Probable Cause

I have a difficult time these days referring to myself as a defense lawyer. It’s not because of the usual negativity that one encounters as a defense attorney. Many people on hearing that someone is a criminal defense lawyer will have an automatic negative reaction and ask “how can you defend criminals?” I’m used to that. (Forget the fact that a large number of people charged with crimes in Fresno are actually not guilty.)

No, the problem is my ongoing encounter with law enforcement officials and judges who literally do not care what the law is. They’ve made a decision about what they think should happen with a particular defendant and — by God! — they’re not going to let the facts or the law stand in their way.

Makes it easier to understand how it’s possible for a police officer to believe that making a woman strip and submit to a body cavity search on a busy roadway is a legitimate exercise of his power. But I digress…

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A Mexican brewery has started making Malverde Beer, — that’s “cerveza” to you Gringos — named after the legendary Jesús Malverde. According to the not-so-low-rent correspondent out of Mexico City, Cerveceria Minerva actually began brewing the beer last year.  Some of us were a little too buzzed to notice.

Malverde is one of several men said to be “the Mexican Robin Hood,” stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.  Some people thus consider him the patron saint of the homeless and destitute.  (There are other contenders for this title.)

Some Mexican comic books feature narcocorridos, smugglers and hit men, but the Green Evil is definitely not to be confused with the Green Hornet or the Green Arrow.  The Green Evil evokes the image of marijuana.  Many people who smoke marijuana claim how it makes them feel is something of a miracle.  It is Malverde’s rumored association with personal healings and blessings, plus the association with the green evil of marijuana, which has made him the patron saint of drug dealers.

It’s uncertain whether Malverde actually lived — “Malverde” is actually a fairly common Mexican surname — but he is alleged to have lived in the late 1800s; he was executed by the governor of Sinoloa in 1909.

Also uncertain is whether my wearing Jesús to court every day has any impact on the success of my law practice.  At the very least, it gives Freddie and the other bailiffs the reasonable suspicion they need to frisk me and saves me a ton of money on massages.

Maybe that title is a little too cute.  (I picked it after Kerry Prindiville, a librarian at the Fresno Public Law Library, sent me the link to an article on the use of social networking sites by jury consultants.)  And maybe it’s time for me to move on from writing about MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites.  It’s something of a hot topic, however, and I have some pretty strong feelings about it.

My other articles about this may be found here and here. Those articles have started to attract some attention of their own….

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Yesterday, I got a phone call from the litigation coordinator at Pleasant Valley State Prison saying that if I take off my pants one more time at check-in, I won’t be allowed to visit again. As I told him, if this happens, we can hash it out with the Attorney General: refusing to allow an attorney to see his client is theoretically a misdemeanor. And the guard responsible has to pay $500 out of his own pocket to the client.

I say “theoretically” because the government routinely breaks its own laws with impunity. Frankly, I don’t know why we make laws saying the government has to do this, or cannot do that; when it suits them, they simply ignore those laws.

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As a former philosophy major turned criminal defense attorney and someone who is very interested in that quaint and ancient custom called “the rule of law,” I’m continually amazed at criminal defense attorneys who don’t think it’s important to know the law. If I had a nickel for every time some attorney came into my office and said, “You don’t need all these books,” or for every attorney who told me I didn’t have to read as many judicial opinions as I do, I could buy myself lunch. Well, at least at Taco Bell. Still, that’s a lot of nickels.

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It’s a wonder to me why anyone these days would believe a police officer’s account of anything.

The Fresno Bee the other day contained several stories concerning what is increasingly nothing more than a gang of uniformed criminals. The first story I remember concerned a Marysville police officer who stopped a woman for driving without a seatbelt. Apparently, the officer suspected that the woman was hiding the seatbelt in her ass, because he authorized another officer to strip her and do a body cavity search. Right there. On the side of the road. While cars were going by. So far, I’ve been unable to verify whether the officer actually said, “Constitution schmonstitution, check her ass for hidden seatbelts!”

But this is just one such story.

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In my last post, I talked about prosecutors and police using MySpace and Facebook against defendants in criminal cases. A few days after posting that, I received a call from a reporter from LawyersUSA in Boston. He was writing an article on the same subject and wanted to ask me some questions about how lawyers could handle the situation in court.

What I told him was…

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If MySpace and Facebook mean anything, looking like a clown is the new cool.¹ However, if you’ve been charged with a crime, you might want to consider at least temporarily re-vamping the camp: a MySpace makeover could keep you from suffering a stiffer sentence if you are convicted. A Facebook face-lift can make it easier for your lawyer to convince the District Attorney you deserve a break.

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1. In the interest of staying alive, I’ve decided not to post any examples. [↩]

It’s always nice to win. It’s even nicer when you win and your client appreciates it. I received the following letter yesterday from a client and he gave me permission to share what he wrote: that’s why he wrote it, so that others would know what I did for him. I have, however, decided to use his first name only.

As they say on the Internet, “More after the jump.”

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Before starting this post, let me point out that for years I was a card-carrying registered Republican. My beliefs about the Democratic Party are such that even after coming to the sad conclusion that I could no longer support the Republicans, I registered as “No Preference.” For reasons mostly relating to time, I won’t go into all the reasons for this right now.

However, I miss the old Republican Party. If we had truth-in-­­advertising laws, the new Republican Party would change its name to the “Let’s See If We Can Destroy America” Party. Then maybe we could have a real Republican Party again.

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