Hiatus

The blog is five years old now. It's had a few good years, and a few years of gentle steady decline. It's given me a place to post about representation, depression, transitions, and a few odd obsessions (and post about the kid, dogs and cats). It's made me some excellent new friends and brought me into contact with some quite remarkable lawyers, investigators, law professors and others (if I skipped a link, look for yourself in the blogroll). And now it's time, arbitrarily, capriciously, to give the blog a rest. There were so few public defender blogs back in 2004; it's great to think how many followed, and how many there will be to come. This site will stay up, and maybe it even will be relaunched. Until then, happy trials to you, 'til we meet again.

- "Skelly"

Happy Trails - Roy Rogers

Reclaiming futures, one blog at a time

By request ( and by professional and personal interest ):

Reclaiming Futures Launches Blog Dedicated to Substance Abuse and Teens in the Juvenile Justice System

Reclaiming Futures Every Day is a professionally-staffed blog that aims to keep people informed of the latest happenings in juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment. Launched by Reclaiming Futures, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it can be found at http://blog.reclaimingfutures.org, and is designed to help readers:

* Discuss the national challenge of helping teens break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime.
* Comment on new developments in teen alcohol and drug treatment and juvenile justice reform.
* Stay in touch with what's going on in the 23 communities using the proven Reclaiming Futures approach.
* Receive expert opinions and commentary from regular contributors who are leaders in the field...

Added to the blog roll.

Facebook face

This post from the blog "My day is better than yours" put me in mind of that great p.d. investigator and social network authority, Sancho Villa:

... and do you have a Facebook?

When our office takes a new case, we send our investigator out to the client to... collect the basic info to open up the case - name, address, auto insurance info, and oh yeah, if the client has a Facebook.

(It is worthwhile to point out that when I worked at the Public Defender's office at Juvenile Hall, knowing whether or not our clients there had a Myspace or a Facebook was valuable information to us. Just by looking at their pictures we would find out if our own clients were lying to us...)

Or to their p.o., or to their treatment provider, or to their drug court judge...

I am an aggregator

Nothing to see here, move along.

P.S.: AmbImb introduced me to a term I should have known: tumblelog. Takes all kinds to make a blawgosphere.

"Reporters feed me and let me nap on their coats"

Equal time, from Bob the Cat in Olympia:
A cat's eye view of the statehouse ( Bob's blog via Ridenbaugh Press )

Bonus link: Neko Case - People Got A Lotta Nerve

Me and that train

From the public defender at Preaching to the Choir:

I want off this train

By the time a case gets to me, the train wreck has already happened...

This part of the job is like a scene in Housekeeping, watching the train slide off the railroad bridge into the lake.

Bonus link goes to Patty Larkin singing "Me and That Train."

Rah-rah vs. nah-ah

How to best describe us criminal defense types?

"Turbo" from South Carolina says we're cause lawyers.

"Cynic" in Arizona says we're broken lawyers.

Here's one vote for acknowledging our own brokenness. I'm closer to Arizona, geographically and otherwise.

All hail glorious people's blog of eastside Olympia!

I just met the heroic Stakhanovite behind Oly Ost: Rolandovich looks much different in real life.

Gideon strumpet

Scott at Simple Justice sticks up for the Rodney Dangerfields of the bar:

The Vast Mystery of Public Defenders

There is no mystery surrounding public defenders. The only mystery is how lawyers outside the practice of criminal law have managed not to notice these problems for decades, and how PDs have made Herculean efforts to fill the void we've left for them...

Thank you for that. Speaking as one of these mysterious p.d. strumpets, I hope that everyone with a bar license might read Scott's post.

Bridge to somewhere

From the International Bridges to Justice blog:

Faces of IBJ: ISLP Volunteer Leslie Rosenberg

This September, I took a leave from my job as an assistant state public defender in the Office of the Minnesota State Public Defender to volunteer with IBJ in China...

October Cambodia Training

The IBJ Fellow in Cambodia, Ouk Vandeth, recently conducted a training session for criminal defenders...

New blog: Incorrigible Dicta

Via Mostly Plants, welcome Incorrigible Dicta, with "Platitudes and Diatribes from the Best Defense Money Can’t Buy."

It's a new blog to me at least. With three posts in its first month, it's calling out for more members of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services’ Public Defender Division to become contributors. Any volunteers?

NY: 5 boroughs, one p.d. blog

An addition to the blogroll, from some real "Raising the Bar" p.d.'s:

Five Borough Defense - New York City Public Defenders

How can you tell they're real NYC p.d's? Exhibit A (which does not include my wimpy Idaho-person asterisks):

Another client coming to court every few weeks for a year because some *ssh*le called the cops. Client loses money, promotions. The DA calls at 9pm the night before trial and asks if the client wants an ACD. Client does not want an ACD. Then, on the day of trial, the DA dismisses...

"Circumstances have conspired," but in a good way

Ms. Injustice Anywhere, I'm glad that you're back to blogging.

(and thanks for the birthday greeting, too)

Weekend worriors

Public defender Amb Imb wishes he didn't have to go into the office on weekends, while public defender Ken lays out one danger associated with the practice: going to the restroom and locking yourself out of your office, which happens to contain your wallet, car keys, cell phone, brief case, and badge (parental advisory: Ken says f*ck more than once).

I didn't go in this weekend, but do I have a doctor's note. I'm probably the oldest person around who still gets ear infections; antibiotics are proceeding nicely.

On having been poor

Insight and empathy drawn from personal experience and pain, from Woman of the Law:

Purging

It's taken me almost five years, but I am finally parting with my fat clothes... I still have the anxiety, that if I throw them out I have no safety blanket, I'll have nothing to wear, no way to get new clothing, and I'm just throwing money away. I cling to these things because I can't take those things for granted. I'm always afraid of being poor again...

Don't skip the comments.

Bonus link goes to John Scalzi on being poor.

We accept Blondie, one of us!

Great news from Blonde Justice:

Two weeks from now, I will once again have my dream job. Public defender.

Welcome back, Blonde One.

"Maybe we're all masochists"

Many of us have felt like this, from Eat, Drink & Be Married:

Right now, I'm dealing with an extremely difficult client... But the issue isn't just this one client. It's much more about what this client represents. There's a culture of abuse that most public defenders come to accept. Maybe we're all masochists. Anyway, we get used to having judges, prosecutors, witnesses, and our clients treat us poorly. I don't mean to generalize so broadly, but we make martyrs of ourselves on a fairly regular basis in the name of protecting our clients...

(P)eople who go to law school to change the world are misguided.

Prone to masochism and martyrdom? Check. Went to law school to change the world? Check. Misguided? Check. But hey, I'm still here in the job. Hang in here, colleague. And read some blogs by other p.d.'s, they'll help fight this feeling.

It's not just a job, it's an adventure

Once, my kind were as numerous as the mighty bison and the migratory hippie, and we roamed the courtrooms of this land armed with our "liberalism" and our concern for the "underprivileged." Now the younglings are explaining to me this new path that we trod. From the law student at I Immediately Regret This Decision:

As of 8:30 AM on Monday I will be officially employed. I'm working for a local public defender but I don't know whether to be excited or bummed... What's funny about all this is that I hope to be a prosecutor once I graduate...

... to the guest blogger at Public Defender Dude:

First, to be a PD you have to kind of fall into it. The vast majority of PDs that I know in this day and age in California were not necessarily raised as "liberals" who like helping the "underprivileged," code in my book for minorities. That is something that happened in the sixties and the seventies. Some of those PDs are still around, even in my office. But not many.

No, where I am from the majority of PDs fell into criminal defense because they wanted a job and the PD hired. We have a number of people who wanted to work for the DA but couldn't get hired. We have a number who were civil and got tired of it and came to the PD. As I said, most just sort of fall into it...

... to keep my middle-aged p.d. head from shaking, I'm thinking of all the cool young lawyers who, rather than fall into indigent defense work, strive for it heartily and dive into it enthusiastically. I know they exist - I've worked with many, and hired a few myself. Others I know from reading their blogs.

"Skelly,"
P.D.
(something that happened in 1988)

Deer hunting with Beezus

In a persnickety post a while back, I linked to an article on class by Joe Bageant, a wise man from Winchester, Virginia, who lived for a time in North Idaho (Plummer and Moscow). Today Statcounter told me that I may have had a distinguished visitor:


I hope that it was him. Some of the coolest moments blogging are the chance encounters with admirable people, even in a virtual way.

But I was nowhere near Cleveland!

Now and then, P.D. sightings turn up in unexpected blog places. From the Cleveland Sandwich Board:

...a man in a short-sleeve shirt and tie who looked haggard. I imagined his life as a tired, spent public defender who made his living defending petty criminals and getting beaten up by the prosecutors. He still found the heart to joke with our host, and I liked him for it...