Posted on 06/26/2006 1:23:37 PM PDT by new yorker 77
FYI
(do I really need a sarcasm tag for this one)
Man...so far Alito isn't a dissapointment. I hope he stays away from the dinner parties.
Republicans are divided on the issue. It threatens to tear the party asudner!
He and Roberts have been fantastic, and they don't strike me as the dinner party types, especially Alito.
Respondent Cuauhtemoc Gonzalez-Lopez was charged with conspiring to distribute marijuana in the Eastern District of Missouri. Upon his arrest, his family secured a lawyer for him (Mr. John Fahle), whom he had never met. Fahle represented Gonzalez-Lopez at an arraignment hearing, but shortly thereafter, Gonzalez-Lopez heard about a California lawyer named Joseph Low, who had recently secured a favorable deal for another defendant in a similar case before the same judge. Gonzalez-Lopez contacted Low and ultimately hired him. Shortly thereafter, Gonzalez-Lopez asked Fahle to withdraw from the case, leaving Low as his sole attorney.
Before the trial, Low applied for formal admission pro hac vice four times and applied for general admission to the Missouri bar, but the trial court denied his motions and tabled his application. The court based its ruling on Low’s alleged violation of a local rule, which, according to the trial court’s interpretation, prohibited lawyers from talking to represented parties without their current lawyer’s permission. On this basis, Low was denied the ability to represent Gonzalez-Lopez at trial.
Low had previously brought in another attorney, Karl Dickhaus, to act as local counsel while his applications for admission were pending. But after Low was denied admission, Dickhaus went on to represent Gonzalez-Lopez at trial in what was Dickhaus’s first federal criminal case. At trial, Low was not permitted to sit next to Gonzalez-Lopez or advise Dickhaus in any way; he was seated in the audience, with a U.S. Marshal placed between him and his client. He was denied the ability to consult with Gonzalez-Lopez until the last day of his trial.
I'll have to read the decision in order to see if I agree with a reporter's charactization of it, but my initial reaction is that this is BS, and Scalia must be losing it.
The only hurdle should be whether one gets adequate legal representation, not who the particular attorney is.
If I have a constitutional right to Clarence Darrow as my attorney, and he happens to be DEAD, that is a problem.
I have to agree, Scalia really blew this one. He's creating all kinds of problems for courts. Suppose that Bruce Cutler, the mob attorney, can't be in court for a particular client because he's already scheduled a trial with a higher-paying client. Is the criminal court judge violating the defendant's right if he refuses to adjourn his trial so Bruce can be there? There's so many potential loopholes that Nino will regret this one. I'll go on record right now that he'll actually see the error of his decision and acknowledge it in a future opinion.
The lawyer was alive, the defendant wanted to hire him, he had the money to hire him, the lawyer was willing and available, and the judge kept him out of the trial for no good reason. Scalia was right.
Somewhere in America, there's the worst lawyer in America.
Maybe he should have had the attorney he wanted. But that's no reason to throw out the conviction. Facts are still facts.
Not if the attorney isn't a member of the state bar where the trial is. Which was apparently the case here.
No good reason?
As I understand it the state bar wouldn't allow the lawyer to practice in their state.
Hardly a barrier. That's what pro hac vice motions are for.
The judge ordered him not to even talk to the local lawyer.
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