Why Nothing Will Ever Change In Criminal Justice

Two stories hit the internet over the last week or so. One was about the FBI breaking wiretapping laws. The other was that 500,000 people are currently incarcerated awaiting trial at an annual cost to taxpayers of 9 billion dollars.

Yawn.

That was the collective response of the nation.

Sure, we've got Haiti on our minds, the Super Bowl's coming up, American Idol is starting a new season, the iPhone may be available to other carriers besides at&t soon, and the two stories I mentioned dont play well on "Law & Order," or with the Law & Order crowd.

But these two stories put the nail in the coffin on the issue of whether anything will ever change in the criminal justice system.

Nothing ever will, change.

We have a love/hate relationship with crime. We love watching white trash after white trash being arrested on Cops. We love watching everyone get convicted on the 12 different Law & Orders. We are numb to the fact that local news is nothing more than a few top stories of crime and punishment, and then something about a dog, or cute kid, and don't even realize that we are addicted to something we hate - crime.

I know, this is about the time someone says "but if there was no crime, you wouldn't have a job."

Yes, I would. I'd find something else to do. We all would. Cops, prosecutors, judges, we'd all do something else.

But we have a society that is spending money we don't have to make us all feel "safe."

For every lawyer, judge, civic activist, or casual courthouse observer that laments the explosion of criminal statutes, explosion of the number of people in jail, and lack of priority in the system - there's a group of police officers and angry mothers that demand we stay the course.

Leadership in state legislatures, where most of the thoughtless legislation on criminal justice is created, is basically non-existant. The goal of a legislator is singular - to remain a legislator. No one gets elected, or stays elected, by touting significant change in the criminal justice system - unless its more laws, more jails, and more people in those jails.

California's jails are at capacity at 100,000 inmates. They currently have 170,000. No one cares. Eventually a federal judge will pen an order requiring the jails to release inmates. Until then, California will do nothing. They can't. It would take thought, courage, and leadership. That doesn't exist anymore.

Whenever numbers are thrown out regarding the amount of non-violent drug offenders in our jails, there's another group calling those numbers "lies." Legislators cower in committe rooms when 20 uniformed police officers show up and sit in the gallery. They are there for one reason - to let the elected officials know that if they do anything - anything that disturbs the apple cart - they will be targeted as "soft on crime," and they may lose their seat.

We don't care that the FBI was or is illegally wiretapping phone conversations. From Joe Six Pack and his wife, to the typical suburban family who "have nothing to hide," wiretapping conversations is OK. These are the same people who "don't care if cops want to search my house." These are also the same people who want a cop fired for giving them a traffic ticket.

As for all the people awaiting trial at a cost of 9 billion a year - that's too big a number to think about. The average family doesn't have 9 billion dollars, and they don't think they are paying towards that number. They just know that the damn garbage fee keeps rising a few bucks a year.

As long as people continue to go to jail, and stay there, that's just fine with everyone. Disagree? Walk around any judicial fundraiser where there's non-lawyers and others outside the system and you'll hear the clamoring of "you gonna keep those criminals locked up - right?" That's what people think judges do.

So they do.

We've lost any sense of how to deal with the criminal justice system. In Florida last year the prosecutors asked that no new criminal statutes be enacted.

They heard crickets.

One after the other they came - more laws, more increased sentences, no thought at all.

And we just keep going.

We have determined that there is no solution. We deal with the line of innocent people released from prison with shrugged shoulders. Then we watch our legislators fight to keep the exonerated from receiving a dime.

We give cops power, and when that power is abused, we give them more.

We hear that certain laws arent working, so we tinker with those non-working laws to make them more impossible to deal with.

Our prisons have too many people that don't belong there, so we put more people there.

And so it goes....

Brian Tannebaum is a criminal defense lawyer in Miami, Florida practicing in state and federal court. Read his free ebook The Truth About Hiring A Criminal Defense Lawyer. To learn more about Brian and his firm, Tannebaum Weiss, please visit www.tannebaumweiss.com



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Haiti

Being a resident of the city containing the largest population of Hatians outside of Haiti, I thought while putting on my suit, drinking a nice cup of coffee, getting in my nice car with air conditioning and leather seats on my way to my nice office from my nice house, I'd post this photo of the aftermath of yesterday's earthquake in Haiti taken by Carel Pedre of the Associated Press:



And this:



And this:

Donate to the Red Cross.



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The Continued Criminalization Of Drug Addiction

I see Redmond O'Neal is back in jail - having failed to stay clean during a 24 hour holiday pass from his residential drug treatment program.

Redmond is of course the son of actor Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett. Those that watched the documentary on Fawcett's battle with cancer saw Redmond say goodbye to her in chains and a jail jumpsuit during a furlough.

Redmond apparently can't stay clean, and now he may go to prison for 6 years.

He's not a drug dealer, he's just addicted. He belongs in treatment - treatment his family can well afford. Instead, he'll be sentenced to prison, get little help, and on the taxpayer's dime. I know the critics will say "well what about someone who can't afford treatment, should they go to jail for addiction?" No. If only a real study on the cost and benefits of treatment as opposed to jail would cause our "leaders" to think differently about where to put addicts, as opposed to dealers.

And I understand, he was on probation. There has to be consequences to violating probation. Testing positive for drugs is and should be an instant violation.

But what's the solution?

We live in an age where jail is the solution to everything, even for a guy like Redmond O'Neal who is only hurting himself. (Yes, I know he "broke the law").

California is broke, yet a drug addict is possibly on his way to prison for years - for addiction.

The judge made an interesting comment to Redmond in court. He said "It actually strikes me that you haven't got a clue as to what recovery means. It is a lifelong commitment and it's grinding, hard, painful work."

I don't think the problem is that Redmond doesn't have a clue. I just don't think anyone in the system has a clue.

Brian Tannebaum is a criminal defense lawyer in Miami, Florida practicing in state and federal court. Read his free ebook The Truth About Hiring A Criminal Defense Lawyer. To learn more about Brian and his firm, Tannebaum Weiss, please visit www.tannebaumweiss.com



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Shooting at Vegas Federal Courthouse Pisses Me Off

I have to tell you that I take for granted the security in federal court. I never think twice about someone coming in with a gun, mainly because my keys and blackberry get a nice pat down upon entrance, and the scanner beeps when the only thing I have on me is my shirt and pants. Must be the tie.



This haunting video, is not really a video, but the sound of a day in court when some angry litigant, angry over the dismissal of his social security case, decides to get his own form of sick justice. This was yesterday, in Las Vegas Federal Court.

Today at every federal courthouse security will be a little tighter. People will get a second look, maybe a third. There is no correlation between what happened in Las Vegas yesterday and federal court anywhere else. People get angry at the grocery store, at the post office, and at work. But it's like when someone with a shoe bomb tries to blow up a plane, well, you know the rest.

We (those who go to court) all have to deal with what happened yesterday. It will happen again, we all know that. But because we cannot stop a sick, angry litigant from sneaking in with a gun, a shotgun, we have to at least pretend we can. The gunman was dressed in black. Watch "no black" be the next addition to the dress code. We can only sigh and understand that this is the world in which we live.

It angers me that today I have to mourn the death of a Court Security Officer, a retired cop now one of the guys in blue jackets that waive familiar lawyers through, and say "how you doin' today counsel?" A guy who just "went to work" right after the new year, and left the courthouse dead. Five seconds before he was probably talking to a prosecutor, defense lawyer, or fellow security officer about his New Year's vacation, or the weekend's football games.

Pisses me off.

Brian Tannebaum is a criminal defense lawyer in Miami, Florida practicing in state and federal court. Read his free ebook The Truth About Hiring A Criminal Defense Lawyer. To learn more about Brian and his firm, Tannebaum Weiss, please visit www.tannebaumweiss.com



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New Decade: New "Attorney As Government Informant" Story

“Posing as a criminal attorney to get a defendant to talk ‘freely' of his criminal past screams of entrapment and will turn the U.S. justice system on its ear if this is allowed to happen.”

That's not the statement of a criminal defense lawyer, prosecutor, or judge. It's the statement of defendant Shannon Williams.

According to Omaha World-Herald reporter Todd Cooper, that's exactly what happened.

More than 30 times this year, investigators say, Shannon Williams orchestrated a multimillion-dollar marijuana ring from inside the Douglas County Jail.

In one-on-one sessions with a jail visitor, Williams would use the visitor's cell phone to call associates and instruct them on how to divvy up the gobs of marijuana and money his operation was taking in.

He would confide in the visitor about his past exploits, claiming he had earned $15 million to $20 million while operating the marijuana ring in Omaha. He would ask the visitor to launder the money he was making. And he would use the visitor's cell phone to try to arrange hits: one to beat up his longtime defense attorney and another to “put a few into the back” of an Omaha man who had been messing with Williams' girlfriend.

All the while, the visitor would take it in, nodding and promising to follow Williams' orders.

The informant, the one that went to the jail to arrange the 30 drug deals, is a lawyer.

Fellow Omaha attorney D.C. “Woody” Bradford, in his 42nd year of practicing law says he's “shocked that an attorney was willing to do it.”

Not surprisingly the defendant was a bit taken aback: “An FBI (informant) posing as my attorney!!!” Williams wrote. “I still can't believe it!”

The article has the full story.

Here's the bombshell:

Williams said he had retained Haddock for several matters, including a lawsuit Williams filed to try to expose disparities in crack cocaine sentencings.

Stuck, the agent, disputed that. (Read: important defense evidence, dispute.)

Williams, who was acquitted in the 1993 murder of an Omaha man, said Haddock's “betrayal” has left him unsure whom to trust. At last week's hearing, Williams could be overheard asking if his new attorney “was an undercover agent, too.”

So begins the decade, so comes another snitching lawyer in the criminal justice system. Sadly, the government will fight like hell to prosecute this case, and even more scary, a judge may allow it. (I expect some to say there is nothing "legally" wrong with this tactic.) I don't think it will become commonplace, unless the Bar morally collapses, but it will happen again (It's happened before). All the government needs is one case to say it's ok.

That a lawyer, a former lawyer of a client, would agree to this, is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. Period. I hope this lawyer is out of business, and disbarred.

Colleagues, prepare for this:

"Hi, I'm your lawyer."

"Prove it."

Brian Tannebaum is a criminal defense lawyer in Miami, Florida practicing in state and federal court. Read his free ebook The Truth About Hiring A Criminal Defense Lawyer. To learn more about Brian and his firm, Tannebaum Weiss, please visit www.tannebaumweiss.com



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