COMPLETE, COMMON, AND UNUSUAL

Here is an updated Herald Obit on Judge Deehl, which includes an in depth look at the Judge's life- from the battle of Okinawa, to being offered the head of capital crimes by newly elected State Attorney Richard Gerstein, to putting Muhammad Ali in jail in 1968 for a few days for DWLS. 
We wrote the post below Sunday for publication Monday but then delayed it a day upon learning of Judge Deehl's passing. That's why some of the language seems a bit off. 


Start you day and week off right and follow this link and stop reading our blog and read Roy Black's blog post entitled "Criminal Law: Quo Vadis." If that doesn't energize you to try a case this week and tell the prosecutor and the cops to shove it, nothing will. 
What Roy wrote is just too good not to repeat (steal, copy, etc):

Criminal lawyers should be like Raymond Chandler’s private detective:

“…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world…. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.”

Speaking of telling a prosecutor and the cops to "shove it" the oral argument for Alex Michaels at the 3rd DCA is this Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 9:00 am. Good seats may still be had. When we last left Alex, the 3rd DCA had ordered him released from a 2 day jail sentence imposed by Judge Miranda (who we criticized for not setting an appellate bond in her order holding Alex in contempt).  

In Roy Black's blog post Quo Vadis, he wrote this on Lee Bailey's reinstatement as a lawyer by the Maine Bar:

F. Lee Bailey, on his 80th birthday, was re-admitted to practice in the state of Maine. I called to congratulate him and found out he already has a criminal case set for trial. Bailey is a grizzled old-school criminal lawyer: Brilliant yet deeply flawed, his private life a shambles, always short of money no matter how high the fees, and anathema to the organized bar which tried to destroy him. But phoenix-like he has arisen.

And earlier in his post Roy Black wrote:

Have we forgotten why we got into this business: Fighting for people; Defending Rights; Willing to battle no matter the odds? Where will the Don Quixotes come from? The disruptors, the agitators, the mavericks? Is this the death of the independent criminal lawyer willing to take on all-comers? 

Isn't that the best of Alex Michaels? A disruptor; an agitator; a maverick? Shouldn't we be doing a little more disrupting, and spend a little less time ruminating on guidelines and motions for dowardward variances based on cooperation? You can fight the system and fight for your client without telling the prosecutor, in English or Romanian,  "FU". 

This is a short week, with many judges and lawyers on vacation, and everyone else knocking off early Wednesday and taking Friday off with Thursday being July 4. One of Rumpole's rules of practice is to never set a case for trial for the first week of a new year because you run into judges and prosecutors who have set resolutions to try more cases and issue longer sentences. 

Maybe we as defense attorneys can have a Fourth of July resolution: to remember that we chose this profession to fight for clients, not to back down from judges, prosecutors, or law enforcement officers and that without us, the system doesn't work because counterintuitively it runs too smoothly. The system was not designed to run smoothly. Our system was designed for the Alex Michaels and Lee Baileys of the world to muck things up, challenge preconceived notions, and to go war against all odds. 

So what are you going to do to shake things up? 

See You In Court.