Fire, Gideon, Nelson and fed judgeship

Broke my left hand, so it’s been a while.

Fire sale at the SAO?

That’s what some lawyers are saying – except in Rapp and Colbath where the caseloads are the highest.  Now that Michael is gone, there seems to be less fear.  Some PDs in felony have over 150 cases each.  Wow.

The Gideon reception was a success.

This year’s honoree was an author/lawyer/professor.  She spoke about her book Ordinary Injustice.

“One of the most powerful and important books on the law published in 2009…”.

—National Law Journal

Here is the public defender who pleads most of his clients guilty with scant knowledge about their circumstances; the judge who sets outrageous bail for negligible crimes; the prosecutor who habitually declines to pursue significant cases; the court that works together to achieve a wrongful conviction. Amy Bach goes beyond the usual explanations of bad apples and meager funding to reveal a clubby legal culture of compromise. She exposes an assembly-line approach to justice that rewards mediocre advocacy, bypasses due process, and shortchanges both defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving. It is time, Bach argues, to institute a new method of checks and balances that will make injustice visible—the first and necessary step to reform.

Judge Nelson Bailey honored by PBACDL

It will be at Morton’s, 5:30, April 19th.  Judge Bailey is responsible for how jury pools are picked in Florida.  That’s right.  From driver’s licenses, not voter’s registration.  I heard he was quite the trial lawyer in his day.  He started the first black/white law firm in Florida with Rendell Brown.  He is also a great storyteller.