No, what particularly offends me, what set me off, happened well before the Louisiana Supremes weighed in.  I went ballistic when I saw that the Jefferson Parish Indigent Defender Board – appointed to defend an indigent guy in Jefferson Parish, a guy they’d represented at trial and to whom, presumably (though Louisiana is it’s own special legal place they taught us in law school), they had some sort of continuing duty of loyalty – chose not to defend him but to litigate against his interest.  They didn’t just refuse the appointment.  They challenged it.  All the way to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Who the fuck are these people?  And by what mangling of the language do they claim to be an “Indigent Defender Board”?

Castillo wanted to appeal his conviction, at the hands of his lawyers, the JPIDB, and sought an attorney to do so.  He got what he wanted, and his old friends, who represented him and lost at trial, the JPIDB, was assigned. They fought tooth and nail, hard as they could.  Not to defend their client.  Not to protect their former client.  They fought to abrogate his right to be represented on appeal. 

The Jefferson Parish Indigent Defender Board fought their own client to crush his right to be represented by counsel.

My guess is that the JPIDB was motivated by financial self-interest, the fear that if Castillo was entitled to indigent representation on appeal, it would place too great a burden on them, overtax their lawyers and overwhelm their budget.  It may be that it would undermine their ability to provide a defense to anyone, spreading them too thin and having the net effect of diminishing their ability to perform their core mission, the trial defense of the indigent accused.

Institutional defenders don’t think they way individual lawyers think.  They concern themselves with spreadsheets and budgets, internal precedent and proposals.  While it may be one defendant at a time for the individual lawyers in their employ, it’s the collective mass that keeps the brain trust awake at night.  Giving JPIDB the benefit of the doubt, they saw Castillo’s appellate representation as the straw that might break their back.  Of course, I may be attributing far too much good faith to the JPIDB, and they just didn’t like Vincent Castillo and are a bunch of angry, pathetic losers.

Regardless, they burned their client.  They actively, deliberately and with great effort did everything they could to assure that their client would not be represented on appeal.  They had an institutional reason for the decision to harm their client?  So what.

The action of the Jefferson Parish Indigent Defender Board violated the most fundamental precept of criminal defense, that the criminal defense lawyer’s first duty is to defend his client.  The duty of loyalty trumps all else.  It matters more than the budget.  It matters more than the potential for future burden.  It matters more than the myriad problems that collective thinkers can dredge up to justify the decision to spend their resources harming their client.  It is inexcusable.

“But what were they to do?” ask those of you who love to be on official committees that make you feel powerful and important even though you are nothing more than a boil on the butt of the profession, and, in your heart, you know it.

Fight the man.  Fight for a bigger budget, adequate resources to perform a constitutionally mandated function of defending the accused.  Fight for the ability to perform the job of standing between the government and one poor schmuck who stands beside you in the dock.  Fight everyone and everything, except your client.  The defendant is the one person, the only person, you are there to protect.

What makes the indigent defendant special is that he is the most vulnerable defendant in the system, the one least capable of having a fighting chance.  He deserves every iota of defense that an indigent defender can muster.  Instead, Vincent Castillo found himself under attack, not just by the state but by the lawyers who defended him at trial.  There’s no one left.

I share Gamso’s outrage.  I share his disgust.  This flagrant breach of the ethical obligation of fidelity to their client demands sanction, the personal punishment of disbarment for whoever decided that the limited resources of the Jefferson Parish Indigent Defender Board should be spent harming their client instead of defending him.

But if all goes according to plan, they will throw themselves a gala banquet and give themselves awards for being the last great hope of the Constitution and the poor.  There will be just enough money left in the budget for a plaque hailing their efforts in providing “justice for all.” Suitable for hanging.  And like all official committee lovers, they will pat themselves on the back afterward and congratulate each other on the fine job they’ve done.

And Vincent Castillo’s name will never be mentioned again.