Legal Ethics; or: Lawyers Behaving Badly
First amendment rights for lawyers?
- Attorney’s taunts – “he called a police officer a ‘punk’ and ‘dirty cop,’ and told another he hopes the officer gets ‘shot in a drug house in Detroit'” – land him before disciplinary board.
- Violation of gag order, to provide public airing of client’s side, lands attorney before very irate judge. Norm Pattis, sympathetic to counsel’s position, disagrees with threat of criminal contempt but doesn’t claim a 1st, or for that matter a 6th, amendment right to violate a gag order.
- “A public defender in California who lost about a third of his lawyers due to budget cuts this July is accused of challenging a prosecutor to fight for refusing a delay in a drug case.”
OK, that last example relates more to one’s threshold for emotional pain than exercise of first amendment rights. Nonetheless, some Mr. Badger-recommended reading follows: Margaret Tarkington, “A First Amendment Theory for Protecting Attorney Speech“; Barry Tarlow, “Lawyers: Do they have First Amendment rights?”
Speaking of the 6th amendment, Mr. Badger will go out on a limb and boldly predict that it isn’t elastic enough to support destroying a court file as part of your preparation for an upcoming trial.
Search & Seizure
Mr. Badger closes this linkfest with something practice-oriented: This takes you right inside a suppression hearing courtroom for some of the most riveting cross you’ll ever experience.
