Point & Glick

Work­ing at the Office of the Pub­lic Defender is incredible.

I’m learn­ing so much about the prac­tice of crim­i­nal law, it’s actu­ally pretty pathetic. I mean, you’d like to imag­ine that after law school and the bar you know some­thing about the real­ity of crim­i­nal law.
Some­thing.
Any­thing at all.

But at least I have the oppor­tu­nity to actu­ally learn. I’ve been prep­ping cases, inter­view­ing clients, tak­ing wit­ness state­ments and sit­ting in court through the daily dock­ets. Once I get sworn in they’re going to give me a case, train­ing me and work­ing with me so I can actu­ally stand in front of a judge and rep­re­sent a client. They’ll grad­u­ally give me more cases as I get more expe­ri­ence and confidence.

This all with me com­ing in one day a week.

Over at the Unwashed Advo­cate (for­merly the “Mil­i­tary Under­dog”), Eric Mayer wrote a list about lessons he has learned in his pri­vate prac­tice.
That got me think­ing about things that I have learned already in my time at the OPD.

This list is by no means com­plete and I mean to update it as my time with the OPD goes on.

• Pre­lim­i­nary Hear­ings are a joke.
• If the client is on the street, there’s a good chance bail will be raised or revoked, so you’re usu­ally bet­ter off waiv­ing it.
• Even if your client is in jail and there’s no bail to lose, the hear­ings have become noth­ing more than a rote cer­e­mony per­formed by the court to ful­fill the require­ment of hav­ing one. As far as I can tell, once the offi­cer has read his report out loud tes­ti­fied, any­thing and every­thing else is no longer relevant.
• To quote House: Every­body lies.
  • Your client lies.
  • The police offi­cers lie.
  • Wit­nesses lie.
• Allow­ing some defen­dants from lock up to sit at their own pre­lim­i­nary hear­ings with their hands cuffed in front of them instead of behind them is a ter­ri­ble secu­rity haz­ard that the Assis­tant State’s Attor­ney and the judge sim­ply can’t risk.

Like I said, I’m sure there’s a lot more I can’t think of now, so I’ll update this as it goes on.

- UPDATE — 12/14/11

Since I am con­stantly learn­ing, it comes as no sur­prise to me that my view of the pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing is pathet­i­cally lim­ited.
Jeff Gamso men­tioned the poten­tial impor­tance of a pre­lim­i­nary hearing:

A pre­lim would pro­vide dis­cov­ery.  It would trap in tran­script today’s ver­sion of the sto­ries told by the wit­nesses.  It would pro­vide mate­r­ial for cross-examination.  That’s no small thing.