Thanks to Skelly, I found this post at TechNomadic Packratt. David, the Packratt, was the victim of the joys of how our system treats its own. It rocked him to his core, as did the follow-up. He has good reason to be angry about it, and angry he is.
Assuming every word he writes it true, and I have no reason to doubt that it’s so, he brings a reminder to the table that he was one of them until he suffered personally. This is how it usually happens, but then it happens to you, everything changes.
The writing was always on the wall. It was there for you to see with a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand others, but it didn’t matter until it was you. Packratt is angry now because he cannot find an attorney willing to sue the Seattle police, prosecutors and public defenders who did this to him. He is angry with Skelly because the only thing Skelly gained from Packratt’s experience was the phrase, “legal hobbyists.” Skelly’s link had to do with Packratt’s intended suit against his public defenders, another rant against PDs because they can’t do the job that a private attorney can do when they carry 200 cases at a time.
Packratt, on a second blog, Guilty Until Proven Innocent, narrates his effort and failure to find an attorney willing to take his case pro bono. While non-lawyer commenters presume to point him toward the ACLU (which won’t take let him past the secretary) to bar associations to the assumptive position that “somebody should,” Packratt explains that no one would.
No attorney will represent him against the myriad of wrongdoers without being paid. Either no one explains, or he was unable to appreciate, that the ACLU represents ideas and positions, not particularized victims for personal compensation. And surprisingly, there is no attorney who simply floats around the country taking on the cause of individuals harmed as a matter of principle listed in the phone book.
You might think that my purpose here is to explain why Packratt is wrong or misguided. While there is much askew in his vision of what went wrong here, not to mention to grand irony that he would have never read his own blog had he not lived the experience. There is no explaining away this anomaly, as it is precisely why he cannot find justice, whether his version or otherwise. Everything changes when it happens to you, Packratt. But it only changes for you, not for everyone else.
As for attorneys, we see it daily. It angers us, and we wish we could cure these ills, but we also realize that it is an ongoing, constant fight. Each individual’s situation does not become the central focus of our lives, to the exclusion of the hundred others in the same circumstances. Packratt’s job is to write technical white papers, and I assume that you enjoy a paycheck for doing so. Yet you begrudge attorney for not taking on your situation pro bono?
The sad truth is that you are one of the many, and based on what I’ve read on your blog, your approach would scare off any lawyer who might be inclined to consider taking on your case, whether pro bono or for a reduced fee. You are dogmatic. We are practical. You have lived an injustice. There are a million injustices, and you are one of them.
But Packratt is absolutely right. There should be a way for someone who had experienced victimization at the hands of the police to achieve redress. The legal system, with attorneys expecting to be paid, is not a good method for accomplishing this. People in Packratt’s situation have nowhere to turn. The mistaken fingers pointed at the ACLU are just wrong. People who know nothing often make poor suggestions, which just seem to exacerbate the frustration. There should be a place for Packratt to go for vindication of his rights without expense to him.
But if there was, it too would be deluged with the thousand of angry, frustrated people who belief that their rights have been trampled, and that they, and they alone, have suffered the most egregious injury ever. Packratt, I am not belittling what happened to you. I am trying to give you some context to appreciate that everyone who has suffered like you believes that theirs is so horrific as to demand the attention of the world, rather than just another example of the nightmare of our government, police and legal system. This really doesn’t express my point well, but I’m trying. As I say, there should be a better way for you.
In a particularly good case, with a helpful and appropriate plaintiff, there are lawyers who will take the case on a contingent fee with only expenses paid up front. Why Packratt cannot find such an attorney I do not know. But this has been a huge learning experience for him, and he has already suffered a great deal by the dissembling of his secure world. It was good that the criminal charges against him were dismissed. I hope that he can find an attorney to represent him in an action against the appropriate parties.
It would likely help if he steps back and stops demanding that others feel what he felt, and join in his anger and outrage that there is a wide world out there that bears no resemblance to the one he was comfortable in before this happened. Remember, everything changes when it happens to you, Packratt.
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Thank you for the advice, I appreciate the spirit in which you wrote it.
It is always the responsibility of the speaker (or writer) to communicate the intent of the message clearly, and obviously I have failed in that.
When I try to explain my situation I also try to explain why it should be important to others, even when they think such things will not happen to them.
Also, and again where I’ve failed to communicate it clearly at all times, I never intended for anyone not to earn their livelihoods… indeed I paid my defense lawyer in full and truly appreciate that he worked with us to allow us to do so… and I’m still paying it off, which I don’t regret either.
But, it is the unfortunate fact that I am still paying off that debt and have suffered some reduction in work because of what happened that I find myself unable to pay a lawyer up front… I wish I could and would gladly if I could.
…and as for myself, the reason I started Injustice In Seattle and Guilty Until Proven Innocent was not for me, but for others who suffer similar fates. So too would I offer any assistance I could in anyone else’s efforts to redress injustice and prevent further injustice, whether that be joining an ACLU class-action, providing testimony, or just giving people a voice via my blogs.
As you say, I am just a technical writer, so what I can do and what voice I have is a small one in this world, as are the injustices done to me are insignificant in the world scheme. But I wish to do what I can and without others to help me find ways in which to do something, I do what I know.
I am sorry that what I know is such a small thing and seemingly lost in translation… indeed I am not angry at Skelly, but merely wanted to explain why I am not a legal hobbyist by choice and did not decide to pursue my case just to give people headaches.
…nor am I angry at you for your perception of my intent, I am upset with myself for not being clear enough about it.
Thank you for showing me how others are perceiving what I say.
It’s likely that you will misapprehend whatever is written, because you won’t be in a position of realizing that you are not insignificant, but you are also not alone. When I read what happened to you, I felt the horror of it all, from the kick in your face when the police first arrives to standing there naked, bleeding and being treated like a subhuman from the very people you believed were there to protect you.
Please try to understand this. What happened to you does matter. You are not alone. This is not a quirk of the Seattle Police. This is the system that you, prior to your experience, and most people, because they have never had the experience, have created, supported, defended and loved in the belief that it will be there for you when you need it, and that the only poor suckers who will suffer a fate like yours somehow deserve it. Only when people appreciate the fact that it can and does happen to normal people will they care that it happens at all.
We fight this everyday. Criminal defense lawyers are hated for what they do and who they represent. The system is designed to make us as useless to the protection of individual as possible, while giving it plausible deniability so that they can pretend to be fair for the consumption of the taxing public.
This is what we deal with, except it’s not just you but thousands of people everyday. Injustice is a matter of who you are and what you know. It is not that you are insignificant, and when you write that you demonstrate a misapprehension. You are significant. You are just not unique. And we don’t have a way to cure the disease for everyone who suffers from it, but we keep trying to enlighten the world to the best of our abilities.
As for your situation, I hope someone in Seattle reads this post and feels that he or she can take on your case on a contingent fee so that you can have a lawyer to represent you. You should have a lawyer, and we should have a better system that can accommodate you. It is not your fault that you were treated this way, and there truly should be a means of viable redress. I posted about to highlight what happened, in part to bring some more attention to your situation and in part to put it in the context of the larger picture.
I hope that you receive vindication of your rights and for your suffering. Your story brought me great pain, and reminded me how much we have left to do to fulfill the empty platitudes that people spout to pretend that things like this never happen.
Thank you for the kind words, and I also mean it when I also thank you for the needed criticism. I tend to get too drawn into my own struggle and neglect to focus on the struggles of so many others.
And… I think it’s important for me to say that I do appreciate what defense attorneys have to do and how difficult a line of work it must be. Indeed, I cannot even express how greatful I am to my defense attorney and how much I respect him. I mention him in a previous post here: http://packratt.blogspot.com/2007/12/year-of-thanks.html
In any case… Thank you for your kind words and for your honesty, I really do appreciate it.
“Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere”
Martin Luther King understood.
“Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere”
Martin Luther King understood.