I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Because I may never pass this way again, I wanted to leave a bit of advice for those who will replace me. My ten best tips on how to gain a client base for your most robust practice with those who live outside the law, like me, but, not like me, get caught.
They are:
10. Join a biker gang.
9. Throw a party for the neighborhood drug dealers.
8. Place an ad in Mafia Today.
7. Buy a Lincoln.
6. Commit a minor crime that won’t get you disbarred, and do some quality networking in jail.
5. Start a campaign to criminalize coffee.
4. Change your name to Philip Corleone. (Use your own first name: that one’s taken.)
3. Attend a different Catholic church every Sunday and chat up some altar boys.
2. Meet a few working girls and tell them, no, really, I just want to talk.
And the Number One Top Ten Way To Build Your Criminal Defense Practice:
1. Stop buying lunches for other criminal defense attorneys — they’re just as clueless as you are — and pal up with some plain old…criminal…defense attorneys.
Editor’s Note: This article was recently published by the European Defendology Center in Banja Luka, the second largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sadmir Karović is a distinguished professor of criminal law who lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina and has published many times on both criminal justice and human rights, as well as many times here. He is also possibly the only person I have never met whom I consider a dear friend, and if neither of us ever return to these pages, I will miss him.
For the last two decades, the issue of protecting every individual’s fundamental human rights and freedoms, regardless of their national, ethnic, religious, or racial affiliation, or any other personal characteristic, has been continuously brought to the forefront. The international community has recognized this global problem that burdens public opinion worldwide and national legal systems, leading to the creation and adoption of numerous international legal documents aimed at incorporating the protection of these basic human rights and freedoms.
Contemporary challenges and problems actually warn us that many international legal documents have not fulfilled their purpose in a practical sense, as we still see many people in the world today who are hungry, homeless, and lacking adequate social and health care, that is, individuals deprived of the satisfaction of their basic existential needs. Social, economic, and other inequalities, along with the divide between the rich and the poor, leave behind certain consequences. I believe it is inappropriate to talk about the protection of human rights and freedoms when we consider the mentioned inequalities and divisions among people, especially taking into account the status and situation of the most vulnerable in the world.
On the other hand, peace, security, freedom, and justice are universal values recognized by the civilized world. Still that world does almost nothing to provide adequate or at least minimal protection and security for these values. Instead of providing adequate protection, prevention, and deterrence against international crimes, billions are invested in enhancing weapons and military equipment that are even deadlier and more destructive. An evident example of human destruction and the culmination of human evil is Gaza, seen as a “graveyard” for basic human rights and freedoms. Thus, instead of stopping and preventing further destruction, Gaza has become a “testing ground” for the use of devastating and modern weapons and military equipment that leave devastation in their wake.
The civilized world has the opportunity to witness horrific scenes from Gaza daily, including organized, planned, and systematic destruction of property and the killing of people, women, children, and the sick. Yet, it does not undertake the necessary protective actions to halt the culmination of human evil, which takes on surreal proportions. An absurd question arises: how can we explain to the people in Gaza that there are basic human rights and freedoms, or how can we make them understand that they, too, have the right to life, a roof over their heads, food, medicine, healthcare, the right to work, the right to education, and so on?
International interests have neglected universal human rights and have once again, for who knows how many times, confirmed that the right of the stronger prevails. On the international social scene, we have a glaring example of the impotence of international (criminal) law, which shows its apathy and all other weaknesses in the realm of general prevention against international crimes. I could never have imagined that in the 21st century, we would again witness the culmination of human destruction, especially when I had the opportunity to see horrifying, gruesome, and brutal scenes on TV, such as a child being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, fighting for its life. Or when I read about newborn twins being killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father was at the local authorities’ office to register their birth. More than 12,000 children have been killed in Gaza! After this, I am ashamed to even mention children’s rights, let alone discuss them!
The civilized world and the international community are aware of all this; they know about these and many other horrific, brutal, and gruesome examples from Gaza. This is not a secret nor is it a matter of hearsay or unverified claims, yet they turn their heads away and pretend everything is fine in the comfort of their offices, meeting rooms, and conference halls. I mention children specifically because they are a vulnerable age group that deserves special attention and sensitivity, as well as adequate protection. The mentioned examples indicate that basic human rights and freedoms apply only to certain people, not all, because the people, women, children, the sick, the elderly, disabled individuals, and other categories in Gaza are unequivocal evidence that the universal human rights promoted by the civilized world do not exist for them.
Here, a key human question arises: are you human or not? It is not a matter of whose side you are on. There is a stark, compelling, and recognizable difference between humanity and human destruction (killing, property destruction, etc.), and the only question is whether we want to see that obvious difference or turn our heads away and talk about human rights and freedoms as some kind of abstraction or a “colorful lie” for the weak and powerless. A crime is a crime and has no other name or justification.
Unfortunately, in the world, especially in Africa, there are other crisis hotspots, armed conflicts, unfinished civil wars, and other forms of human destruction that receive less media coverage, where it is also absurd to talk about respecting and implementing basic human rights and freedoms. After Gaza, I ask myself: what needs to happen for the international community and this civilized world to act urgently and vigorously to prevent or stop human destruction, killing, and property destruction… and to show that basic human rights and freedoms truly exist in practice? It has long been clear to everyone that evil, or crimes, must be responded to urgently and in proportion to their severity, scope, prevalence, and other destructive characteristics, and that appeals, pleas, diplomatic pressures, and economic sanctions have no effect and are not a proportional response to the evil that threatens.
Moreover, the purpose and effectiveness of international (criminal) law and international justice are often questioned, especially when considering their role in preventing and combating international crimes. Despite these efforts, such crimes continue to occur, often with increasingly devastating consequences.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
When I lived in Springfield, Missouri, the city had some sort of marker commemorating what it claimed was the last public lynching in the United States. It’s hard to know if that’s true, because there were so many: only seven of our fifty states have never recorded a lynching. We’ve mostly lynched black people. But we’ve also lynched white people — mostly for helping, or trying to help, black people avoid being lynched. We’ve lynched immigrants, too.
Now, thanks to some vigorous incitement from some well-known loud if not particularly respected political figures, immigrant lynchings may not remain a relic of the past. Another Springfield may soon be able to make that claim.
But the president of the NAACP says “Missouri lynched another innocent black man” just a couple of days ago. It wasn’t by a mob, unless you want to call a bunch of lawyers and judges a mob, and I know many folks who might want to do that.
Marcellus Williams didn’t die at the end of a rope, but at the end of a tube through which a possibly failed legal system pumped poison into a vein to end his life. Even the county prosecutor pleaded with the Missouri Supreme Court and the Missouri governor to stop the execution, because he believed evidence uncovered after the trial cast grave doubt on its fairness. It’s hard to find more than three votes these days, of the five justices of the United States Supreme Court it takes to stay an execution, and that’s all Williams’s lawyers found Tuesday.
The family of the murdered woman had asked that the sentence be commuted instead to life imprisonment.
Williams was convicted for the stabbing of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reporter in 1998, during a robbery at her home. None of the forensic evidence gathered there, including DNA, pointed to Williams. Other evidence did point to him.
I don’t know whether Williams did or did not commit the murder; I believe he probably did. I don’t, however, believe in a system of capital justice that essentially leaves things to God to sort them out.
My old home state’s next scheduled execution is for 3 December, not so far from Christmas.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Centuries, millennia, of hate and fear led to the sentencing of a Texas father the other day who viciously struck his son four times in the face because he thought he might be gay.
The boy is two. He was special to his father because the man tried three times before to have a son, and sired girls. Like his sisters, the child preferred Barbies and kitchen sets to toy trucks and soccer balls. This the man could not abide. So he slapped his special son bloody.
The boy will be eight before he sees his daddy again, if his father serves the full six years in prison the judge ordered. I’m pretty sure the boy doesn’t know now if he’s gay; I’m pretty sure he won’t know then.
I can only hope that the child grows to understand he didn’t deserve the punishment his father gave him, that the father grows to understand that too.
Centuries, millenia from now, maybe we’ll all grow to understand that.
