October 2014
Explore the various claims and tools defense attorneys can use to fight stash house cases.
Articles in this Issue
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Book Review: Criminalistics: An Introduction to Forensic Science — Eleventh Edition
The rapidly advancing field of criminalistics is cogently and comprehensively presented in an understandable and highly educational format in the Eleventh Edition of Criminalistics. This edition maintains its imposing presence in academia and practical criminalistics. Through careful and thorough writing, Dr. Richard Saferstein does a masterful job of explaining the complexity of fundamental criminalistics as a discipline of forensic science.
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Book Review: Defending Jacob
William Landay, a former prosecutor but never a defense lawyer, is a brilliant fictional writer who has given his readers much more than just a murder mystery in Defending Jacob. “A Reader’s Guide” with Landay at the back of the book presents profound ethical questions for parents, children, and lawyers. It should be the centerpiece of discussions at bar associations on such topics as the limits of advocacy; how we as attorneys teach others about what we do; what we can take from laypeople (clients, parents, friends, psychologists and experts) that will help us to better represent clients and mature as advocates and people; and learning to listen to others and our consciences.
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Book Review: How Can You Represent Those People?
Defense attorneys may find themselves asking where this book has been all their lives. Masterfully compiled and edited by Abbe Smith and Monroe H. Freedman, How Can You Represent Those People? is a provocative collection of essays from a wide-ranging group of lawyers that seek to answer the ultimate “cocktail party question.”
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Book Review: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice And Redemption
Bryan Stevenson is the leading human rights lawyer in America today. Just Mercy is his first-person account of his work over the last quarter century, mainly on behalf of death-sentenced prisoners in Alabama but ultimately extending to some 2,500 prisoners across the country who were sentenced to die in prison for crimes they committed as children. The book is a collection of humanizing stories about these clients. The names are not the abstract embodiments of case law citations in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, but the flesh-and-blood characters in the human dramas of Bryan Stevenson’s practice as a lawyer. All these men and women had been condemned either to execution or its harsh, unforgiving alternative, life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Capital Cases
The botched lethal executions in Oklahoma, Ohio, and Arizona have many legal experts questioning whether methods used for carrying out these killings violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
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Escobedo v. Illinois: Not Quite Forgotten
The “Miranda warnings” have pervaded American popular culture, but the predecessor case, Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), is often overlooked or given scant attention. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that groundbreaking precursor. While Miranda v. Arizona is among the U.S. Supreme Court’s most significant criminal justice decisions, without Escobedo, the Court may never have reached that juncture. Peter Fenton and Michael Shapiro re-examine this case, which they call one of the most important “stepping stone” cases in history.
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Fighting the Stash House Sting
The stash house sting — in which an undercover officer or an informant recruits suspects to “rob” a fictional location where drug dealers allegedly keep large amounts of drugs — is increasingly used by both state and federal law enforcement. Law professor and former county public defender Katharine Tinto describes the various tools and claims defense attorneys can use to fight these stash house cases.
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From the President: The Best Thing a Criminal Defense Lawyer Can Ever Hear
After a defense lawyer explains to colleagues the challenging and hopeless circumstances of a case, and then reveals a surprising, wondrous outcome – what is the best response the lawyer can hear? “How the hell did that happen?” is the best response.
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Getting Scholarship Into Court Project
The “Getting Scholarship Into Court Project” brings helpful law review articles and other writings to the attention of criminal defense attorneys.
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Mitigating the Monster In a DWI Case
Some crimes are more politically charged than others, and drunk driving is one of them. This makes plea bargaining and sentencing hearings challenging for a DWI defense attorney. To maximize mitigation, the defense attorney must provide prosecutors and judges with documentation that justifies leniency, and the defense must offer conditions and terms that will protect them from a possible repeat offense by the client.
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NACDL News: Justice Department to End Practice of Seeking Waivers of Ineffective Assistance of Couns
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Oct. 14 a new department policy on waivers of claims of ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) in a memo to all federal prosecutors from Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. The memo reads in part:
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NACDL News: NACDL Offers New Scholarship Funding to Indigent Defense Providers
NACDL announced a new program of scholarship assistance for indigent defense providers on Oct. 23. The scholarships will foster access for both public and private defenders of the indigent accused to outstanding criminal defense training programs nationwide.
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NACDL News: New York State Settles Hurrell-Harring Indigent Defense Challenge
Parties in Hurrell-Harring et al. v. New York, a class action brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union challenging systemic deficiencies in the indigent defense services in several New York counties, settled on Oct. 21, 2014. While the settlement applies to only five of the 57 New York counties, it can be used as a blueprint by other counties in New York to meet the obligation to provide adequate representation to indigent defendants statewide. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the federal government, filed a Statement of Interest in the litigation that, while not taking a position on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims, declared that the right to counsel “is so fundamental to the operation of the criminal justice system that its diminishment erodes the principles of liberty and justice that underpin all of our civil rights in criminal proceedings.”
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NACDL News: Polarizing Issues Are Focus Of ‘Under Siege’ Webcast
October 16, 2014 — Implicit bias, disparate sentencing policies, and the overpolicing of minority and poor communities were among the topics discussed during NACDL’s webcast Under Siege: The Defense Bar Examines Police Militarization, Ethnic & Racial Dynamics of Sentencing, and Their Impact on Criminal Justice Outcomes.
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Racial and Ethnic Disparity: A Time to Remain Silent — And a Time to Speak (Inside NACDL)
The sad and shocking events in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., compelled the public to face the painful reality that the United States has not yet achieved the elusive goal of universal racial and ethnic harmony – a goal toward which so many of good will have worked for far too long.
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Shaping Eyewitness And Alibi Testimony With Coercive Interview Practices
The Reid Technique of interrogation has been shown to lead innocent citizens to falsely confess to crimes. Little is known, however, about its use with nonsuspect witnesses, such as eyewitnesses and alibi witnesses. The Reid Manual includes a section that basically says it is appropriate to use the same interrogation methods for suspects on nonsuspect eyewitnesses if the investigator determines that the eyewitnesses are unwilling to disclose key information or are being deceptive. The authors — a defense attorney and two psychologists — discuss a case in which the police used Reid-style interrogation tactics on witnesses, as opposed to the suspect. The results were nearly catastrophic. They use the disclosures from this case to illustrate the dangers of this tactic.
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Tribute: R.I.P. William H. Buckman
A tribute to William H. Buckman, NACDL treasurer and longtime board member.
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Verbatim
Each year hundreds of thousands of people look for employment after their period of incarceration ends. Returning citizen Adryann Glenn shares his story of trying to find a job after incarceration and experiencing rejection due to past mistakes. Despite setbacks, he refuses to live as a second-class citizen.