News from an experimental forest
Hello from the Lubrect Experimental Forest of the University of Montana School of Forestry.1 I’m here for a week of “trial boot camp” and, for the most part, I’m loving every minute of it.
Ok, to be honest it seems a bit unfortunate that the week after I get sworn in and can finally start handling my own cases I have to leave for a week to do something else. I’ve learned that some of my fellow new public defenders who were also just sworn in last week have already done their first jury trials, so I’m clearly slacking and have some catching up to do.
On the other hand, this training is a great thing. I did a mock voir dire today2 and it was definitely a tremendous learning experience that I’m glad I got to have before I actually had to do it for real. Because I’ve never done a jury trial before, I’ve never had to select a jury (nor did I have to simulate the process in any class or clinic prior to now). What I’ve learned is this: It’s not easy. People say all kinds of crackheaded things in response to your questions and your job is to make split-second decisions about how best to use that crackheadedness to your advantage. Should you go for a strike-for-cause, or should you try to use the crazy to teach the jury something more valuable? And whichever you choose, what exactly should you say to achieve that result?
What you’ve heard is true: Jury selection is an art, not a science. Today made one thing very clear: I am not yet an artist in this medium.
So it’s all good. I’m told when I return from the wilderness I’ll have more clients than I can shake a stick at. If you don’t hear from me for a while, the silence will be the sound of me being overwhelmed.
- How, exactly, it’s experimental, I’m not sure. I guess people do research here or something.↩
- ”Voir dire” refers to “jury selection.” Why don’t lawyers and judges just say “jury selection” so that everyone would know what they’re talking about? Because lawyers and judges are pompous asses, that’s why. Ok, maybe it’s because “voir dire” is French for something like “to speak the truth,” and that kind of does describe what the whole exercise is supposed to be about, so, well, ok, maybe the fact that lawyers and judges are pompous asses is not the only reason they call it “voir dire”…↩
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October 26th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
A little off topic, but your post got me thinking…
I live in SD, where many of the counties don’t have public defenders. Instead, the court will appoint lawyers to indigent criminal defendants and the lawyers are compensated at something like $80/hr, paid for by the county, to be reimbursed by the defendant (if the county is lucky).
In the larger counties, they DO have PD’s who are paid a salary or a contract rate.
I live in one of the bigger counties where we have a PD. There have been TWO jury trials in the last year in my county. Two, in over a year. And about 1,000 plea deals.
In the surrounding counties, however, the ones without the PD, there are significantly more jury trials, by raw numbers and by percentate of total cases. Obviously, that’s because in those counties there is more of an incentive (for the lawyer) to take the case to trial (and get paid by the hour). Contrast that with the PD, who has NO financial incentive to go to trial. In fact, the self-interested PD will just try to crank cases through as quickly as possible, to get them off his or her desk.
(Obviously the PD’s in my county aren’t very scrupulous, but I imagine this is a problem which plagues all PD offices.)
This is probably not news to someone who knows how this stuff works. But I’m just finding out, and I think it’s awful. The lawyers should do what’s best for their CLIENT, not what’s best (financially) for themselves. It’s reprehensible.
Yet this is what happens.
I guess I don’t know what the point of this comment is, other than to say I hope you keep your enthusiasm for taking cases to trial — for doing what’s BEST for your client, regardless of the financial (dis)incentives — a few years down the road when you’re a salty, grizzled veteran. :)
November 1st, 2006 at 8:29 am
Yeah, just having a PD system is no guarantee that clients will get better representation. There are perverse incentives either way. I look at it this way: I get paid the same regardless of how much I work on a case; this gives me more time to actual focus on my cases and clients b/c I don’t have to worry about running a business and paying the bills. I can also be more honest in my practice; I don’t have any reason to prolong a case unnecessarily. My only motivation is to give my clients the best represntation I can. Unfortunately, the large caseloads of many PDs force them to triage, meaning that some cases and clients get shorted. On the other hand, a unified PD system can combine the strength of many lawyers to attack systemic issues in a way that contact attorneys can’t.
I don’t know. There’s no perfect system. I’ve got to give this one more time to see whether it’s going to turn out like the one you describe in SD, or better….