We don't need no stinkin' statehood . . .

According to the information I am getting, folks in Puerto Rico tend to vote at around an 80% turnout rate. Now, I don't know if that is, in fact, true but it certainly holds the capacity, given that Puerto Rico's population is approximately 2 million, to really impact the face of the primaries.

And, it occurs to me, precisely how ironic that would be, given the longstanding issues and debates and acrimony regarding potential statehood circulating through the blood of that island.

Because they need to be kept honest

Every so often . . . well, if I am to be perfectly honest, more than every so often . . . someone asks the inevitable question:

"Why do you do it? You're a good person, Armagh. How can you spend your life on the side of the criminals? How can you do things that might lead to someone who did something horrendous getting off of the hook?"

There are, of course, a million answers to that question, and in the coming weeks and months I hope to more fully explore some of them.

For the moment, however, I think it is enough to simply quote one of my favorite passages from one of the more significant SCOTUS Criminal Procedure cases:

There are those who say, as did Justice Cardozo, that under our constitutional exclusionary doctrine "the criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered." In some cases this will undoubtedly be the result." But, as was said in Elkins, "there is another consideration -- the imperative of judicial integrity." The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence. As Mr. Justice Brandeis , dissenting, said in Olmstead v. United States: "Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example . . . If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
--Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961), internal citations omitted.

Of course, every so often I run into a cop or a DA who gets this. Unfortunately, that tends to be the exception, rather than the rule.

Another sad realization

I hate to be fatalistic, but some kids just do not have a chance.

In which I make a divergence in to the quasi-political . . .

. . . and ask that someone, anyone, explain to me how de-funding RIF could be considered sensible, logical, or in any way in the same universe as a good idea.

Reset

I've thought a lot lately about the purpose of this blog . . . about why I created it . . . about what I want it to become . . . and about whether I really want it to become anything.

At first, this was a place to practice my writing, via musings about politics, law, religion, and other assorted aspects of life, but there is something inherently unsatisfying about that, especially now. My existence is far to overwhelmed by my work for me to write about anything else, but blogging as an attorney poses some special risks in terms of professional reputation and the danger of inadvertently revealing more than one can within the standards of professional responsibility.

Still, the work and professional life of an attorney is a very unique thing, a phenomenon more different from the popular imagery than most people would even begin to guess, and more myths and misperceptions about the profession have evolved than I can even begin to count. This is perhaps uniquely true of the work of a criminal defense attorney. Whenever I talk to strangers, acquaintances, friends, and even my closest relatives, I am staggered by the extent to which their approach to me is now colored by some clouded understanding of exactly what it is I do and why I do it.

So, from here out, that will be the primary purpose of this blog. Granted, there will still be religious, political, and cultural musings, but they will cease being the headliner. That slot will now be devoted to an examination of life inside the profession. Nothing about specific cases; I'm not fool enough to tread within a mile of that line. But there are so many strange things that are common to the work . . . more than enough for years and years of blog posts.

Just wondering . . . .

If we want peace so badly, so desperately and so consistently, why is it that we so very often effect our strategic goals at the point of a missile?