Another Quality of Life Bust Last Saturday night Dora, a single mother of two, was getting off of work, heading home on the subway to pick up her kids from the sitter. She only had $1.50 on her metrocard, but the machine would not accept cash to refill it, only credit/debit cards, which Dora did not have.
The token booth was closed, so she had no way to get on the subway and had to get home. Another woman came down the steps and offered to take her through the turnstile with her. Relieved, accepted and was promptly arrested on the train platform.
The cop didn't want to hear Dora's excuses. The law's the law. She was taken to central booking and spent the next 36 hours in jail. It was Monday night when I met her. When she was finally separated from general population for our interview she began shaking and sobbing about her children.
She had begged the babysitter to stay with her kids, but she had not been able to speak with her in over 24 hours and had no news of where her kids or the sitter were. She was a recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic, shocked at the brutality of our system, but I had nothing to offer her but sympathy.
This is Giuliani's legacy. This is "quality of life" policing. Whose quality of life is the question not often asked.
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Posted on Oct 4, 2008 at 9:25 AM | Comments
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PD Holiday... ...to Europe, where the laws are sane, Barak's The Man and even the Green Party has a spot at the trough.
This is a interview I did with Mob Logic (I learned subsequently....)
Happy Labor Day, for those of you who remained employed.
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Posted on Aug 19, 2008 at 6:42 PM | Comments
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Tough Days in Part A Gun possession in NYC is taken very seriously, no mercy is shown under any circumstances. Get caught with a loaded gun in public and you will be offered one year in jail prior to indictment, 3.5 years if you try challenging the case against you, i.e., the search, often based on the 'ol "bulge" routine.
Whatever your views on gun control, NYC's gun policy has led to more gut-wrenching scenes than I can count since I've been in the Bronx. Another recently played out during the course of a long day in Part A.
DD was 19 when he was caught in a taxi with a gun. Like virtually every client I've had on gun possession cases, the kid had never been arrested before and had stunned, anguished parents waiting for him in court.
It was only months from DD's high school graduation when he was arrested. After his parents posted bail, the case was adjourned for two months for DD to graduate and then go straight to jail and leave a year later with life-long violent felony record, forever unemployable.
A week before sentencing, DD's mother called, begging me to get him probation or at least more time before he had to "step in." The district attorney would not hear about it.
Yesterday, the day came. DD and family arrived at 9:30 - surprising, I thought, because clients are not usually in a rush to get to court to go to jail. But DD was not ready to go to jail. We can fight, I told him. It's at least 3.5 years if we lose, I reminded.
I left to handle other cases and give the family time to think, time to work up nerve. Nerve is needed no matter what is decided.
I came back hours later, but nothing had changed. More time, please, Mr. Fabricant! Probation! DD just graduated high school! I called the district attorney.
He was not hearing it some more.
The lunch hour came and went; it was 3:00 p.m., time to decide. Mom comes to me weeping, DD sat on the bench behind her staring at the ground. They've decided DD would "step in." We count days on my calendar, circling the day when DD will be home and I leave to go sign up the case.
For a defense attorney, there is no worse feeling than corrections officers suddenly standing behind your client while you are in open court.
The sound of cuffs rattling off belts.
Hands behind your back.
Wait! My cell phone!
Give them to your lawyer.
My keys!
You won't be needing them anymore!
Judge: Defendant is remanded.
Officer: Step in.
DD's little brother is crying. Mom is crying. I give her the house keys...the cell phone starts vibrating when I hand it to her.
I tell her I wish there had been more that I could do.
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Posted on Aug 9, 2008 at 11:12 AM | Comments
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Look Up "Meat Wagon" in the Dictionary... ...and find this attribution, for which I'm very proud.
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Posted on Aug 8, 2008 at 11:14 AM | Comments
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And...They're Off 9:00 am - stagger into office, put on stale shirt, once-worn socks, throw on suit in the bathroom stall and head to court.
10:00 am - "in" client pleads guilty to time-served on a misdemeanor, rather than the burglary he had been waiting 7 months for trial...client very happy, skips out of court in his Air Pataki's.
10:30 am - in trial part, client with immigration problems gets case dismissed (but must do some anger mgt classes)...client happy.
11:00 am - visit older woman in jail on felony assault charges who has been waiting 17 hours to get case her case called because corrections is in a work slow down...client not happy.
12:00 pm - woman charged in bogus assault case gets case adjourned for 7th time...this time till September...client not happy.
12:30 pm - phone call from another attorney...client re-arrested just before his sentencing on another case (not good), this time felony assault...client not happy.
1:00 pm - 14 messages on my voice mail, client waiting in my office, 8 high school interns to address and hearing to prep.
2:00 pm - resume pre-trial hearings on client charged with attempted murder, accused of shooting a rival gang member...client and attorney very uptight.
6:00 pm - 22 messages on my voice mail.
Trial resumes Thursday. Stay tuned.
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Posted on Jul 20, 2008 at 9:10 PM | Comments
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Another 16 Hours in Holding Cell Hell Sunday and Monday night arraignments again. I have nearly 30 new clients from the past two weeks. Some are in jail, some are out on bail, and some have been released for August court dates. My suits smell like I've been working out in them; I'm sleeping weird hours; the rest of my life is rotating around a different axis, waiting for me to get out of night court.
It's summertime now and the drug cases start to pile up; the kids are out and the dealers are putting them on street to take the risks for them. Spotters (of police and customers), stash men, money men, steerers (Mr. R was steerer); it doesn't matter to the police or the district attorney -- it's just a bunch B level felonies. I too struggle at times to keep human faces on what feels like factory conveyor belt.
When I get home at night, a client or two will usually stick out in my mind. Last night it was Sammy, a 45-year-old crack addict, wearing a bloody hospital gown. He had a broken nose, 18 stitches in his head, 5 stitches in his mouth, a fractured shoulder, a black eye and he was bleeding from both ears. An undercover cop had beaten him with a gun when he discovered Sammy and an informant smoking the crack the informant was supposed to be buying for the undercover cop. The cop just lost it when he saw his bust going up in smoke. He beat the hell out of him, charged him a drug sale and assaulting a police officer and punched out for the night.
Mr. D, a neighborhood guy, no hustler, also sticks out. He tells me his girlfriend is 5 months pregnant, he's unemployed and needed money. For a week he was being harassed to buy crack for someone he suspected was cop. (Admittedly, in my mind, at this point of his story, I began thinking, Then why the hell did you sell to him!) But Mr. D did not want to end up in jail. So he broke up an Alka-Seltzer, stuck it in a baggy and sold it to the guy, who, indeed, turned out to be cop.
Sucker! Strike a blow for liberty!
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Posted on Jun 17, 2008 at 1:10 PM | Comments
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"Air Patakis" Bright orange slip-on shoes issued at Rikers....that's what our clients call them.
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Posted on Jun 12, 2008 at 5:09 PM | Comments
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Legacies It's almost two in the am (the time post on the blog is Pacific time for some reason), just finished back-to-back 5pm to 1am arraignment shifts; the holding cells have been jam packed, it was 100 degrees in NYC today and nobody went home.
When you spend 16 hours interviewing so many miserable people in the bowles of hell, the trends, the atmospherics start to overwhelm the individual stories.
Fathers in jail...so many client's father's are upstate doing time, that's what I'm left tonight. No matter how we struggle to emulate or disassociate, the power of our parents' circumstance seems to be the dominate the force.
(One guy who did make an impression was a massive dude with a Mike Tyson tattoo on his face. He's a "bail enforcement specialist" - aka bounty hunter -- ironically enough, he was in on a fugitive warrant from out of state for a probation violation.) |
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Posted on Jun 9, 2008 at 11:00 PM | Comments
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A Trip Out to Rikers I don't go out to Rikers Island very often; clients are usually "produced" for court appearances and we meet in the court's holding cells to discuss the case. It's a strange trip, just take a left in this working class neighborhood in Queens and suddenly there's a winding road, guardhouse and a long, narrow bridge with prison barges for the "overflow" inmates floating grimly off to the right.
A visit to the island is always for a heavy case, and Mr. T's case is fucking heavy.
We've been together a long time, me and Mr. T. I first met him in St. Barnabas Hospital, chained to a bed with a cop sitting next to him. He'd been shot in the face by police, and did not have an attorney until his mother came to our office to find him one.
I was on intake and headed over to the hospital with an investigator and, a few days later, arraigned him right there in St. Barnabas, still chained to bed, with a judge, court reporter, district attorney and about 10 corrections officers in the room.
Today, nearly two years later and still in a wheelchair as a result of the shooting, Mr. T is being "offered" 20 years in prison. If we lose at trial he could get a life sentence for allegedly assaulting a police officer (with a vehicle).
Tough case. Undoubtedly more on this later.
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Posted on Jun 2, 2008 at 7:11 PM | Comments
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The Return and Remand of Mr. R When Mr. R trotted down the stairs and out of the courthouse as the jury was retuning with the verdict a few weeks ago, nobody -- not the DA, not us, the judge, the cops -- believed he would be gone long or hard to find. No big sirens were wailing, no guards screaming down the corridors.
Everyone knew Mr. R would go right back to the same neighborhood, probably the same block and hustle to get high.
The same block. The block that the undercover cop had been doing "buy and busts" in for 18 months. Thousands of people she had arrested. The courtroom had to be cleared during her testimony because she's still undercover, working the same block. Right where Mr. R went back to. The easiest place to buy crack. That's where the police go shoot fish in a barrel.
Mr. R was one of the little fish. He has spent seven years in prison since '92, but has never served more than 8 months. 45 days here; 90 days there; four months; time served...the life of a drug addict in the South Bronx.
And of course he went back out there. He lasted about 3 weeks before he was arrested on a possession charge. He now faces 12 years in prison.
My two-year-old likes to sing the wheels on the bus go round and round...over and over (he's two so he doesn't recognize inanity).
The DOC bus that will take Mr. R upstate will pass a bus heading back downstate, release its passengers back to the same block...then the bus will pick some different people from the block and take them upstate.
And the wheels on the bus go... |
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Posted on May 22, 2008 at 5:46 PM | Comments
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4:00 a.m. Phone Calls When my cell phone rings at odd hours it sends a little panic into my gut, imagining that something horrific is happening, is about to happen or has happened to one of my clients.
Calls from families that their son is being deported; can I arrange a quickie wedding at Rikers? Calls from mothers, frantic that her son is in custody, at some unknown precinct, charged with some unknown crime; can I go get him out? Calls from young mothers being evicted along with their infants; can I get them into a shelter...now?
My cell phone rang last night at about 4am. I slept through it. "Someone called you at 4am," Tonya noted. "Probably a client," I told her. Listening to the message the next day in court, it was virtually unitelligible, though it was clear that it was a client and that he would not be making it to court the next day. Since the client I was waiting for was not in court, I assumed it was him. The message said to please, please, please, call him back at the number that came up on my cell.
So I dialed the number.
"Hello."
"Yes. This is Chris Fabricant. Is Mr. DD available?"
"Ah...I think you have the wrong number."
"Mr. DD is not there?"
"No."
"Where have I called?"
"This Midnight Interludes."
"What's Midnight Interludes?"
"We're an escort service"
"An escort service?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
Hehehehehehe...... |
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Posted on May 12, 2008 at 11:32 AM | Comments
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Intake in the S. Bronx Today was intake day for me. Everyone who has any type of problem, imaginable or otherwise, wash upon the shores of our office, desperate to speak to a lawyer. And we try our best to help, though the problems are often pretty far afield.
A representative sample:
9:00 a.m. -- Mr. D, Vietnam veteran, comes in to talk about his drug treatment program. He's dressed in a nice suit, carries himself with dignity, gives me a firm hand shake and tells me that "his ass is raw" and he needs to buy "diapers" because of his bladder problem, but he doesn't have any diapers because his drug treatment program won't give him his money. He wants a new drug treatment program, he wants his money, he needs some new diapers (he insists on calling them diapers), but there is nothing I can do about that - it was court-mandated. He left in a rage.
10:00 a.m. -- Ms. TU came in with a grocery bag full of papers and her boyfriend. She had bought a car from a S. Bronx dealership for $30k (!!!!). Problem is the dealer did not own it. Second problem is that she returned the car to him, in exchange for what amounted to a thank you note. Third problem is that her bank is still forcing her to pay back the loan, for a car she never owned. Ms. TU is pulling out scraps of paper from the bank, the dealer, the DMV, etc. and piling them on the table in front of me. She wants me to fix the problem (I'm a lawyer, aren't I?). The best I could do was give her some sympathy and the number to the Attorney General's consumer fraud hotline. She gathered up her pile of papers and her boyfriend and left unhappy.
11:00 a.m. -- A 20-year-old kid came in. He told me he and his father had been busted "trucking" several hundred kilos of cocaine. They both ended up being used by the DEA, trucking large shipments of drugs around the country trying "work off" their case. He had been responsible for several large-scale cocaine busts across the country. But they haunted him. One guy, the kid was sure, had seen him when the DEA made the arrest and knew where he lived with his mother. The pressure began to get to him. He became paranoid in the extreme; his hands started to twitch uncontrollably; he developed a rash and then began hearing voices. He called his DEA "handler", who told him he was "hot" and to "lay low".
Then he cut him off, just never returned his calls.
A year went by. The kid waits to hear about his case, about the guys he helped get busted, he can't sleep...he's literally losing his mind. A social worker in my office spoke with him for over an hour, trying to get him into a counseling program. He left with, hopefully, some direction, which is more than DEA would give him.
2:00 p.m. -- Mr. C, a recent widow, came in. He had been living with his wife in the same two-bedroom apartment for 29 years before she died. Within a week of her death, the Housing Authority filed papers to force him to move to a studio in a different building, although his grandchildren often stay with him and, after nearly three decades, his building was his world. We have housing attorneys in my office, so to Mr. C I was able to offer more than my sympathy. I'm not sure how he left.
I left the office newly amazed at the shit the people in the S. Bronx deal with, even those not caught up in the criminal justice system. |
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Posted on May 6, 2008 at 10:54 AM | Comments
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Not Guilty! Lots of ups and downs and kiss-your-sister in-betweens the last few weeks. An unmitigated good day today.
Mr. E was charged with spitting on a cop, kicking him a few times, "flailing his arms" and smashing out the window of the police cruiser on the way to the precinct.
This is misdemeanor stuff in the Bronx, at least when it has the stench of what's known in our office as "cop assaults": a cop assaults a client and sends him "down the R.O.A.D." (Resisting arrest; Obstruction of Governmental Administration; Assault; and/or Disorderly Conduct.)
Misdemeanor or no, a conviction would not only mean jail time for Mr. E, who had never been arrested before, but he would be deported to the Dominican Republic, although he is a legal permanent resident.
So the case dragged on for nearly 2 years. Mr. E made something like 15 court dates. I didn't want to try the case because it would be a bench trial, and judges tend to believe cops.
But push came to shove today. The cop got on the stand and testified in a sustained projectile of bullshit, beginning with something about Mr. E fitting the description of a suspect fleeing a gang assault in the area. Some additional bullshit about Mr. E stomping him with his white cowboy boots, hurling invective, loogies, attempted biting of the forearm. Then some more bullshit regarding Mr. E smashing out the back window of the cruiser. (Thus necessitating macing him in the face.)
No medical records of the cop's injuries. No photos of the injuries. No photos of the broken window. No receipts for the damage. No description of the fleeing suspect Mr. E supposedly fit. And the gang assault had occurred an hour before Mr. E was arrested.
Not guilty!
For a guy who wears white cowboy boots, Mr. E is pretty macho, but he gave me a hug. Mr. E's mom, who had been harassing me for 16 months, cried and hugged me and cried some more and hugged me some ....
....beats a sharp stick in the eye, as my dad likes to say.
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Posted on May 1, 2008 at 6:37 PM | Comments
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The Pope Sets Our People Free Amazing. Last weekend the Pope came to NYC to give thanks and praises and every cop in the NYPD worked overtime security details. What does that mean for the good people of the S. Bronx?
No one gets arrested! The cops were all too busy to bust anyone. Not even a trespassing arrest. (That's not 100% accurate; a couple found enough time to falsely arrest three teens for trespassing in their own building, though they were not my clients.)
Last night I picked up a single case. That has never happened before. Not even during the Super Bowl, not on Christmas Eve, never. Since the police would have arrested anyone charged with a violent crime and responded to 911 calls, one must ask this question: why are so many people usually arrested?
Did everyone's quality of life nose dive during the Pope's romp through the city?
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Posted on Apr 22, 2008 at 5:45 AM | Comments
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guilty... ...verdict announced in an empty courtroom, just me, my co-counsel, the prosecutor and the jury.
An empty feeling.
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Posted on Apr 16, 2008 at 7:45 PM | Comments
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4:30pm -- We Have a Verdict... ...but not announced because Mr. R did not make it back to court after a recess. My fears range from a suicide, in one form or another, to a conviction with even more time.
Either way, he may be gone tomorrow. We carried his jacket and hat back to the office. There was a dinner role in his pocket.
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Posted on Apr 15, 2008 at 5:35 PM | Comments
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Tea Leaves From the Jury Four jury notes yesterday. We sit trying to figure out what they mean. They want the cross-examination of the arresting officer read back by the court reporter (good!). They want the direct of the undercover read back (bad!). They want to look at the crack (???).
Mr. R seems to be getting worse, just wants a verdict.
I'm sick to my stomach.
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Posted on Apr 15, 2008 at 4:47 AM | Comments
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How Do You Think the Trial's Going? Mr. R picked his head up off the defense table and ask me that on Friday as the jury was shuffling out of the jury box, excused for the weekend. I almost thought he was joking. Most of the jurors glanced at Mr. R as they walked out of the courtroom. I put my arm around his shoulder and tried to read their expressions, but it's impossible to tell if the looks are pity or disgust or indifference. Maybe they're not so different than the looks people give -- or avoid giving -- the homeless asking them for change on the street, but much as they may want to ignore Mr. R in the same way, they will decide his fate. None of them know how much time he's facing. Right now, there is no " lesser included offense" of simple possession, which is what he is guilty of. (We will be fighting about that with the judge tomorrow morning.) Our fear is that the jury will feel like it will be doing Mr. R a favor by sending him to jail, just to detox. We have to make them understand that state prison is not rehab. And our last chance is Monday, closing arguments.... ...one way or another, the end is near.
Fuck the Drug War! |
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Posted on Apr 13, 2008 at 9:38 AM | Comments
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Sitting on the Edge of a Cliff... ...and nodding off.
I told Mr. R that that was what I felt like he was doing while we were sitting outside the courtroom today.
Then the prosecutor gave an opening statement, jabbing a finger at Mr. R. Then I gave an opening statement, jabbing my finger at the police.
And so we go....
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Posted on Apr 9, 2008 at 8:25 PM | Comments
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Can The Jury Forgive Mr. R? It's about midnight. I'm finishing work on a cross-examination, going over the opening statement in my mind, thinking about Mr. R on the street right now, getting high.
And there is no doubt about that.
Today, during the last rounds of jury selection, while Mr. R nodded out at the defense table, I was talking with potential jurors, asking them if they had formed an impression of Mr. R. They were embarrassed to admit it at first, but they finally started to talk about it.
Some thought he didn't care. Some threw out some very charitable excuses for him (stressed, can't sleep; night job), but most seemed to understand. Whether they can forgive Mr. R for the shape he is in, whether they can judge the case strictly on the (lack of) evidence, remains to be seen.
It's truly bizarre to be standing in court, talking to a jury panel about your client's nodding out while he's sitting right behind you. And Mr. R hardly notices. He looked at me when I sat down. I thought he was going to be upset, but I realized he hadn't followed at all.
A veteran defense attorney was in the gallery watching us conduct voir dire. He opined the jury would convict in 5 seconds if Mr. R sleeps through the trial, just on principle.
6 to 12 years. It's incredible to me that we jail people like Mr. R in this country, even for day.
We have a jury now. It begins (or ends) tomorrow.
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Posted on Apr 8, 2008 at 9:06 PM | Comments
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Worse and Worse We did some math today. The minimum sentence is 6 to 12. But it seems that if we told Mr. R he was facing the death penalty he would still want to go to trial. So there shall be a trial.
We sit in a robing room off the side of the court, questioning individual jurors about their excuses for not serving, their biases, their feeling about drug cases. Mr. R moans aloud and picks at the fresh stab wound that appears to have become infected; sometimes he falls asleep.
It's incredible how many potential jurors have been affected by drugs and the drug war, and death and violence. Fathers who died in prison after a drug conviction. Brothers serving long stretches for drug crimes. Sisters who died of overdoses.
Everyone comes into the little room and pretends as though we're all having a normal discussion about our schedules and hang-ups, while Mr. R disintegrates in the corner.
He is sleeping in our office during lunch. The judge warns him after
every break that the trial will go on without him should he wonder off, since it seems clear
to everyone that Mr. R may or may not be able to make it back to court.
Why are we doing this?
And it was just the first day of jury selection.
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Posted on Apr 7, 2008 at 6:59 PM | Comments
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Can Mr. R Make to/through Trial? So it's a "school grounds" case, meaning Mr. R is actually facing a minimum 3 1/2 years in jail. (The Drug Policy Alliance has a good article about school zone statutes here.)
It's a piece of crack the size of tic-tack. 3 1/2 to 12 years.
Yesterday, Mr. R was almost jailed for showing up about hour late for court. (We took him to our office during lunch and he fell asleep in a cubicle...we had no idea where he was. Finally we called the office and had a search party find him and get him to court.)
Today, Mr. R barely made it to court in the morning. He's so strung out he keeps nodding out in the middle of the proceedings; head down, drool running down his chin. He picked his head up after I nudged him when the jury was empaneled today; he was barely able to stand when he was introduced by the judge. My co-counsel and I take turns keeping an eye on him, giving him a paper to write on to keep his attention focused, nudging him, lecturing him, giving each other worried looks.
It's a nightmare.
Such a sweet guy. Wants us to beat the case for him. Wants to be involved. And in his own way, he's trying. He showed up today with eye glasses, I guess for a studious look. They're not prescription; they have a big 'Steve Madden' label right on the glass, which we can't get rid of because they're only supposed to be used as frames.
Mr. R needs help. He doesn't want help. He's on trial. If we beat the case, he'll keep using. If we don't, he'll keep using in prison.
Now it's the weekend. I wonder whether he'll be in court on Monday as I work on my opening statement.... |
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Posted on Apr 4, 2008 at 4:46 PM | Comments
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not that trial, this trial a text today from another attorney in my office: 'sent to judge P, 2:15. yuk'. this meant that a trial neither of us really expected to "go", got "sent out" to judge she's not nuts about. and this a felony drug sale, our client is facing 2 to 9 years in prison.
i arrived at the appointed hour, at the appointed courtroom. but the jury was still deliberating on the last trial held in the courtroom, so we will not start until a verdict is reached. (which is just as well, since i'll need some time to prep the case...but we could begin picking a jury at any moment tomorrow -- making thursday all the more nuts -- or the next day or on monday.)
our client, Mr. R, is a gentle, sweet mess. he's addicted to crack, and living a very, very hard life. (he was completely out of it this afternoon and has a fresh stab wound running around his elbow with about 25 stitches...it looks just horrendous. my co-counsel, a maternal woman, got some anti-biotic cream and rubbed it on his arm and gave him the tube to take 'home' with him.)
Mr. R is alleged to have been the 'hand-to-hand' in an undercover 'buy and bust' operation. aside from 6 empty ziplocks with cocaine residue, which suggests he was using, not selling drugs, nothing was found on him and he had no marked money. indeed, he had no money...
it's the kind of case that makes obvious what a waste of human lives and money the drug war is. the arresting officer testified at a preliminary hearing that she personally had made 700 drug arrests -- just on buy and busts -- in 6 years. 700!!! what has changed as a result? what purpose will be served by jailing Mr. R for at least two years if we lose the trial?
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Posted on Apr 2, 2008 at 7:16 PM | Comments
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storm clouds gathering
thursday is going to be a bad day. seven felonies (five indicted, two unindicted) are "on," meaning a court date of some sort.
one client was shot in the head by the police -- he's in a wheelchair now -- the issue of course will be whether the shooting was justified...this is my worst case, it is on to pick a trial date. ouch. (more on this later...)
one client is being brought in from Conn., where he's "in" on a parole violation. his (bullshit) bribery of police officer case is on for trial, meaning it will plea out, or it will go to trial.
one client has already pled guilty and been promised probation, but then got indicted on a bunch of fraud charges that allegedly happened before he pled guilty. so the case is on for me to beg the judge to sentence him to probation on the new stuff. ouch.
another client is not getting the drug treatment program he wants, but will either take it or likely be in jail for next 2 to 4 years.
there's a juicy burglary case ($250,000 in bundles of cash stolen from a safe, power cut in the house, alarm overridden...pretty techy operation for the S. Bronx). this on to pick a trial date.
and a couple of poor souls who were arrested yesterday, whom i represented today in arraignments (without much success) and will be at their side again on thursday....and along the sides of everyone else noted affectionately above.
or i could be sent for trial tomorrow and one of colleagues will inherent my thursday. |
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Posted on Mar 31, 2008 at 6:20 PM | Comments
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and on friday...a trial what an insane week. lastly, a misdemeanor bench trial, came in as a felony burglary. my client called my office 18 months ago. i was on intake. she needed a defense attorney; i was transferred the call and yesterday it was finally over.
Ms. M, a middle-aged widow with a teenage daughter, spent most of her life as a working class, stay-at-home mom, but
her husband of 19 years dropped dead of a heart attack one night and Ms. M wound up
on the streets in less than 5 years. when she called the office she was living in hard-to-find, low-income, non-profit housing, after enduring the NYC shelter system for 7 months.
her landlord, who got her the apartment, took advantage of her, taking her to vacant apartments for sex and refusing to acknowledge her otherwise. the landlord had a pregnant girlfriend in the building and risked a sexual harassment suit -- i mentioned loudly to his attorney -- if he tried to evict her.
on the day Ms. M called our office, she said the police were at her apartment building, calling her on her cell phone demanding she return home or face prosecution for breaking into her landlord's apartment.
the cop was friend of the landlord's, not acting in his "official capacity", he told me when i called him and was gone by the time Ms. M returned home. the landlord tried to force her to sign an agreement to vacate the apartment. after she refused , he filed felony burglary charges against Ms. M and she was jailed for 48 hrs, but allowed to return home pending trial, outraging landlord.
four months later, the landlord claimed Ms. M violated the order of protection by threatening him. Ms. M was arrested again, spending another 36 hours in jail.
Yesterday, after the top charges were dismissed, the case finally got "sent out." Ms. M was terrified of going to jail again, terrified of testifying, terrified of the landlord's power. she wanted to plead guilty and get it over with, but we talked her out of it.
unbelievably, the same swine of a judge mentioned here heard the case. the landlord got on the stand and embarrassed himself with an avalanche of bullshit throughout 2 hours of testimony. and Ms. M testified, coming across as she was: anxious, intimidated, guileless, but there was no absolutely, positively no doubt she had been used by the landlord, the only man she'd been with aside from her husband.
after a day of testimony, the judge acquitted Ms. M of violating the order of protection, but convicted her of attempted criminal trespass (he believed Ms. M had once been inside the landlord's apartment without permission, but also believed the landlord had lied about the sexual relationship and lied about being threatened by Ms. M). he sentenced her to nothing and allowed her to return to the apartment.
Ms. M was happy, mostly that the case was over -- she spent 3 days in jail and made 15 court dates! -- and that the landlord was finally made to look like the liar he was. but a different judge, once finding the landlord was using a vulnerable widow for sex in non-profit housing and lying about it, would have acquitted her of everything.
always a roll of the dice, the criminal justice system. pain and suffering, one form or another, is assured however...
...glad to have this week over -- arraignments till 1am on sunday and monday night, a client in the grand jury on wednesday and a trial on friday.
(and... while walking back to the office during lunch recess, my co-counsel and I ran into a colleague outside the bodega who has having a throw-down with an asshole cop who was tying to impound her client's car. he's actually telling us that he's towing the car to all the way to Staten Island -- rather then the impound in the Bronx -- just to be a dick. really. just because he was pissed off. we of course end up in this fight, miss lunch, and get back for an afternoon of trial, fueled only by outrage and a bowel of Cheerios ten hours earlier....)
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Posted on Mar 28, 2008 at 7:18 PM | Comments
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a good day in the trenches Deciding whether to have your client testify in the grand jury is a real roll of the dice. My client -- a 66 year old man with no criminal record, retired after 36 years of working at US Steel, fractured hip, using a walker, diabetic -- was charged with selling drugs. Bail was set at $5,000 at arraignment by a real swine of a judge, meaning my pathetic client would spend the entire time his case was pending in jail (at least a year).
I usually don't have my clients testify in the grand jury. Testify and get indicted, plea offers by the DA get even shittier, bail is sometimes raised and you're stuck with whatever your client says -- under oath -- if the case goes to trial.
But today I put my client in. He's just too old for this. Walking with him to the grand jury panel -- one hand they had handcuffed to his tattered pants and he hobbled along using a cane in the other hand -- I felt like I do before a trial. Scared shitless.
My client told his story; I walked with him back to the guarded elevator down to the holding cells; went back to the office; got a call on my cell.
He blew it out! Case Dismissed! He's home!
FUCK YES!! FUCK YOU!! FUCK THE DRUG WAR!!
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Posted on Mar 26, 2008 at 8:06 PM | Comments
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Street Sweep Trespassing Arrests So another arraignment shift last Sunday night. This time misdemeanors, meaning the usual assortment of outrageous/false trespassing arrests. The misdemeanor cases come in stacks and the holding cells are crammed full of people who have been in jail for days waiting to see a lawyer.
I was going through 10-11 of the trespassing cases and noticed they were all from the same building, and in every single one of them -- every one! -- the police claimed that the defendant admitted to him that he was there to buy drugs. (Those of you read the Village Voice piece know that this type of complaint has already been held by at least one judge to be simply incredible...people don't spontaneously admit to police officers they were going to buy drugs!....yet it continues)
What happened was the police simply did a street sweep of everyone in the area. Anyone they did not find drugs on, they locked up for trespassing and made the rest up.
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Posted on Mar 25, 2008 at 5:43 PM | Comments
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An Interesting Arraignment Shift I haven't posted anything personal on this blog or talked about the day-to-day of my work, perhaps I'll begin this week, with an arraignment shift.
First a 64-year-old woman who shot her husband (he lived, though he's in considerable pain). Never before arrested. The statement she gave to the police: "Yeah I shot that motherfucker. I got tired of his shit."
Next, a man from Yemen, busted with enough Khat to be charged with an AII felony. Here's a little background on the Khat trade. I had never had a Khat bust before; it will be interesting to see how seriously the DA takes it. Will it be a like an MJ bust (not so serious) or like a crack bust (time to bring the pain)?
I also used my office's "Freedom Fund" for the first time. Here's a NY Times article on the way the fund works. I was able to get a man out of jail that the judge had set bail on, despite my outraged podium pounding about what bullshit the charges were. He had been attacked by knife-wielding gangster in a Twin Donuts shop and ended up being charged with assault himself, after disarming the guy and, understandably, kicking his ass. And it's all on video, including my client being attacked.
I'll try to update the progress of these cases as they descend into the black hole of S. Bronx criminal justice.
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Posted on Mar 16, 2008 at 6:51 AM | Comments
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Village Voice Piece This is an article I wrote on trespassing arrests for the Village Voice. Originally it was much longer, but I think it gets the point across. This is an issue I have been outraged about since I began working at the trial level. My goal is that this will serve as a catalyst to end this shameful, routine abuse of power against the powerless.
If you have read the piece the following are some thoughts about the cost of Operation Impact/Clean Halls:
Whatever its merits, the cost of the policing strategy is not easily quantified with statistics. Although the cart blanch given to the police certainly plays a significant role in the fact that 85% of marijuana arrests in New York City are of blacks and Latinos, despite their drug use being less than whites. (Put another way, when the NYPD begins searching everyone from Tribeca to the Upper East Side there will be a balancing out of the marijuana arrests in New York.) More generally, a study published in Social Psychology Quarterly in 2003 found what my experience in the Bronx suggests: aggressive police tactics such as "verticals" alienate law-abiding residents from their own communities.
But the true cost of the strategy stems from false arrests. The routine false arrests of people simply going about their daily lives eats away trust in the NYPD and respect for the criminal justice system. It's at the root of the so-called stop snitching culture, and the root of why Bronx juries believe cops perjure themselves without impunity. The erosion of trust and respect begins with the abuse of power, the "little lies" , the nights in jail for anyone caught in a dragnet and pressured to plead guilty, never holding the People to their burden of proof. A jury of your peers in the Bronx will have more experience being treated like a criminal than your peers in Tribeca and the Upper East Side.
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Posted on Nov 9, 2007 at 8:24 AM | Comments
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Busted for Carrying (not reading) Busted! It was so very hard for me to read the DEA's announcement that Ms. Watson had just collapsed in a warm puddle of defeat - another water buffalo mauled by the cheetah. She had no drug war survival skills. What should she have done? Why is it obvious she'd not read the book before she packed for her drug trip? Let me count the ways.
Limbaugh Lesson #1 - Choose Your Dope Wisely. Mr. Limbaugh's Choice? Pills. Lots and lots of pills. Ms. Watson's Choice? Meth. Grade: F.
The Third Commandment (of the Busted! Ten Commandments): THOU SHALL NOT COVET MORE THAN A MISDEMEANOR BUZZ. Ms. Watson's Buzz? Six and a half years. Grade: F
The Fourth Commandment: THOU SHALL NOT PISS AWAY THY RIGHTS. And the DEA says, "Under questioning, Watson claimed complete responsibility for the drugs." Grade: F
The Eighth Commandment: THOU SHALL LEAVE THY DOPE AT HOME. And the DEA says, "Watson, the driver of a 2006 Dodge Stratus rental car from Phoenix," which was pulled over in Oklahoma, "claimed to be from Van Buren, Arkansas".
A quote from Busted!: "The toiletry bag is the first place they're looking". And the DEA says, "The officer found 79.84 grams of actual methamphetamine inside a female makeup kit."
Another quote from Busted!: "Every pipe, roach clip, puddle of bong water, Philly's Blunt, poster of Marley smoking a spliff, stanky ashtray, and copy of Busted! - that's right, hide this book - is added to the wrong side of the bullshit scale [i.e., our bustee's credibility]."
The DEA: "Also found were various articles of paraphernalia including small baggies, smoking pipes, and a Bunsen burner".Watson was also in possession of five cellular telephones, only four of which were active. She was also in possession of a book titled "Busted, Drug War Survival Skills" which offers defensive legal strategies to mitigate prosecution."
Ouch.
And of course, The Busted! First Commandment: THOU SHALL NOT DEAL. And the DEA says, "The defendant pled guilty . . . to Possession with Intent to Distribute Methamphetamine." And it all added up to: "Wendy Watson, age 37, of Van Buren, Arkansas, was sentenced to 78 months imprisonment, 60 months supervised release, and ordered to pay a Special Assessment fee of $100.00."
Can you believe they hit her with the fucking surcharge? |
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Posted on Feb 12, 2007 at 12:21 PM | Comments
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Rights? I Got Your Rights Right Here Motherfucker!
Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?
Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.
MCF: That's The United States Attorney Alberto Gonzales, and here's one of his victims. Is it time for marching in the streets yet? |
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Posted on Jan 18, 2007 at 4:44 PM | Comments
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Busted! New Years Update As promised the email updates have been irregular. I hope no one has been the subject of any unpleasant police scrutiny -- is there any other kind? -- or worse since the last update. But judging from the rash of recent Drug War stories, that has not been the case.
Recently I got an email asking me about "Woody's Dodgy Dope Ditty" (p. 170). The writer thought she may have known him, but it now seems unlikely. Since I assume most of the people who signed up for updates have the read the book -- maybe not the Dept. of Justice folks -- I thought some might be interested the ditty's origin:
After signing the contract to write the book, I took a sabbatical to Thailand. On an island called Pha Nang (here's a video of the beach) I met Woody -- unquestionably one of the most hilarious and totally fucking nuts individuals I have ever met. Over the course of a long night by a bon fire, I filled a notebook full of Woody's insane stories and promised him that I would use at least one in the book. I picked the airport story because it was perfect for the Airport and Borders section of the book, but there were at least 5 more I could have used. When the book was published I tried emailing him, but I really could not read the address I'd written down very well, and everything bounced back to me. (I admit that by the end of the night my handwriting was something less than legible.)
So Woody is out there in the universe somewhere and I hope someday he picks up a copy of the book and reads his story - and he'll know I wasn't full of shit.
An update on the lawsuit. It has been unceremoniously dropped. I can say now what it was about. A lawyer from Ohio sued HarperCollins -- and this poor public defender -- for copyright infringement, claiming he had written a book called Busted! It turns out that the lawyer had been disbarred, his book had never been published and even if it had, titles apparently cannot be copyrighted except under very limited circumstances. So the swine went away empty-handed. Incidentally, I wanted to call the book The Drug Bust Bible and make it look exactly like a bible, which was why I wrote the Ten Commandments, but my editor wouldn't go for it.
For those of you who checked out the chris fabricant show, it has been shelved for the time being. It has been a lot of fun, but trial work is too demanding to do a weekly show. Anyone interested can listen to archived shows on iTunes. I am currently taking a prodigious amount of notes about my first year with the Bronx Defenders and plan to write about the experience in the future.
Since we are approaching New Years Eve, a.k.a. Amateur Hour (p. 82), I want to remind people that it's always better to get wasted at home and stay home when you're wasted; it's just so, so easy to get busted carrying on New Years. Walking out the front door is walking into the Second Level of Doom (p. 79). (Btw, during night arraignments a few weeks ago a prosecutor came up to me in court and said he had been on DrugWarSurvival.com and that he wished more people followed the Ten Commandments - and said he thought MJ should be legal. Nice of him to say, but of course he's still out there prosecuting the cases.)
Last year at this time I hoped for peace in the Middle East and regime change at home. Although peace seems a more distant hope a year later, regime change is upon us. So I try to remain optimistic.
Happy New Year. |
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Posted on Dec 30, 2006 at 8:15 AM | Comments
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Doogie Houser...the word's first blogger. He really doesn't get enough credit for that. |
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Posted on Sep 13, 2006 at 6:59 PM | Comments
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Our First Twelve Episodes The iTunes summary of our first twelve episodes, from the latest to the launch (check it out here):
Mourning the death of the fourth amendment and an interview with Steve Bloom, Editor at Large for High Times Magazine
An interview with Norm Stamper, the former Seattle Chief of Police, plus more tales from the Bronx Courthouse and all the bad news from the criminal justice system.
Chris gives us a taste of life inside a Bronx holding cell and chats with artist, author and drug war activist Anthony Papa, who spent twelve years behind bars.
Chris gets personal on the subject of teachers and sex, plus an exclusive interview with Josh Gilbert, director of the new film A.K.A. Tommy Chong.
Introducing our new news correspondant Tonya Lester, Chris and the guys take the "Are You Going to be Raped, Robbed or Murdered" test and debate Meth vs. Crack.
Chris takes on Hollywood lawyer Will Benseusen, pedophiles and all the bad news from the criminal justice system.
An exclusive interview with Yousef Salaam, one of the "Central Park 5" plus Chris's take on criminal appeals, boob tag and all the bad news from the justice system.
Chris is joined by drug policy activist Doug Green to discuss Limbaugh Lesson #6, Russell Simmons, and the wonder drug Ibogaine. Plus underage child pornographers, piss bombers in Ohio and all the bad news from the criminal justice system.
What would make five young men confess to a rape they didn't commit? The Central Park Jogging case and other false confessions, plus all the news from the criminal justice system.
Limbaugh Lesson #8, Mexico's decriminalization plan and all the news from the criminal justice system
Trying cases in the media, an interview with filmmaker Holly Page Joyner about her new doc "Pack, Strap and Swallow", and all the news from the criminal justice system.
Perjury - day in and day out in the courts, and all the bad news from the criminal justice system.
Money, Good Looks or Connections - what's better if you get busted?, an interview with lawyer and activist Simone Levine and all the bad news from the criminal justice system.
Per Se drugged driving, an Interview with Barbara Lerner about the Rockefeller Drug Law reforms and all the bad news from the criminal justice system.
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Posted on Jul 16, 2006 at 7:22 PM | Comments
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Busted! Blog Goes Podcast. This blog will now be a weekly podcast, The Chris Fabricant Show, co-hosted by filmmakers (and bloggers) Adam Eland and Jeff Marks. Please subscribe! |
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Posted on Jun 5, 2006 at 7:34 PM | Comments
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Meth v. Crack - Going to the Bronx - Rehabology Sentencing Law and Policy has a very interesting piece on the different responses legislatures have had to the so-called meth epidemic (wreaking havoc on poor white communities), as opposed to the so-called crack epidemic in the Eighties (usually associated with poor black communities).
I think the difference reflects inherent racism, but I think it's more subtle. White legislatures look at their own communities, look at thier prisons overcrowded with drug offenders -- largely the result of mandatory minimums passed during the crack epidemic -- and actually lean toward rational decision-making.
.....
In other news, I recently took a new gig with The Bronx Defenders, starting in two weeks. Should be interesting.
I also want to let readers know about a new blog, Rehabology.com, devoted to, among other things, "explor[ing] the connections between those who produce and consume drugs, legal or illegal, as well as those who campaign for or against their use." Check it out; it's good stuff. |
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Posted on Jun 5, 2006 at 8:07 AM | Comments
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DNA Doesn't Lie, Right (update) For four years now, I have been beating my head against a habeas corpus petition pending in federal district court. I did not handle the orginal appeal in state court, a former colleague had, but then left for private pratice. Having lost his direct appeal, the defendant filed a pro se petition, which wound up in front of a judge for whom I used to work. The judge called me and asked me to take the case. I did. And I have lived to regret it.
At the time I filed the petition, the central issue was the use of semen evidence and derivative DNA evidence against my client at trial. The DA had told the defense prior to trial that the evidence did not exist and defense counsel opened to the jury emphasizing that there was no physical evidence linking my client to the crime. A couple of weeks into the trial, the DA discovered that there was indeed semen evidence and she of course wanted to use it. The judge said, 'Sure! Why the hell not?!' Counsel did a lot of objecting to no avail.
While cross-examining the serologist, counsel asked if DNA testing had been done on the semen sample. She said no, but pointed out that the defense could have requested it just as easily as the DA. And so trial was halted, DNA testing was done over the weekend and admitted against my client the following week. Although the science amounted to guess work, the expert insisted that my client could not be excluded as a donor and said that the chances of someone other than my client matching the sample were as low as 1 in 180,000.
After arging the habeas petition in the district court and while I was waiting for the decision in the case, the DNA was re-tested and my client was excluded as a possible donor. I was very excited. A rare Perry Mason moment in the otherwise fairly predictable criminal justice system.
The petition was held in abeyance, pending the outcome of sure-fire winning motion in the original trial court, particularly because the original judge died and would not have to reverse himself. But I lost. It was very ugly decision, right off the stable floor. Surely I would get leave from the Appellate Division to argue the case again. But I didn't.
Back in federal court on an amended habeas corpus application, I argued that the late disclosure of the semen evidence amounted to a Brady violation (DA's obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense), that my client's conviction rested on "false evidence," and that the discovery violation rendered his trial "fundamentally unfair." Surely I would win with my old liberal boss now a liberal federal magistrate, who even before the re-testing of the DNA thought the petition warranted assignment of counsel. But I didn't.
Today I wait to see whether the district judge will adopt the decision. I am not as optimistic as I used to be.
UPDATE: Not only did the district court adopt the decision, it denied a certificate of appealability. |
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Posted on May 12, 2006 at 10:15 AM | Comments
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4/20 Pot Surveillance Police in Colorado are demonstrating the significance of the 6th and 8th Commandments, particularly on April 20th.
Here in NYC the fuzz videotape political demonstrators.
Pretty scary shit. |
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Posted on May 3, 2006 at 6:03 AM | Comments
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The Family Research Counsel For some time now I have been receiving regular updates from the Family Research Counsel -- straight from the desk of Tony Perkins, a hardcore, tight-assed, red-neck-in-a-blue-suit whacko. I thought I'd share his latest missive on the surge in fucking he's concerned will coincide with the Gay Games:
"The Gay Games have attempted to fashion themselves as the Olympics for Gay people as if it were just another grand sporting event like the Special Olympics or the senior Olympics. While model Olympic athletes display discipline and self control, there appears to be no model for Gay Games attendees, in fact, the "social" life, the off-the-field activities, garner more emphasis. It's bad enough that corporate sponsors the Gay Games include Walgreens and Commonwealth Edison- Chicago's utility company. Now we learn that a Chicago gay bathhouse has been accepted as a corporate sponsor for the games. Such venues are breeding grounds for the AIDS virus. The tragedy is that there are Americans who may well be infected with a deadly disease as a direct result of this most unwise decision. Why should this administration feel the need to bow to the politically correct crowd? Please call the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 to register your concern."
I too urge you call the comment line and register your enthusiam. |
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Posted on Mar 3, 2006 at 7:56 AM | Comments
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Why Would I Mind if You Search My Bags? And so we have it. The sure-fire loser of a lawsuit has come to pass. Judge Berman decided that the fuzz are free to search your bags if you ride the NYC subway, which is just about everyone in the city, usually a few times a day. What does this solve? Why isn't this just another rollback of civil rights in the name of fighting terrorism? |
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Posted on Dec 5, 2005 at 9:35 AM | Comments
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Criminal Defense Doesn't Pay Criminal defense attorneys, particularly on appeal, wind up making a lot of arguments and filing a lot of briefs that, frankly, barely pass the giggle test. (I once argued that the DA had failed to prove my client intended to kill his estranged wife, although he was caught running after her with a machete screaming, "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, BITCH!")
And when we're not holding our noses and mucking the stalls for our clients, we are losing cases that we should win, convictions that anyone not wearing a robe, not up for re-election, would understand must be overturned if we're going to take the whole fair trial thing seriously.
Nobody really likes to talk about the reality of criminal defense at the appellate level. It's very depressing for those of who do the work, both in a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind of way, and in the-criminal-justice-system-bites kind of way.
The existential crises appeal goes like this. A stone cold killer with a wild posse of priors confesses to blowing away a cab driver while he was out of his mind on crack, all over an $8 fare. This is a dog. A low-down dirty, belly-licking dog. It won't matter what kind of gross miscarriage of justice was served up a trial; I'll get up in front the judge and start arguing about Miranda rights and I'll be cut-off long before working up a righteous lather:
Isn't your client the man who, while on felony parole and while intoxicated on crack cocaine, shot an unarmed, immigrant cab driver, who was feeding a family of 17, over an 8-dollar fare?
Ah&yeah, but&.
And he confessed in writing and on videotape, isn't that right?
These bothersome facts will not be the facts my client is focused upon. He's focused on his Miranda rights. And he's litigious, because he's been through the system before. He's lost other appeals. He's spent time in the prison law library. He knows he can make me work.
I will have to argue something.
Not that I will be lacking in creative ideas. My stone cold killer friend will have a whole lot of ideas, and he will be writing me and writing me and writing me and writing me. He'll devote more time to his shitty little appeal than he has any other endeavor in his doomed life. (Thats right. Doomed. If you find yourself in an intense, old school snail mail relationship with your appellate attorney, you are doomed. Get used to those four walls and start grinding out the letters and lawsuits.)
Prison law libraries churn out some magnificent bullshit; mucking that stall for something worthwhile is usually a frustrating, futile process, but I am obligated to take all of my client's legal research seriously. I will patiently explain to him that, yes, that case would be very helpful to us if it hadnt been decided by some whacked-out hippie judge in San Francisco in 1968. Here in the Age of the Orange Alert that shit ain't flying.
And then there will be the family. Stone cold killers have families who believe in them, too; and they will be outraged about the injustice of it all. Outraged about the conviction, outraged by the sentence, and working up a good outrage about by my gross incompetence. Down to the public defender's office they will come. Tears, drunkenness, A.D.D. two-year-olds, chair-hurling sisters they'll all come down demanding justice, asking me what I'm going to do about it.
Ah, well your brother did confess to shooting that cab driver while he was high on ah, crack, in& ah&in a dispute over the fare&.So ah&.
Eventually, I will come up something. I will put it down on paper. I will strap on the one suit I own and trim up the sideburns. I will meet the family on the courthouse steps. I will stand in front of the judge and take my abuse like a man. I will lose. Then I will defend myself against an ineffective assistance of counsel suit, cursing the day the bastard was born. And I will wonder what the hell I am doing with my life.
Then there's the-criminal-justice-system-bites appeal. They go like this. My man is an illiterate Pakistani immigrant; he got busted in a buy and bust operation -- cop buys dope, busts dope dealer. (Tomorrow different cop buys different dope, busts different dope dealer). Something smelled about the bust; missing buy money, weirdly inconsistent police reports, a degrading roadside cavity search, and my client's testimony that the cops planted the dope was more credible than typical. (Not that that's an incredible feat.)
But even if everything the cops said was gospel, my client was so far down his organization's food chain and strung out that he didn't know where the hell he was, let alone who he was really working for. So he had no one to rat out, goes trial and gets 6 to 12 years, quick-like.
Nobody called me about this guy. Nobody tried very hard at his trial. He can't write me. My office is too impoverished to accept collect call without a damn good reason. Another inmate wrote a letter for him once, generally making the point that the cop who busted him was a lying swine. And that was about it.
I would like to help this guy; and, incredibly, he has a great, admittedly obscure, issue to appeal: the judge didnt read a jury note to the lawyers before responding to it. Ah ha! I have the sons of bitches right where I want them. I march into court; stand up at the podium, spike my brief in their faces, and moonwalk out of the courtroom.
Eighteen months go by. But then, the impossible . . .
A win!
Someone called it a technicality. Nothing boils the blood of an appellate attorney more than that word. The man deserved a new trial and they aint passing them out like handy wipes. It pains them to reverse a conviction. Oh how it pains them.
What surely eased the agony of giving someone they're pretty sure had the dope a new trial is that he has already served nearly five years; by the time its all over hell have served at least the minimum. Nevertheless, I go see my client to deliver the good news. The District Attorney will undoubtedly offer to let him plead guilty to a lesser charge, no more jail time, and hell walk out of court a free man. This is pretty good stuff for a defense attorney, what the (sometimes we) true believers live for. A sympathetic client, a nice little checkmate move, and out pops the client.
No deal.
My man continues to have this principle thing about pleading guilty to a crime he insists he didn't commit, but he will for a misdemeanor. He'll only plead to a misdemeanor, and there's no chance the DA will let it go at that. Perhaps more importantly, my client's not a citizen; if he pleads guilty the INS will lock him back up for an unknown amount of time and then deport him back to Pakistan, where he has not been since he was 3 years old; where he doesnt speak the language and where he has no family.
So he's not going free, and it's beginning to occur to me that he would prefer to stay in jail than be deported. Back to trial he shall go, where he will undoubtedly lose with a quickness, and the DA will undoubtedly slam him with all shes got, since her office will have spent an incredible about of time and money on a boring old buy and bust. Now they shall have their pound of Paki flesh. My client shall serve some more time, hell appeal his new conviction, he'll lose and then he shall be deported.
That was my win.
I admit that defense attorneys indulge in a lot of cynical, some might say depressing, gallows humor. When I am accused of relentless black humor, I tell the story of the defense attorney who was finally disbarred when he was discovered naked on his roof, firing a shotgun in the air over the freeway in LA. That guy? He had no sense of humor.
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Posted on Nov 22, 2005 at 4:13 PM | Comments
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Old Hippies and DA's I get a lot of email from clearly inebriated individuals and a lot angry emails from cops, and have also gotten a few from teachers, telling me they're going to recommend the book to their "at risk" students (as though there are any other kind), but the two most interesting groups I hear from are DA's and aging hippies.
This is a fairly typical response to the book from the aging hippie set. My folks, who fall squarely into the aging hippy demographic, were, like the reviewer from the Underground Comics site, very depressed about the current state of the 4th Amendment and drug policy and the criminal justice system. For them, the book's humor was mostly drowned out by the reality of the Drug War.
DA's, on the other hand, tend to think the book is hilarious. This is a recent email from a DA in NYC, which was forwarded to me: "Um, well now you can tell MCF that today was story time at the DA - it was slow so I whipped out the book and started reading aloud! I was doing a damn good job of entertaining at least 8 ADAs with Busted . . . then we got busted and had to do some work! Btw, today I won my first Mapp hearing."
As a writer, I love it when people think my writing is funny. But it's very telling, and sadly ironic, that it's the DA's who are finding the book so amusing. The email quoted above is particularly telling, because a "Mapp hearing" is a suppression hearing, and that section of the book is where I talk about the DA's who (often knowingly) put lying cops on the stand.
I guess it's just a lot easier to laugh at a system rigged in your favor. |
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Posted on Nov 7, 2005 at 10:46 AM | Comments
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The Smack of Conspiracy I don't know, it's probably not an actual conspiracy, it's just a question of having A LOT of people in the right places, particularly in the federal judiciary (for the rest of their lives), but it is very, very nice -- and it smells very, very funny -- to fight each of lives biggest legal battles (think election 2000) in front of judges your Papi Bush appointed to watch over his mischievous little maniac, er . . . leader of the free world. Fuck the flu. I want to hear about I-fucking-Raq. I want to hear all about lies. Bring in Big Bill as an expert witness on the consequences of telling lies. |
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Posted on Nov 2, 2005 at 4:20 PM | Comments
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Busted! Update: Attica, Lawsuit, Rush, etc. A piece of mail landed on my desk from one of my clients. He's in Attica serving 20 years for manslaughter, and it was a more or less standard letter, cops were lying swine, that kind of thing. Then the last line: 'Also, I sent my people out to purchase the book you authored.'
So there you have it, Busted! for the people it's too late to help. Perhaps now is the time we'll have the 'knowing nods' and 'smacks to the forehead,' which were predicted (see 'Flying High Again' p. 112), but still Attica is an odd, if not stunning, place to have readers.
Later the same week the letter from Attica arrived, I got a call from a lawyer at HarperCollins, the same lawyer who vetted the book, which took a loooong time. (Flashback)
Steel gray haired lawyer [talking to your writer]: Okay, turning to the 'Dangling Dope Ditties' (see p. 106). Can you take the 'bare-assed' woman's name out, since she wasn't convicted of anything?
Writer: Oh, all right.
Steel gray haired lawyer: And must we call Sheriff Joe Arpaio an asshole?
Writer: Oh, yeah. He is an asshole.
Anyway, got a call from the steel gray haired lawyer, says someone is suing me in Ohio. It's a right of passage of sorts, I suppose. I wish I could comment specifically on what a ripe load of bullshit the suit is, but I can't yet. More info as soon as the case is dismissed.
A belated updated on former Sound Factory owner, Richard Grant, (see the 'The Sound Factory Goes Boom,' p. 138). Unbelievably, he was acquitted, but his club shall forever remain closed, and all the promoters, er, dealers are still on the hook. Speaking of Evil Beats, the Winter Music Conference in Miami has been scheduled for March 24-28. For Busted! readers planning to attend, your attention is directed to the 'Evil Beats' (p. 134) and 'Airport and Border Busts' (p. 167) sections.
Rush remains at large. The sage drug war Buddha continues teaching us the value of Limbaugh Lessons #2 and #7 (pp. 256, 266), as his attorneys still fighting the DA in an effort to protect Rush's privacy, and, now almost 3 years after the Buddha got busted, he continues to wait it out (the latest skirmish will be of great help to that cause). But I believe he will ultimately reaffirm Lesson #8.
For readers in the LA area, I encourage you to attend to the 2005 International Drug Policy Reform Conference. The conference encompasses virtually every area of modern drug policy debate. I will be speaking and signing books on Friday (signing at 12-2 p.m., speaking at 4).
Also, for those of you who have not scene the Busted! gorilla film project, now is the last chance to see the orginal; it is being re-done with original music to make it all legal-like and ready pollute HDs willy-nilly. |
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Posted on Oct 23, 2005 at 2:53 PM | Comments
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Ghosts of Elections Past I imagine these comments by Al Gore torturing some Florida 2000 non-voter the same way Scrooge was. And I think it's safe to say he wouldn't have appointed his lap dog to the Supreme Court. |
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Posted on Oct 12, 2005 at 7:58 PM | Comments
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"My Client, the Pimp" An Overheard Conversation Down at the PD's Office
Fellow PD (hanging up the phone, shaking head): That was my client, the pimp.
Officemate: Who?
PD: Oral V.
Officemate: Oral!? Hehehehe.
PD: He got called down the precinct this afternoon, and for some reason he had 8 boxes of condoms on him.
Officemate: Hahahahaha!
PD: Yeah, looks pretty bad.
Officemate: Hahahahaha!
PD: Fucking guy.
Officemate: Hahahahaha!
PD: Going to be hard to explain.
Officemate: Hahahahaha! |
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Posted on Sep 24, 2005 at 10:53 AM | Comments
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18 Months Later...A Win! About 4 years ago my client got 6 to 12 years for allegedly selling cocaine to an undercover cop, the result of a "buy and bust" operation in Queens. Last week, 18 months after arguing the case, and with two dissenting judges, they overturned the conviction.
The case is probably a long way from finished; since there are dissenting judges, the prosecutor will likely get the Court of Appeals (the highest court in New York) to hear the case. But, for now, we celebrate a rare, rare battle victory in the Drug War.
Of course, by the time all the litigation has drawn to its bitter end, my client will have served at least the minimum sentence already. |
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Posted on Sep 18, 2005 at 9:02 AM | Comments
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Does The Ethicist Consider the Drug War Amoral? An interesting response to a question about turning in a meth dealer by The Ethicist in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday. While dutifully noting that he is not endorsing dealing meth, perhaps the most influential arbiter of ethics in popular culture today comes right out and says it: "the war on drugs does more harm than the drug use it seeks to suppress." Mr. Cohen states that he would be "reluctant to invoke laws that can be both inflexible and ineffectual" and suggests the unthinkable: drug use should be considered a public heath matter, rather than a crime.
I applaud Mr. Cohen not only for his stance, but for having the courage to write his comments in a piece about meth dealers in the midst of all the hysteria about the new demon drug. |
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Posted on Sep 11, 2005 at 7:48 PM | Comments
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Am I Promoting Drug Use? I noticed over the weekend that someone from the Department of Justice signed up for email updates. I'd be lying if I told you this development did not give me pause. But I suppose that if they were seriously interested in my activities they would write themselves a "national security letter" (see Busted! pp. 188) and start tracking me in less obvious ways.
So what better time to have the first Busted! update!
Read all about it here.
I was asked recently by Utah's NPR affiliate, not for the first time, whether Busted! promotes drug use . Dutifully, I said no; it's about protecting your rights, but I added that I don't think anyone should go to jail for doing drugs, and if you read the book you're unlikely to wind up in the joint. (So, for the record, no; I am not promoting drug use. I do not, however, care if you do dope.)
Later we kicked around the Drug War, miserable little failure that it is. The interviewer asked me how it was, after nearly 100 years of a failed drug prohibition policy, we still have politicians running on platforms of getting 'tough on drugs.' This time it's going to work, dammnit! Because, I answered, it is so easy to paint anyone opposed to the Drug War as pro-drugs, and pointed out that the first question he had asked me was whether I was promoting drug use.
Then the book was called 'vile and evil' by a reviewer in Louisville, Kentucky. In the same column she gave a big thumbs up to 'Abu Ghraib: Through the Looking Glass,' written by an apparently unapologetic member of the 800th Military Police Brigade, many of whom, she pointed out, 'had personally known people who died during the destruction of the World Trade Center.'
Oh. I see.
Recently it was suggested that I had been using a pseudonym, and might not really be a defense attorney. (Or live in New York for that matter.) It's kind of a wacky piece, available here.
Nicer things have been said here.
And we have a winner for best Drug War story thus far here.
Dope Ditty Updates
"Ask Ed" Rosenthal (the "Growing Dope Ditty" on pp. 51 of the Medical Marijuana section of Busted!) is appealing his conviction. His sentence was already reduced to 1 day, but he's fighting the bogus conviction on appeal. I shared about 2 1/2 hours of late night radio airtime with him recently. I believe in his cause and he's fighting the good fight, but he's a combative son of bitch. I can see why the feds wanted him so bad. You can listen to the interview here. (Be warned; it's the entire 3 1/2 hours or nothing at all, and since it was from midnight to 3:15 a.m., it got a little zany.)
Finally, an update on the sage Drug War Buddha, Rush Limbaugh (see Fighting Your Drug Bust, by Rush Limbaugh, pp. 253-268). Rush's appeal to the Florida Supreme Court was partially secussfuly, because he followed Limbaugh Lesson # 2; he protected his privacy. Resolutely sticking to Limbaugh Lesson #7, Rush continues to wait it out, hoping that it will all go away.
That's the news from the Busted! front. More at irregular intervals. |
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Posted on Sep 6, 2005 at 6:24 PM | Comments
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Urine Tests While Getting Your Freak On Need another reason not to party in Bali following the arrests of Australians Schapelle Leigh Corby, who was sentenced to 20 years for importing 9 pounds of pot, and model Michelle Leslie, who faces 15 years for possessing 2 hits of E (her not-so-swift, now-former lawyer sat by her elbow while she signed a confession)? Now you can be subject to an on the spot urine test by the police . . . at the club!
Bali, man. Crazy fuckers take their drug war seriously. |
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Posted on Aug 28, 2005 at 2:15 PM | Comments
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DNA Doesn't Lie, Right? For four years now, I have been beating my head against a habeas corpus petition pending in federal district court. I did not handle the orginal appeal in state court, a former colleague had, but then left for private pratice. Having lost his direct appeal, the defendant filed a pro se petition, which wound up in front of a judge for whom I used to work. The judge called me and asked me to take the case. I did. And I have lived to regret it.
At the time I filed the petition, the central issue was the use of semen evidence and derivative DNA evidence against my client at trial. The DA had told the defense prior to trial that the evidence did not exist and defense counsel opened to the jury emphasizing that there was no physical evidence linking my client to the crime. A couple of weeks into the trial, the DA discovered that there was indeed semen evidence and she of course wanted to use it. The judge said, 'Sure! Why the hell not?!' Counsel did a lot of objecting to no avail.
While cross-examining the serologist, counsel asked if DNA testing had been done on the semen sample. She said no, but pointed out that the defense could have requested it just as easily as the DA. And so trial was halted, DNA testing was done over the weekend and admitted against my client the following week. Although the science amounted to guess work, the expert insisted that my client could not be excluded as a donor and said that the chances of someone other than my client matching the sample were as low as 1 in 180,000.
After arging the habeas petition in the district court and while I was waiting for the decision in the case, the DNA was re-tested and my client was excluded as a possible donor. I was very excited. A rare Perry Mason moment in the otherwise fairly predictable criminal justice system.
The petition was held in abeyance, pending the outcome of sure-fire winning motion in the original trial court, particularly because the original judge died and would not have to reverse himself. But I lost. It was very ugly decision, right off the stable floor. Surely I would get leave from the Appellate Division to argue the case again. But I didn't.
Back in federal court on an amended habeas corpus application, I argued that the late disclosure of the semen evidence amounted to a Brady violation (DA's obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense), that my client's conviction rested on "false evidence," and that the discovery violation rendered his trial "fundamentally unfair." Surely I would win with my old liberal boss now a liberal federal magistrate, who even before the re-testing of the DNA thought the petition warranted assignment of counsel. But I didn't.
Today I wait to see whether the district judge will adopt the decision. I am not as optimistic as I used to be. |
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Posted on Aug 20, 2005 at 9:11 AM | Comments
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Mind If We Search Your Bags? NYC ain't for liberals no more. We beat the hell out of protesters and say they resisted arrest. We arrest homeless people for sleeping on park benches. We have a billionaire Republican mayor who outlawed smoking. And now we search your bags willy-nilly on the subway.
Yeah, yeah, you can turn around. You don't have to take the subway if you don't want to have your bags searched. But isn't it suspicious to walk away to avoid being searched?
Of course!
Won't the cops use that as a justification to search you?
Of course!
They would be fools not to. Some sweaty looking guy with a bulgy trench coat gets wide-eyed at the sight of the cops and hits the pavement, that's our man. But that's not the jihadist - those cats do some scouting - that's the dude with the satchel full of gnarly porn, or the 'Fuck the Police' flyers; and of course that's the kid with a dime bag in his backpack.
It would be different if there was some point to it all. But nobody really believes this will be effective at thwarting a terrorist of even minimal competence.
So, here in New York, here in the dark blue underbelly of the liberal beast, we rolled over and took another blow from September 11; quietly giving away the right to privacy in anything we happen to be carrying. Just a weak little sure-fire-loser of a lawsuit from the NYCLU and everyone bent over for their cavity search.
And if we find a little subversive literature, there's a little island off the coast of a Florida where we ain't gonna listen to no whining about your stinking constitutional rights, terrorist swine! . . . or terrorist swine sympathizer! . . . or suspicious looking swine with a Koran!
. . . or whatever. |
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Posted on Aug 8, 2005 at 7:21 PM | Comments
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Sorry About all the Motherfuckers In-Laws: Hi Chris! We got your book; it looks great!
Writer: Oh, good. Thanks.
In-Laws: And the acknowledgement was really sweet. We were touched.
Writer: From the heart. Ah . . . have you had a chance to read any of it?
In-Laws: Not yet. We just got it this second and wanted to call to say congratulations right away.
Writer: That's really nice, thanks. You know, I thought about you guys while I was writing it, and I could hear you saying, 'Oh, Chris do you really have to say motherfucker one more time?'
In-Laws [chuckle . . . pause]: We can handle it.
Writer: I just wanted to say that word out loud once so when you stumble across it you'll know that I'm sorry.
In-Laws: It looks great.
Writer: Thanks.
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Posted on Jul 25, 2005 at 12:07 PM | Comments
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Eating, Screwing, Making Money and Getting High Modern man has four basic pleasures: eating, screwing, making money and getting high. Everyone needs a little something from all four pleasure groups, some more than others; they're all inter-related, and outlawing the pursuit of any our four pleasures is pointless.
Limits? Fine. Let's have some limits. But let's have some reason. If you want to stuff yourself silly with Big Macs day-in-day out, don't go waddling to the courthouse complaining that you're thighs are chaffing. If you're thing is bare-backing transvestites in truck stops, don't expect lots of sympathy and fundraisers when you contract a gnarly disease. If you're a corporate pig-in-a-suit, don't whine about your fucking taxes. If you're racked-out in your parent's basement, smoking blunts and collecting unemployment, it's not the Drug War that's holding you down.
Should we outlaw Big Macs? Hell no. Should we outlaw bare-backing transvestites? Only if they're leaving the dome lights on. Should we outlaw corporate pigs? Of course! But we can't. Should we outlaw getting high?
No.
No.
And no again.
I think we can all agree that your body would really prefer that you go for a nice run and eat some cabbage, rather than do bong hits and watch T.V., but that's your decision - just like eating your Big Mac, screwing like you like to, and wallowing in functional alcoholism like a fat Wall Street swine.
So I say God bless the burgers, God bless the hookers, God bless the corporate pigs, and fuck the Drug War.
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Posted on Jul 19, 2005 at 5:52 AM | Comments
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