Willful blindness in the reflecting pool cases

At some point, there will be a reckoning. 

The reckoning may be a public one:  Judges and lawyers hauled before the D.C. bar to face potential disciplinary proceedings.

It may also be a purely private reckoning.  It may be looking into the mirror and asking oneself the question:  Am I proud of how I acted during this time?

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I watched clips of the confirmation hearings for James Crowell and Stuart Nash.  Both were nominated for empty seats on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

When asked who had won the 2020 election, each of them provided the same rote response that, because of the judicial canon against weighing in on political matters, they were precluded from saying anything beyond the fact that Joe Biden had been certified as the winner.

I understand this was also true for the six nominees for vacant seats on in D.C. Superior Court. 

Judges are entrusted with the responsibility for decisions that affect people’s lives in the most fundamental way.  They are expected to exercise independent judgment unencumbered by any personal or political considerations.

These nominees are beginning their new positions by showing that they are willing compromise their integrity in pursuit of their own personal interests.  This is the opposite of honesty and independence. 

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The reckoning will also affect people at lower levels; for example, line prosecutors and first- and second-line supervisors for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C.

I represented a defendant in one of the reflecting pool cases.  And I had uncovered evidence – eyewitness accounts and an I-phone recording — that completely exonerated my client.

In the old days, I trusted the prosecutors to do the right thing when presented with exculpatory evidence.  It was in no one’s interests for me to sit on this evidence until trial so that I could surprise them.  It made far more sense to have the case dismissed immediately. 

I would thus present the evidence to the prosecutor.  The prosecutor would thank me for it.  The prosecutor would then dismiss all charges.

Those was the old days.

In this case, I could not get the line prosecutor to return my phone calls.  Finally, after making what turned out to be seven unreturned phone calls, I got a call from both of the prosecutor’s supervisors.  (In retrospect, the fact that there were two supervisors on the line should have alerted me to the fact that this call was not going to go well.)

Great, I thought.  Finally I can talk to someone about this case.

I was mistaken:  Just as the arresting officer had no interest in interviewing eyewitnesses to the supposed crime on the day of my client’s arrest, the supervisors had no interest in discussing the exculpatory evidence I had uncovered. 

That is because this evidence did not fit the narrative the Trump administration was pushing.

This is willful blindness.

The only purpose of the supervisors’ phone call, as it turns out, was to scold me for the seven phone calls I had made to the line prosecutor.

Think about this:  My client had been subjected to the humiliation of a public arrest for a crime we all know she did not commit.  And they wanted me to apologize for having harassed their poor, overworked client.

Both of these supervisors were prosecutors I had worked with in the past.  Both of these prosecutors were people I had respected.