craigslist.org > rants & raves > Some Advice From Your Public Defender
last modified:Tue Apr 26 10:53:15 2005
First, let me say I love my job and it is a privilege to work for my clients. I wish I could do more for them. That being said, there are a few things that need to be discussed.
You have the right to remain silent. So SHUT THE FUCK UP. Those cops are completely serious when they say your statements can and will be used against you. There's just no need to babble on like it's a drink and dial session. They are just pretending to like you and be interested in you.
When you come to court, consider your dress. If you're charged with a DUI, don't wear a Budweiser shirt. If you have some miscellaneous drug charge, think twice about clothing with a marijuana leaf on it or a t-shirt with the "UniBonger" on it. Long sleeves are very nice for
covering tattoos and track marks. Try not to be visibly drunk when you show up.
Consider bathing and brushing your teeth. This is just as a courtesy to me who has to stand by you in court. Smoking 5 generic cigarettes to cover up your bad breath is not the same as brushing. Try not to cough and spit on my while you speak and further transmit your strep, flu, and hepatitis A through Z.
I'm a lawyer, not your fairy godmother. I probably won't find a loophole or technicality for you, so don't be pissed off. I didn't beat up your girlfriend, steal that car, rob that liquor store, sell that crystal meth, or rape that 13 year old. By the time we meet, much of
your fate has been sealed, so don't be too surprised by your limited options and that I'm the one telling you about them.
Don't think you'll improve my interest in your case by yelling at me, telling me I'm not doing anything for you, calling me a public pretender or complaining to my supervisor. This does not inspire me, it makes me hate you and want to work with you even less.
It does not help if you leave me nine messages in 17 minutes. Especially if you leave them all on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. This just makes me want to stab you in the eye when we finally meet.
For the guys: Don't think I'm amused when you flirt or offer to "do me." You can't successfully rob a convenience store, forge a signature, pawn stolen merchandise, get through a day without drinking, control your temper, or talk your way out of a routine traffic stop. I figure your performance in other areas is just as spectacular, and the thought of your shriveled unwashed body near me makes me want to kill you and
then myself.
For the girls: I know your life is rougher than mine and you have no resources. I'm not going to insult you by suggesting you leave your abusive pimp/boyfriend, that you stop taking meth, or that your stop stealing shit. I do wish you'd stop beating the crap out of your kids
and leaving your needles out for them to play with because you aren't allowing them to have a life that is any better than yours.
For the morons: Your second grade teacher was right - neatness counts. Just clean up! When you rob the store, don't leave your wallet. When you drive into the front of the bank, don't leave the front license plate. When you rape/assault/rob a woman on the street, don't leave
behind your cell phone. After you abuse your girlfriend, don't leave a note saying that you're sorry.
If you are being chased by the cops and you have dope in your pocket -dump it. These cops are not geniuses. They are out of shape and want to go to Krispy Kreme and most of all go home. They will not scour the woods or the streets for your 2 grams of meth. But they will check your pockets, idiot. 2 grams is not worth six months of jail.
Don't be offended and say you were harassed because the security was following you all over the store. Girl, you were wearing an electronic ankle bracelet with your mini skirt. And you were stealing. That's not harassment, that's good store security.
And those kids you churn out: how is it possible? You're out there breeding like feral cats. What exactly is the attraction of having sex with other meth addicts? You are lacking in the most basic aspects of hygiene, deathly pale, greasy, grey-toothed, twitchy and covered with open sores. How can you be having sex? You make my baby-whoring crack head clients look positively radiant by comparison.
"I didn't put it all the way in." Not a defense.
"All the money is gone now." Not a defense
"The bitch deserved it." Not a defense.
"But that dope was so stepped on, I barely got high." Not a defense.
"She didn't look thirteen." Possibly a defense; it depends.
"She didn't look six." Never a defense, you just need to die.
For those rare clients that say thank-you, leave a voice mail, send a card or flowers, you are very welcome. I keep them all, and they keep me going more than my pitiful COLA increase.
For the idiots who ask me how I sleep at night: I sleep just fine, thank you. There's nothing wrong with any of my clients that could not have been fixed with money or the presence of at least one caring adult in their lives. But that window has closed, and that loss diminishes us all.
Thank you, Mr. Duden*, for being appalled at my failure to do something with my intellect after college. It was precisely the indirect kick in the butt that I needed, and I couldn't be happier with law school. :)
Three years from now I'll be billing more per hour than I used to net in a week.**
*Mr. Duden was my government teacher sophomore and senior years of HS
**insert poignant rant about women's work being poorly compensated
I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius shortly before school started, and would like to recommend it to anyone who has ever thought they were alone in their paranoid fantasies and morbid daydreaming. It's basically the story a college kid whose parents both die of cancer in the same month and is left to raise his little brother; it's a true story. This raising of the brother doesn't make for the bulk of the plot though - there really isn't one. It's more like several hundres pages of stream-of-conciousness on paper. Certainly not something that would appeal to action fanatics, but very interesting if you've ever wanted to crawl inside someone else's head for a bit.
The best way to get called on in law school is to say "I'm not going to get called on" right before class. My friend Natasha and I were 2/2 on Thursday. It was rad.
There is a really big spider hanging out by my front door. My mom tried to move him last week - he rolled into a ball and she swept him into the yard, worried that she'd killed him - and the next morning he was back in his spot looking angry.
He's not as big as the spiders we paid Zach to exterminate (which have grown to golf ball-size in my mind), but I have to pass by him multiple times each day. I usually try to get as far away without walking in my plants as possible, and then I avoid eye contact when passing by his web. Eek. My parents are coming over today, so hopefully I can get my dad to move him far enough away that the can't find his way back.
After coming out of a deep sleep to use the bathroom around 4am last night I walked directly into my closed bedroom door under the belief that it was open. I did this with enough force to give myself a bloody nose.
1. stupid
2. very funny
3. what part of your nose is bleeding when you slam into something? It's not the usual mucous membrane problem like when you're sick and you're blowing it too much. So what it is?
In Biology (I was the only freshman in my class) I was frequently the only person to raise my hand when my teacher asked a question; he said "anyone other than Kara" on more than one occassion.
Well, my Civil Procedure professor just did the same thing. Question to class. One or two hands raise, including mine. "How about I call on someone who doesn't talk all the time . . . " Sweet. :)
Some woman sat down next to me at my study table and she smells like she smoked a pack and then rolled in the ashes. It's gross. I'm thinking about moving to a different table.
95% of the time the correct answer, or at least a very good answer, to a hypothetical posed by a prof is "it depends." No, I'm serious.
Okay, I'm going out of my mind. My roommate is a ghost, I don't have enough homework to keep me busy at all hours, and I have no friends in Portland. I think I need a tv . . . something to provide movement and sound so I don't feel like I'm living in a cushy 2200 square feet of dark and silent abyss. A person can only take so many naps and surf so many internet sites. Law school is going swimmingly, but I am just so utterly alone here. :(
So my roommate has been spending all day, every day, at the library. He leaves at 5am and comes back at 11pm. And he says he usually reads for a few hours in the middle of the night when he can't sleep. We were talking yesterday and he said he had spent 5 hours briefing a 3-page case . . . this assemblage of facts was getting me worried. Yes, I am spending a lot of time reading, but not NEARLY as much as he is. Am I missing something? Is this really harder than I think it is and I'm just not getting it? Yes, it's dense material, but I actually feel like I'm getting it so far. However, last night we got to talking about LSAT scores, and I came to the conclusion that he just knows he's going to have to work harder than most students at Lewis and Clark to fare well. I totally respect that, and it also puts me at ease about our difference in time expenditure so far. I could still be wrong - he might kick my ass grade wise - but as long as I feel good about my comprehension level I'm not going to freak out if he spends thrice as long on the reading.
. . . someone please tell me that's a good idea. =P
I know it's just the beginning of what will be a long stretch of long distance realtionshipping with Nick and me, but so far it's good. We went two weeks (and a day) away from one another and both survived nicely. Granted, we did have a long weekend to enjoy together, but he didn't come down till Saturday and I have Fridays off, so I suppose we can make most weekends about this long when we want to. It will probably be a bi-weekly situation - I think I'm going to have too much work to see him more often than that. But Thanksgiving and Winter break aren't far away. It's not as tough as I imagined it would be, so I'm please for that thus far.
Seriously, a good jazz singer can sing about anything, with basically any set of lyrics, and make it sound rad. I just heard some woman on www.kplu.org singing something about ducks, and part of the chorus was "quack quack quack, quack quack quack", but it was a great song! Cute little story line, she had a beutiful voice, good tempo . . .
I also like how jazz remakes of lame-o songs sounds sufficiently different that at first you don't recognize the tune, and then when you do you think"whoa, this is such a better version!". Right now I'm listening to a jazz piano version of Glory Glory Hallelujah, and it's only identifiable at times, but so enjoyable throughout.