Kiddie prison post coming soon . . . and that Duke thing

I took a fascinating tour of three of the state's juvenile institutions last week, and I am working on a nice, long post about it all. The short story is that they weren't as bad as I thought they would be, but still not someplace we should be sending kids except in extreme circumstances. In the meantime, check out David Feige's (of Indefensible) spot-on analysis in Slate of why disgraced Duke prosecutor Mike Nifong's disbarment is a "freakish anomaly" rather than a precedent for the criminal justice system.

Will New Dallas DA Get to the Bottom of Wrongful Convictions?

Wretched of the Earth announces yet another DNA exoneration in Dallas County, bringing the total since 2001 to 12. James Waller was convicted based on the identification of the victim, which, if the article about the case is correct, sounds incredibly shaky, and the type of identification that should have been dismissed by a jury as completely unreliable. Newly sworn-in Dallas DA Craig Watkins has promised not to block requests for DNA testing in future cases (he already agreed to DNA testing in another case, which helped lead to a speedy exoneration) like the previous DA had, and to look into the root causes of the wrongful convictions. I hope he follows through on that promise. It would be great if they did some training with police agencies on proper identification procedures, and backed up that training by not using IDs in court that were the result of improper procedures. That second part may be asking too much, but I'm interested in seeing where he goes with this. In the meantime, his willingness to agree to DNA testing in appropriate cases is a nice change in policy, and one that any DA truly interested in doing justice, and not just in protecting their convictions, would embrace.

Tip for the Prosecutor

Offering my client a deal that involves pleading as charged (to a felony, no less), and a sentence recommendation that is pretty much exactly what the judge would sentence him to if he went to trial and were convicted is not really a plea bargain offer.

The State . . .

You know what has really started to annoy me? When the prosecutor repeatedly refers to herself in the third person as "The State." "The State is very concerned about the respondent's behavior since he has been released from detention." "The State believes the respondent needs to be placed on twelve months probation to ensure that he gets the help he needs." Or, my recent personal favorite, "The State will be on vacation that week, and so is unavailable for trial." Really? The whole State is on vacation that week? Does that mean I don't have to work either? Cool.

Switching Sides

Skelly picks up a discussion that grew out of a law student discussion about getting a public defender internship. In the discussion, one poster said the following:

The head of the Colorado PD's office actually told us at an informational meeting that they view working for the DA as a huge black mark. While he didn't say it would be an automatic disqualification, he did state that there was no PD he knew that could even consider being a prosecutor.

That's just nuts. In my old office in Texas, we had a number of former prosecutors in our office. For two years, I interviewed law students from every law school in the state at the UT Public Interest Law Conference for internships in our office. Trust me when I say that having volunteered or worked at a prosecutor's office was NOT a black mark. It was a plus. Anything that illustrated an interest in criminal law was a plus. The fact is that public defender jobs are not easy to get, especially right out of law school. It is much more feasible to get a prosecutor's job coming straight out of law school--at least it was in Texas, where very few counties even have public defender offices. Also, one of the best, if not THE best way to get criminal trial experience right out of the gate is to go work for a prosecutor's office. That kind of experience, even if it's on the side of the prosecution, is incredibly valuable to a public defender. In my experience as a public defender, I have known plenty of PDs who could never imagine being a prosecutor. Personally, I tend to fall on that side of things, although it's not something I would ever completely rule out. But, the idea that working for a prosecutor should disqualify you from being a public defender is simply ludicrous. A good lawyer is a good lawyer. And if that good lawyer can bring the passion and professionalism to representing the indigent accused that she brought to representing the state, then the indigent accused are better off. That's the way I see it.