George Zimmerman's Disgraceful Press Circus

Well, it's really, really ugly. On two fronts: the racist, unjustified killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, black teenager, and then, to make the situation even more grotesque, some really awful, amateurish, disgraceful attorney-press interactions by a lawyers who says he is representing the killer.

I’ve been raging about the murder of Trayvon Martin. I’m disgusted by it. I want to see George Zimmerman arrested, indicted, tried and convicted. In short order. And I’m enraged by all of the bogus excuses for why the process of charging him has been so delayed. I confess to being extremely angry.

And as if all of that weren’t enough, I’m also shocked and disgusted by the “lawyering,” if that’s what it is, the accused, George Zimmerman is receiving in the media.

Look, if George Zimmerman is guilty of the homicide of Trayvon Martin, and I’m virtually certain he is, he is entitled in the United States to the effective assistance of counsel of his choice. And like it or not, counsel has to interact in big cases like this one with the press in a way that doesn’t make the client’s case worse. Counsel’s job isn’t to promote himself as a celebrity. It’s to protect his client, to make him more sympathetic, to assert the presumption of innocence. Or at the least to act as a shield. Counsel has to do all of the things he can that will prevent George Zimmerman from being completely convicted in the media before a trial is ever held. It's a hard, unthankful job. But in our system, that's the job that is required of whoever is representing him.

But if you look at George Zimmerman’s “defense,” and even using that term pains me in this case, it’s a pathetic mishmash of contradictions, disclaimers, and down right stupidity. It’s a disgrace. I’ve never seen anything as awful. And I say that based on being a criminal defense attorney for more than thirty years and having had to, on more than a few occasions, get my client's story out.

George Zimmerman is in hiding because he wasn’t immediately arrested and charged with the homicide of Trayvon Martin. Nobody can explain satisfactorily why Zimmerman is still at large. In fact, he shouldn’t be. He would be better off if he weren't. But he hasn’t spoken to the press. No. He’s enlisted friends to talk to the press. And he has a lawyer talking to the press. But is this lawyer really representing Zimmerman, or is he creating a huge, public relations calamity and credibility crisis for his client? Sadly, I think it’s the latter.

This past Friday, Craig Sonner, an Orlando lawyer, gave an interview to CNN. He said he was Zimmerman’s lawyer and that his client wasn’t a racist. But, as to the details of the crime,

Sonner refused to share the details of his conversations with Zimmerman, citing attorney-client privilege, but did say that the former neighborhood watchman has cooperated with the investigation. He also declined to share any of the specifics of his defense strategy, saying:

I don't know what all the evidence is, and what transpired that night. That's what the trial's going to be about, and that's hopefully what the trial will stay about, and not about being angry over a racial issue.

What? “I don’t know what all the evidence is, and what transpired that night.” You have to be kidding me. Sonner is representing Zimmerman, his conversations with Zimmerman about the crime have been privileged, but, and this is one big, fat but, he doesn’t “know what all the evidence is.” Are you kidding? That’s incredible on its face. How can the lawyer representing the defendant in the most publicized, most hotly debated incident since OJ, not know what the evidence is. And if he doesn’t know what the evidence is, why is he talking to the press about what he doesn't know rather than ferreting it out? What kind of bogus disclaimer is this?

But wait. On Friday, despite all the press and all of the talking about the case, according to WFTV, Craig Sonner said, no, he was NOT representing Zimmerman. He was NOT his lawyer. He was “just advising him.” So he’s not Zimmerman’s lawyer? Why are the media talking to him about this case if he doesn’t represent even the shooter?

Very nice. But don’t worry. This distinction about “lawyer” vs. “legal advisor” was immediately thrown out. The next day, March 24, Craig Sonner, again identifying himself as Zimmerman’s lawyer, was interviewed by CNN. He said he “believed” Zimmerman’s nose had been broken and the back of his head had lacerations. Then he uttered this astonishing sentence:

“I have not discussed with him the incident of that night other than the injury he sustained were from Trayvon Martin,” Sooner replied. “I assume he hit him in the face and caused him to fall back and hit his head.”

What? Wait a second. You are the guy’s lawyer. OK, maybe you’re not. But you’re talking to the press supposedly in his behalf and supposedly with his authorization, and you tell the press (a) you have not discussed with Zimmerman the incident of that night, and forget whether I learned what happened or not or discussed it with the shooter, none of that matters, because (b) it was self defense. Oh. And I "assume" something happened? Jeepers.

How is anyone supposed to believe a shred of what this guy is saying? Doesn’t his even saying it now subvert it and discredit it? He's definitely not out there saying, "Look, if my client committed a crime, and we don't think he did, he will surrender to authorities as soon as they say they want him to. He's presumed innocent. We have nothing further to say to the press about this case, and we won't have anything further to say until the case is resolved." No. He's talking about whatever he wants to, and it's a gumbo of disclaimer, hypothecation, assumption and incredibility.

But it doesn’t stop here. Oh, no. That would be merciful. We could just dismiss whatever this lawyer clown says and wait for the arrest. But no. The lawyer has to turn this case into a complete trainwreck. As to the self-defense claim, Sonner’s talked about that before to the press. Said he,

A lawyer for the man at the center of the Trayvon Martin death investigation said Florida’s “stand your ground” law doesn’t apply to the shooting that killed the unarmed teen.

“In my legal opinion, that’s not really applicable to this case. The statute on ‘stand your ground’ is primarily when you’re in your house,” said Craig Sonner, attorney for George Zimmerman.

“This is self-defense, and that’s been around for forever — that you have a right to defend yourself. So the next issue (that) is going to come up is, was he justified in using the amount of force he did?”

What? Self-defense? George Zimmerman is told not to pursue Trayvon Martin by dispatchers. He pursues him anyway. He chases him down. Zimmerman is armed. Martin has skittles, iced tea, a cell phone and a hoodie. Zimmerman provokes a confrontation, and then he shoots unarmed, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin. Only heaven knows how this can possibly be transformed into self defense. And is the lawyer for George Zimerman really telling the world in behalf of his client that “Stand Your Ground” is “not really applicable to this case” and that they will not raise that as a defense at trial? How, one would like to know, can the lawyer say anything like that if, as he admitted to the press, he’s never discussed the incident with Zimmerman (except for Zimmerman’s injuries) and he doesn't know what the evidence is?

Apparently, Craig Sonner doesn't care what he says to the press. And the press, to no one's genuine surprise, doesn't care whether it makes any sense or not. They just lap it up. They don't question him. But wait. The case is not about Sonner. It's about George Zimmerman. He's the one with the serious pending legal issue. He's the one who killed Trayvon Martin. He's the one who needs to be protected.

This is a complete and utter disgrace. It’s an embarrassment to those of us who take seriously our obligation actually to represent our clients, even those clients who are accused of unspeakably horrendous acts to which they have no defense. No matter what they’ve done, these people are entitled to effective counsel and to a fair trial. And I want George Zimmerman to receive one. He’s entitled to it. And Trayvon Martin is entitled to justice and a fair trial and conviction of the person who killed him.

The only way this ridiculous press circus will be stopped is by George Zimmerman’s arrest. Or by Craig Sonner's deciding to go into hiding with his client and to wait for the wheels of such justice as there is in Florida to grind out an indictment.

Polluters Seek To Cut Off Legal Clinic Funding

Polluters and other defendants in numerous lawsuits brought by Law School Clinics in behalf of the victims of corporate and state government abuse have discovered their adversaries' Achilles heals. Reprising events in the early history of the Legal Services Corporation, the defendants are now actively moving in state legislatures to cut off funding to the law school clinic lawyers who represent their adversaries. The result, they hope, will be continued immunity from legal inquiry and a continuation of business and pollution as usual.

Many years ago, during The Great Society, the federal government funded the Office of Economic Opportunity, (OEO) which provided many services, including civil legal services to poor people. These legal services were obviously capable of transforming society in fundamental ways. Poor people, for so long disenfranchised, found they had access to federal and state courts and free lawyers to pursue fundamental violations of their civil rights. Instantly, poor people had allies in enforcing their legal rights. In response, those who favored the status quo immediately sought not to remedy poor people's complaints, but instead to cut them off from their lawyers, to forbid the lawyers from pursuing these important cases.

By 1975, in response to conservative complaints, Richard Nixon managed to dismantle the OEO and to replace it with the Legal Services Corporation, which took on the OEO's legal services mission In the early and mid-70's LSC lawyers continued nevertheless to provide poor people with needed legal services to address their personal legal issues (e.g. divorce, foreclosure, debt collections, etc) in cases that could not generate fees (e.g. personal injury accidents which generated contingency fees), but they also engaged in "law reform" cases, most frequently federal, class action, civil rights cases against state and federal agencies in behalf of welfare recipients, consumers, prisoners, and numerous others who could not retain counsel for important, worthy cases. These cases were capable of changing entire systems in state government: how welfare benefits, food stamps and other benefits were provided, how the states ran their penal and mental health facilities, whether the states could permit various kinds of consumer transactions, and so on.

Congress and state governments, of course, reacted extremely negatively to these cases. Who, they inquired, did these welfare recipients think they were to file lawsuits so that they would receive prompt benefits? Who did these prisoners think they were to file lawsuits to require uncensored mail and medical treatment and freedom of religious exercise? Who do these unemployed workers think they are to require fairness in decisions about their unemployment benefits? The list of complaints was as numerous as the policies of governmental and corporate agencies who were being challenged. What made the howling of these defendants most vocal was that for years their practices had been illegal, but those they were taking advantage of, those who were their victims didn't have the resources to fight back in any effective way.

At first, President Nixon's henchperson sought to kill the LSC program off. Failing to kill it completely, the federal government unleashed a trend which continues today in restrictions of the many, many kinds of cases LSC lawyers are not permitted to pursue. In general the civil legal assistance that remains includes the following:

* Family law: LSC grantees continue to help victims of domestic violence by obtaining protective and restraining orders, helping parents obtain and keep custody of their children, helping family members obtain guardianship for children without parents, and other family law matters. More than a third of all cases closed by the local programs are family law cases.


* Housing & Foreclosure Cases: More than 25 percent of cases involve helping to resolve landlord-tenant disputes, helping homeowners prevent foreclosures or renegotiate their loans, assisting renters with eviction notices whose landlords are being foreclosed on, and helping people maintain federal housing subsidies when appropriate.


* Consumer Issues: Twelve percent of cases involve protecting the elderly and other vulnerable groups from being victimized by unscrupulous lenders, helping people file for bankruptcy when appropriate and helping people manage their debts.


* Income Maintenance: Approximately 11 percent of cases involve helping working Americans obtain promised compensation from private employers, helping people obtain and retain government benefits such as disability benefits to which they are entitled.

These are extremely important services, they are very important to a huge number of people and they are worthy of our full support. But if there was at one time a movement in the LSC to initiate reform, to represent poor people in large, class action, civil rights cases against government institutions and corporations, to shift power from the status quo to the then disenfranchised, it long ago moved from LSC. It was no longer funded by the Government. The Government, if it ever was, was no longer intent on rooting out inequality by providing access to the courts at taxpayer expense. There could be civil representation of poor people, and they would benefit from it, but the lawyers would be forbidden from seeking to alter the balance of power in society.

Where is this important legal work now? Two main places (apart from private law firms that for one reason or another decided to handle important cases pro bono): not for profit legal services organizations including but not limited to the NAACP Inc Fund, Center For Constitutional Rights, ACLU and Mississippi Center For Justice, all of which, of course, have limited resources and must choose cases on the basis of the impact they will have, and as important, the Law School Legal Clinics.

And now, to no one's surpirse, the the law school clinics face the same tide of reaction from state and federal government and the large corporations they are suing, as LSC faced thirty-five years ago. The New York Times reports:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Law school students nationwide are facing growing attacks in the courts and legislatures as legal clinics at the schools increasingly take on powerful interests that few other nonprofit groups have the resources to challenge.

On Friday, lawmakers here debated a measure to cut money for the University of Maryland’s law clinic if it does not provide details to the legislature about its clients, finances and cases.

The measure, which is likely to be sent to the governor this week, comes in response to a suit filed in March by students accusing one of the state’s largest employers, Perdue, of environmental violations — the first effort in the state to hold a poultry company accountable for the environmental impact of its chicken suppliers.

Law clinics at other universities — from New Jersey to Michigan to Louisiana — are facing similar challenges. And legal experts say the attacks jeopardize the work of the clinics, which not only train students with hands-on courtroom experience at more than 200 law schools but also have taken on more cases against companies and government agencies in recent years.

State government itself and its powerful, corporate contributors know full well how to respond to meritorious lawsuits that will result in injunctions and expense and changes in their profits. Don't fix the problem, they say, just cut off the plaintiffs' lawyers' funding. Make the plaintiffs incapable of pursuing their claims however meritorious. Forget about whether the claim is or is not going to prevail in court, just make it go away. Cut off funding for the law school clinics, and voila! it's as if the lawsuit had been won by the defendants. The practices that led to the lawsuit remain immune from review and remedy because nobody who is affected can afford to pursue the issue.

The Maryland clinic's litigation is instructive:

The fight is proving especially heated here in Maryland because it so directly focuses on Perdue, one of the state’s most powerful political players and the sixth-largest poultry company in the country.

The suit accuses Perdue and Alan and Kristin Hudson, two Maryland chicken farmers who contract with Perdue, of polluting the Pocomoke River and allowing chicken waste from the farm to flow to the Chesapeake Bay.

The suit argues that Perdue dictates so much of how farmers handle their flocks — including the food and medicine the chickens get, as well as the size and location of the bird houses — that the company effectively shares operational control of the farm and thus should be held accountable for what happens there.

Luis A. Luna, a spokesman for Perdue, said that though the company had done no lobbying in support of the pending legislative measure, the company’s chairman, Jim Perdue, went to Annapolis in early March to tell lawmakers that cases like this one represented “one of the largest threats to the family farm in the last 50 years.”

“Perdue can take care of itself,” Mr. Luna said. “But the small farmers who make up an important part of this industry cannot survive against lawsuits like this.”

And why, you might ask, isn't Maryland's Attorney General's Office pursuing this very litigation to prevent the pollution of streams and rivers with chicken manure? Why is it that the clinic finds itself acting as if it were an agency that was supposed to enforce Maryland and US environmental laws and regulations? Where is Maryland's enforcement power and the EPA?

“There is no reason that tax money should pay for these law students to act like regulators,” said State Senator Robert Adley, a Republican who submitted the bill in response to a request from his state’s oil and gas industry.

Obviously, when the regulators put issues on hold and slumber, someone needs to step in. The concept is called becoming a private attorney general. The law school clinics have stepped up because they needed to, and now for all their good work, they face being drastically limited or shut down. They too will always be able to provide divorces to people who cannot afford counsel, but, just as happened with LSC 35 years ago, those who control the purse strings will be able to stop all of their threatening, law reform efforts.

The answer, if there is one, involves increased funding from private individuals and the Bar to private, not-for-profit firms and organizations which can effectively pursue these important issues. Or more unlikely, the commitment of state governments and law schools to providing counsel in important cases to those who would otherwise remain voiceless, regardless of the controversy that might provoke. In the absence of both of these alternatives, corporate and governmental mis- and malfeasance prevail solely because no one can challenged them in the courts.

The Gitmo 9: First Let's Bash All The Lawyers

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Henry VI, Part 2; Act 4, Scene2

The New York Times editorial gets it right. The Right is attacking DoJ lawyers who once represented Gitmo detainees. The Times correctly points out that this is a smear for political gain that undercuts justice in this country.

In the McCarthy era, demagogues on the right smeared loyal Americans as disloyal and charged that the government was being undermined from within.

In this era, demagogues on the right are smearing loyal Americans as disloyal and charging that the government is being undermined from within.

These voices — often heard on Fox News — are going after Justice Department lawyers who represented Guantánamo detainees when they were in private practice. It is not nearly enough to say that these lawyers did nothing wrong. In fact, they upheld the highest standards of their profession and advanced the cause of democratic justice. The Justice Department is right to stand up to this ugly bullying.

Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has been pressing Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. since November to reveal the names of lawyers on his staff who have done legal work for Guantánamo detainees. The Justice Department said last month that there were nine political appointees who had represented the detainees in challenges to their confinement. The department said that they were following all of the relevant conflict-of-interest rules. It later confirmed their names when Fox News figured out who they were.

It did not take long for the lawyers to become a conservative target, branded the “Gitmo 9” by a group called Keep America Safe, run by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and William Kristol, a conservative activist (who wrote a Times Op-Ed column in 2008). The group released a video that asks, in sinister tones, “Whose values do they share?”

"Whose values do they share?" They share my values. I've been a criminal defense lawyer for more than thirty years. When I represent someone who is charged with murder, I'm not endorsing murder. When I represent someone who is charged with other heinous acts, I'm not advocating for those acts. No. Not at all. Not ever. I'm trying to do something that's hard: to make sure that the accused gets a fair trial regardless of what s/he is charged with. I'm trying to make sure that the accused has the benefit of each and every legal right s/he has under the US Constitution and laws. And I do this proudly. It's a sacred obligation. It's called justice. And it doesn't depend on the popularity of the accused.

But that's not the approach of the Righwing talkers and blabbers.

On Fox News, Ms. Cheney lashed out at lawyers who “voluntarily represented terrorists.” She said it was important to look at who these terrorists are, including Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who had served as Osama bin Laden’s driver. Let’s do that.

Mr. Hamdan was the subject of a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Ms. Cheney conveniently omitted that the court ruled in favor of his claim that the military commissions system being used to try detainees like him was illegal. Republican senators then sponsored legislation to fix the tribunals. They did not do the job well, but the issue might never have arisen without the lawyers who argued on behalf of Mr. Hamdan, some of whom wore military uniforms.

In order to attack the government lawyers, Ms. Cheney and other critics have to twist the role of lawyers in the justice system. In representing Guantánamo detainees, they were in no way advocating for terrorism. They were ensuring that deeply disliked individuals were able to make their case in court, even ones charged with heinous acts — and that the Constitution was defended.

It is not the first time that the right has tried to distract Americans from the real issues surrounding detention policy by attacking lawyers. Charles Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs under George W. Bush, urged corporations not to do business with leading law firms that were defending Guantánamo detainees. He resigned soon after that.

If lawyers who take on controversial causes are demonized with impunity, it will be difficult for unpopular people to get legal representation — and constitutional rights that protect all Americans will be weakened. That is a high price to pay for scoring cheap political points.

Put another way, the Rightwing argument from Beckistan is that Atticus Finch should never have taken on that case in Maycomb County, Alabama. And William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass should never have taken on that case in Chicago. And Thurgood Marshall should never have taken on that case about the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education. The list of lawyers who shouldn't have taken various cases is a proud and an exhausting one. I can think of a few cases I have handled that I hope fit comfortably in the same category. After all, it's relatively easy for lawyers to know which cases these are: they're the ones where complete strangers, not to mention immediate family members say to you in words or substance, "How could you represent that awful person who did such terrible things?"

The Times is right that the tactic from Fox and elsewhere is about "scoring cheap political points." The bigger question, the one the Times doesn't reach, the one that is really most disturbing, is how the general state of understanding of the justice system became so beclouded that the Fox argument was not immediately scoffed at as arrant stupidity.