Sep

The Law Thing

I wasn’t always a true believer. Back in 1995, when I interviewed with the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the guy who interviewed me tossed my resume on his desk, and said, “Feh, I don’t see anything on here that would lead me to believe that you want to be a public defender.” And, he was right — legal secretary at Morgan Lewis, intern at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, law clerk for a worker’s comp guy — nothing that said I was committed to defending the rights of the indigent. I shrugged, and said, “My resume is a collection of things I don’t want to do.” And, that was equally true.

But, what I did want to do was try cases. And, I convinced him to hire me.

And, 13 years later, here I am, still.

And, in those thirteen years I must have been asked at least a thousand times the same two questions – how can you do what you do? and how can you defend people you know are guilty? And the answer to the first question - how can I not? And, the second question? To me it’s a stupid question – really, everyone has a right to an attorney, and the right to a zealous defense, and it’s the Commonwealth’s problem to make out their case . The real question is how can you defend people that you know are innocent – that’s the hardest thing – those are the cases that stay with you forever, and haunt you.

I don’t really write about my job on the blog. Primarily, because most of what I do goes into a “vault” because it’s protected by attorney client privilege. Other things that I could write about, well – that just wouldn’t be smart. Saying this judge did that, that judge is stupid . . . not in my client’s best interest, my best interest, nor my office’s best interest. And, yeah, of course I have opinions about different areas of the law, and sometimes I may write about that – but the bottom line is that I would never want an opinion of mine regarding the law to be attributed in any way to the office, so I might was well not write about it.

But, with all of that said, if you are interested in what I do – here are a few of my cases –