On a related note, Jeff Gamso credits Mike at Crime & Federalism with having the best tag line in the whole blogosphere:

Because everything I was ever told was a lie.

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.

What really pissed “everyone” off, though, is that I cited as interesting, in the course of advancing in the face of impassioned and disdainful resistance the uncontroversial proposition that the role of the criminal defense attorney is to do justice, Bugliosi’s policy as a criminal defense attorney of only representing people he was persuaded were actually innocent. (But see here.) Compare Serra, as quoted in Lust for Justice: “What I’m mostly noted for is taking the impossible cases. Every case I do nowadays is impossible. I win sometimes, I hang more times, but I lose most of the time.”

Between Bugliosi’s and Serra’s criminal defense practices, guess whose I’d think would be more terrifying.

I remain deeply perplexed by the saga of Strike Lawyer / Atticus / John R. / John Regan. When the “Lawyers on Strike” blog appeared, I was as skeptical as anyone towards its stated idea “to function as a clearing house of the most egregious and harmful judicial abuses and select specific instances, and judges, for a targeted boycott – a strike – by attorneys,” and was surprised when level heads like Jeff Gamso’s actually appeared to take it seriously, although I later noted that if you actually Google “Lawyers on Strike” you’ll see that the concept itself is hardly unheard of. Frankly, I wondered whether the author of the blog, who went by Atticus then, was himself really serious, or whether the concept of his blog was some kind of clever stunt. I wondered this especially because Atticus seemed quite lucid and rational, and not at all nuts. (He was, for example, apparently the only blawger in the whole so-called practical blawgosphere besides myself who understood that the role of the criminal defense attorney is to do justice.) On the other hand, as he himself very recently observed: “the problem with a madman is not that he is illogical; it’s that he is only logical. It’s logical to frantically brush off the giant spider; the problem is there is no giant spider.”

At least a couple bloggers apparently have an irrationally low opinion of “John R.,” Atticus’ past incarnation as a commenter on Scott Greenfield’s blog. I couldn’t disagree more. That of course doesn’t mean I think he was always right. In one exchange he appeared to defend “rat-lawyers” (which is admittedly hardly an unorthodox position), and this comment he left as Atticus on my blog in retrospect seems consistent with that. On the other hand, there was this exchange between John R. and Greenfield, which in my opinion John R. clearly “won” (without even trying) and which concluded with Greenfield writing: “The fact is that my quibble with you is around the edges, not the core.  Your problem is that you care, and life is never easy for anyone who cares.”

I strongly suspected Atticus was John R. long before Atticus revealed himself as John M. Regan Jr. (JMRJ). My reaction to this revelation and to JMRJ’s story was similar to my initial reaction to the appearance of the “Lawyers on Strike” blog itself: I thought, this is nuts, but the guy telling this story is lucid as hell. The broad outline of the story didn’t make much sense, and I said as much in a comment on his blog, but JMRJ promised to explain everything, and began to fulfill that promise in a series of very interesting and cogent posts. Now it appears that “some attorneys” whose opinions JMRJ respects have raised some concerns about him telling the story, and he has halted further posts pending resolution of their concerns. This is exceedingly strange, since JMRJ, who apparently represented the client at the center of this story until at least 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of habeas corpus he filed on her behalf, wrote an article about the case back in 2007 that names names and is available online, and since if you Google the client’s name the very first item that comes up are the comments on a 2006 local news story, which includes comments like this.

I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that JMRJ is, like Tony Serra, like all of us, a “deeply flawed” human being. I wouldn’t even be terribly shocked to learn that something in his mind has snapped, and that he is frantically brushing off a giant spider when there is no giant spider. (For that matter, I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if I lost my mind.) I’m of course giving him every benefit of the doubt on that score, at least until he’s had the opportunity to finish his story, although at this point I don’t know whether he’ll ever have that opportunity. As Mike at Crime & Federalism wrote: “Strike Lawyer is a credible, thoughtful guy. I’m inclined to presumptively take him at his word.” Regardless, I will consider JMRJ a friend and a kindred soul. I have no heroes.

Then, Scott Greenfield tried to kick John Regan’s ass and “revealed” that John Regan was also commenter “John R.”.

Then, Bennett updated his post to write of John Regan that “it might be better for the criminal-justice system if he stays in Canada.” Bennett’s reversal of his reversal was based on the following comment left by John R. at Greenfield’s blog in 2010, which both Greenfield and Bennett at the time adjudged “scary bad”:

In my opinion there’s only one way to reliably win for a criminal defendant at trial: you have some evidence that is devastating to the prosecution’s case, you disguise it so that neither the judge nor the prosecutor knows what its significance is, you get it into evidence on some other ground, and you don’t say another word about it until you close.

I tried to leave a comment on Bennett’s post countering what seemed to me an unfair assessment of John R.’s 2010 comment, in which I repeated something I wrote here about Vincent Bugliosi’s account of his successful defense of a client charged with aiding and abetting her lover in the murder of another couple on a deserted atoll in the Pacific in 1974:

What was especially noteworthy [about the closing argument] were some very compelling inferences from the evidence Bugliosi drew for the jury, inferences which had not occurred to me despite my familiarity with the evidence from the first part of the book. In that important sense the closing argument presented a “surprise ending” in line with the best detective stories. Something that was staring you in the face all along is finally revealed in its true significance.

Bennett deleted my comment like a little bitch. After I told him to fuck off, he wrote: “Excellent. Nutjobs of the world unite. You have nothing to lose.” If I’m not mistaken, Bennett is calling me a loser. He’s saying that, in contrast to him, a rich man with everything to lose, I have nothing and am nothing. I take that as a compliment.

On a lighter note, Mike at Crime & Federalism has a post up today quoting Benjamin Franklin on the Socratic Method:

While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood’s), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur’d Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method.

I was charm’d with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis’d it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.

I continu’d this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.

This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag’d in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.

If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix’d in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire.

I commented: “The so-called blawgosphere would be a bigger place if its denizens took Franklin’s thoughts on the Socratic Method to heart.”

The conviction remains a total outrage, although I’ll wager the young men who were wrongfully convicted are pleased that their lawyers didn’t go on strike.

I commented in response:

Do I detect a hint of reversal in attitude toward Strike Lawyer? I note that with respect to the particular case at issue Strike Lawyer has done the very opposite of go on strike. If there is criticism to be made of him, it’s for not letting the case go, for not accepting the “finality” valued by the criminal justice system, for looking to extra-judicial avenues of appeal that from my perspective would seem to have absolutely no prospect of practical success (but I don’t know the whole story). Now, with respect to the criminal justice system, with respect to taking on and fighting other cases, with respect to his profession as a lawyer, he may well have said to hell with it, but that’s his prerogative. There is a logic to it. There is a logic to being unable to accept and abide certain injustices, although this inability may be peculiarly strong in certain human beings. And once one recognizes this about oneself, recognizes that one case can kill you, recognizes that you are the type of person who will go down with the ship, recognizes that whether one is killed depends entirely upon the judgment of judges one doesn’t trust or respect, it may become logical to leave other battles to more detached souls.