Confidence to Defend

A lesson of this summer: It takes a lot of confidence to be a public defender. Very often, the odds are against you and you're going to lose. Sometimes your client is actually guilty, sometimes your client will have confessed whether he/she was guilty or not, sometimes the evidence will be so stacked against you that your client's guilt or innocence appears irrelevant. And at all times the state has a formidable array of resources amassed against you — primarily the police with their investigative authority thinking they work for the prosecutors, and the prosecutors themselves, who may have significant advantages via the laws of discovery in your jurisdiction, via their cozy relationship with the police and w/certain judges, and just through the supposed moral force of "representing the interests of the state." If you're a defender, these are the main forces against which you must struggle every day. And that struggle is not done quietly in your office, or via briefs and motions you have the time to write at your liesure. Some of your work will be there, but a great part of your work will be going to court every single day, facing the police, the prosecutors, the judges, complaining witnesses -- all of them (except, theoretically, the judge) there for one reason and one reason alone: To tell you you're just plain wrong. There you stand, just you and your client (and if you're lucky, a witness or two willing to testify on behalf of your client), and your job is to convince a judge or jury that regardless of what all these people are saying, your client should not be punished (or, in some cases, should be punished very little).

If you don't have a lot of confidence in yourself, in your knowledge of the law, in your role as a public defender -- if your confidence in any of these weakens or fails, you will be toast.

Posted 06:43 AM | Comments (4) | 1L summer

The Book I Am?

You're Watership Down! by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

[link via Half-Cocked; see also Buzzwords, aka The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.]

Posted 05:54 AM | Comments (5) | life generally meta-blogging