NACDL - August 2013

Affiliate News

After seeking nominations from all affiliated organizations, NACDL held the 2013 Affiliate election at the Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Paula Henderson of Knoxville, Tenn., and CeCelia Valentine of Phoenix, Ariz., will fill the vacancies on the Council of Affiliates. NACDL would particularly like to thank all the Affiliate Executive Directors and representatives who participated in this year’s election.

Gerald Lippert

Book Review: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America

In Lake County, Fla., in 1949 a white woman of dubious moral character accuses four young black men of rape. It’s a tragic cliché: The KKK and corrupt government officials. A media circus. A trial. Conviction. Sentence of death.

Maureen L. Rowland

Book Review: Excellence in Cross-Examination

As a young criminal defense attorney in the early 1970s, I cross-examined police officers and identification witnesses on behalf of defendants who entrusted their liberty to a lawyer who was hardworking but inexperienced. I tried to compensate by finding (and sometimes by purchasing) transcripts of the cross-examinations conducted by the great trial lawyers of the time. From the transcripts of masterful cross-examinations by enormously skilled examiners like F. Lee Bailey, Edward Bennett Williams, and my partner at the time, Joseph Oteri, I began to fill the void left by a law school education that in no way trained its graduates for the challenges of the courtroom. It was one thing to know the rules of evidence from the perspective of reading appeals, and quite another to develop the instincts to object to hearsay or lay opinions or just improperly worded questions before and not after the damage was done. Likewise, learning the language of confrontation was a light year away from reading the classic Sixth Amendment decisions by the Supreme Court that legitimized the wide-ranging but not limitless examinations that are the DNA of effective cross-examination.

Martin G. Weinberg

Book Review: Grave Injustice: Unearthing Wrongful Executions

Richard A. Stack’s Grave Injustice is a significant contribution to the academic and popular discourse surrounding the death penalty in the United States of America. Stack, a member of the faculty at the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., deftly exposes the crumbling moral, philosophical and legal foundations undergirding the death penalty system.

Mary Kelly Tate

Book Review: Handbook of Mitigation in Criminal and Immigration Forensics (3d ed.): Humanizing the C

There is no question that effective advocacy requires the ability to humanize the client before the decision-maker, whether one is representing the subject of a criminal or civil proceeding. Indeed, this is a large part of the work done by criminal defense and immigration attorneys. Mark Silver’s Handbook offers useful tools to help attorneys become better advocates in either arena. However, it also suffers from the author’s transparent attempts to promote the mitigation expert field.

Erik R. Guenther

Book Review: Life After Murder: Five Men in Search of Redemption

How would you react if you were told that your next-door neighbor had been sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder and was out on parole? Would you walk over with a housewarming gift? Would you lock your doors more often and install a home security system? Would you believe it if someone told you that “once a murderer” very rarely means “always a murderer?” Life After Murder reveals the compelling and trying stories of the lives of five convicted murderers in America and their search for forgiveness and a second chance at life.

Cynthia Rodriguez

Echoes of War

This article is the first of a two-part series. Part One addresses the history of combat trauma and its ties to criminal behavior. Part Two will focus on the nuts and bolts of effectively defending veterans in criminal court.

Brockton Hunter and Ryan Else

Encrypting Data May Give Rise to a Limited Constitutional Defense

The U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals broke new ground in 2012 when it held the Fifth Amendment barred the government from compelling decryption of digital media purportedly containing encrypted, self-incriminating data. While the decision could sweep aside some of the best evidence prosecutors are accustomed to obtaining, the ground that decision breaks may prove to be less fertile than it first appears, especially because the Supreme Court has limited the Fifth Amendment rights available to many in white collar cases.

Chet Kaufman

From the President: Rising to the Challenge to Protect Liberty

Criminal defense lawyers must rise to the challenge of protecting liberty. Major victories are within our grasp.

Jerry J. Cox

Getting Scholarship Into Court Project

The “Getting Scholarship Into Court Project” brings helpful law review articles and other writings to the attention of criminal defense attorneys.

Getting Scholarship Into Court Project

How the Medicate-to-Execute Scheme Undermines Individual Liberty, Offends Societal Norms, and Violat

As of January 2013, there are a total of 3,125 inmates on death row in the United States.²It is estimated that five to ten percent of all inmates on death row suffer from mental illness.³ In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Ford v. Wainwright, that it is unconstitutional to execute the insane.⁴ What about the severely mentally ill individual whose symptoms do not, at the moment of the competency determination, indicate that the individual is “floridly psychotic”?

Caitlin Steinke

Indigent Defense in America: A Time of Despair, but a Shining Ray of Hope (Inside NACDL)

Budget cuts have decimated the federal indigent defense system. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel should not be treated as just another line item in a budget. Access to effective assistance of counsel is a constitutionally ordained individual right that provides a vital check on the power of the government.

Norman L. Reimer

NACDL News: AG Holder States Vision for Criminal Justice Reform

NACDL News: AG Holder States Vision for Criminal Justice Reform Ivan J. Dominguez and Isaac Kramer August 2013 August 2013 13 On August 12, at the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder delivered an important policy speech articulating a w