April, 2017 | McLane Bednarski & Litt, LLP

25 Apr

Emperors With No Clothes and Junk Science

April 25, 2017

BLOG BULLETS: A recent report on forensic science by the (former) President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology notes that various developments and studies over the past two decades have raised increasing doubt about the validity and reliability of some important forms of forensic evidence. In addition to pointing out some doubts about forensic […]

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11 Apr

A State Court’s Mistaken Take on the Effect of the Federal Wiretap Statute on State Wiretap Authority.

April 11, 2017

By Carl GunnPress

BLOG BULLETS: Some state courts are allowing designated assistant district attorneys to apply for state wiretaps even when the district attorney himself is not absent. This is inconsistent with the federal wiretap statute as interpreted in United States v. Perez-Valencia, 727 F.3d 852 (9th Cir. 2013), and United States v. Perez-Valencia, 744 F.3d 600 (9th […]

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4 Apr

More or Less Advanced than Mutt and Jeff? And Not Advanced Enough in Any Event?

April 4, 2017

By Carl GunnPress

BLOG BULLETS: There’s a technique used to train officers in interrogation known as the “Reid technique,” which one police training organization recently announced it has abandoned and which a large number of articles criticize as prone to producing false confessions. Descriptions of the technique on the Wikipedia website and the website of the company which […]

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About the Blog

Shortly before I moved on after 28 years of work as a Federal Public Defender, one of the younger attorneys I had the honor to mentor forwarded me an e-mail he’d received from an Assistant United States Attorney. The e-mail complained that my younger colleague was being extremely frustrating, that my colleague was making far too much of a “simple little case,” that the client in the case was going to be deported no matter what, and that my colleague was forcing the prosecutor to “expend a tremendous amount of effort” on what the prosecutor characterized as a “silly issue.” He ended his e-mail by asking, “Have you been hanging out with Carl Gunn?”

Some people would have been insulted by this, but I felt rather proud. Making as much as we can out of what the government sees as “simple little cases,” litigating issues despite the government’s view that they might be “silly,” and “expend[ing] a tremendous amount of effort” on behalf of clients who have the full weight of the government thrown up against them – often with the government’s view that the case is open and shut, or “simple” – is our calling as public defenders and defense attorneys. We all have our different reasons for doing it, but it’s a crucial task – for our clients, our system, and ourselves. As Sir Thomas More was said to say in “A Man for All Seasons” in response to his future son-in- law’s exclamation that he’d “cut down every law in England” to get at the devil: “Oh, and when the last law in England was down and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat?”

I’m proud if “hanging out with Carl Gunn” means not just accepting the government’s view that cases are “simple” and “little,” that issues are “silly,” and that we shouldn’t expend resources on our clients. Hence the name of this blog: “Hanging out with Carl Gunn.” I hope to offer some thoughts and ideas that the government may think are “silly,” but I respectfully don’t; that you can use in cases that the government may think are “simple,” but aren’t so simple when looked at more critically; and that are an entirely appropriate way to expend our resources. And in the spirit of this being a “hanging out” together, there might be guest bloggers from time to time with their “silly” ideas to offer. I hope you find some of the ideas on this blog helpful and offer whatever comments you might have to add to them.

Month: April 2017

Emperors With No Clothes and Junk Science

A State Court’s Mistaken Take on the Effect of the Federal Wiretap Statute on State Wiretap Authority.

More or Less Advanced than Mutt and Jeff? And Not Advanced Enough in Any Event?

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