I came across the following quote while doing research on a Petition for Review . I really like it and it is the first time I have used a citation from the 1800's.
The district attorney, representing the majesty of the People, and having no responsibility, except fairly to discharge his duty, should put himself under proper restraint, and should not in his remarks, in the hearing of the jury, go beyond the evidence or the bounds of a reasonable moderation.
People v. Greenwall, 115 N.Y. 520, 526, 22 N.E. 180 (1889). How I wish prosecutors remembered that. 118 years and prosecutors still don't get it. When is society going to realize that a conviction at any cost, includes the cost of our constitutional rights?
As part of her justification for telling me I have no conscience, my bus friend said "well most of them are guilty anyway." Right there in her statement is the reason why everyone deserves a defense attorney: "most". Most is less than All. Most understands that some defendants are in fact innocent. Most realizes that in order to treat the falsely accused fairly we must presume that everyone is innocent unless and until we can prove otherwise. It's as if our system had a presumption of some kind, a presumption of innocence.
Has anyone switched over the Word 2007? I've been using it for the past month and while I like many of the changes that have been made, I'm noticing some serious flaws. I cannot get the Table of Contents feature to work correctly. It insists upon changing my formatting. I've unchecked the box saying "build table of contents from: Styles" yet it continues to change the styles of the selected text. Also for some reason the Table of Authorities decided to randomly make some of my entries bold.
It also has a new setting to automatically add a space between paragraphs. I'm not sure how this feature could ever be useful.
If anyone understands Word 2007 any better or has any suggestions please leave a comment. Since I'm just an intern I have a feeling that when I finally snap and start swearing at and punching my computer it won't go over well.
I'm 60 pages from finishing Defending the Damned. It's no Courtroom 302, but I've enjoyed it so far. I'll write more once I finish it.
2 comments:
You should read David Feige's "Indefensible." That's a good, quick read, about one day in the life of a pd. And it will give you some good responses to the HOW CAN YOU DEFEND THOSE PEOPLE questions.
You depress me about the Word 2007. My court is FINALLY going to e-filing, and we may be switching to Word; I've been using WordPerfect forever.
WordPerfect just flat out sucks. Not that word is much better, but WordPerfect is awful. WIB, consider it a blessing.
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