it’s not the coolest place on earth. But here are a pair of stories that explain why shame might be an appropriate thing to feel when discussing the Hoosier State: 1) A grandmother was arrested for purchasing two boxes of pseuphedrine-containing cold medicine in a single week because her grandchildren – triplets – were sick. The state documents who buys these products (like they do most places, since they can be used to make meth) and then arrests those who buy too much in too short a period. 2) The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that “reasonable suspicion”, rather than probable cause, is sufficient for police to take DNA evidence in the form of a cheek swab from a suspect. The post, from the indispensible Simple Justice blog, goes on to detail exactly what we mean when we talk about “slippery slopes”.

There’s also a semi-debate regarding texting-while-driving laws, which Austin is about to pass as a city ordinance. Grits for Breakfast (Central Texas’ finest source of criminal justice commentary) argues that the law is essentially meaningless and an ad campaign detailing the dangers of DWT would be a better use of resources, while Simple Justice finds that tweaking such laws so that a person couldn’t be stopped by police solely on suspicion of DWT would address most of the concerns. The discussion spills into the comments section of Simple Justice, with Grits and SJ both making some fine points. And, since this is a concern that’s likely to play out in Austin streets, it’s worth paying attention to now.

Labels: driving while texting, in the news

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