Return phone calls.

Respond to emails.

Transfer the file immediately.

Transfer the complete file, with papers intact.

Sorry that the client decided to fire you and go elsewhere.  But you were paid for your services, even though you are now out of the case. It happens. There is a guy sitting in jail expecting a lawyer to be doing his job, working on his case, doing everything he can to represent him.  Except the old lawyer can’t be bothered to cooperate.

Your feelings are hurt?  You’re too busy?  You just don’t feel like it?

You are depriving the defendant of representation.  Every day you delay is a day that work cannot be done on the case.  The government may be prosecuting, but you are hindering the defense.  It’s wrong. It’s unethical. It’s unprofessional.  Maybe if you demonstrated greater concern for your client, you would still be on the case.

But you’re not.  Get over it and get the file into the hands of the new lawyer.  Everyone is waiting for you.

When I learned that I was used in a post at the  Lawyerist by some SEO marketer, I was less than flattered.  It’s not just the fact that I think the Lawyerist is just about the most insipid website for lawyers around (it is), devoid of substance and catering to readers who have difficulty counting to 21 with their pants on. It’s that I don’t care to be used as somebody’s fluff.

Aaron Street, boy-wonder of the Lawyerist,  came back at me on twitter with his challenge:

@ScottGreenfield Well-reasoned analysis as always.

So what is excellent client service and how do you provide it? Here are some thoughts from people that know what they’re talking about:

My respect for copyright notwithstanding, putting a little power in the wrong hands tends to give rise to mischief.  Assistant Deputy Director of ICE, Erik Barnett, proved this truism in  his announcement that government seizures of websites involved in copyright infringement have been a huge success:

“People told us that we will fail if we seize these domain names, and that we’ll look foolish,” said Erik Barnett, assistant deputy director of the US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) team, which began conducting Operation In Our Sites last year. “People said [that the infringers] would come back. But the reality is they didn’t – that was surprising.”

Separately, Barnett spoke to The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) for an interview about the seizures…He kicks it off by again thanking Congress for passing the ProIP Act, which snuck the seizure bit into law, with most people believing it meant seizing actual tools of infringement, not domain names. From there, he discusses how ICE decides what to seize:

The popularity of the website, because how popular a website is tells us how profitable. We look at a website’s Alexa rankings, because the lower the Alexa ranking–meaning the more traffic a website receives–directly correlates to higher proceeds from sales, or to more revenue from advertisements.

Alexa?!? My goodness. Alexa is perhaps the least accurate website ranking system out there and is considered a total joke.

Barnett also makes this highly questionable claim:

“The notice says that you can challenge the seizure, but no one has yet,” he added.

Yeah, that’s because the US government has made it incredibly convoluted and difficult to actually challenge the seizure. While Barnett notes that the notice says you can, there is no process, and the Justice Department has done everything it can to avoid letting anyone challenge the seizure.

What was really incredible was how everyone I spoke to involved in these cases (even though not at all connected with one another) had an identical story: they’d all love to take their cases to court, but they’re waiting for the government to actually get in touch with them.

I can’t tell if Barnett is just totally and completely uninformed here… or lying. As plenty of people have noted, at least on the copyright side, the vast majority of the sites have reappeared, often within hours.

The government has never shown finesse at dealing with technology, and the courts even less so.  The heavy hand of law enforcement, which will attest whenever possible to its omniscience in all things under the sun, could make the effort to use a scalpel rather than a bludgeon.  Yet it fails to do so with remarkable frequency, and rarely shows much concern for its failings or interest in doing it better.  But this isn’t limited to a domain seizure, but all things tech. 

In the past, I’ve written  harsh  words about  lawyers who were only too happy to run down to the local TV station to appear on the news on any subject under the sun, wholly oblivious to the fact that they neither know the subject about which they’re supposed to opine nor care.  Anything to be able to tell people you’re a television hero.  This conduct was as disgraceful as it came, I wrote. I’m forced to eat my words.

It’s not the the conduct isn’t disgraceful.  It most assuredly is.  It’s that there is now a new, lower step, a new cliff to fall off of, that makes this conduct pale in comparison. 

Apparently, an email went out to some lawyers.  If I received one, I didn’t read it, but I suspect it never came to my box.  But Houston criminal defense lawyer  Mark Bennett got the email.

Hello,

As the Casey Anthony trial is taking place in your backyard, our media contacts (whom we have great relationships with) have let us know that they are actively seeking Criminal Defense Attorneys to comment on the case.

If the thought of appearing on National & Local Television & National & Local Radio Shows has ever crossed your mind – This moment is yours to take.

If not, simply write back REMOVE because you’ll never again be the midst of a press frenzy like this – CNN, NBC, and Fox will be covering this 24-7.

When you appear as a guest on national media, millions of eyes across America are on you and traffic drives to your website and ultimately can increase your bottom line.

Of the many issues with the Casey Anthony case, and  there are more than one can shake a stick at, this wasn’t one that I saw coming.  True, commentary during the OJ Simpson trial made darlings out of a few lawyers who were at their best in a studio, far away from a courtroom.  They got gigs on talking as if they had a clue, as if they could read minds or had even a vague familiarity with law and practice in far away jurisdictions.  No one seemed to care, as long as interesting sounds emitted from their mouths.  More importantly, no one seemed to remember what they said the day before. They only cared that people remembered their name.

But these people, time fillers in stories run by people selling TV commercials, had at least one virtue.  No, they weren’t paid for the their time.  Not a dime.  They made themselves perpetually available, just in case Larry called, for free.  Being close to celebrity was payment enough.  They did not, however, pay for it.

That once was sufficient to earn the title media whores, a pejorative description for lawyers who would say anything to get on television.  Given the next step down, below the gutter (into the sewer?), they no longer look so disgraceful.

Would you pay someone to place you on television as a talking head?  Are you so desperate for attention, for faux prominence, that you would hire a publicist to make you a “star?”  Bear in mind, if you had any virtue, any, that would give rise to a media outlet calling you directly, a youthful producer thinking to herself, I want this lawyer, Joe, to provide analysis on my broadcast, they would call you directly. 

The usual scenario, where the producer asks around for the name of a lawyer to do commentary, who might either have some bit of knowledge that could add to the broadcast or at least know how to speak in interesting sound bites and make chatter that adds to the show, never runs short of lawyers.  Lawyers love to be on TV.  Lawyers adore being treated like “experts,” even if their only role is to answer a five minute question from the anchor with a two second response.

So Joe the lawyer, having watched the cross-examination where the sheriff said he was forced to put the gun in her mouth, and of course he really had no choice but to taser her in order to get her mouth open wide enough, and the judge screaming at the defense lawyer, blah, blah, blah . . .

Well . . .

We’re out of time, but thanks to Joe the lawyer for his fascinating insight. In another story, a new mousetrap has been developed that coddles the little critter. Here to report is . . .

So what if it cost Joe half a day to do this segment, waking up for his black car ride at 4:30 a.m.  He got a donut and coffee in the green room, and now has a video to put on his website proving that he is, indeed, a renown media pundit.  What client doesn’t want a lawyer who is so special that he’s on TV?

That lawyers and firms have publicists is nothing new. As a blawger, I get a never ending stream of ridiculous emails from PR firms hyping stories about some unknown firm having scores some inconsequential case, and would I like to speak to the lawyer who is available 24/7 for an interview.  They’re laughable, and the lawyers who do it become the targets of scorn and ridicule.

But this is different. This was a blind email, sent to any lawyer willing to pay for the privilege of being the freebie lunchmeat in the media sandwich, filler with no nutritional value.  At least the media whore didn’t pay for it.  The next time some unknown lawyer who has neither the knowledge nor chops to do commentary dresses up in his best suit and a clean white shirt to pretend that he’s a celebrity, this email will come immediately to mind and the only thought running through my head is “how much did he pay to get on TV?”

Don’t blame the PR company.  Don’t blame the 6 o’clock news.  Don’t blame cable TV with 24/7 coverage of things that only happen 9 to 5.  No one makes lawyers take that leap off the abyss.  Lawyers do this to themselves.  And pay for it.

The old days, when the worst that could be said of the media whore is that he has nothing to offer but won’t let that stop him, is beginning to look relatively dignified.  If it can get worse, it will.  I wonder how many lawyers were only too happy to pay for the service?

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a gay girl in Damscus.


But why worry about it?  After all, it’s not like any idiot can manufacture a completely false internet persona and get away with it, right?

Proactive is one of those buzzwords that people love to toss around as proof that they’re ahead of the curve.  But then it comes to law enforcement, the sweet sound of “proactive” hides its real meaning: An investigation commenced without any reason to suspect wrongdoing.  Why wait?  We don’t need no stinkin’ reason.

The  New York Times reports that the F.B.I. has rewritten its agents’ guide, Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, so that agents can commence investigations, which they delightfully call “assessments,” without any basis whatsoever to believe that the target has engaged in a crime. 

And if they can investigate, they naturally needs the weapons to do so.  No need to bother supervisors either. Not even the need to document what you’ve done, since that would create a record of who’s being investigated, and that could always get into the wrong hands. Go get ’em, tiger.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

There has long been an argument that law enforcement should get ahead of the curve, better to head ’em off at the pass than wait for the body to turn cold.  But most people would still assume that it takes more than innocently getting on some Fibber’s radar to become the target of a federal investigation.  You know, some itsy, bitsy actual reason to suspect that someone might be doing something, you know, wrong?

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

Mr. German said the change would make it harder to detect and deter inappropriate use of databases for personal purposes. But Ms. Caproni said it was too cumbersome to require agents to open formal inquiries before running quick checks. She also said agents could not put information uncovered from such searches into F.B.I. files unless they later opened an assessment.

Quick checks sounds so innocuous.  Of course, quick checks can turn into longer checks, if something piques an agent’s interest.  Or, he can just be using the F.B.I. computers to make sure the parents of the boy his daughter is dating is, well, his kind of people.  A father can never be too careful.

The new rules will also relax a restriction on administering lie-detector tests and searching people’s trash. . . But soon agents will be allowed to use those techniques for one kind of assessment, too: when they are evaluating a target as a potential informant.

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others. But Ms. Caproni said information gathered that way could also be useful for other reasons, like determining whether the subject might pose a threat to agents.

Two ironies at once! How cool is that.  First, one sentence to cover both polygraphs and picking through trash, as garbage investigations belong together.  But more importantly, the motivation behind authorizing agents to pick through garbage at will is to nail down “potential informants.”  In other words, rummage through the trash to find something embarrassing, humiliating, so that you can threaten to reveal it to persuade people to become rats.  Notice how well rats fits in with the other garbage analogies. As if it was made to fit together, just like the agent would do such a thing.

There are additional changes as well to facilitate internal spying, infiltrating groups without any files being opened, supervisors’ approval obtained, anyone knowing that an agent, of his own volition, has decided to do so.  The stuff of thrilling novels.

There is one new restriction, however, which will limit an agents authority to stick his nose under any tent he so desires.

At least one change would tighten, rather than relax, the rules. Currently, a special agent in charge of a field office can delegate the authority to approve sending an informant to a religious service. The new manual will require such officials to handle those decisions personally.

Thank the Lord the F.B.I. respects the sanctity of religious services, especially since they vote in large blocks.

Harvey Silverglate posits that we all commit three felonies a day, which I’ve since upgraded to three felonies by coffee break,  If you happen to piss off, or simply get noticed by, a federal agent, what are the chances that he might find something that he finds suspicious just fooling around in his computer and rummaging through your trash?

But isn’t it worth it to feel secure knowing the F.B.I. is being proactive?  And what do you have to fear?

If you already know what a strop is, you probably have no reason to waste the few minutes reading this post as you’ve already learned the lessons. 

Both my son and I were getting a bit scraggly, so we hopped in the car and went for a haircut.  We went to a place called a barber shop, which can generally be identified by a stripped pole outside.  Sometimes the poll swirls, and sometimes not, but it’s been the sign of barbers for generations.

Barber shops do not call themselves salons, and barbers are not stylists.  Barbers cut hair.  They used to perform surgery, but the law frowns on such conduct today.  Still, they have straight razors used to give a shave, whether on the front or back of the neck.  This is why they need a strop, as no one wants a dull straight razor. Some barbers are comedians, and use the old ketchup on the straight razor gag to get a laugh out of the guys in chairs. 

There are two reasons why there are guys in chairs in a barber shop.  The first is that they don’t take appointments. If you want a haircut, you come in and sit down, waiting for your turn in the barber seat.  You talk to the other guys waiting in chairs about news, politics and horse racing. This brings us to the other reason there are guys sitting in chairs.

Barber shops tend to be gathering places for guys who know a great deal about horse racing. They frequently have horse racing on the barber shop television, and there is sometimes a fellow there to whom the other guys in chairs say, $2 on Brilliant Sparkle in the 9th.  Horses have strange names. 

If you do not know much about horse racing, it’s best that you not strike up a conversation on the topic with the guys who yell out anything about “trifecta.”  They won’t appreciate it and will look at you askance.  It also tends to cause the barber to give you a lopsided haircut so that you won’t be happy and return.

Barbers do not wash hair before cutting it.  At most, they spray cold water from a bottle to make it wet, but they have no one who will rub any soapy stuff into a guy’s hair and rinse it out.  They keep their instruments clean by placing into a jar containing blue liquid.  It’s supposed to sterilize the combs, but no one really knows if it does.

Barber shops do not do manicures and pedicures.  No one wants another guy to take his shoes off in a barber shop.  No one.  But then, no ones wants another person screwing with his nails.  Nails grow exactly the way they are supposed to, without human interference beyond the requisite trimming.

If you are new to a barber shop, you tell the barber how long it’s been since your last hair cut so the barber will know how short to cut it.  If you want something special, you need to be specific, but also need to realize that if it requires more than three words, chances are that the barber won’t know what you are talking about.  Most haircuts can be described in three words or less.

Barber shops do not color hair.  If you don’t like being gray, then there are products at the supermarket to fix it.  Otherwise, you will leave with the same color hair you came in with, only shorter.

There will be a rack of magazines at the barber shop, but the magazines will all be quite old.  If they are news magazines, they won’t be very interesting.  There are no fashion magazines. There are no magazines with polls about one’s love life.

At the counter, there will be a cash register where the barber can ring up the charge for your haircut.  Charges tend to range from $10 to $15.  I paid $12 for my haircut, and gave the barber a $3 tip.  If the barber doesn’t cut you, then you should tip him.

Next to the cash register will be lollipops.  They are really there for the little boys who come in for their first haircuts.  There are special benches that are placed on the barber chair for little boys.  They don’t like them, but they will get used to them.  The lollipops make things better and usually stop the crying.  If a grownup wants a lollipop, he can take one.  No one will make fun of you for it.

Proper grooming for men is important.  Everything needed for a man to be properly groomed can be had in a barber shop.

A few days ago, Keith Lee of  An Associate’s Mind sent me a story about some 19-year-old kid, Tio Sessoms, from the San Francisco Chronicle. 

When 19-year-old Tio Sessoms was arrested in 1999 for the murder of a Sacramento minister, he told police that his father “asked me to ask you guys — uh, get me a lawyer.”

The officers responded by saying they would advise him of his rights and then see if he wanted a lawyer. They also told him two other suspects had already talked to them without lawyers and that an attorney would probably discourage him from giving them his version of events. And they denied his request to call his father.

After they gave him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have an attorney present, Sessoms said he was willing to talk.

Naturally, he confessed.  If he hadn’t, there would be no reason to write about this.  Keith’s reaction was “seems pretty clear to me…”  And that’s why he’s writing a blog and not majority opinions. 

The trial court denied the motion to suppress the confession, and the 9th Circuit upheld the denial in a 2-1 ruling.

The court said police must halt their questioning of a suspect who clearly asks for a lawyer, but that Sessoms hadn’t done that. When he said, “Get me a lawyer,” he wasn’t speaking for himself but was just relaying what his father had told him, Judge Richard Tallman said in the majority opinion June 3.

In the questioning, which was recorded on video, Sessoms “never indicates any desire to transform his father’s advice into his own desire to have a lawyer present,” said Tallman, joined by Judge Johnnie Rawlinson. He also noted that the law requires federal judges to give great deference to the conclusions of state courts, like the one that upheld Sessoms’ conviction.

See, Sessoms wasn’t actually asking for a lawyer, but just repeating to the police what his father had told him.  You know, telling a story about family life.  “Dad said eat my broccoli, treat women with respect, ask for a lawyer;” that sort of thing.

No matter how many times it’s said, arrested folks just can’t seem to get it quite right.  The magic words are: I do not want to answer questions. I want to speak with my lawyer.  And then say nothing else, until another officer comes into earshot, whereupon you say the magic words again, and then shut up again.  But you already know this because you’ve heard this a thousand times from criminal defense lawyers.

In a dissent described as “indignant,” “Judge Betty Fletcher said Sessoms’ clearly asked for a lawyer.”  There’s nothing more heart-warming than an indignant dissent.  It’s the next best thing to winning.  The problem, of course, is that there are a thousand, no, a million, variations on the mantra, which are similarly clear to anyone inclined to support the invocation of Miranda by actual people that fail in case after case. 

Change a word, a verb tense, anything, and the likelihood is that what strikes any normal person as absolutely clear is suddenly not only unclear, but ineffective.  How, courts demand to know, should a cop understand “I think I ought to speak with a lawyer first” to mean that the persons wants a lawyer?  He’s not asking for a lawyer, but merely expressing his thought processes.  It’s entirely different.

The law requires a clear and unequivocal invocation of the right to remain silent and the right to speak with an attorney before questioning.  The problem is “clear and unequivocal” is clear and unequivocal, that the only way the courts will accept the invocation is if you use their mantra.  Anything less, or different, is subject to interpretation, and anything subject to interpretation isn’t clear and unequivocal.

So it’s not about whether it seems clear to you.  It’s all about the mantra; use it or lose it.  And just so you know, Keith, it seems pretty clear to me too, which is why I write a blawg and not majority opinions either.

“Sending a message” is a phrase heard with regularity in the legal system, whether from judges at sentence or prosecutors at arrest.  Sometimes the message is about not harming others or you will be caught, prosecuted and punished.  Other times, the message isn’t nearly as clear, or as proper.  Still, it’s a message.

Walter Olson writes about such a at Cato @ Liberty, one that may lack the panache of blood and guts that tends to get blood boiling, but one that’s particularly pernicious.

The Stevens case arose after the Food and Drug Administration investigated GSK’s marketing of the drug Wellbutrin. Lawyers, responding on behalf of the drugmaker, failed to furnish all the information the FDA considered itself entitled to, and federal prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice proceeded to “forage through confidential files” (as the judge later put it) in search of some sort of criminality to pin on Stevens, the team’s leader.

In her defense, Stevens said she had at all times relied in good faith on information provided her by company employees and had consulted and followed other lawyers’ advice on doubtful issues. Not good enough: the feds proceeded to charge her with six counts, including making false statements, obstructing justice, and concealing documents.

What makes this particularly troubling is the dynamic that drives financial and corporate criminal law investigations, where decisions are made by committee, invariably risk averse and perceived by all to be only about business (read, “money”) rather than right or wrong.  A group of people whose butts are not on the line want to know how much it will cost to make the problem go away, happy to throw the beloved and soon to be martyred former corporate lawyer or executive under the bus.

Say you’re an oddball in corporate America, a person with a few scruples and the guts to say “no” occasionally.  Whispering in the ear of the board members are some specialists working at a thousand lawyer firm, still bearing the stink of their last job at the Department of Justice, that they must capitulate, cooperate, get on their knees and beg the government for mercy.  There’s no other way. No one ever wins.

Then there’s someone who never sucked on the government teet saying,

but we did nothing wrong. Nothing. We must stand up to the demands of prosecutors who are clueless about our corporation, our industry, and who want to dictate corporate decisionmaking.  This is the time to take a stand.

Outside counsel shudders in fear.  Board members cower in the corner.  Accountants crunch the numbers.

Lauren Stevens, former house counsel at SmithKlineGlaxo, showed resolve.  She did her due diligence and arrived at the conclusion that displeased the government.  She said no. She conducted an in-house investigation and concluded that there was no smoking gun proving her employer a raging criminal enterprise.  

Prosecutors faced turned dark red.  No one says no to them.  No one.  Time to send a message.

The flimsiness of the DOJ’s case appears to have disturbed Judge [Roger] Titus, a law-and-order-oriented jurist who had never ordered a bench acquittal in his seven years as a federal judge. The confidential documents on Stevens’s work, he wrote, “show a studied, thoughtful analysis of an extremely broad request” from the FDA and were based on “good faith,” not an attempt to assist a client in fraud.

Judge Titus refused to let the case go to the jury.  What surprises people is that harsh law-and-order judges tend to get particularly angry with the government when they conclude that a prosecution is complete garbage.  Prosecutions like that make judges feel dirty for otherwise loving the government too much, and when the case goes far enough over the line, prosecutors see the snarl that is almost always directed only at the defense table.  But don’t get too teary eyed about it, as a case has to be so god-awful-bad, out of the ballpark garbage, to get a rise. 

So Judge Titus sent a message of his own:

Titus said Stevens “should never have been prosecuted” and that allowing the case to go forward to a jury “would be a miscarriage of justice.”

Though the message seems clear enough on the surface, it somehow failed to sink in.

After the stunning dismissal, the U.S. Department of Justice [via no less a personage than Lanny Breuer, chief of the criminal division, to a meeting of corporate lawyers] was quite unapologetic, a top official suggesting that its prosecutors intended to do nothing differently in the future. And unfortunately, there are few incentives for them to learn any lessons.

How could the message fail to come across loud and clear?  It’s a trick question.  The message was, indeed, heard, but it wasn’t Judge Titus’ message.  It was Breuer’s.

Lauren Stevens lost her job, was prosecuted and went to trial, wondering every day whether she would end up wearing a jumpsuit at Club Fed.  She was disgraced and vilified.  It cost a bundle.  And likely destroyed her life.  Whether she can recover from this prosecution has yet to be seen.  And she won.

Sure, there a couple of prosecutors whose cheek stings a bit from the smack, at least for a few minutes. But they got their paycheck every two weeks and went home to dinner with their families every day during the prosecution and trial.  On the day of dismissal, they left court sad and, after a beer, had meat loaf for dinner (I’m just guessing about this part). 

Corporate counsel got the message.  Even when you do nothing wrong, you lose.  When the government comes a’calling, turn around, bend over and let the government have its way with you.  No in-house lawyer wants to sacrifice his life, his family on the alter of “justice.” 

Message sent.  Message received.  Lauren Stevens was just doing her job, with courage and integrity.  The message is that when the government wants to destroy the life of an innocent person, it will.  She can beat the rap, but she can’t beat the ride.  That’s the message.

Every once in a while, something happens in the blawgosphere that wreaks havoc with the smooth process that allows its participants and onlookers to feel the unfettered sense of belonging.  It happened this week. It’s going to happen again. Now.

After my post, A Book Unreviewed: Norm Pattis, a few people expressed some sadness that our little group of criminal defense blawgers couldn’t just get along, couldn’t just write about the evils of police abuse, prosecutorial misconduct and judicial error.  We are all against these bad things, so why battle amongst ourselves when we can focus our anger toward the things that deserve it, demand it.

Why indeed?

This isn’t another post about Norm. He reduced himself to an irrelevancy when he slinked away after his fabricated world crumbled around him. If there was any question, it’s now resolved.  It’s about everyone else.

One of the things this corner of the blawgosphere does, and does well, is highlight the wrongs that happen in the criminal justice system, the people who do them and the things they do.  Before one has the right to challenge others, one must choose to maintain personal integrity.  We cannot lie about what happened or we are forfeit any claim to challenge others. This can be brutally painful at times, compelling us to write things we would prefer not to write, but if we shirk this responsibility, we are unworthy of challenging others.

Can we call someone else a liar while being a liar?  Can we challenge the falsehoods perpetuated by others while we perpetuate our own?  Can we expect others to believe us when we know what we say to be unworthy of belief?  I don’t think so.

Sure, there will always be people who calls us names, tell us we’re wrong, stupid, deceitful.  But it’s a big internet and it’s impossible to satisfy every perspective, every agenda, every level of intelligence or sociopathy.  Mistakes are made.  Judgment calls are blown.  It’s not about perfection or about winning every vote.  It is about integrity.

Without integrity, we are nothing.  We are them.  We are as bad as all the malevolent people.  We are as bad as the people who do malevolent things.  We have no legitimacy in challenging or questioning, in highlighting or noting, in speaking out against wrong.  Because without integrity, we too are wrong.

This is a choice that I, and other blawgers, are compelled to make every day.  How easy it would be to twist a few details, distort a fact or two here and there, recast a quote to make it better fit our views, and then go to town.  Just leave out the link, omit the name and build in plausible deniability that we are dissembling.

Being a blawger, and writing stuff that appears publicly, exposes us to challenge as much as it does the target of our writing.  And it should.  We’ve talked about blawging as peer reviewed, where our fellow criminal defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges, cops, and anyone else with sufficient interest can read what we write and opine, whether here or elsewhere.  We lay it on the table, and you do with it as you will.

When an ugly issue arises within the community, when peer review turns unpleasant, however, smiles turn upside down.  Why can’t we just ignore it, get along, band together to fight the common enemy?

Because we are no more entitled to enjoy situational integrity than they are.

Because we cannot attack others for unclean hands if ours are dirty as well.

I realize that this upsets other blawgers and some readers.  It would be so much easier to pretend it doesn’t happen and let things go back to the way they were before.  If no one says anything, then we can smile again and think only of the things we want to think, the things that make us happy.  My “vitriol” was not appreciated by many as it caused a disruption in the force.  Why, oh why, can’t I just save my vitriol for our common enemies and preserve the harmony of the blawgosphere?

I deal with reality, for better or worse, right or wrong.  It’s never been my way to smooth over the unpleasant rough spots in order to get along and make others like me.  And I am not sorry for making others uncomfortable by speaking of unpleasant matters. 

In furtherance of my belief that the integrity of the blawgosphere, of Simple Justice, of me, matters, a decision has been made.  For those who find situational integrity acceptable, and are happy to overlook deception in this corner of the blawgosphere, who don’t care to scrutinize ourselves with the same care we do our common enemies, you are no longer welcome here.  I can’t stop you from reading, if that’s your choice, but I will no longer engage with you.  If lying doesn’t matter to you, then we aren’t going to get along.

Some of you won’t care, which is your choice.  Some of you will tell me that I’m wrong, unduly harsh, maybe even selfish.  Some will tell me I’m pompous and arrogant to think anyone gives a damn what I think, either of them or what they do.  Some will blame me, following their heart instead of theri mind. This may all be true, but what I do is my call.  And this is my call. If it makes me unpopular with a certain crowd, so be it. 

Sometimes the force needs some disrupting.  When integrity is at stake, disruption seems a small price to pay to clean things up.  We are not a bunch of liars.  We are not enablers of liars.  We do not acquiesce in lying.  And because of this, our ability to bear up to scrutiny, we can say what needs to be said and do so with honor.  And if you can’t do this, or won’t do this, then you don’t belong here.

And now, to lighten up the mood a bit without sacrificing the point . . .