When cops pose as Lawyers
I just got an unbelievable email. It was an urgent request from the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to join a letter writing campaign to the Washington State Bar Association urging the Board of Governors to file an amicus brief in a case currently before the State Supreme Court. If you can believe this, police posing as lawyers sent a “letter” to a murder suspect, soliciting him to join in a class action “lawsuit”. The defendant apparently responded, licking his envelope and sealing his fate along with it. Police matched the DNA on the envelope with DNA found at the scene and arrested the suspect for first degree murder.
The defense team’s motion to suppress was denied, based on a line of cases allowing police to use “ruses” to lure suspects into incriminating themselves. But this is not like a phony lottery letter. This is an outrageous act, undermining confidence in the integrity of the profession and amounting to a violation of Rules of Professional Conduct prohibiting the unauthorized practice of law. It’s astonishing to me that any court would sanction this type of behavior, and I hope the Washington State Bar Association agrees. As of this writing, state prosecutors are urging the WSBA to take a stand in defense of the practice by staying out of the issue.
Excuse me while I go write to my Board of Governors. The case is State v. Athan, and you can read the details here.
RP
January 13th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Excuse me but what undermines condidence in the legal profession are folks with opinions like yours. “Outrageous” that a murderer/rapist is brought to justice after all of these years and a 13 year old little girl is in her grave is a point of view that certainly destroys any notion that defence attorneys have a soul. Believing that obtaining DNA evidence by sending a letter of ANY type in should be verboten is a twisted perversion of some concept that you and others such as the ACLU promote as “protection” for Americans. How can a human being wish that this creature who commited such a crime should be freed under ANY circumstances? Laugh now but I believe that a higher authority will ultimately judge the killer/rapist and also those that sought to protect him.
January 13th, 2006 at 10:21 am
You know, there is another way of looking at this. Rather than limiting our outrage to one side or the other, as though it can only be directed at one “side” or the other, we can both recognize that decent human beings are rightfully outraged at the barbaric acts of criminals against their victims, while at the same time outraged at the means by which the government responds. I hope and I believe that we all share sympathy for the tragic victim and outrage at her perpetrator, while at the same time share a desire to NOT forgo the liberties and protections of law that define us as a people and assure that the right persons are brought to justice. Stop assuming that those who work hard to protect your liberty have no soul. Even your “higher authority” stood by both the victim and the criminal, forgave them both, and preached a broader responsibility toward humanity that did not pit one against the other.
January 14th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Thanks for responding to my post, Robert. If you read the preceding post, adjectives such as “astonishing”, “outrageous” (you can read the rest of the post again) are what led me to responding the way that I did. This person would have this creature be set free because the letter appeared to be generated by a law firm. Only someone very far removed from the reality of such a crime could use such adjectives.
Had he stated his point of view in this way: “I think that it is incredibly wonderful that such a crime now has closure and a perpertrator is behind bars, but I think that we may want to place limitations on the substance of such “dummy” letters for the following readons….”
Now that type of statement might benefit the image of defence attornies and serve to mitigate the steady errosion of confidence in the integrity of the legal proffession that has been taking place for a long time.
Another example twisted ideals is that defense attornies would like for executions to be televised. It would help us all see the reality of what we are doing. I imagine though, that they wouldn’t want a detailed re-enactment of the inmate’s crimes to be part of such a show. But that in fact, would be equal and balanced “entertainment” and I am almost sure that most Americans would want to inject the serum themselves after seeing what a victim actually went through at the hands of deathr-row fiends. Yet, defense attornies even wish to make autopsy photos inadmissable at trials. It might sway the jury!!!
My post was a gut reaction. While I am not saying that defense attornies are evil or that we don’t need someone to do the job, I am saying that I would never under any circumstance fight to gain the release of a monster like this. I am proud of this.
Russ
January 16th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Russ,
Thank you for a rational and thoughtful response. Although blogs are a good place for gut reactions and controversial positions, the reality you bring to light is that these cases involve real people with real lives, broken by the unspeakable tragedies that define this area of the law. I for one never lose sight of this fact.
By the way, I’m the guy who wrote that piece and yes, I’m still “outraged” at what the cops did in this case. FYI, I’m even more outraged at what happened to the victim in this case. But it’s a false dichotomy to assume that I have to limit my outrage to one side or the other, and that just because I’m opposed to what the police did in this case, that this somehow translates to my being Ok with what happened to the little girl who died, or that I’m sympathetic to her killer. Why would you assume this? Do you believe that defense lawyers secretly hide criminals under the floorboards of their homes and get paid with drugs and contraband? Do you think that they enjoy seeing man’s inhumanity to man day after day? I’m a father and a husband and I can’t help have the same reactions to these unspeakable crimes that you or anyone else would have.
In most policy disputes carried on between rational, reasonable people, there’s usually some legitimacy to arguments made on either side, and the “truth” is somewhere to be found in consideration of all points of view. I believe that’s the case here. Fighting for the abstract Constitutional protections that define our freedom isn’t quite as visceral and tangible as fighting for the victim in the morgue, but both are important and both need championing. I think the current systems in place do as good a job as humans are capable of doing of resolving these tragic conflicts, but this isn’t going to stop people on both sides of the argument from being “outraged” and “astonished” at developments that offend their respective professional positions. But it doesn’t mean that we lose sight of the underlying tragedies behind these cases. Please don’t assume away our humanity just because we continue to fight for what we believe in.
For the record, I’m not an advocate of televised executions but if I were I would support a requirement that “equal time” be given to re-enact the crimes against the victims. Where you and I differ is that I believe that most Americans would be rightfully sickened by all of it and would come to the rational conclusion that one tragedy isn’t made any better by the other. I believe that most Americans understand that we may never be able to prevent bad guys from doing their deeds, but that we *can* prevent the mistakes that are made when we officially kill people in response. The record is clear, we do convict innocent people, and mistakes are made on death row. That’s something we can and should prevent. A gut desire for vengeance and retribution, while it may feel good and satisfying, ultimately isn’t a good reason to continue making these mistakes.
RP
January 26th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
[…] You might remember my original post on this case, wherein police actually nabbed a suspect by illegally posing as a lawfirm and mailing him a solicitation to join in a class action lawsuit. When the unsuspecting target mailed back his envelope with his request to join in the suit, police retrieved DNA from the saliva left behind when the defendant licked the envelope, sealing his fate along with it. He was subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted of murder. […]