IT'S ALWAYS THE COVERUP THAT GETS YOU

Before we begin, we note we removed the entertaining and informative post on the recent Supreme Court case about Native American tribal lands and jurisdiction. We have no inclination to read the opinion (there goes an hour we will never get back) but we thought many readers would benefit by the excellent analysis of the opinion in an email that was sent to us. 

Much like Groucho Marx (if you say "who?" please stop reading the blog and go to Instagram or tweetbook or wherever millennials post selfies) we choose to not join a club that would accept us as a member. We are too misanthropic to participate in annual awards dinners ("The Best Continuance Award for 2020 goes to...Sheila Smith, Public Defenders for her ninth continuance on a disorderly intox case"....etc); too cheap to pay dues; and too egotistical to care about what others think or are doing ("If anyone has a motion for substitution of counsel in Paco, County, could you please send me a copy?"...etc). But from time to time various members of these clubs  forward us emails and this seemed like a good one to use. However, we did not have permission and it was authored and sent for review amongst members only, and since we are nothing if not warriors for property and intellectual property rights, we removed it.  You will just have to read the opinion like the rest of us mopes. 

THE COVERUP
We all know Nixon didn't resign because of Watergate. He resigned because of the coverup. (If you do not know who Nixon is, or what Watergate was, please stop reading the blog and go to Instagram or tweetbook or wherever millennials post selfies). 
For all he did wrong, Al Capone was only convicted of tax evasion. 

Thus it is troubling to see the negative press in the NY Daily News, Miami Herald (you may need a subscription. Spend ten bucks and help Ovalle get a raise) , and ESPN about witnesses to two NFL players accused of robbery being paid off in a local lawyer's office.

NBC reports The Florida Bar (motto: "We're gonna get you sucker") is now investigating the lawyer. All sorts of digital evidence we know nothing about like DMs, Instacart, and video recordings apparently support the payoff  (video recordings-that's evidence we understand ever since a Ukrainian born clothing manufacturer named Abraham Zapruder recorded the Kennedy assassination. If you don't know those names or the event, please see above as to what to do blog-wise). 

We presume our colleague innocent, as we presume the players innocent. 

Let's assume the entirely plausible scenario that the clients/players/defendants schemed to pay off the witnesses at the lawyer's office and the lawyer knew nothing about it. Our question for our loyal readers to ponder is how do you as lawyers protect yourselves from unscrupulous clients? 

This is a funny story that is true. We had a client who was Jamaican who was in pretrial custody for a murder. We were in his brother's place of business in Broward (yuck) before seeing the client in the Broward Jail (double yuck). The brother asked us to tell his brother he had "a big grouper" he had recently caught ready for him when he was released (we had an Arthur Hearing pending). We politely responded we would do no such thing. We thought this was code talk for a large drug deal, and as it stands we are already  unwelcome in Broward. We had no desire to make it worse. The gentleman looked at us askew. He asked why we refused,  and we vaguely responded we don't mention "fish" to clients in custody. "It is not proper for a lawyer to do" we said. The gentleman got up and motioned for us to follow. We walked into the garage and he opened a large cooler. There were no kilos of cocaine. There were no bales of marijuana. There was a delicious looking 25 pound black grouper on ice. 

The moral of the story as Freud famously said: "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." (And if you do not know who Freud is...). 
Also the client was found NG at trial.