The Sane Branch of Government

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We live in strange times. But I still have faith in the judiciary and in lawyers. It took us just over a week of the Trump presidency to reach our first constitutional crisis, and the judiciary seems to be keeping its head. That branch of government will be tested in the months and years to come.

Our President reveres President Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson is perhaps best known for defying a court order so that he could could deport people in massive scale. In response to the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, President Jackson said “John Marshal has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” That case was also an injunction case. Six years after the ruling in Worcester, the Cherokee were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in what was one of the darkest moments in American history. The parallels between then and now and between the historic president and the modern one who reveres him are clear.

But I have faith in the judiciary and in the rule of law. Just this weekend, teams of volunteer lawyers showed up at airports around the nation to lend a hand to those left stranded by a bewildering executive order. They turned airport cafes into law offices and e-filed petitions for habeas relief. Lawyers visited with the families of those victimized by recent executive action. And courageous judges stepped up as well. One such judge was Ann M. Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York. Those who know her describe her as one who “will not be perturbed by the storm around her” and as one with “a firm moral compass.”

I can think of no time in our history when lawyers and the judicial branch are more critical to the survival of our Republic. Our nation is still young, and America is still very much an experiment. Lawyers like those who stepped up over the weekend and judges like Ann Donnelly provide hope. But the power of the judiciary and of our constitution is only as strong as the American people and our belief in the rule of law and our founding principles.

Best Argument For And Against Recording in the Courtroom

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Georgia superior court judges have pursued some polarizing changes to the way they are regulated. Now, they want to impose strict restrictions on the public’ ability to record what happens in open court. On January 17, 2017, they will begin considering a new superior court rule that will give Georgia judges unprecedented control over their courtrooms. I have never been a superior court judge and don’t feel qualified to know the ins and outs. Judges have done a great job of getting their way with the legislature, and they have put in a sustained effort to clamp down on attempts to record what they do in the courtroom. So, it may not matter what critics or the public think.

Judges say that their position is credible because they like to have power over the people who come before them, whether parties, their lawyers, jurors, reporters, or spectators who want to come in and watch what happens. And judges have the ear of powerful legislatures, as a recent episode of This American Life demonstrates. Georgia jurists did not like the idea of an ethics committee telling them how to run their courtroom. So, they convinced some friends in the legislature to put the ethics committee under the legislature’s control.

Now, they are pushing new revisions to rule 22. This rule would give judges the power to hold in contempt a spectator in a courtroom who turns on a recording device (for instance, just about any smartphone). Even if the recording process is not disruptive, a spectator who records a judge, if the rule is enacted, could be summarily jailed:

(3) Spectators: All spectators while in a courtroom must turn the power off to any recording device while present in a courtroom. No use of any recording device is permitted unless authorized by the Court.

There are all sorts of arcane rules for spectators or attorneys to ask to use recording devices in the courtroom. And judges have great discretion to say “no,” upon such vague ideas that the act of recording would be “undignified.”

Critics claim that the rule is essentially a power grab. They are suspicious that judges are going to such lengths to shut down efforts to record what happens in their courtrooms. They reason that if judge have nothing to hide, why would they care if proceedings are recorded? These critics believe that there are some fairly ridiculous problems within the rule. For instance, spectators absolutely must power off recording devices in the courtroom. And they can only record upon proper request if they somehow learn how to make a proper request.

Critics think that this new rule is a thinly veiled attempt to prevent judges from getting caught doing things they should not do, such as the Cobb County Judge who was caught engaging in conversation with prosecutors about criminal cases while the defendants’ lawyers were not present. In fact, the superior court is harshest on attempts to record in a courtroom while court is not in session — exactly the setting for the Cobb County judge’s misdeed.

The rule is friendlier to parties or attorneys who want to record. But critics of the proposed rule would point out that parties and attorneys are least likely to rock the boat by asking to do so. They want to stay in the judge’s good graces because the judge will either decide the case, will decide what evidence the jury gets to hear, or will decide how long somebody goes off to prison. A spectator, on the other hand, has no dog in the fight. A spectator is not out to impress the judge and could care less if the judge is angry at her. And, wouldn’t you know it, spectators would be most restricted from recording if the rules passes.

Judges just think that that the critics of the rule are trying to interfere with their courtrooms. They’re the judge, so we should trust them with maximum control.

Personally, because I have to practice in front of these judges, I endorse the proposed rule change. But I note that many people are appalled by it. And many critics find it ironic that judges attacked the JQC because they claim  it sanctioned judges in a Star Chamber environment. But for the people who appear in front of those judges, the Star Chamber is just fine, thank you very much.

Cell Phones, The Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment

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Yesterday, I spoke at a continuing legal education conference for the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The topic was searches of cell phones incident to arrest.  I also discussed the  Application of the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination when a suspect is compelled to provide a passcode to unlock a cell phone or to decrypt hard drive data.

Please contact me if you have questions or comments. Or you may comment here.

 

Breaking into Appellate Law

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A few days ago, a newly-minted attorney asked me about what it takes to become an appellate attorney. I was initially at a loss for an answer. I never exactly set out to do this for a living. In law school, I was quite sure that I would be a trial lawyer. Only now am I closing out my last trial level cases and moving to being a 100% appellate and post-conviction practice.

How I Ended Up Here

I’m a frustrated novelist, which many lawyers are. And I enjoy the solitude of an office and a closed door. I greatly prefer it to calendar calls and all of the other time-wasting rituals of the criminal trial process. Back in law school, I worked for an attorney who had some appellate cases but did not particularly like them. At the time, he was sending the writing off to a former associate who had moved to the North Georgia mountains. I tried my hand at a couple of appeals. And soon, as a 3L, he was no longer sending those appeals out. I was doing them, and it was my role even as I developed a trial practice in his firm as an attorney. In my first year, I caught an issue on a murder case that led to a reversal of the conviction. I hit a lucky streak and reversed a few more, including an issue I caught in what was otherwise run-of-the-mill DUI trial. A Public Defender’s office started sending me all the appeals I wanted. The pay was low, but I was getting the reps in. There have been many losses, but there have been some astonishing wins. And it’s often fun.

It appears that appellate law is the thing that many lawyers and students want to do. For budding civil appellate lawyers not in a big firm, I can think of no comparable thing to PD office with a steady stream of cases. There are few civil trials these days and all sorts of incentives not to appeal. And if I had intended to build an appellate practice, I don’t know that I would have followed these exact steps.But nearly ever felony trial that ends in a one-word verdict is appealed, and there is not an attorney’s fee downside. Everybody understands why a person with a 3,000 year Georgia-style sentence would like to appeal his conviction.

It’s Not Always Fun

When it comes to retained work, there are all sorts of challenges. The trial lawyer who comes before you often makes a mess of things and leaves errors unchallenged. The client has often exhausted his life’s savings before the appeal starts. And when you get started on the case, the client and family have some serious trust issues with attorneys because the lawyer they chose to do a murder trial was not as good at murder trials as he was at drafting Uncle Jeff’s will. Also, if you are not in the appellate section of a major firm, there may be some limits on the ability to get some of the bigger cases. But those come with time. The client often cannot make the transition to standards and processes of appellate law, with a lingering interest in whether various witnesses were lying and with little interest in the erroneous burden-shifting jury charge that you find so fascinating. Also, in the era of Serial, Making of a Murderer, and other such shows, clients come to you armed with an expectation that you should work for free or nearly free just because must be outraged by their perceived injustice. And the internet has done more for amateur jailhouse lawyering than the jail law library ever did.

With that said, appellate practice feels like “real law” to me. I find that the suppressed writer has a good outlet to work. And this kind of practice lies at the intersection of advocacy and scholarship. Finally, the work can be done from nearly anywhere there is an internet connection. So, it is pretty easy to pick up and hide away from the office.

If I had to advise someone on how to build this practice, I would note that it takes years. And it takes some creative maneuvering to get your reps in — including some pretty low-paying gigs for a while. And there are fewer cases out there than there are DUIs or petty drug offenses. So, the dues are much higher. But I think it is worth it, even if there are days when I wonder why I even went to law school.

The Conscription of Apple Engineers into Government Service

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Before this week, I had never heard of the All Writs Act of 1789. As I understand from the news accounts I have read this week, a Federal Magistrate cites it as authority to order Apple to develop software that law enforcement can then use to break into an iPhone. For anyone who’s ever dealt with this on their phone, here’s what happens. If you try repeatedly to enter the password to unlock an iPhone, successive unsuccessful attempts result in a delay. So, you can’t try to log in for a set period of time, which increases with each attempt. Eventually, try enough times, and the iPhone wipes out all of the contents. This protects iPhone owners from a brute force attack or a program that tries random characters until it reaches the right combination.

In an open letter, Apple CEO Tim Cook has explained that it complies with court orders and subpoenas to provide materials in its possession.

However, the password to the evidentiary phone at issue is not in Apple’s possession. The phone is not in Apple’s possession. It cannot provide material it lacks. Until this week, I would have thought that this would be the end of the story. But alas no. A Federal Magistrate Judge has ordered Apple to create software that would unlock the encryption on this phone and provide that software to the government.

I’m new to the All Writs Act of 1789, but this seems, at first blush, like complete lunacy:

  • It seems odd to me that the government could conscript software engineers to code up anything and give that code to the government. This feels like indentured servitude.
  • It’s a bit unsettling that the argument from the government is, “make this software for us and give it to us. We’ll just use it for this one special case. Trust us. We’re the government.”
  • It’s only a matter of time before this software, once created, gets into the hands of bad guys or bad governments.

Maybe I’m missing something here. And I’m open to having my mind changed. But this sounds dangerous.

Why I (Sort of) Like Atlanta Municipal Court

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Flickr cc: Joe Robertson

Flickr cc: Joe Robertson

Picture it. It’s 7:30 in the morning. I’m downtown in Atlanta. It’s about to rain again. It’s the week between Christmas and New Years. I pull into a parking deck that I have to myself. And I walk over to court for what is now my third appearance on a misdemeanor case. And about an hour later I come out of the court with a healthy amount of respect for what it does. After thinking about it some, I sort of like Atlanta Municipal Court.

The Way Atlanta Municipal Court is Different from Other Municipal Courts

  • They Don’t Do Trials or Contested Motions. If you file a motion to suppress or want a bench trial, the Court will immediately bind your case over to the State Court of Fulton County. That’s right, Atlanta Municipal Court exists for one purpose only: to put you in a position to take a plea or to choose to go elsewhere for a better offer or to litigate your case. They won’t hear any contested form of anything.
  • Things Run on a Timetable. When the case is initiated there, there is an organized process that moves you through the court, where a plea offer must be conveyed in writing, and where a decision point eventually arrives.
  • It Doesn’t Pretend to be Something’s it’s Not. Municipal courts are the Rodney Dangerfields of the Georgia criminal justice system. They exist to generate revenue for the municipality they serve. That’s why the procedure to appeal a municipal court conviction is so byzantine. That’s why you will see cash registers in the courtroom. However, nearly all of these courts operate under a delusion that they are an actual court of record. That’s why cases often take so long to process there. The ones that do bench trials place either clueless pro se defendants or the occasional client with a lawyer before a judge who is an employee of the same outfit that employs the cop who wrote the ticket. What follows is a short and swift bench trial or contested motion. When the judge convicts, he generates revenue for the city. When the judge acquits, he turns money away and tells a fellow employee that he is wrong. Guess where the incentives are. Generally, a lawyer in Municipal court understands the game and tries to cut a deal that appeals to the profit motive of the system to the mitigation advantage of the client. Most municipal courts pretend that they are a real court of law with fair trials before a neutral and detached arbiter of facts and law. Atlanta Municipal appears not to harbor that illusion. So, the case moves fast. The municipal courts that have trials aren’t really in the trial business either. They just don’t acknowledge this fact.

When I say that I like this Court, I mean I like it to the extent that I like any Georgia municipal court. It’s a great place unless you’re innocent or poor. Within the context of a city/county justice system, it’s pretty difficult to get a trial at all there. When you bind the case over, you have a two-year wait ahead of you to get a case into court and an even longer period of time if you want a trial. It’s also probably not fun to be a poor person in any municipal court. In a system that values a defendant’s money so much, it is bad to have nothing you can offer. But as municipal courts go, Atlanta has the whole thing down to an art.

The Atlanta Federal Courthouse Should Retain its Name as The Russell Building

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Lyndon_Johnson_and_Richard_Russell1I have read two editorials in the Fulton Daily Report in the last week or so. The first was written by a Federal Defender who believes that the building should not be named after former Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell because of his legacy in support of segregation. The second was a response by former Georgia Senator Max Cleland. He defended Senator Russell’s legacy and argued that we should not judge Senator Russell’s views by our more evolved views on segregation.

The Federal courthouse in Atlanta is one of many public works bearing the name of Richard B. Russell. A US Senate Office Building bears his name. Several dorms and other buildings at colleges in Georgia are named after him, as are several schools, roads, lakes, dams, and an airport. Senator Russell’s legacy is more than one of racism. His was a life of achievement and public service in several areas. I knew little about him until I read and became fascinated with Robert Caro’s volumes of biography about Lyndon Johnson. After finishing a book on Robert Moses, Caro has devoted his life and career to telling the story of LBJ. He’s still not finished. That story contains many biographies with the biography, Senator Russell’s being one of them. Caro tells the story of Senator Russell so well that I came away feeling a sense of connection to him. Many of my friends and colleagues who are fans of Caro came away with a similar feeling. Senator Russell created the school lunch program and was a saving figure in his leadership over the committee that investigated the firing of General Douglas MacArthur (the importance of what he did in that episode is beyond the scope of this post). He had a distinguished career in the Senate.  He was instrumental as a new dealer as a young governor of Georgia. To read Caro is to get a sense of the man. The Senate he dominated was a vibrant and strong institution. Personally, he was a life-long bachelor who never amassed great wealth in his years of public service. He also was a man of Georgia and carried proudly a family name with a  father who was also an accomplished public servant.

So, to the issue at hand, I actually disagree with the Federal Defender who advocates removing Senator Russell’s name from the Federal Building AND Senator Cleland. It is perfectly appropriate to judge Senator Russell for his stance on race and segregation. By any contemporary standard, Senator Russell’s views are shocking and disturbing. And even by the standards of his times, his views were out of touch with the majority. He was a master of the minutiae of Senate Rules — particularly the filibuster. And he used those rules, along with the Southern bloc of Senators, to defeat integration when the will of the majority of senators was to end it. He deserves to be judged for those actions. It is not enough to excuse such views as those of a “man of his times.” He was out of touch even with the time in which he lived on the issue of race. So, I disagree with Senator Cleland on his main argument.

However, I also disagree with the idea that his name should be removed from the Federal Building or any of the places that bear his name. He achieved much. His legacy as a Senator and a Georgian are worthy of remembrance into the future. Generations to come should know who he is and what he did. Those who might be prompted to learn who he is from seeing his name on buildings, schools, roads, lakes, and other public works should also come to learn of his racism and how he bent the rules of the Senate to block integration. To erase his name from the historical record is to deny even the chance of a discussion of who he was, for good or for bad. Georgia’s history, maybe even its present, is not the best on issues of race. But it is important to keep our historical figures in sight and in mind and even on the names of buildings, if for no other reason to learn about them and to engage in dialogue about them. There is a danger in the loss of dialogue about who we were — we lose sight of who we are and can be in the process.

New SCOTUS Case Will Have Big Impact on Some Georgia Sex Offenders

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Jonathan McIntosh Flickr CC

Jonathan McIntosh Flickr CC

In a per curium opinion (pdf), the United States Supreme Court has held that the placement of a tracking device on a person is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, even if the person is compelled for life to wear the device as part of a sentence. As summarized by Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic Monthly, “[i]f the government puts a GPS tracker on you, your car, or any of your personal effects, it counts as a search—and is therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment.” This opinion could spell changes for Georgia’s regime of tracking persons in Georgia who have been designated as Sexually Dangerous Predators.

In Grady v. North Carolina, the Petitioner challenged a court order requiring him to wear a GPS tracking device for life as a violations of his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The North Carolina courts rejected his claim, reasoning that the placement t of a tracking device was not a search. The United States Supreme Court’s per curium opinion held that the placement of a tracking device on the person of Mr. Grady was a search as defined by the Fourth Amendment. But the Court remanded the case for a determination of whether the search was an unreasonable one. This case could make its way back to the Supreme Court eventually.

What is the possible consequence for Georgia? Consider first the comparison between the way GPS tracking for sex offenders works in in North Carolina versus Georgia.

  • Under North Carolina law, a person convicted as a recidivist sex offender goes before a judge where, after a hearing, the decision may be made to place a lifetime tracking device on the person. In Georgia, all sex offenders with convictions, a move to Georgia, or a release from prison after 2006, will be reviewed by Georgia’s Sexual Offender Registration Review Board. The offender never has the right to a hearing.
  • The SORRB can choose to classify even a first-time offender as a Sexually Dangerous Predator and force the offender to wear a GPS monitor for life. And the SORRB can, and often does, rely upon police reports and other hearsay materials in reaching its conclusion. In North Carolina, GPS tracking for sex offenders does not become an issue until there is recidivist treatment.
  • In Georgia, there is an opportunity for judicial review in a Superior Court. However, the judge who considers the case may deny the petitioner the right to a hearing. In that case, the judge who decides whether to make a person wear an ankle monitor for life relies upon the hearsay that the SORRB used as well as the hearsay analysis that the SORRB prepared and sent over to the court. It will be interesting to see how those orders stand up in the wake of Grady.

For Georgia lawyers going forward,  a claim under Grady can be made on SDP appeals. And for folks who have already passed that point, there is room for a HABEAS challenge raising Fourth amendment grounds. As the process is set up in Georgia, with little meaningful judicial scrutiny, it would be hard for the government to demonstrate that the decision to violate a person’s Fourth Amendment rights was reasonable. After all, even for something as routine as a search warrant, a magistrate hears or considers sworn testimony. Not so in many SORRB SDP cases. For more on that process, consider my previous post.

Does the Jury Have the Right to Know About Mandatory Minimums?

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Flickr Creative Commons Dags's Bricks

Flickr Creative Commons
Dags’s Bricks

Jarvis Taylor was on trial for committing an armed robbery with an air gun. Because his prior criminal history included theft by receiving stolen property, possession of a tool for the commission of a crime, and aggravated assault for his actions during a jail riot, a conviction for the armed robbery would have meant a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Atlanta Judge Wendy Shoob instructed the jury (pdf) that a conviction for the offense would bring a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. The jury ultimately convicted of the lesser included offense of robbery by intimidation. But not before the Fulton County District Attorney moved to recuse the judge from the case and not before the judge refused to grant the State a certificate of immediate review.

When I first read this story in the Fulton Daily Report, my reaction was that the judge made a gutsy and principled move but one with little basis in the law. I held this view until I read the Order.  I walked away from the order with the belief that the order is on a firm legal footing. Allow me to provide a brief overview:

  • Under the Georgia Constitution, “in criminal cases, the defendant shall have a public and speedy trial by jury; and the jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts.” Here, the State objected to an instruction to the jury about sentencing, arguing that the jury is responsible for guilt and innocence and the judge is responsible for sentencing. But, not so fast, said Judge Shoob. With mandatory minimum sentencing, the judge has no real power over the sentence. The sentence and the verdict are inextricably linked to one another. Hence, the jury ought to know the consequence of the verdict.
  • There is a historical basis for the power of the jury as a check against an overreaching government. Here, Judge Shoob actually cites The Federalist Papers to support a position that the jury has a tradition function to maintain free government. That function includes the right to nullify.
  • Recent United States Supreme Court decisions have stressed the importance of returning the jury “to appropriate constitutional powers and essential role within the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. Here she goes into recent Sentencing Guidelines Cases that have returned to the jury certain powers with respect to sentencing.
  • Finally, she reasons that the jury has the right to know about mandatory sentencing. First, “where the Court is bound by the statutory term of imprisonment, the jury essentially determines both the verdict and the sentence.” This last point sound a good bit like her first point. But, here, she references cases from around the country and she weaves two previous point together. “When the prosecution does not use its power carefully and equitably, and the judge is removed form sentencing decisions, the only thing that stands between the individual and the awesome power of the State is the jury system.”

A couple of points. I do not think I’ve ever received an order from a Georgia State or Superior Court judge that quotes The Federalist Papers. Also, the point that under a mandatory minimum regime, the verdict determines the sentence is a powerful and innovative one.

I will leave for another post the idea of prosecutors who use recusal motions when a judge does something that they do not like. It is trend I have noticed around the State lately.

Pro tip: weave Judge Shoob’s Order into motion or request to charge in your next case with a mandatory minimum.

If Juries Could Impose the Sentence

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In Georgia, juries generally don’t get to decide the sentence. Only where the State is seeking death does the jury get a hand in sentencing. Not only do Georgia juries not get a say in sentencing decisions, our law is designed not to let them know a great deal about what might happen at sentencing. The idea is that jurors might be swayed by sympathy in the guilt-innocence phase of the trial if they knew what was in store for the defendant after a guilty verdict. For instance, an armed robbery conviction in Georgia carries with it a minimum mandatory ten years to serve without the possibility of parole. For certain repeat offenders, a guilty verdict means life without the possibility of parole. Jurors are not told about minimum mandatory sentences unless they stay to watch the sentencing hearing.

Scott Greenfield posted at Simple Justice about a Federal Judge who consulted with the jury on what a fair sentence ought to be in a case. Turns out that most jurors would sentence well below the sentencing guidelines. And I imagine, on the State side, that jurors would often sentence below the minimum mandatory.

A few months ago, I tried a case in Federal Court where the jury reached a guilty verdict. I noticed that many of the jurors were crying as they walked into the courtroom (never a good sign). After it was all over, they asked me to come back to the jury room to talk to me about their decision. They then asked the prosecutor to be lenient.

In between the verdict day and the ultimate sentencing date, I consulted with many colleagues who regularly practice in Federal Court about whether it would be a good idea (or even ethical) to invite jurors back to testify in mitigation. Opinions varied, but the consensus was that I should not do it. There was no way to know how a judge might respond to this kind of testimony or whether such a move might appear to be a stunt. I ultimately decided against doing it, thinking that the potential downside outweighed the potential good. After all, the judge saw the same trial they did. And he hopefully saw things the way they did.

When it was all over, my client received a sentence significantly below the guidelines.

Scott Greenfield’s blog post raises an interesting question. Should jurors have a role in the sentencing process in more cases? And could jurors be consistently be counted on to recommend or impose a sentence below guidelines or below a mandatory minimum?

Philosophically, I don’t think I’m into the idea of jurors imposing sentence. There’s a reason that we give jurors their job and judges theirs. However, it’s appealing to me to wonder if legislatures would be as prone to enact mandatory minimums if they were taking the sentencing power away from jurors rather than judges? I’m not sure what the answer is. I suppose they would do in the sentencing world what they’ve done to damage caps in the civil world. However, the minimum mandatory universe makes me a little less certain about whether juries should have a hand in the sentencing process. Perhaps outraged jurors would put pressure on their legislature to eliminate some mandatory minimums.

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