This is the time of year when lawyers and businesses, apparently with nothing better to do, feel compelled to clog our email in-boxes with a happy thanksgiving message. It's even worse if they include a picture of a turkey in a Pilgrim's hat.
Let us tell you what does not occur: A family gathered around a Thanksgiving table, about to eat and give Thanks for the Cowboys covering the spread- when someone says "Wait! We cannot start until we checked the email and received the Happy Thanksgiving email from Dewey Cheetum and Howe!"
"Who?"
"Dewey Cheetum and Howe. You know, those lawyers who did our closing and then sued the roofer for us."
"Oh yeah. You're right. It's just not a Thanksgiving until they send us a "Happy Thanksgiving email. I love the turkey dressed up as a Pilgrim."
SO PLEASE. NO HAPPY THANKSGIVING EMAILS. No other happy holiday emails. We do not need your email to celebrate Chanukah, St. Patrick's Day, or Veteran's Day or Boxing Day or Ramadan.
Nobody thinks "Isn't that nice. Retired Judge XYZ sent a nice holiday email. Apparently they have a mediation business opening."
We have enough emails to respond to. We do not need your best wishes. We do not need to know that the "gang at the Florida Filing Portal" is thinking of us on Christmas. They are not thinking of us. They do not even know us. Neither does 99% of the idiots sending us holiday emails.
So just stop it. Do not send that email. We will erase it before we read as will everyone who has half a brain. Granted, Judges sitting in empty courtrooms on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving may spend an enjoyable hour thumbing through emails...but look at your audience.
SO NO HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM YOUR FAVOURITE BLOG
Happy Thanksgiving!!
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteBravo!
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving
ReplyDeleteRumpole. Would like to hear your take on criminal defense attorney Laura Hogue, one of Gregory McMichael's lawyers, who said the following in closing arguments about the decedent:
ReplyDelete"Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails," Hogue told jurors.
There has been nearly universal outrage as to her comment. What say you.
As long as there are juries, there will always be lawyers who appeal to jurors' unsavory aspects and prejudices.
ReplyDeleteIn an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, March 5, 1977, which his biographers include in full, the man who has done more than anyone else to create Singapore explains why he rejected Anglo-American system of trial by jury for his country despite the fact he trained as a lawyer at Cambridge. In his first case he was "was assigned to defend four murderers." Fleeing the Japanese, a Dutch woman had entrusted her daughter to a Malay muslim.
She came back after the war, reclaimed the daughter. The Chief Justice, then an Englishman, pending hearing of the case, sent the girl who had been converted into Islam to a convent to be looked after, and hell broke loose. The police force mutinied. Malays and Muslims took out their knives and a lot of white men, just because they were white, nothing to do with the case, were killed. These four men were accused of killing a Royal Air Force officer and his wife and child. They were travelling on a bus from RAF Changi down to town.
Lee Kuan Yew, who had been assigned the case, explains that he did what any advocate does: He "worked on the weaknesses of the jury -- their biases, their prejudices, their reluctance really to find four Mussulmen [Muslims] guilty of killing in cold blood or in a heat of great passion, religious passion, an RAF officer, his wife and child." And he employed "the simple tricks of advocacy -- contradictions between one witness and another, contradiction between a witness and his previous statement to the police and the preliminary enquiry."
When the jury acquitted the murderers, Lee Kuan Kew reports, "The judge was thoroughly disgusted. I went home feeling quite sick because I knew I'd discharged my duty as required of me, but I knew I had done wrong." He thereupon concluded that no government in which he had a say would employ this foreign, "foolish, completely incongruous system." Pointing out that the French and other Latin nations do not use trial by jury, Lee Kuan Kew argues that it is too "alien" to the basic social attitudes of many other cultures, including those of Asia.
In his Memoirs, Lee adds more detail, but the main points still hold. Thus, it turns out that the young barrister defended four out of fourteen defendants; he brought judge and jury to the scene of the murders at night, demonstrating how difficult recognizing individuals would have been in such conditions; and although "Chinese and Indian jurors were never happy to convict if it meant sending a man to his death," the evidence weighed heavily enough upon their consciences that they did in fact convict nine of the fourteen of "causing grievous hurt," though three of his own clients "got off scot-free" (144). In the Memoirs Lee also explains in more detail why he believed his clients guilty, but the conclusion he drew from this painful experience of the jury system remained the same: "I had no faith in a system that allowed the superstition, ignorance, biases, and prejudices of seven jurymen to determine guilt or innocence" (144).
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/singapore/government/leekuanyew/lky2.html
I did not follow the trial, so can any of the talented criminal defense attorneys on this great blog explain to me the even arguable relevance of that statement? If none, she should be disbarred, period. I am withholding judgment, as someone may point out relevance, but I’m not seeing it. Was there an objection? If so, what did the court do?
ReplyDeleteDisbarred ? I think she was trying to give her client an advantage by pointing out a fact depicted in a crime scene photo that made the victim look unkept. objection sustained not disbarment , snowflake.
DeleteHappy Turkey Day, gRumpy!
ReplyDelete552
ReplyDeleteThe argument was people with long toenails are not joggers. The addition of dirty was entirely superfluous. The argument wouldn't be necessary if the state wasnt pretending he was a jogger, but using the word dirty is, well, a dirty trick. Kinda like when the prosecutor purposely minimized and misstated the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Here is a bit of legal/film/arcane trivia. When was the first mention of the famed law firm Dewey Cheetum and Howe in a film? Answer: The Three Stooges. file:///F:/dewey%20etc.jpg
ReplyDelete9:48, "dirty" was a word from the autopsy report introduced into evidence by the State.
ReplyDelete