Every once in a while, somebody who ought to know better says something so breathtakingly stupid as to command attention. The honor today goes to Colorado District Attorney Martin Beeson who, along with his staff of 14 prosecutors, covers Pitkin, Garfield and Rio Blanco counties, which includes “ritzy” ski resort, Aspen.
From the Aspen Daily News, via Jeff Gamso, the statements stem from one of the most critical aspects of any elected official’s function, getting more money. You see, Beeson was being asked to cut his budget by 5% by the Pitkin County Commissioners, akin to having a forced circumcision without anesthesia in front of all the hot girls in your high school gym class. Beeson struck back.
Beeson met with the Pitkin County commissioners this week, asking for a $600,000-plus contribution to his $3 million budget covering the tri-county area. He declined to cut his budget by 5 percent, as the commissioners had asked, and the county board appears poised to grant his full request.
A bit of a budgetary swing? Maybe if it was you, but no biggie for a guy like Beeson, who knows how to put on his man-pants. They ask for a decrease? You just “decline”. Is there a problem?
Beeson has good reason to not merely refuse the “request” of the purse-string holders, but let them know what he expects them to cough up. After all, how is he supposed to keep evil under wraps without a budget that “is largely inflated by the cost of investigating cases, and paying for witnesses and experts to travel here and give testimony.” It’s not like he can let the police, who have their own budget, do all the work for him.
And lest you think he’s being greedy, consider that money goes to public defenders as well, about 20% of what the prosecutor gets, even though they handle more than 60% of the cases. Fortunately, this differential is easily handled by the low salaries paid.
Some may surmise that there is a certain unfairness to all of this, perhaps even a lack of parity between the prosecution and defense functions. Beeson clears up this fallacy:
Asked about the public defender’s budget after his Aspen meeting on Tuesday, Beeson criticized the office for abusing the 6th Amendment right to a defense counsel by needlessly frustrating the DA’s efforts and using legal loopholes to suppress incriminating evidence against their clients.
“Public defenders are not defenders of the public,” Beeson said. “They are not serving the public good. They are taxpayer-funded attorneys for criminals.”
Come on. Admit it. He’s got you there.
Gamso tries to take Beeson on:
But then Beeson goes off the rails. Because he quite clearly thinks that the right to counsel does not mean the right to have a lawyer who’ll make it harder for the prosecutor to get a conviction. That’s because it’s an abuse of the right to counsel for the lawyer to be “needlessly frustrating the DA’s efforts.” You know, by cross-examining witnesses, say. Or even endorsing a Not Guilty plea. And especially not by “using legal loopholes to suppress incriminating evidence against their clients.”
You might think that Jeff is just another criminal coddler, sucking up the taxpayer’s last dime to enable criminals, but he gets it.
If you think all that seems harsh, well, you’re missing a fundamental point that Beeson gets even if the 6th Amendment doesn’t. Those clients? The folks public defenders represent? They’re all criminals.
And, of course, that is Beeson’s point. There’s only so much cash to go around, and it’s either going to the good guys who put the bad guys in jail or the bad guys who keep the other bad guys out. Whose side you on?
Times are tight and choices have to be made. On the left coast, courts are dismissing cases because of the state’s failure to provide speedy trials. But in Colorado, they drink Coors, not marijuana-infused chardonnay, to get their Rocky Mountain high. And nobody in Aspen is as high as Martin Beeson right about now. See what you can accomplish when you have the right attitude?
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Too bad you can’t be disbarred for displaying such a dearth of knowledge about the Constitution.