a year ago, i wrote a blog about the time it would take for  the first homicide in the city to occur.  in 2007 the first one was in august of that year, in 2008 it happened a lot sooner on the 1st of january.  what would this year bring?  well obvoiusily the news cant be good because i am blogging about it.  the first homicide this year happened on the 4th of january.  there is something troubling about a city that is not what most would call a big city, having a new year start off with a homicide two years in a row.   it's hard to read about the city you live or work in such a bad light so early into the new year.  and of course because of the way my mind works, i got to thinking about this:
for those who may live outside the state line of massachusetts, let me explain a little something about new bedford.  do a google search on new bedford and you will find one word is synonymous with new bedford-whaling.  in years past new bedford was one of the wealtiest cities in america, on par with Newport Rhode Island and as financially as powerful as wall street is today ( well minus the stock crisis.)   as a history buff, it is incredible for me to think that the last of the wooden whaling vessels sailed out of the new bedford harbor in 1921.  but whaling declined and the city turned to textiles for its economic recovery.  that only lasted a few decades and new bedford became a economically challenged city. 

now i know there is no link to whaling and our homicide rate, but it is nice to know that even though this city does have occasional bed news it is still a great city to live and work in.  and for me it got me thinking, it does not really matter if the first homicide in on january 1st or december 31st, the city still had a homicide.  i am not foolish enough to believe that there will never be any more homicides in the city but it is a little harder to start the year on a positive note when it happens so early. 
and as for the other ramblings- our office just had a yankee swap for Christmas gift giving.  The gift i received was a great book on the history of WHALE, a preservation group in New Bedford and all they have done since their inception in the 60's.  if anyone really wants to learn about a great american little city that hit it peak in the 1800's, declined from the 1960's to the late 90's and is slowly rising again, check out this website from the National Park Service- http://www.nps.gov/nebe/

this is a copy of an article that was in the Standard Times Newspaper, the local paper in New Bedford Massachusetts, about the view the District Attorney has in regards to defense counsel.

Sutter offers praise for system, 

NEW BEDFORD — One might expect a district attorney to be a bit circumspect when asked about the importance of defense attorneys, especially members of the defense bar who are paid by taxpayers.

To Bristol County District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter, however, all those charged with a crime deserve effective and adequate representation, even if they are unable to pay for it.

"Every single person charged, no matter how grotesque, horrendous, unconscionable the crime may seem, the person deserves to have a voice," he said.

In an early stage of his career, Mr. Sutter himself took on court-appointed cases as a bar advocate in Barnstable and Wareham.

"That is a lot of what I did, and I felt the training that I received and the guidance that I received were excellent," he said. "I think that holds true today."

There are controls in place, such as the amount of trial experience a bar advocate must have, to ensure that bar advocates who take Superior Court cases have the background necessary to handle the increased complexity and difficulty of those cases, according to Mr. Sutter.

Mr. Sutter also knows almost all of the full-time public defenders in Bristol County, he said, and "they're all superb attorneys."

In addition to giving defendants a voice in the courtroom, there are two other compelling reasons why bar advocates and public defenders are a necessary and important component of the justice system, he said.

"Some people are innocent," Mr. Sutter said. "It's maybe a strange thing for a district attorney to say, and we certainly go forward only with cases we believe in."

But there are people who are charged with crimes — a few, he said — who are innocent, and those people deserve effective representation.

Also, he said, "The fact of the matter is, like anybody, the police make mistakes, and it's up to the defense attorneys to hold the police accountable for the mistakes they do make."

— Charis Anderson

I thought that was something that you dont hear everyday from a DA so I thought I would include that in the blog. 

I am also including a link to another acticle written in the same newspaper on the same day about being a Public Defender as well as some of the issues we all face, both in and cout of the courthouse.  For those of you who dont live in Massachusetts, it may be a good piece to compare how things are in your own state.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081214/NEWS/812140356

it is a longer article so i dod not want to paste in here.

 

Today i was reading the news on a story about Caylee Anthony, the florida girl who has been missing since june.  Police have found the remains of a small child and the rush is on to identify the remains.  this of course got me thinking about the trial that will be happening soon for the mother who is accused of killing her child, and there are a lot of questions.  I think obviously one of the biggest is can she get a fair trial.

Now lets fast forward ahead a little to after the trial for this thought. Casey Anthony may be found innocent of the charges and that could be because the D.A. was not able to prove their case successfully, or as many American's always complain about, there was some technicality which allows Casey Anthony "to get off."

I hear the complaint all the time about how criminals get of out going to jail for a crime they did because of a technicality.  it makes people very angry.  But there are some questions to ask about who is to blame for this.  do you blame the defense attorney who saw that something was amiss during the trial and brought it to light, causing their client to have their case won?  Do you blame the D.A. for maybe not being prepared or not doing the best job they can which caused the technicality?  do you blame the system itself for allowing things like this to happen?

now after you have answereed those questions, lets ask one more.  does you opinion about technicalities change depending on whether your loved one was a victim or the accused?  if your child dies at the hand of another, and that person "gets off" because of a technicality, i imagine you will be very upset and angry at anyone and everyone who may have let that happen.  now reverse the role and suppose that your child is accused of killing another and during that trial there is a technicality that caused your child to win their case.  are you angry at anyone and everyone then?  surely not.

the American justice system is not perfect by any means but it is inheriently a good one.  it allows people to be brought before their peers, to be judged solely on the evidence- yeah i know humans may always be influenced by some outside source - and there are a set of rules that both sides have to play by.  if one side does not follow the rules, the other side wins by default. 

as the saying goes, "don't hate the player, hate the game."  if you done like the rules then you have to do something about changing them.  and you cant be a fan of the rules only when they work in your favor. 

Recently  I had to visit a inmate at the house of corrections.  As you walk towards the main entrance, it says "house of corrections" right there on the building and everytime I see it i crack a smile because I always think to myself "what is it they are correcting and how are they correcting it?" 

One thing to remember is that prison and jail are not the same thing.  When someone is sentenced to the house of corrections, the maxium sentence is 2 1/2 years, while prison can be any amount of time.  i mentioned in a prevoius blog about having inmates earn a college degree or high school diploma while they are in prison, that would be one way to correct something.  Sure 2 1/2 years may not be enough time for someone to earn enough credits for a degree or diploma but what else could they do?  How about anger management groups, AA meetings, religious groups, and the like. 

One thing the inmates can do is go out into the community and do work for an orginazation.  Locally, the inmates recently painted the Council on Aging facility in town.  Not only did they do a great job, but the people who use the facility were so thankful for them doing it.  It is a win/win for everyone. Plus let me include this. one elderly person whose sight is very bad dropped $15 while the inmates were painting.  An inmate saw this and alerted the sheriff who got them then money back.  I know lot of people who have never been to jail before who would have kept that money in a heartbeat. 

And so I have to crack another smile because maybe there is some correcting going .. all.

Someone was attacking women in Fairfax County and Alexandria, grabbing them from behind and sometimes punching and molesting them before running away. After logging 11 cases in six months, police finally identified a suspect.

David Lee Foltz Jr., who had served 17 years in prison for rape, lived near the crime scenes. To figure out if Foltz was the assailant, police pulled out their secret weapon: They put a Global Positioning System device on Foltz's van, which allowed them to track his movements.

Police said they soon caught Foltz dragging a woman into a wooded area in Falls Church. After his arrest on Feb. 6, the string of assaults suddenly stopped. The break in the case relied largely on a crime-fighting tool they would rather not discuss.

"We don't really want to give any info on how we use it as an investigative tool to help the bad guys," said Officer Shelley Broderick, a Fairfax police spokeswoman. "It is an investigative tool for us, and it is a very new investigative tool."

Across the country, police are using GPS devices to snare thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators and killers, often without a warrant or court order. Privacy advocates said tracking suspects electronically constitutes illegal search and seizure, violating Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is another step toward George Orwell's Big Brother society. Law enforcement officials, when they discuss the issue at all, said GPS is essentially the same as having an officer trail someone, just cheaper and more accurate. Most of the time, as was done in the Foltz case, judges have sided with police.

With the courts' blessing, and the ever-declining cost of the technology, many analysts believe that police will increasingly rely on GPS as an effective tool in investigations and that the public will hear little about it. Last year, FBI agents used a GPS device while investigating an embezzlement scheme to steal from District taxpayers, attaching one to a suspect's Jaguar.

"I've seen them in cases from New York City to small towns -- whoever can afford to get the equipment and plant it on a car," said John Wesley Hall, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "And of course, it's easy to do. You can sneak up on a car and plant it at any time."

Most police departments in the Washington region resist disclosing whether they use GPS to track suspects. D.C. police spokeswoman Traci Hughes said D.C. police do not use the technique. Police departments in Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery counties and Alexandria declined to discuss the issue.

Cpl. Clinton Copeland, a Prince George's County police spokesman, said his department does use the technique. "But I don't think that's something [detectives] would be too happy to put out there like that," Copeland said. "They do have different techniques they like to use on suspects, but they don't really want people to know."

Details on how police use GPS usually become public when the use of the device is challenged in court. Such cases have revealed how police in Washington state arrested a man for killing his 9-year-old daughter: the GPS device attached to his truck led them to where he had buried her.

Cases have shown how detectives in New York caught a drug-runner after monitoring his car as he bought and sold methamphetamine. In Wisconsin, police tracked two suspected burglars by attaching a GPS device to their car and apprehending them after burglarizing a house.

The Foltz case offers a rare glimpse into how a Washington area police department uses GPS. Foltz's attorney, Chris Leibig, challenged police in court last week and tried to have the GPS evidence thrown out. He argued at a hearing at Arlington County General District Court that police needed a warrant since the device tracked Foltz's vehicle on private and public land. The judge disagreed, and the evidence will be used at Foltz's trial, which will begin Oct. 6. Foltz was charged in the Feb. 6 attack, but not in the others.

Without obtaining a warrant, Jack Kirk, a detective from the Fairfax police department's electronic-surveillance section, placed a GPS device on Foltz's van while it was parked in front of his house, Kirk testified. He said it took three seconds. Another vehicle was not targeted because it was on private property, he said.

Detectives began actively monitoring the van four days later, when it appeared to be moving slowly through neighborhoods, Kirk said. Foltz was caught the next day.

In preparing to defend Foltz, Leibig filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every police department in Virginia, asking about their use of unwarranted GPS tracking. Most departments said they had never used the device. About two dozen refused to respond, including Loudoun and Prince William counties, Alexandria and the Virginia State Police.

Arlington police said they have used GPS devices 70 times in the last three years, mostly to catch car thieves, but also in homicide, robbery and narcotics investigations.

Fairfax police used the technology as early as 2003 and have used it many times since, according to year-end reports Leibig received. Police used GPS devices 61 times in 2005, 52 times in 2006 and 46 times in 2007.

Five other Virginia departments reported using GPS once for specific investigations.

GPS advocates said police do not need a warrant to track suspects electronically on public streets because the device provides the same information as physical tracking.

"A police officer could do the same thing with his or her own eyes," said Arlington Commonwealth's Attorney Richard E. Trodden. "It helps to cut down on the number of police officers who would have to be out tracking particular cars."

Leibig said GPS should be held to a different standard because it provides greater detail. "While it may be true that police can conduct surveillance of people on a public street without violating their rights, tracking a person everywhere they go and keeping a computer record of it for days and days without that person knowing is a completely different type of intrusion," he said.

GPS devices receive signals from a network of satellites, then use the information to calculate their precise location. By taking readings at different times, they can also calculate speed and direction.

The Defense Department operates the system, which was made available for civilian use in 1996. The technology's price has dropped since then, with new dashboard models available for less than $200. Some cellphone models are equipped with GPS, and many companies and local governments rely on GPS to track vehicle fleets.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program, considers GPS monitoring, along with license plate readers, toll transponders and video cameras with face-recognition technology, part of the same trend toward "an always-on, surveillance society."

"Things that would have seemed fantastic 15 years ago are now routine," he said. "We have to rethink what is a reasonable expectation of privacy."

So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has not weighed in on unwarranted GPS tracking, but supporters point to a 1983 case that said police do not need a warrant to track a car on a public street with a beeper, which relays the car's location to police.

Lower courts that have addressed the issue have not all agreed. The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that police must obtain a warrant to use the device in that manner, but courts in New York, Wisconsin and Maryland, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago, have held that a warrant is not necessary.

Craig Fraser, director of management services for the Police Executive Research Forum, said tracking technology's new capabilities might eventually require legal adjustments.

"The issue is whether the more sophisticated tools are doing the same things we used to do or are creating a different set of legal circumstances," he said.

Paul Marcus, a law professor at Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, said the debate will only grow stronger as more departments substitute old-fashioned manpower for better and cheaper electronics.

"It is going to happen more and more," he said. "No question about it."

 

Do you take your job personally or not?

let me actually add some smaller questions to that to make it easier, as well as tell you what got me on this in the first place. 

My friends on this Myspace page have a variety of backgrounds.  some of them are defense attorneys, some are process servers, some are district attorneys, some are in civil law.  

Let's say you are the district attorney and you loose your case, do you go home and say "that criminal should be in jail!" or do you think " I did the best i could but the jury got it all wrong."  Or could you go the other way and say "the juducial system works and this is the result that should have happened."  I once heard a DA say to a defense attorney something along these lines: "sure your clent won today but he'll just get arrested for something else soon enough."

 Are you a defense attorney that, after having your client found guilty, thinks the Judge was wrong in their decision, or do you think the DA presented their case in a way that was well thought out and argued with conviction?  There are plenty of defense attorney's that know their client is guilty and work as hard as they can on a defense because that is what they swore to do, but  do they lay the blame somewhere when thy lose or do thay also say " I think this is the way the judicial system should have worked."

i think it is easy for someone to lean one way or the other and staying neutral can be very difficult sometimes but I would bet that most fall right in the middle on the majority of issues.  What made me think of this was the issue of manatory sentencing; i know it seems a little off topic but here's why I brought it up.  Two layman are having a conversation about someone who goes to jail for possession of narcotics, not a large amount, just enough to still be considered personal use.  hypothetically, lets say the manatory sentence is 2 1/2 years for that crime.  Person A argues that is too long of a sentence for that crime and the laws are too harsh, they think judges should have more say on how long a sentence it for a crime.  Person B says drugs are drugs no matter how much or little and there should be rules to follow no matter the amount.  Guilty is guilty, and a judge should no flexibility in sentencing.    if it is your client that wins or looses, or if as the DA, your case is won or lost, who do you blame/congratulate at the end of the day?

 

On a personal note, let me give you my own answer.  regardless of whether i think a person is guilty or innocent, i do my job to the best of my ability each time.  I am not an attorney, so technically none of the people I work with are "my client"  but they are the attorney's client.  i always looked at it as the attorney is my client and i have to do everything i can to make sure I provide fair and accurate services to my clients.  I think anyone would agree that you have to leave your personal feelings about a case out out of it.  But when i interview a witness and their story contradicts every other witness i have talked to and i think i am being lied to do i take it personally?  When i serve someone a summons and they slam the door in my face, do i take it personally.  The honest answer is I used to.  I always asked myself "what did i do to them to deserve that?"  I have learned since not to take anything in this job personal.  It is just the way life is somtimes  and you can not let it get to you. 

 I know there are lots of jobs that peole work in that they feel the same way.  The police officer that gets yelled at at a traffic stop who is told to go arrest real criminlas, the person behind the counter at the automotive repair store who is told they really messed up when it was the technician who actually did the work, the kid working at McDonalds who is asked by a customer "do you have rocks in your head?" when the cook forgets to put no mustard on the customers burger.  should any of these peole take it personally?   no, but i bet some do.

 

when i first started the myspace page, one of the things i wanted to do was to be able to network myself with other people in the field of law.  This could be lawyers, police, corrections officers, process servers, investigators, or even people that just had an opinion on the state of the U.S. criminal justice system.  the idea came to me after seeing another blog that someone does by the name of Sancho Villa.  I first read the blog about a year and a half ago and one of the things the blog did was get blog of the year for 2006, well in the Public Defender catergory anyway's.  it's hard to not wim when you are the only one doing it.  so i figured i would give it a shot as well.  (I don't know if Sancho is male or female but i guess it woud be a guy, though i could be way off because anyone can be whatever they want to online)

About two weeks ago i saw a bullitin asking if anyone in Massachusetts could help out a investigator in California and it just happened to be Sancho.  Soemone else had already answered to call for help but i did get a little thank you e-mail anyway which is always nice.  i thought it was kind of ironic that out of the 103 million plus people on MYspace, the one person whose blog i always read was not looking for help out here 3000 miles away.  that is the beauty of the internet, it puts everyone in touch, if you just know where to look.

 

 

Since a previous posting I did about what exactly my job is, I find there are plenty of people who still dont know what I do, why I do it, the difference between the Public defender and the District Attorney, Why I love my job, and the big one - Why would I want to help that guy? 

I get a lot of people who know that I work somehow in the law field and if they have not seen me in a while will always be kind enough to ask how things are going at the DA's office?  I have explain that I work for the Public Defender's office, the side representing the Defendant; hence the term Defender's office.  On the other side, I have one guy that always ask's "How are things in the zoo this week?"  Sure I have told him that our office is always busy and that we handle a lot of crazy cases but I would not compare it to a zoo. 

In my job I have to speak to a lot of people, some who witnessed a crime, some who are the alleged victim of that crime, and some who allegedly committed the crime.  I always make sure they understand my position before I ask them questions to avoid any confusion.  One person I wanted to speak with, who happened to be the complaining witness,  said to me " you want me to help get the person off.  People think I get a bonus or a gold star if i get a client out of trouble.  It does not work that way at all.  The lawyer works with their client, and even though their client becomes my client, the way I see it is the attorney is really my client.  It is my job to make sure they know as much as possible about their client, the witnesses, the facts of the case, all of that and more before a trial happens.  But i am not trying to trick anyone into saying something that is not the truth.  As our office head reminds me often, : I want to know the good, the bad, and the indifferent."  That is the best I can do, even if what I find out is all negative.  If a person is found guilty, do I think I represented them the best I could?   Of course I do.  there are plenty of people that we represent that committed some very serious crimes, but they are still entitled to a defense and a good one at that.  One woman told me she would never hire a Public Defender becaue all they do is collect a paycheck while some other "real, hard working attorney's" would do a better job for her.  I have come across a lot of lawyers in my job and the measure of a great attorney is not in their wallet but in their heart. 

I dont take it personal when someone does not want to speak with me, that is part of the job as well.  All I know is I try to do the best job I can. Oh and for those that once again ask how I can represent those people?  let me say this.  Someday you or someone you know could be on the receiving end of a crime, let me paint you this picture.  you are driving to work and you are 15 minutes late for a meeting with your boss that you have.  As you drive down the road, you reach over to grab a file you have on the passanger seat for just a second when BLAM!!!, you ran over a person crossing in the crosswalk, and they die.  Were you a evil criminal serial killer mastermind?  no.  Did you say to your self that morning I will go out and kill today?  No.  It was an accident but you still did commit a crime.  Now lets say you walk into a bank with a gun and tell the bank teller you want all her money in the cash drawer.  Once she is done, you take off and use the money to buy crack cocaine. 

Now the questions are: who deserves a better attorney?, I hope you answered neither one deserves a better one, they should ge tthe same representation.

I know a few out there said the bank robber is a scumbag and doesnt deserve anything, they should just get locked up.  Well that bank robber is still a person and wasn't born a bank robber, but maybe something tragic happened in their lives to make them that desperate.  If they are found guilty should they serve jail time?  of course.  But in either case, either one could be well served by a Public Defender.

 

This is from this weeks' issue of Time Magazine.  I thought it was appropriate because one of the first questions briefly mentions the plight of the Public Defender.  Take  a peek.

This former lawyer—and lawmaker—found his greatest success writing legal thrillers like The Client and A Time to Kill. His latest book, The Appeal, is out Jan. 29. John Grisham will now take your questions

Is the criminal-justice system broken? —Leslie Moyer, Wichita, Kans.
It is a mess. More than 100 people have been sent to death row who were later exonerated because they weren't guilty or fairly tried. Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong.

You recently wrote your first nonfiction book, The Innocent Man. Will you write more like it? —Anne Sherwood Kansas City, Mo.
No. Nonfiction is too much work. I'm too lazy to do all the research. I actually never thought about [writing nonfiction], but when I saw the story, I knew I had to write it.

You always root for the underdog. What drives that? —Tom Roberts, Yangzhou, China
I was a lawyer for 10 years—a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him—it's the American way. That is, until the little guy gets to the top, and then we can't wait to see him fail. [Laughs.]

Your stories typically feature at least one slimy attorney. Are most lawyers like that? —Grace Hall, Rosedale, N.Y.
Not a lot. But there are enough of the slimy ones to juice up the profession and create a lot of good stories. Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers—the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

Has the legal world ever reacted negatively to your work? —Diana Parrish, Boston
There have been tons of negative reactions. I have been routinely trounced by lawyers and legal critics, but I couldn't care less. A huge part of my readership is made up of lawyers, and every book was inspired, in some part, by something that really happened.

You churn out a book almost every year. Does that impact the quality? —Cynthia Moyer, Salt Lake City
I don't think so, because if I had more time, I wouldn't use it. I'd wait until the last three months and write the book. I learned how to procrastinate in law school, I perfected it as I practiced law, and now I am an expert. I've written stuff when I had plenty of time, and it wasn't very good.

Do you try to put Christian sentiments into your books? —Steve Bohannon, Philadelphia
I'm a Christian, and those beliefs occasionally come out in the books. One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.

If you had to be one of your protagonists, who would it be? —Luis Garcia, Celaya, Mexico
I keep going back to Rudy Baylor from The Rainmaker. He got out of the legal profession, found a girl, packed up his car and said, "I am out of here." That is what I always wanted to do when I was a lawyer. I never wanted to go back to the office.

You are a big baseball fan. What was your reaction to the Mitchell Report on steroids? —Ava Reed, Los Angeles
It was probably the darkest day in modern baseball history. For the rest of our lives we will look at the inflated statistics and some of the so-called stars who put up those numbers and doubt the authenticity. Hopefully, it is behind us, but I am not sure it is.

You used to serve in the Mississippi House of Representatives. If your friend Senator Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election, will you join her Cabinet? —Joseph Saucedo, Seattle
I would not re-enter politics under any circumstances. I asked Hillary at a fund raiser in front of a thousand people if I could be appointed as the U.S. ambassador to France, so I could live in Paris. She said no. That is the only job I want, so I am out of luck.

Here is a story that was in today's AP, read it and then see what you think-

 HAGERSTOWN, Md. - A county judge was reprimanded for calling three black female lawyers "the Supremes" in court and advising the defendant to get "an experienced male attorney."Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias. In his written response to a complaint,

Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.The Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities concluded the comments Boone made during a court hearing last April were "undignified and disparaging." The notice of reprimand was published Jan. 18 in the Maryland Register.A stipulation by Boone and the Commission said that in June the judge offered to recuse himself from other cases the three attorneys handled.

Offering to recuse himself was the right thing to do, said Maryland Public Defender Nancy Forster, who filed the complaint in her official capacity.Boone told the Herald-Mail of Hagerstown that he apologized to the three attorneys, and that even though he offered to recuse himself, each has appeared in his court since the April case."I appreciate their acceptance of my apology," he told the newspaper Tuesday. He also said he had never before had a sanctionable complaint filed against him.

The defendant in the case pleaded guilty in June to assault and cocaine possession and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

So in the year 2008, we still have a person, a judge no less, making sexual and racist comments on the bench.   I am not one to believe the world is a perfect place and people do or say things that should not be an issue in today's society.  I do give the three women credit for accepting his apology and being able to move forward, and I do reconize that that judge did seem genuine in his apology.  Even so, it should not have been said in the first place. 

What got me thinking was when the judge said he had never had a complant filed against him before.  Maybe before Public Defender Forster filed the complaint, no one ever had done so.  I could be wrong, there may have never been a need to file, but I was just thinking.