New Rule: 3500 Reasonably In Advance

I'm sure noted Criminal Justice Act lawyer Bruce McIntyre didn't have a heart attack just because the government withheld 3500 material in his tax case until the eve of trial (as is their practice and as the law permits).  And I know for a fact the prosecutor who was opposing Bruce in that case is a principled guy who would have given up the 3500 material earlier if ordered to do so, and that probably would have been his preference anyway. But I nearly spit out my coffee last night at the Eastern District Memorial Service for Bruce when CJA lawyer Susan Kellman spoke, looking dead-on at our prosecutor friends and asking, in front of judges, God, and everyone:   "Would it kill 'ya to turn over the 3500 material a little earlier?"  Like a stern mom admonishing her children, Susan challenged the room to elevate life balance over silly tradition. 

So it got me thinking.  When did discovery in criminal litigation become such a clogged artery?  Why do civil defendants get to depose and interrogate to their heart's delight while criminal defendants have to guess at the identities of victims and witness, even in cases lacking even the slightest hint of violence or danger?

And why did CJA lawyer Tony Ricco, who summed up on a trial in the hours before delivering his speech at Bruce's Memorial, confess to having felt so awkward, like a bad schoolboy, when he had to seek a couple of hours off his trial to attend his dear friend and colleague's funeral? What's up with that?

Has everyone in this criminal justice system forgotten that we make better advocates if we get more sleep and have more time for our families?  Maybe we Clawsters should start demanding that the silly parts of this system get unsillified.  If stuff can get done in more efficient ways, well, let's demand that it get done that way.   

So, in my next trial case I'm invoking the Bruce McIntyre Memorial Rule:  3500 Reasonably In Advance of Trial.  Prosecutors should have to give one reason why we shouldn't get 3500 material at least a week in advance.  And that reason better be something more than just "that's how it's done."  Life's too bloody short.

Bruce McIntyre: Goodbye to An Unsung Hero of the CJA Panel

Bruce McIntyre was scheduled to start a trial on the first Monday morning in October.  He hadn't much time to prepare on Friday; he had to get to Suffolk County on a state court case.  Driving back to Brooklyn, he stopped by the U.S. Attorney's Office to pick up his 3500 material, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to his downtown office, opened up his load of 3500 material (it was a tax case) and died of a heart attack.  He was 55.

Bruce was a criminal defense lawyer of rare attributes.  He did most of his work for indigent clients, as a member of the Criminal Justice Act Panel.  In that regard alone, his loss is profoundly felt.  He was one of just a handful of African-Americans on the CJA panel.  Of course, Bruce would have given me grief about writing that last sentence.  He never leveraged race.  His noble life was a strong enough testament to the power and promise of his community. 

Bruce began living this quiet life of righteousness simply enough:  in Queens.  Raised by a middle-class family who scrimped and saved for his education, he even attended Julliard to study trumpet.  Bruce's closest friends never knew that he was an accomplished musician, nor did many know that he went to Columbia and Yale, so carefully did he avoid pretense. 

I wonder whether he would admit that the turning point of his professional life was his showdown with Charles J. Hynes, the District Attorney in Brooklyn, who hired Bruce to be an Assistant District Attorney.  In 1990, Bruce was assigned to "second seat" the racially-charged Yousef Hawkins trial (remember those hot summer NYC days right out of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing?).  Shortly before the trial began Bruce quietly resigned.  His resignation letter to Hynes contained no hint of political agenda.  Nor would he return the hundreds of press calls or give a single interview confirming what was "widely reported" by the New York Times and others:  that he was resigning because he refused to be leveraged as a token black man at the prosecution table. 

When he left his prestigious position as a homicide DA, Bruce become a criminal defense attorney.  He took on the most unpopular cases at court-appointed rates, representing alleged terrorists and Chinese gang members, always bringing calm to the table.  But as anyone who tried a case with him knew, it was his thunderous, preacher-like summations that often turned the tide of prejudice away from his maligned clients.  In 1998, my husband Mike Padden and I tried the "Subway Bomber case" with him, and against huge odds, his client was acquitted of all counts of terrorism and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction.  The jurors didn't acquit Bruce's client because they were soft on terrorism; Bruce simply appealed to their sense that guilt by association was just plain wrong.  ''Is it because he's from Palestine that he's supposed to be guilty?'' Bruce challenged the jury.

At his funeral service, Bruce's colleague and dear friend Gary Villanueva spoke of Bruce's love of movies, especially the really cheesy ones wherein the hero lives a life guided by a code of honor he need not advertise, so obvious was the code to others.  A quote from one of his favorites, Gladiator, is that "what we do in life echoes in eternity."

Echo on, Bruce. 

MEMORIAL SERVICE IN HONOR OF BRUCE MCINTYRE WILL BE
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2009, AT 5:00 P.M

THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

225 CADMAN PLAZA EAST, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

COURTROOM TO BE POSTED AT THE COURTHOUSE.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Professor Henry Louis Gates

If you are reading this blog you are not shocked (shocked!) to discover there is still racial injustice in the criminal justice system. So for CLAWSTERS, who are pretty well steeped in this stuff, here are some off beat conversation starters.

**The sit-down over beer in the Rose Garden. Who drank what? (Crowley had Blue Moon, Gates had Red Stripe, the President had Bud Light.)

**Soothe it with alcohol? (See David Letterman commenting on it being the first kegger in the White House since the Bush Twins, and adding "alcohol usually cools things off — have you noticed that?")

**Is it true that Crowley is one of the only non-racist cops on the Boston police force? (See Maureen Dowd on how the daughter-of-a-cop crowd feels).

**So what did happen to Crowley? (See Former Federal Defender Inga Parsons and Slate's Christopher Hitchens explaining why the problem is more about cop anger management than race.)

**And should we all be going out for beers? (See Jon Stewart simulating the historic Rose Garden beer summit at a local happy hour.)

**Finally, where did race fit in in that uniquely Cambridge scenario? (See Vintage Chris Rock on how it ain't always about being black ("If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J.—he'd have been Orenthal the bus-driving murderer") and the Black Take (from the Daily Show's Senior Black Correspondent, Larry Wilmore) that Professor Gates just forgot he was black.

Justice Ginsburg on Being the Lone Woman on the Supreme Court

Fresh out of law school in 1989, I worked out west for a boutique litigation firm of 10 muy macho male lawyers. I was young and uncomfortable in my Casual Corner suits, not yet savvy enough to handle the minority status. Instead, I fled east, chasing some fantasy that there was no such thing as minority status in New York.

So, it was with interest I read this article entitled "The Place of Women on the Court" (recent NYT Magazine) in which Justice Ginsburg talks about being the One Woman of the Nine on the Supreme Court. She also talks candidly about Justice-to-be Sotomayor's path, and sounds downright Claw-like discussing Sotomayor's much-aligned remarks about being Latina and a woman. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”] Here's how Justice Ginsburg responds to those critics:

I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you’ve said something that you didn’t get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I’m sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All of our differences make the conference better. That I’m a woman, that’s part of it, that I’m Jewish, that’s part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me.

God bless her! I wish J.Ginsburg had been there to mentor me back when I was the lone woman on that muy macho litigation team...

150 Years for Madoff -- What Happened to the Parsimony Clause?

Remember Alec Baldwin opposite Meg Ryan in Prelude to a Kiss? Well he is now looking more middle-aged but has taken his sharp observations to politics. See his blog at huffington post or his interview on Bill Maher (HBO Real Time) or Letterman. He's nailed it on the Madoff case. How on earth was 150 years "not greater than necessary" to achieve the purposes of punishment? Isn't Madoff like 85?

Is Justice2B Sotomayor Sexist?

Click here to get the GOP demonization of Sonia as the Great Emasculator, which reports that "Pat Buchanan regularly reminds the public that Obama's nominee can’t wait to get her hooks into the rights of white men."

Ha. These old men (Rush, Pat etc.) are still not confident in their manhood? And here's a question: who cares that Sonia was in some all-women's club that no man had ever sought to join? Click here for that story. Just for the record, and to protect all our members who actually have career goals to make the world a better place, only to be subject to this inane scrutiny:

Here at CLAW we've never turned away a single self-respecting man who has applied for membership.

Guest Blogger JaneAnne Murray on Sanford and the Importance of Criminal Defense

What do you mean it has nothing to do with our work, Jan? It involves a sanctimonious law-and-order politician, whose voting record on crime is strongly on the Republican end of the spectrum (though not as bad as some, we’ll grant); it involves an Argentine beauty who will do and say anything to ingratiate herself with a U.S. benefactor; it involves a law-and-order stalwart finally seeing the importance of humility and forgiveness (however temporary); it involves someone who compares himself to King David (who was the same David of David-and-Goliath fame); and it involves potentially a bunch of federal and state crimes . . . But I love your point that this is really a morality tale about putting heterosexual, white men in positions of power (whoever said they had the monopoly on wisdom).

Totally unrelated, the website that gave CLAW its fabulous logo has a whole new program for supporters of Iranian dissidents. I’d make a t-shirt for my son, but the camp he is starting tomorrow has very strict rules about t-shirts – they must wear a plain vanilla one that says “we’ve got that spirit!” . . . whatever that spirit is.

Gov. Mark Sanford -- Needs a Good CLAWing?

The Mark Sanford Argentine Lover scandal has NOTHING to do with our work, so why are we so intrigued by it?Read this New York Times Gail Collins OpEd piece here and don't miss the embedded line:"perhaps it is time to rethink the idea of constantly electing middle-aged heterosexual men to positions of high importance."

Whoa! Then there are those who ask what's up with the disturbing glee that, well, I, for one, feel upon seeing a hypocrite like Sanford exposed in a most embarrassing way. What does that say about us gleefully imperfect agnostics? (One of the few demographics to whom Governor Sanford most decidedly did NOT apologize. Click here to see the faithful flock to whom he DID apologize.)

Then there's the view, held by my buddy in the court cafeteria, that Sanford gets a break because, unlike dogs like Clinton and Spitzer, he was so obviously in looooooove. (Click here to read his hilarious emails to his Argentinian girlfriend. I haven't heard schlock like this since the make-out session after the junior prom!)

How Does Justice2B Sotomayor Scare the GOP Today?

Click here to get the GOP demonization of Sonia as the Great Emasculator, which reports that "Pat Buchanan regularly reminds the public that Obama's nominee can’t wait to get her hooks into the rights of white men."

Ha. These old men (Rush, Pat etc.) are still not confident in their manhood? And here's a question: who cares that Sonia was in some all-women's club that no man had ever sought to join? Click here for that story. Just for the record, and to protect all our members who actually have career goals to make the world a better place, only to be subject to this inane scrutiny: Here at CLAW we've never turned away a single self-respecting man who has applied for membership. Or any other men for that matter.

Paper Reports on Justice2B Sotomayor's Long-term Friendship with CLAWster Dawn Cardi

Click below to read about our own Dawn Cardi and her family's sweet friendship with the Supreme Court nominee.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/05/27/2009-05-27_sonia_shares_her_joy_with_best_friend.html