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Saturday August 23, 08
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08:46 PM - the plate glass windows
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today, we had law journal orientation.
other than signing people in, I was fairly useless.
I was standing around at the back of the room talking to people when I looked out of the gigantic room-sized windows and saw a person walk down the sidewalk.
A little heavier than what I remembered, i wasn't sure if that was actually him with the yellow baseball cap and sunglasses. It has been over 3 months, after all.
however, he was carrying a bag full of books from the bookstore. he was very deliberately looking down at the ground in a way that you would think he was looking for something (or hanging his head in shame), walking fairly slowly, not even looking through the windows to see what was going on, and with an obvious scowl on his face.
IF that was him....which I wasn't completely sure if it was...I'm thinking "dude! you got popped for being a complete dill hole nearly 3 months ago. Get out the instant replay, bring in John Madden, and have him explain it to you with a diagram why i was pissed!"
unless that head-hanging was from shame and was being very deliberate to show how sad he was.
yes, that guy cracks me up sometimes.
anyway, in completely different news...
one of the 2L's at orientation said that they heard through one of their internships that they had pulled the plug on the public defender's office where I used to work!?!?!?!
i'm not sure how reliable this info is. I went on the commissioner's court website and pulled up meeting notes and saw that there was an item on the agenda APPROVING state funds for the APDO. of course, i put in an email to my ex-boss with hopes of an explanation. i hope it was a 2L being a 2L....after all, at this point, the 2L's are nothing more than 1L's who just came back from an entire summer of downtime. They can find their classrooms, can point people towards the cafeteria, and are allowed to take upper-division classes, and that's about it at this point.
yes, i hate to be blunt about it, but it's amazing how much you THINK you know after you come out of your first year, and it's amazing to find out how much you don't know once you go out in the working world.
but maybe she was right. after all, i can't imagine why the 4th court would be sitting around and saying, "isn't it great? they renewed the APDO's grant for next year!"
you might wonder why they did it. after all, the point of having APDO was to save money from having an appointment system where they had to pay individual attys a salary for each job they did as opposed to paying one salary for unlimited work. well, i think maybe it has something to do with the fact that there are budget short-falls, and even though it is nonsensical, it might be a token gesture to the DA's office who is also being forced to make cuts...or at least, not hire as many attorneys.
of course, my thought is, "you can save a lot of money by not prosecuting a lot of the b.s. that you prosecute for."
yes, prosecute the child molesters and murderers. But do we really need to prosecute kids for felony graffiti for writing their names on their desks while at school? or how about drug users that hurt nobody but themselves?
it's what happens: you hire more cops. They go out and arrest more people. Those people have to be charged and prosecuted or have their charges dropped. So, you need DA's and you need people to defend them. I'm sorry, but the constitution guarantees a criminal defendant the right to an attorney. you can't cut out their attorneys as much as you would like to cut out the hinderance that prevents you from sending the scumbag straight to jail.
maybe the office became a victim of its own success. they popped one judge for showing obvious bias in the courtroom and it stuck on appeal. that same judge apparently has been out for that office ever since then...and maybe she got her way. but you know what? if you don't want to be embarrassed like that, DON'T DO THAT CRAP. it's that simple.
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