People v. State

I wouldn’t write this blog if part of me didn’t love the law.

But one of the greatest lawyers who’ve ever lived, Lysander Spooner, never “practiced” much law. One of the greatest lawyers alive today, Tony Serra, confessed to his biographer that he regarded “going into law” as for him “a fall from grace.”

I suspect being a lawyer is like being a priest. The priest can repudiate the Church. He can be excommunicated by the Church. But he’s still a priest.

(H/T Matt Brown)

From Lust for Justice, Paulette Frankl’s biography of J. Tony Serra:

“The most vital human force on the face of the Earth,” he says, “is the true believer. It’s naive. It’s simple. It’s non-intellectual. It’s a wholehearted commitment to a cause. It’s what everyone’s afraid of. That’s what I bring into the courtroom.”

Serra’s insistence on swimming against the current on occasion, however, doesn’t translate outside the courtroom, even right outside the door. Considering himself the last of a dying breed, a sociological throwback, often results in estrangement. Wherever he goes, he admits, he feels estranged.

“Existentialism 101,” he says. “Disgorge yourself of everything, and redefine yourself, and ultimately the first level you reach is estrangement. The first level you feel is your alienation. I’ve never overcome that.”

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Strike the Root links today to my recent post on the Presumption of Innocence, which largely consisted of quoting J. Tony Serra on the subject. I wanted to add one thing to Serra’s inspirational words: A recent Gallup poll found that, for the first time since Gallup began asking in 1969, more Americans support legalization of marijuana than oppose it. My view is that, so long as fewer than 92% of Americans (nevermind 50%) have supported the criminalization of marijuana, so long has the criminalization of marijuana been exposed as itself an infamous crime.

If 11 out of 12 jurors in a criminal case vote to convict, only 91.66% of those jurors have voted to convict. We righteously require more than that to overcome the presumption of innocence and convict a person of a crime.

If we the people really believe that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that we are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, then we should presume innocent not only every person but every person’s pursuit of happiness, and it should take a lot more than just a bare majority of self-serving politicians to rebut that presumption and to deem anything anybody does a crime.

My idol Tony Serra is quoted in Lust for Justice as saying to a graduating class of law students:

I believe that the presumption of innocence is a fabulous thing. It’s perhaps the most cherished thing that we have given body to as a culture. Americans don’t really stand for very much. We’ve invented the cowboy movie. We’ve certainly invented a lot of implements of destruction: military airplanes, deadly toxins, and bombs. We jealously guard our atomic weaponry and disallow everyone else to have it. But on the good side, we’ve given concrete form and expression to the concept of presumption of innocence and we’re giving it now to the world. It’s really one of the pillars of a free society. We presume innocence. We make the prosecution prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty. What a fabulous notion!

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Some defense attorneys who have blogs seem to be fans of D.A. Confidential, and revel in their professional cordiality. Me, not so much. Here’s #7 on his Top Eight list of why win/loss tallies are pointless:

7. None of us should be afraid to try the hard cases. Sometimes we have cases where we are convinced the person is guilty, but maybe for evidentiary reasons, we also know it’ll be hard to prove it. The defense knows it, too, so won’t plead. I think sometimes we have to try and convince a jury in those instances, even if the risk of losing is high. It’s simply the right thing to do. And, you know, sometimes when we do that, we win.

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Tony Serra comes closest to hero-status for me, but I take him at his word when he says that he is a deeply flawed human being and that his primary motivation as a criminal defense attorney is the gratification of his own ego.

I’ve been accused of being a Bugliosi groupie. I challenge anyone to actually read And the Sea Will Tell and then tell me that Vincent Bugliosi was not a badass criminal defense attorney. This doesn’t mean he’s a hero of mine that I aspire to emulate. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a former prosecutor to enter the kingdom of heaven, at least until after he’s smoked a turd in Purgatory for every hour of unjust incarceration for which he is responsible. (Both Serra and Gerry Spence are also former prosecutors, by the way.) But I’ve got to respect a guy, perhaps especially a guy primarily famous for being a prosecutor, who has written things like this, this and this. Read those links, and then tell me whose “side” Bugliosi is on.

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Scott Greenfield, in the course of trying to kick the ass of John Regan (aka Strike Lawyer, fka Atticus), opines:

Nuthouses are full of people who believe they are saviors, if only they can nail themselves to a cross. . . .

None is the gravest injustice ever, except perhaps the Holocaust.

In the same post Greenfield references an exchange he had in 2009 with Regan, then commenting under the handle “John R.,” on Greenfield’s blog. Coincidentally, back in 2009 I wrote a post here describing an earlier exchange between Greenfield and the same “John R.” on Greenfield’s blog.

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Or not:

To me, the fundamental truths of anarchism have become blindingly self-evident: The politicians and lawyers who make, interpret and enforce “the laws” are, on average and as a class, less honorable, wise and just than are people in general. The State is designed, not to protect and serve, but to steal from the poor and give to the rich. The State has no moral authority. There is no law other than the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. The State is in its essence an usurper and an imposter. We are morally obligated to obey only those of its “laws” which happen to plagiarize the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, and are morally obligated to disobey those of its “laws” which violate the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.

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