As soon as I have the signed order in hand, I head to the “at-risk” cell block to make sure my client is released. My client’s mother, waiting in the hallway, is mad at me. She thinks her son is out-of-control and needs to be locked up, and we have been working at cross-purposes throughout this case. He comes and …
Summer is over, and the Public Defender Service (PDS) interns assigned to the Youth Services Center are gone. Although I never met any of them in person (they were there during the day, and I visit clients evenings and over the weekend), I will miss them very much. So will my clients. The interns were young and smart and had …
The problem with using a canon of statutory interpretation to justify a legal opinion is that you can usually find some other canon to arrive at the exact opposite conclusion. For example, to support its recent holding in In Re D.M., 47 A.3d 539 (D.C. 2012), the D.C. Court of Appeals used the rule that, whenever possible, different provisions within a …
One of the questions parents of a juvenile client often ask me is the effect of a juvenile adjudication on their child’s future. The question often comes up in the context of plea negotiations. If, for example, the government has offered to reduce the charge from robbery to simple assault or theft, the parents want to know if and how …
I have a little speech I like to give to my juvenile clients. I tell them that, while I will be looking out for their legal interests as their lawyer, what happens to them pending trial or if found guilty of the offense will depend far more on what they do for themselves. I then hold up four fingers and …
The list of lawyers approved to take on court appointments for juvenile cases is now out. D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Lee Satterfield issued the order approving the list on February 27. The appointment is good for four years. The process began last summer when all members of the Panel were asked to re-apply. The Family Court Panel Oversight Committee, …
One of the first things they told us during the training for court-appointed juvenile cases was that we should never allow ourselves to become co-opted by the system. My first reaction upon hearing this was: What the heck are they talking about? My only previous experience with juvenile cases had been in Philadelphia, and it was not a good …
I botched the investigation. I went to the store on Upper Wisconsin Avenue in which my client was alleged to have committed a robbery. While there, I neglected to look for a critical piece of evidence: whether or not there was a surveillance camera over the cash register. As a result, my investigator Wayne Marshall had to go back …
A couple of years ago, a Court of Common Pleas judge in Philadelphia banned me from her courtroom for life. Both the stenographer and her law clerk looked at me with sympathy when the judge issued the edict. Maybe they thought I would be upset. In fact, running a list in this judge’s courtroom was viewed to be a …
My client’s mother is annoyed with me. She disagrees with her 16-year-old son’s decision to take his case to trial, and she is convinced I am the one who talked him into it. She’s partially right; in this particular case, I did recommend trial. But it does not matter if the child is 16 years old or 11 years old, …