Shem Walker was a good son.  He would visit his mother, Lydia, every weekend and keep an eye on a property she owned in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.  When he came across a bum on the stoop, he told him to get lost.  Then he was shot twice in the chest and died.

Sometimes, undercover officers dress like bums.  Sometimes, they position themselves on private property, such as stoops, where they can have a comfortable seat with a good line of sight at their target.  But never do they want someone bothering them in the middle of a buy and bust.

The official police response was the undercover identified himself to Walker, but Walker chose to struggle with the officer. 

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City police say a man who told an undercover officer to get off his family’s stoop punched the officer and got into a struggle over the officer’s gun before being shot dead.

Police say Shem Walker grabbed the officer’s gun Saturday night after hitting him on the head.

Police spokesman Paul Browne says other officers heard the undercover officer or a plainclothes colleague identify themselves.

It quickly emerged that Mr. Walker had been convicted of making drug sales in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and was released from prison in 2007. There is, inevitably, more.

In 1999, when the family was living in Wilkes-Barre, Mr. Walker was selling drugs. A mailman introduced him to a buyer who turned out to be an undercover investigator, and Mr. Walker sold him cocaine and marijuana.

The case was still unresolved in the fall of 2001. “Shem became enraged by what happened on 9/11,” said Mr. Collins, a nurse in Harrisburg. “He decided to re-enlist with the Pennsylvania National Guard.”

The 1999 drug case, delayed by Mr. Walker’s military service, remained open until 2004, when he was convicted. At sentencing, he reminded the judge that the offense had occurred five years earlier. “I’m a changed person,” he said, according to The Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre. The judge was quoted as saying: “I don’t care if it happened 100 years ago. It makes no difference to me.”

Even though it was below the fold, it still made the front page of the New York Times.  And even though it was about college admissions, the details were eerily familiar.  The story opened with a fashion show about what kids should wear to their college admissions interview.

“When you say things like, ‘We know the secrets of getting in,’ it kind of implies that it’s not the student’s ability,” said Mark H. Sklarow, executive director of the association, in Fairfax, Va. “It suggests that there’s some kind of underground code.”

It is not uncommon for other counselors to exaggerate their backgrounds. Ivy Success, in Garden City, N.Y., which charges some clients nearly $30,000, says on its Web site that its counselors have “years of experience as admissions officers to help you gain an edge in this competitive and uncertain process.”

Victoria Hsiao, a partner in Ivy Success, said in an interview that she had worked as an admissions officer at Cornell for several years in “the late 1990s.” But Jason Locke, the director of undergraduate admissions at the university, said there was no record, or memory, of Ms. Hsiao doing such work. (Mr. Locke did confirm that she graduated from Cornell in 1996.)

[Hsiao] also said a partner, Robert Shaw, had been an admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania. Asked about this in an e-mail message, Mr. Shaw said he had been only “an assistant,” from 1987 to 1988.

“Don’t remember all the details,” he said, adding, “We really don’t want to be a part of your article as we’re not a service for the masses.”

During the discussion about the pending investigation of the actions of corporate officers and high level executives, my potential client informed me that the corporation would indemnify him for his legal fees.  The alarm went off.  While this is great for the client, who won’t be required to foot the cost of what would be an expensive, drawn out matter, it puts the lawyer into an awkward and unpleasant situation: corporate cog.

Many corporations have the means of circumventing the normal corporate process when it comes to professional services rendered to its officers and executives.  Some don’t.  The issues isn’t who we represent, and it’s made clear from the outset that we are personal counsel to the individual client, but that we thrust into the corporate world of vendor.  Be prepared to have to deal in the world of back office clerks, each with their own checklist of corporate requirements, none of whom care a whit about the fact that their entire world could implode at any moment.  It won’t move them an inch.

Three weeks and quite a few hours of my time were lost to playing footsie with clerks of varying intelligence and suffering from massive delusions.  An affirmative statement on Monday that everything was done and a check would be overnighted for receipt the next morning turned into a definitive assertion the next day that they only required 3 more forms to be filled out and they would assure that payment would be sent a week from Tuesday.  It’s as if nothing they said the day before ever happened.  And call them on it and they cover their butts like nobody’s business.  You can’t win an argument of reason with a clerk.  We don’t share the same reality.

As top executives sent emails demanding, then begging, that we get off the dime and commence cooperating with the various internal and external investigations, the clerks dragged their feet.  Do not set a fee based upon the work needed to represent the client; set a fee based upon the time wasted in dealing with clerks, or they will suck you dry.  For those criminal defense lawyers who have never billed hourly, and for those who proclaim the hourly fee is dead, this is time that bears no causal connection with any service required nor can be avoided.  As the corporate clerks demand your obedience, then only be exacting an hourly tribute can you survive. 

As I continued to receive emails from corporate executives and counsel requesting that I make myself available to them and stop delaying the progress of their efforts, I would calmly respond that no movement would happen until they, the Corporation, covered the retainer.  They would then shoot off emails down the food chain, demanding that they get things rolling.  Toward the bottom of the ladder, supervisors would respond that they were doing everything possible, shifting blame in every direction but their own.  It serves no purpose to question whether they were unmitigated liars, incompetents or psychopaths.  They weren’t going to lift a finger until they put a check mark next to every line on their grocery list, and each mark came only after the screwed up once or twice per line. 

Then again, I wasn’t going to lift a finger until the check arrived.  No, I don’t love the corporation.  No, I don’t care at all about their needs or procedures.  No, I don’t “trust” them.  If the powers in the corporation want to play pass the buck while the corporation burns, it’s no skin off my nose.  They are merely the entity funding the representation of my client.  As I succinctly explained to the grocery clerks, when told what I “must” do, I don’t work for the corporation. I don’t have to do anything, and they still have to indemnify my client because their Board of Directors said so. 

Of course, this was of no consequence when they insisted that a form had to be signed in red crayon instead of blue, even though they told you blue yesterday.  Yes, this was the nature of their very important demands.  That, for criminal defense lawyers unused to life in corporations, is the sort of stuff that is critically important to grocery clerks.

What makes all this most amusing is the angst and damage the corporation ultimately does to its own interests.  After three weeks of waiting, the check came in about midday on a Friday, at which point I immediately set to work and contacted all the various interested folks to advise them that I was now retained.  One such interested fellow was from a law firm conducting an internal investigation on behalf of the Board of Directors.  The same Board that ultimately oversaw the fine work of the lowliest clerk at accounts payable.

The lawyer, relieved that I finally called, emphatically explained to me that he absolutely had to meet with me the following Monday, as his mandate from the Board was to complete his initial investigation within a set time frame.  “Bummer,” I responded.  You see, I had plenty of time over the course of the past three weeks to set up meetings, perform my necessary background work, ramp up my representation, so that everything needed could be performed in a timely, even leisurely, fashion.  Except that his client’s clerks just couldn’t manage to send out the retainer check.  And so all that time was lost.

“But it HAS to be Monday,” he told me again.  “It just HAS to be Monday.” 

“Sorry”, I said, “but I can’t do it.  I have to be in court on Monday to start hearings.”

“Court!”  What do you mean ‘court’?” 

It’s that big granite building with the pillars in front.  No, my purpose wasn’t to insult him.  I understood his problem, but I really had to be in court and making his meeting just wasn’t in the cards.  I explained that I had been available to meet with him for weeks.  Weeks!  But that there were a couple of people deep within the bowels of his client who decided that the urgency of my representation and his investigation were secondary to their making marks next to lines on their grocery list, even though I explained to them that there were a bunch of lawyers and corporate officers waiting for me. 

The clerks didn’t care.  But that didn’t make their delay my emergency.  And it was awfully nervy for the lawyer to expect me to be readily available to suit his need, as if I’ve got nothing to do but be there at his beck and call.  I didn’t relish the idea of making the other lawyer’s life miserable, and would have accommodated him if possible.  But it’s not like they didn’t have three weeks to get it done and make everyone happy. 

Whether this will ultimately matter to the corporation is questionable.  Certainly it’s in my client’s best interest for me to be fully prepared before jumping into meetings to suit the time constraints of others.  But to the extent that this inconveniences everyone else engaged in the investigation and makes their work more difficult and problematic, it was entirely within the corporation’s power to deal with the delay of their own people.

I represent my client, no matter who is paying the bill.  Just remember when you take on a case where the legal fee is being paid via the , no matter how urgent the situation or how problematic the effect of delay, nothing moves any faster than the lowliest clerk with a checklist. 

If this displeases the corporation or its lawyers, then they really ought to have a talk with their own people.  And if they want to allow this ridiculous waste of time and effort to satisfy the grocery clerk gods, that’s their problem, not mine. 

The desire to push aside reason for the desire to vindicate the special wrong done to people for the absolute ugliest, nastiest, stupidest of reasons, is understandable.  The resistance appears almost disingenuous; how can one not feel outrage at an attack on another human being because he’s gay or she’s lesbian?  That there walk amongst us people so blind and angry to do harm to others because of their blind hatred is a travesty.

And yet there need be no special law to “address” this travesty.  We have laws, though the spottiness of enforcement is an issue that need be kept in mind.  That police are often at the forefront of those who don’t care much for gays, or find themselves more attuned to those who would assault them, presents a secondary problem that requires redress.  Once enforced, life in prison for murder is as much of a deterrant as needed.  This is not a life plus cancer opportunity for thinking evil thoughts.

But more laws does nothing but vindicate an emotional disgust, no matter how understandable that disgust might be.  The damage to more fundamental rights, however, every time we want to ramp up our attack under the guise of a “special situation,” is what invariably comes back to haunt us, to damage us, to cause far more serious and permanent harm than can be offset by the euphoria that a group deserving of our concern received special treatment.

There will always be sacred cows, and once we get past this one (and we will), another will vying for our attention.  But over time, we must remember that it’s the fundamental rights that will serve to protect us all, and we really can’t let our focus, and ideological perspective, change with every new cow that wanders into the pasture.  I’m with Jeralyn,  This is bad law.

The passing of Walter Cronkite is a milestone in the lives of today’s middle-aged men and women.  He was the voice of news in a more naive age, when we believed what we were told.  If Walter Cronkite said so, then it was true.

There are many excellent obits for this icon of news, and I have nothing to add worthy of another.  Instead, I mourn the death of innocence in the news in a time when Cronkite would be the target of attack and ridicule.  Whether denigratingly called the MSM or State Owned Media, as has lately come into fashion, Cronkite would have been as easy a target as any network anchor.

But things were different back then, when the news divisions weren’t underneath the entertainment divisions of networks.  Newsmen didn’t banter or do promos and teasers.  They held themselves above the wrestling, believing it to be a badge of honor to tell it straight. 

No one challenged Walter Cronkite’s integrity.  No one dared.  No one would have even considered trying, even if Cronkite’s broadcast was contrary to whatever political perspective they held.  We have people serving us news who similarly want to maintain the level of integrity and neutrality that characterized Walter Cronkite, but they are faced with different hurdles.

The broadcast networks are forced to present us with newscasts as an duty for the benefit of holding a slice of the public airwaves.  There was a time when they never questioned this duty, and embraced it as a responsibility of being a network.  But networks are businesses, and eventually the business minds realized that this was airtime to be used to create synergies with their more profitable endeavors. 

They mixed and matched, and forever changed the way news was delivered.  They dumbed it down and entertained it up.  It’s not that journalists necessary agree with this as the transition happened, but they quickly learned to serve the boss of find a new job at the local station in Duluth.  And so they learned to present news in a fashion consistent with entertainment, concerned with their demographics and public recognition.  All the time wanting to be more like Walter Cronkite as they became Buffalo Bob, trying desperately to cling to their ideals.

Then came the new wave of partisan punditry, to fill the confirmation bias gap generated by the release of news from fact.  Once people accepted the premise that sensibility need no longer be directly connected to reality, they were free to reinvent facts to suit their politics, and to attack those whose facts didn’t comport with their values.  The new genre attacked Walter Cronkite’s progeny, themselves weakened by their succumbing to the practicalities of commercial enterprise.  After all, how does one wear clown shoes or a red squishy nose, yet fend off challenges to their integrity?  Walter Cronkite never wore a red nose, but then no one ever asked him to or told him that he either wore it or found a new place to work.

We were better for believing in Walter Cronkite and allowing him the opportunity to tell us the news without challenge.  If he was to assume the anchor chair today, he might not be treated any differently than any other anchor on a broadcast network.  It’s impossible to say whether Walter Cronkite would have allowed himself to do commercials to promote his network or his newscast, to demean himself in the name of audience share.  I can’t imagine him engaging in mindless banter after telling the story of a tragic death or national crisis.  But then, that wasn’t the way it was done back then.

Today, both ends of the political spectrum attack Cronkite’s network media legacy, calling it names and proclaiming that it’s part of a conspiracy to delude the masses by feeding it biased news or hiding those parts of the story that don’t comport with the position of their bosses.  It’s all spin, or alleged spin.  Would Walter Cronkite have been treated any differently if he was working the anchor desk today?  Not likely. 

Walter Cronkite remains an untouchable icon, as he should.  We need heroes.  We need heroes in the news media, people who are above reproach by the extremist infotainment pundits who manipulate lesser minds.  We need to have a baseline of information that everyone will believe in and accept to be accurate.  We can still debate right and wrong, good and bad, but at least we can agree on the facts underlying our debate.  We haven’t had that agreement in a long time.

Walter Cronkite was the standard for discussion, argument, debate during a time of enormous upheaval in America.  Disagreement between young and old, war and peace, honesty and corruption, was rampant.  But unlike today, there was a factual baseline by which all disagreement could be weighed.  We have lost that standard for what constitutes fact, and are now left to create our own set of facts.  We denigrate the news media’s representations, and pick and chose what reality we wish to adopt.  We don’t really debate anymore, since we’re arguing alternate sets of facts rather than different value judgments based on an agreed-upon set of facts.

Without the standard, we have no common ground.  To improve the human condition, we require a standard.  It doesn’t seem possible that we will ever have another standard like Walter Cronkite to inform us nightly of the facts upon which we agree to rely.

Many blawgers thrill when they hear the phone ring. New clients are the lifeblood of a small firm, and it all begins with a telephone call.  But when you answer the phone and the caller’s first words are, “I saw your blog and,” what follows is often a trip into a fantasy world beyond your wildest expectations.

I thought of this after a chat yesterday with What About Clients? blawger Dan Hull, who told me about a call he received from a woman who explained that she was betrothed to the Prince of Dubai and was having a tiff with Paris Hilton.  Ah, if I had a nickel for every caller who was having a tiff with Paris Hilton.

As the readership of Simple Justice grew, a different sort of person began to call my office.  People who believed they were kindred souls, who knew terrible secrets of law enforcement conspiracies to topple governments and subjugate the populus.  People who were having a tiff with Paris Hilton.

Nobody warns you about this in advance, so I feel obliged to do so.  There are a lot of crazy people out there, and now they all have access to your telephone number.  They are not shy about calling.  They have something very important to talk to you about, and if there’s one characteristic they share, they like to talk.  They have so very much to say, and you’re the only one who will listen.  You, they explain, will understand them when no one else does.

While there’s been much debate about whether blawging offers the Return on Investment that those in the business of making money off other people blawging suggest, few let on to this unintended consequence.  You see, this surprisingly large coterie of the disaffected go from lawyer to lawyer seeking the right one to handle their challenge to the government’s covert war against them, not to mention their tiff with Paris Hilton.  And they want a lawyer who is not only brave enough, bold enough, smart enough, but willing to take it on contingency.

As soon as the word “blog” comes out of the caller’s mouth, I feel an involuntary shudder.  This is the person who has been refused by lawyer after lawyer, thrown out of offices and threatened with arrest if he continues to call.  He is on a mission, a crusade, and he wants to find his legal soul mate to join him, a Sancho Panzo to his Don Quixote (with Paris Hilton as his Dulcinea).

There are times, when you’re not in the middle of work and perhaps in the mood for some distraction, that these calls can be quite amusing.  Of course, once you’ve taken some time with them, they are inclined to call back regularly in an effort to persuade you to sign on.  After all, you would be one of the only lawyers around to take his call, making you the closest thing possible to normal ear he’s got.

The hard part is that once in a while, the odd caller isn’t nearly as insane as he seems, and may in fact be correct in his beliefs and sincere in his need for your services.  After all, Paris Hilton does have a tendency to get into tiffs with others.

Just don’t take it on contingency.

Having watched as much of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of Sonia Sotomayor as any relatively normal human being could, I’m left with a sense of dread.  Not because Senators are political animals, or use more than their share of allotted words.  Not even because Jeff Sessions is broadcast in living color, when it seems that he should come across in black and white.  But because Judge Sotomayor will be charged with safeguarding our civil rights and liberties.

Though it likely isn’t needed, some have tried to offer explanations for what Judge Sotomayor brings to the bench.  Forget the “wise Latina woman” nonsense that will come to be the phrase remembered from these hearings, but, as noted by Anthony S. Barkow, the executive director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU Law School, that she will be the court’s expert on the real world of criminal law.

If she is confirmed, she would be the only justice with experience as a local prosecutor. For five years, Sotomayor was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. In that position, she interacted with some of the poorest, most troubled residents of New York and handled matters ranging from shoplifting, prostitution and petty drug offenses to robberies, child abuse and murders.

Sotomayor’s experience on the front lines in a big city’s fight against crime will bring a much-needed perspective to the court.  Only Justice Samuel Alito has any real background at all in criminal law. He was an assistant U.S. attorney and was later U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

One of the gravest benefits claimed online is its resource to consumers.  It offers some wonderful advice and information, but it similar offers some of the worst, most ignorant and potentially dangerous consumer “advice” as well.  The problem, of course, is that the consumer seeking information is incapable of discerning which is which.

An example of the bad stuff was found by Houston criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett, when he came across a post at what purports to be a consumer guide website, and about how to select a lawyer for a white collar criminal case.  Who, in the great wide world of possible people to author such advice, is the anointed expert on such matters?

Robert Rava is a dude who aged in herringbone jacket at Yale, galloped around French West Africa in the Peace Corps, and later worked as a screenwriter and story editor in Angel City, Australia, Iceland, and Russia. Two years ago, with the encouragement of Mary Ellen Mark, he began photographing.

Sure, if you want to race down to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, spill your guts, plead guilty and hope for a reduced sentence, a former prosecutor is perfect.

But if you want to fight your case, hire a lawyer who has made a career out of keeping people out of prison, rather than putting them in; who has always been on the side of the underdog; and who understands the prosecutorial mindset not because he’s a (“former”) prosecutor but because he’s spent years fighting the government and seen and countered the worst they can throw at him.

Late last month, Los Angeles lawyer Martin Singer sent a threat letter to the San Diego Reader warning of exposure to “potentially astronomical [financial] damages” through a defamation suit if the newspaper “proceed[s] to recklessly and falsely publish a Story which falsely states, either directly or by implication, that my client [Platinum Equity, LLC] engaged in wrongdoing…” Singer’s letter states at the beginning and end that it is confidential and not to be republished.

If you go to the website of the Los Angeles law firm of Lavely & Singer and click the bio of cofounder Martin Singer, you find a Los Angeles Magazine article in which Singer is described as a “pit bull” who has “rabid” tactics and the nickname “Mad Dog.” The article quotes a journalist saying, “I’ll make one call to a publicist to check out a tip, and pretty soon I get a hand-delivered letter from Singer threatening all sorts of disasters and financial damages.”

Warning of “immense monetary damages,” Singer’s letter admonished, “You proceed at your peril.” At the top of the letter were these words: “CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL NOTICE. NOT FOR PUBLICATION OR OTHER USE.” In a number of instances, the Reader has found, Singer’s threatening letters have been published despite his warning of a possible copyright violation. The letters we have seen contained the same language — words such as “malicious,” “defamatory,” and “violation of Copyright Act,” for example — that Singer uses in his letter to the Reader.