Crooked.
A Sleeping Lawyer and a Ticket to Death Row
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/15/news/mn-53250
“I knew John Benn. I knew he wasn’t competent,” Shaver said in a courthouse interview in late June. The judge said Benn had the appearance of “a heavy drinker. . . . His clothes looked like he slept in them. He was very red-faced; he had protruding veins in his nose and watery red eyes. . . . I can’t imagine anyone hiring him for a serious case.”
So Shaver appointed a second lawyer, Sandy Melamed, to assist Benn.
Melamed had never worked on a capital case before and remained deferential, even though he saw Benn’s limitations.