Reading Scott Greenfield’s indispensible Simple Justice blog this morning, like I do every morning, I saw his post on the new DWI law passed at warp speed by the New York legislature, which makes DWI with a minor 15 years old or younger in the car an automatic felony with no possibility for reduction. The original story ran on Gothamist (full disclosure: I’m an editor for Gothamist's Austin-based site, Austinist) and boy, the comments there – as per usual for comments on the Internet in response to just about anything – are pretty frustrating, full of strident comments from people who only half-understand what they’ve just read.

To be certain, driving while intoxicated is very serious. The casual attitude around the legal blogosphere (I can’t bring myself to spell it “blawgosphere”) that sometimes accompanies it is something I’ve struggled with in the past. But the self-righteous stridency with which it’s condemned has always struck me as the gentlemen doth protesting too much. DWI cases, so often, aren’t clear-cut situations in which someone is totally wasted and opted to get behind the wheel anyway. So many of them are situations in which a driver who’s well under the legal limit is driving, stopped for any of a zillion reasons that have nothing to do with the beer he had with dinner, and arrested because the officer smelled alcohol on his breath. It’s not a crime to drive with the smell of alcohol on your breath, but now – if there’s a kid in the car – it’s going to see everyone arrested for it facing down a felony, with the ability of judges and prosecutors to use their discretion removed.

And all of those people in the comments who are celebrating the lighting-quick passage of this legislation – I’m willing to bet if any of them were arrested, they’d miss the ability of the courts to use discretion in their cases more than they’d suffer from the occasional person who’s actually guilty of DWI being charged with a misdemeanor when they really, really want a felony.

Labels: dwi, internet commenters, mandates, simple justice

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

Last month the Travis County District Attorney’s office dismissed all charges against Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen – the defendants in the yogurt shop murders. What an extraordinary outcome. I can only imagine how those two must feel. It’s also hard to imagine how the attorneys must feel after such a struggle with so much at stake.

There are challenges that occur in our lives that define who we are, for better or for worse, and this was certainly a huge challenge for the attorneys involved. I spoke with my close friend, Carlos Garcia, over the weekend and he told me about the experience.

Carlos was lead counsel on Michael Scott’s trial team. For the past two years he has worked on that case to the almost complete exclusion of everything else. Both his law practice and his personal life have suffered. At one point he told me he felt like he had missed two years of his youngest daughter’s life. As he put it, “I would often work at the office until 7:00 PM or so and then go home where I’d work until 1:00 AM. Some evenings my only contact with Samantha was having her in my lap while I reached around and worked on my computer.”

Carlos’ focus on Michael Scott resulted in his law practice being supported almost entirely by his partner, Nicole True. Nicole handled all new cases and well as their 100 plus existing cases. The financial burden became extreme as cash flow diminished.

There was an emotional toll, and not one that you would necessarily expect. Keeping all the attorneys involved in the case working in an effective fashion proved difficult. There was disagreement regarding strategy and how to proceed at times. There was discord and in-fighting. And there was unethical behavior to the point of a grievance being filed against one of the attorneys on the trial team.

When it comes to our legal system and how it is designed to work, it doesn’t matter whether you believe that the defendant’s were guilty or innocent. What matters is that both sides were zealously represented and treated correctly in a court of law. What matters is that someone has the intestinal fortitude to step up to a challenging situation and not back down when things become difficult…so, kudos to you Carlos for doing your job in spite of all the obstacles and hardship. You definitely stepped up to the challenge. You make all of us that practice criminal defense look good and I’m proud to call you my friend.

posted by Dal   permalink   0 Comments

The Ann Arbor Chronicle has been running a serialized memoir from a man who spent a few months incarcerated in the Washtenaw County Jail in Michigan. It’s pretty compelling stuff, and definitely worth reading if you’re curious what the experience is like. It doesn’t speak for everyone, and the Washtenaw experience sounds a bit different from what the Travis County one is like, from what I know, but it’s still a decent resource regarding what to expect in jail, some tips on behavior, and fostering maybe a bit of compassion.

(To that end, as is often true on the Internet, avoid the Comments section, which is full of the standard “anything that happens to a person in jail is totally justified because they’re the ones who got themselves put in there” – which is especially egregious in this case, because the anonymous author was detained awaiting trial, not actually convicted of anything.)

Labels: jail

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments