TUESDAY MEANS LINES

UPDATE BELOW: ASA David Ranck replies to the opinion and his conduct in Chapinoff.

Once again we come to work on a Tuesday with a Monday off. And once again our clients will be faced with inhumanely long lines. Nothing turns people off to the court system then the perception that it is an unwieldily bureaucracy plagued with long lines,  and staffed by clerks who do their utmost to frustrate you. 

Access to our court system must mean at a minimum the ability to get into the damn building. 

We know that Judges Slom and Blake have worked to "slake" this problem. (get it? Slom + Blake =Slake.)

But something tells us that if all the Judges who work in the REGJB  had to wait in the same line with the  rest of our citizens, that something more would be done. Perhaps the Judges would get serious about not scheduling the regular number of cases for trial on a week that starts with a Tuesday instead of a Monday.  If they had to wait an hour or more to just get into the building, we think, and call us crazy if you wish, but we think something more would be done to address this problem. 

ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S QUIZ:

1) Nixon; 2) Carter; 3) Reagan; 4) Bush (41);  5) Bush (43); 

6) Clinton.

DAVID RANCK ADDRESSES THE DECISION IN CHAPINOFF:

We received this email:

What I said in the Chapinoff trial was wrong and I am accountable for it. As a prosecutor who enforces consequences on those who have done wrong I accept those consequences when I have done wrong myself. Accountability is key in our system of justice and it applies to all of us, the president of the country, appellate court justices, circuit court judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and defendants. The opinion was of course personally humiliating. That's a consequence. But more so, I let so many people down: my colleagues both in my office and in the defense bar who have been so supportive of me in the past, and the standards of my profession. Most of all I let down the police officers who worked so hard on the case and the family of the victim because my wrong-doing has been deemed the principal reason that a convicted murderer is now free, forever. That, obviously, is the most important consequence.

Everyone who has written or spoken to me about the opinion has asked me "what the whole story is." Under the applicable system of accountability the only story deemed relevant is that written in the opinion.