The Criminal Lawyer

So on Thursday the WSJ reported that the Obama administration has changed the rules of investigating terror suspects, to permit interrogation without Miranda warnings in certain circumstances:

A Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandum reviewed by The Wall Street Journal says the policy applies to “exceptional cases” where investigators “conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.” Such action would need prior approval from FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to the memo, which was issued in December but not made public.

We made a few notes, hoping to get a minute to blog on the issue.  It just struck us as a stupid and unnecessary thing to do, if prevention of terrorist acts is the goal.  Miranda is just a protection affecting evidence that can be used at the trial of the person being interrogated.  That has to do with evidence of past crimes; it’s irrelevant to the prevention of future acts.  And if the goal is to gather evidence for a criminal trial, then it’s just unconstitutional.  It’s stupid no matter which way you look at it.  But our current never-ending trial is demanding pretty much every waking moment, and nothing got written.

Then yesterday the NYT published the text of the October 2010 FBI memo.  The relevant paragraph provides that:

There may be exceptional cases in which, although all relevant public safety questions have been asked, agents nonetheless conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat, and that the government’s interest in obtaining this intelligence outweighs the disadvantages of proceeding with unwarned interrogation. [4] In these instances, agents should seek SAC approval to proceed with unwarned interrogation after the public safety questioning is concluded. Whenever feasible, the SAC will consult with FBI-HQ (including OGC) and Department of Justice attorneys before granting approval. Presentment of an arrestee may not be delayed simply to continue the interrogation, unless the defendant has timely waived prompt presentment.

At the words “prompt presentment,” we (figuratively) slapped our forehead.  It all came back to us.  In May 2010, when the Obama administration first floated the idea, (more…)

We have some strong feelings on the nature of the law as a profession.  And by “profession,” we don’t mean the colloquial usage of “job description.”  We’re talking about the concept of a calling — a calling to the service of others where one’s own personal interest must be secondary to the interest of those served.  A true professional is not one who does his job well, but one who truly acts first and foremost for those he serves.  There are only three true professions: the clergy, medicine, and the law.  It not much of an exaggeration to think of it as a sacred calling.

Here at the Criminal Lawyer, we haven’t been too shy about saying that if you’re in the law for the money, then you don’t belong here.  There’s nothing wrong with making money as a lawyer.  There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money as a lawyer.  But if the money is the reason why you go to the office, then you do not belong in our profession.  And we’d both be happier if you left.  (And if you’re a law student thinking of joining our profession in order to get a nice income, you doubly don’t belong here.  Because on top of having the wrong reasons, you also seem to lack the basic research skills to realize that most lawyers aren’t exactly making a killing.)

We’re not going to rehash all our thoughts here.  Feel free to scan our archives for the tags “legal profession” or some such, if you’re really interested.  But we took a moment during a break from trial this afternoon to skim Scott Greenfield’s blog, and he had a great post today coming at this issue from a different angle.  So here’s a paragraph which we are offering for its truth:

The underlying problem, which cash-obsessed lawyers fail to recognize, is that they never should have been lawyers at all.  It’s hard to practice law.  Being a professional requires sacrifice, dedication to someone other than yourself.  it’s fine that some people don’t have a feel for such things, but then they have no business being lawyers.  Let the brain drain happen, and let’s rid the ranks of the legal profession of those who elevate profit over dedication to their clients.  They never should have been lawyers to begin with, and their loss is not only a non-problem, but a benefit to those who remain.

And you can read the rest of it here.

We started yet another trial this week, and it’s looking like it will continue into the first week of April.  Not our longest trial ever, but fairly lengthy for a state case.  But at least it’ll be over before the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, which also began this week, and which is expected to last through the beginning of May.

But these are nothing compared to the trial of Charles Taylor, former head of Liberia.  This is the same guy who ran for election with the campaign slogan (not making this up): “He killed my ma / He killed my pa /But I will vote for him.”  Probably a thinly-veiled threat that those who didn’t vote for him would get the same treatment.

Taylor first came to prominence in 1980, when he took part in the coup led by Samuel Doe.  Whose government he soon ripped off in a massive embezzlement scheme.  He fled to the U.S., got picked up and thrown in prison, and made a daring prison escape before he could be extradited in 1985.  He high-tailed it to Libya and the protection of Muammar Gaddaffi, and went through some terrorist training camps.

With funding from Gaddaffi, he organized a rebellion against the Liberian government in 1989.  The civil war would rage for seven years, utterly destroying the country.  Slaughter, fear and lawlessness made Liberia the classic “failed state.”  There was no government, only destruction.  (A State Department official we knew at the time said it was no good trying to reach anyone in charge there.  ”The phone’s just going to ring and ring, because there’s probably bullets flying through the office and they’re hiding under their desks.”)  The word “horrifying” doesn’t begin to describe what was going on throughout the ’90s there.

In 1997, Liberians elected him president in the vain hopes that this would avoid any more civil war.  But within two years, it was raging again.

But none of this is what he got in trouble for.

Apparently, Liberia wasn’t exciting enough, so he got involved in the horrors over in Sierra Leone.   During his own civil war, Taylor took advantage of Sierra Leone’s instability to found a rebel group (funded with Sierra Leone diamonds, and manned with conscripted children) to launch a civil war in Sierra Leone.  Because the government there was so corrupt, it had no real resources, and there was pretty much no economy.  So they couldn’t really fight back.  Still, they wound up having their own brutal civil war throughout the 90s.  A large Nigerian-led UN force finally intervened and restored peace, finally disarming the rebels in 2004.

Meanwhile, the Special Court for Sierra Leone managed to file an indictment against Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity, based on what he did in Sierra Leone.

He was indicted in 2003.

His trial just ended today.

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Even if you take into account the fact that he hid out in Nigeria until finally being arraigned in 2006, and the fact that the trial proceedings themselves didn’t really begin until 2007, we’re still talking a four-year trial.  That’s a long time to hear a case.

And the trial isn’t really technically over, anyway.  Just the evidentiary part is over.  The judges are going to take the next several months before rendering their verdict.

This thing ain’t ever going to end.

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Whether he’s guilty or not — and we haven’t seen the actual (more…)

Just upgraded to the newest versions of PHP and WordPress.  We do our own coding, so hopefully everything’s backwards-compatible.  But if you catch any glitches, please let us know.

That is all.

(Oh yeah, today’s insider trading webinar went great, thanks to fellow panelists Seth Levine and John Nathanson.  Top-notch guys, really know what they’re talking about.)

First, a shameless plug: Tomorrow, we’ll be participating in a Dow Jones webinar for Private Equity and VC types, discussing how the current environment of insider-trading prosecutions affects them, and what they might do about it.  (Link here, if you’re interested.)  Of course, those guys aren’t so much the focus these days as, say, hedge funds and the expert networks that help them make investment decisions.  ”In the spotlight” doesn’t begin to describe it.  Not a week goes by without some major news about insider trading allegations in the hedge fund world.

With all that reporting, and all the various cases that are going on, one might think the issues are pretty well understood by now.  But they’re not.  Not even by the very people who are doing the prosecuting and investigating, it seems.  It so unclear that a month ago the Managed Funds Association formally asked the SEC for guidance on what is and is not kosher when dealing with expert networks.  “Our industry would like to know where the sidelines are right now so that we can stay well within them,” MFA president Richard Baker said at the time.  “The trouble is the referees aren’t quite clear where those lines are.”

Amen.  Nobody knows where the line is between lawful and unlawful conduct.  The feds themselves admit it.  And yet they are prepared to prosecute people for crimes, when the public has no way of knowing that such conduct was criminal.  Even an investigation is enough to destroy a reputation, wipe out a career, erase a business.  A conviction will take away a real person’s liberty and rights.  Americans don’t allow their government to do that in a gray area.  But it is happening.  How that is not a serious violation of basic due process is beyond us.

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Expert networks are a fairly new thing.  It used to be that research was conducted by analysts who were more akin to investigative journalists than anything else.  They poked around, talked to people, and tried to piece together useful information about a company’s value or where an industry was headed.  The goal was to gain an insight that had value — something that wasn’t obvious to everyone else analyzing the public information.  Then along came Regulation FD, and all that changed.

Reg FD came about in 2000 as an attempt to (more…)