The Defense Perspective
"The main problem, of course, lies with the lawyer's work ethic . . . not the race of the accused"
I agree, at least to an extent. I have been astonished and embarassed to see how little work some attorneys put into cases, retained or appointed. In one recent instance, an appointed attorney pled a defendant to TDC time without waiting for the lab report; when it came back, another attorney caught that the results showed no illegal drugs at all and she was able to file a motion for new trial (barely) in time. In other case I inheirited on an MTR, the trial atty pled an illegal alien to a split sentence, TDC time on one count, probation on the other. Naturally, he was deported at the end of his pen time and was of course unable to complete his probation. On the other hand, personal anecdotes aside, the huge disparity in incarceration rates and sentencing between whites and non-whites suggests that we have not yet reached the "promised land" MLK spoke of 40 years ago.
Patrick:
Indeed the overwhelming majority of those accused of crime (or should I say, caught) are African-American. But that, of course, is an entirely different set of problems. Regarding the work ethic issue . . . Maybe when lawyers apply for their bar card they must promise to work hard and if they don't . . . we shred the card.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by to comment. BTW, is there anyway to subscribe to an RSS feed on your blog?
sg
"BTW, is there anyway to subscribe to an RSS feed on your blog?"
There may well be but I have no idea how it works. When it comes to the interwebs, I am like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
Yes, you can subscribe to the rss feed. Hit the subscribe area and eventually you will see it. You can subscribe to both Steve's blog and the comments as well. :)
Thanks for your article. These are the kinds of topics we need to be able to discuss directly and head on to get past them.
I believe there is a huge disparity in those "accused" of crimes 10-1 Black vs. White.
My wife is white, and had never been pulled over DWB (Driving While Black), until she took a ride with me in an upper crust community, where I have several friends, all of whom happen to be white.
A police officer stopped us, including our two infant sleeping sons and asked if we were intending to buy drugs in the neighborhood. He pointed to a car in a driveway (who I happened to know to be a realtor because I owned a construction company at the time)(I believe the realtor didn't want Blacks in front of his potential customers) and said he was an undercover detective and we were trying to purchase drugs.
He kept this ignorant concocted story even though he saw our sleeping infants.
He literally kept us there for about 20 mintues asking us if we knew several people, including Deion, and RayRay etc.
Had I not been with her and instead with some friends who happen to be Black, I have no doubt we would have ended up in jail that night, in front of an all white jury, a white PD and a white judge and prosecutor explaining our "drug bust."
Most Black people I know have these kinds of experiences and I actually "enjoy" having them with white people so you can get a taste of what it's like.
Another experience like that happened in the Carolinas and I was with a group of white friends out of high school.
Long story short they wanted to fight the white guys. These were my white friends!!! They couldn't believe it...I told them to back down because we will definitely get shot.
To this day they are still astonished.
I remind them all of the time, arrest (or get caught as you put it) of African American's for the same crime is 10 times as high and convictions for African American's also stands at 10 times the rate of whites tried for the exact same crimes.
Those are my two cents!!
Keep the dialogue going please!
Tony:
Thanks for sharing some of your personal experiences. I am always amazed that race continues to be an issue in this country. I imagine as long as we look at another person and see he's "different" from me, those differences will continue to divide us. But law enforcement should have had that bias trained out of them after all these years. Maybe we are expecting too much out of the human race?
Again, thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
Commenting by HaloScan
