Looking for Justice
This endless search is in grave peril in California.
We got a rare glimpse of what goes on, reading about yesterday's celebrity-lawyer-filled training session held for Loyola law students in their legal lab. The program is named for Judge Larry Fidler who attended, and is otherwise currently presiding in the Phil Spector trial. In the interests of letting a little light into a tangled web of tactical deceit and see how it's practiced, and at the cost of bestowing free publicity, let's try to examine these much admired industry players; Gods, heroes, necessary evils or pond lives, depending on your courtroom experiences (if any) with them:
The celebrity attorney mentors of this new crop of law students included Paris Hilton's drunk driving specialist Richard Hutton. Then there was Thomas Mesereau Jr. who stood up for Michael Jackson in his famous molestaton case; Mark Geragos, who repped Scott Peterson and Gary Condit and Susan McDougal and Winona Ryder.
Harland Braun, who (for a while) worked for actor Robert Blake and director John Landis, and for a police officer accused of beating Rodney King, and at present Lane Garrison. Prosecutors included John Hueston who worked for the team against the Enron corp. Included too was K.C. Maxwell (a female), a rep for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Richard Gabriel, a jury consultant in many high-profile trials. Oft-quoted Loyola Law School professors Laurie Levenson and Stanley Goldman were also on hand to throw in a few cent's worth of observation.
I am unaware of any pro se's being invited to sit in.
Braun made a stunning pronouncement. He said that as a general rule, it is better to keep your client off the stand and away from questions, for fear the truth might come out and destroy all the damage a skillful attorney may have done to the prosecution's case.
So it's now out in the open; we learn that TRUTH is not concomitant with JUSTICE!
Would that a few members of the public, prospective jurors and self-representing pro pers had been present to keep them honest with a few hard questions for the benefit of the students. But of course, they would not have been allowed in to monitor this clubby conference of celebrity's highest paid beauts.
They might have been able to point out that ordinary middle-class members of the public would probably face bankruptcy were they to become clients and put themselves entirely in the hands of lawyers, none of whom are required to disclose their huge fees. But perhaps that is part of the attraction of a career in U.S. civil and criminal law.
It goes without saying that a defendant has the right to expect a judge will keep all the participants straight and in line when they are under his eye. But will it happen? I could not help hearing the ringing of a bell and recalling my own experience when I observed the mentoring of a bunch of Loyola law students by the judge presiding at my wife's divorce trial against me. Actually in the courtroom, and it led to my pressing a 170.1 disqualification motion against Judge Arnold Gold (which was disallowed and failed - by him, of course.) Here's how I did it:
