Month: May 2018

I have long been a pupil of the greatest historian of civilization, Will Durant.  When I find myself disagreeing with him, I’m always wrong.  He’s one of my personal heroes, as well as my teacher.

Durant ranks Confucius at the very top of the roster of human genius.

In the sixth century B. C., Confucius undertook to restore order and health to China.  How could this be done?

Confucius says,  “The illustrious ancients, when they wished to make clear and to propagate the highest virtues in the world, put their states in proper order.  Before putting their states in proper order, they regulated their families.  Before regulating their families, they cultivated their own selves.”   And so on.

I am in the process of attempting to regulate my family, and cultivating myself.  If I can succeed, I can move on to trying to put my state in proper order.  Only then will I be ready to campaign to fix Article V.

If and when that moment does arrive, I will ask for help.

I pray to God it happens soon.

In June of 1973 Babbie and I flew to Ketchikan, Alaska, where I would be a legal intern to City Attorney Ed Stahla.  Part of my duties was to be the Prosecuting attorney for enforcement of the City of Ketchikans’ criminal laws, including its prohibition of driving while under the influence.  So when the City cops arrested someone for drunk driving, I was in charge of the case.  Stahla left it all up to me.

There are only about 25 miles of road in Ketchikan, which is located on island.  And it was a hard drinking town.  So standard practice was to reduce the DUI charge to reckless driving as part of a plea agreement.  There had been no trials of DUI cases in Ketchikan for as far back as anyone could remember.

This didn’t make much sense to me, and when a DUI occurred, I refused to plea bargain and we took the case to trial.

The defendant was the president of the Moose Club, and a popular man.  His attorney was State Senator Bob Ziegler, the dean of the Ketchikan bar.  Bob made no objections to my introduction of the breathalyzer results, and we argued the case to the jury of six.

I made the best argument I could, and Ziegler was very low key in his final argument.   They came back with a verdict of not guilty after deliberating for twenty minutes.  When the court adjourned one of the women on the panel came up to the defendant, gave him a hug, and said how glad she was that he was acquitted.

There were only about twenty lawyers In Ketchikan, and most of them would get together for coffee every day before going to their offices.  Stahla and I went every day.  These were the first actual lawyers I’d ever known, and it was clear to me that this was something I could do to support myself.  And I liked these guys, and they liked me.

I became a lawyer to make a good living and to lay the groundwork for a political career.   It looked promising.  After two more quarters at UCLA I flew up to Anchorage to stay with my Uncle Fritz and study for the bar exam.  Before the results came back the Executive Director of the Bar Association called me down to her office to ask about some trouble I’d gotten into after graduating from Cal.  Some members of the Board of Governors of the Bar Association wanted to prevent my admission because of it, which would mean my law degree would be worthless.

I don’t know for certain, but I think Bob Ziegler told them this was all bullshit.  He was an influential man, and I did get admitted.

Nine years later, when I was a freshman State Senator, Bob Ziegler asked for my vote for his Resolution calling for a balanced budget amendment.  It passed 11-9, and Alaska was the 32^nd state to pass this Article V Resolution.

And so began my 35 years, off and on, of promoting Article V.  The BBA Task Force currently has 28 states, but will be hard pressed to get any more.  The BBA has become a partisan issue, and there just aren’t enough Republicans.

So, after over 40 years of trying, the drive for a Balanced Budget Amendment Convention has come up short.  It’s been 229 years now, and the states have never been able to reach the 2/3 supermajority needed to call an amendment convention.

This is not what the Framers had in mind when they adopted Article V.  The state legislators can unilaterally (with voter approval) reduce the 2/3 requirement using Article V, but it will take 34 states to agree to do this.  Democrats have to be on board with this in order for it to work.

Do Democratic state legislators want to empower themselves, putting them on an equal footing with Congress?  Or are they so in awe of Washington D. C., and afraid of what their Republican colleagues in state legislatures might do, that they’ll prevent Article V from being fixed?

I’m betting on the former, and we’ll all find out soon enough.  I served with patriotic Democrats like Bob Ziegler.  If there are enough like that still around, we can do this.

If we could make the public aware of all this, I think it would happen quickly.  Some how, some way, will be found to get the message out.  And then we can save our country.

 

I’ll never know why I was picked to represent Leroy Hunicutt on a charge of First Degree Murder.  The Public Defender couldn’t represent him, since the principle witness against him was already a client of theirs.  I had no experience in major felony trials, much less a murder case.

I took the case without a second thought.  I’d make $35 an hour, and with some aggressive time keeping (which I knew no one would object to) this would be the largest fee I earned in any criminal case by far.

Leroy was charged with gunning down Alfonzo Green on Anchorage’s notorious Fourth Avenue.  This was where all the hookers, pimps and drug pushers worked.   An eyewitness would testify he saw the shot fired.  Leroy had powder burns on his hands, and had made three confessions.

The victim had been released by the Army at Fort Richardson and gone home to Alabama.  He returned a month later and began working the streets, selling crushed aspirin as cocaine, running crooked crap games, and trying to steal hookers from their pimps.  He was shot on Fourth Avenue at 3:00 in the morning a couple weeks after returning to Alaska.

When I interviewed Leroy in jail he said he didn’t shoot Alfonzo, and he didn’t know who did.  He said he confessed because he was confused.  He said he wanted to go to trial, so it was game on.

None of the felony DA’s wanted this case.  It was, in their terms, a “piece of shit.”  Leroy was a petty street criminal, but wasn’t one of the real hard cases.  And his mother was a good, strong Christian woman.  And nobody gave a shit about Alfonzo Green.

A misdemeanor DA asked if he could try it, and the District Attorney reluctantly agreed.  This guy wasn’t much of a lawyer, and he thought getting a first degree murder conviction might win him some respect.

I got the confessions suppressed and we went to trial.  I was waiting for the elevator to go up to court with Leroy’s mother when she spotted legendary criminal defense attorney Wendell Kay.  Wendell was far and away the best criminal defense lawyer in Alaska, and this woman ran up to him and said she was worried about her son.  Wendell told her she had nothing to worry about, that Leroy would be well represented.  That was the highest praise I ever got practicing law.

After the prosecution rested its case I asked the Judge, Seaborn Buckalew, to dismiss the case for lack of evidence, and he immediately agreed, and dismissed the charges against Leroy.   The DA was furious.  It was clear that there were people on the jury who were ready to vote for a conviction, but Judge Buckalew never let them get to the case.

So as far as murder trials go, my record is 1-0.  I never lost one.

When he got out of jail Leroy went to a lawyer to see if he could sue me for not getting him out on bail before the trial.  He’d spent six months in custody, and somehow blamed me.  Nothing came of it, of course, but I thought I deserved better than that.  I never heard of Leroy again.

A few months later I was representing this kid on a reckless driving charge, and on the way to court I decided to try one of Wendell Kay’s old tricks.  The defendant, Jimmy Fejes, was a short, stocky redhead.  His passenger, and defense witness, was tall and pale, with black hair.

I told Jimmy to sit in the audience, and his friend to sit next to me at the defense table.  The DA called the investigating officer to the stand, and asked him if he could identify the defendant.  The officer pointed to Jimmy’s friend at counsel’s table, and positively identified him as the driver, Jim Fejes.

When the prosecution rested I called Jimmy from the audience to take the stand and be sworn in to testify.  He identified himself as Jim Fejes, and began telling his side of the story.  After a minute or two the judge interrupted him, and asked him who he was.  He said he was the defendant, Jim Fejes.  Then he started testifying again, and after a few seconds the judge interrupted again, and, pointing to Jim’s friend at defense counsel’s table, and asked “Who’s he?”

I told him he was a passenger in Jim’s car, and then the judge, a real twerpy little nerd of a guy, bangs his gavel and said the court was in recess, and runs out of court back to his chambers.

A mistrial was declared and I had to retry the case a few weeks later.  I think Jim only gave me about $175 for this case, so I didn’t make any money on the deal.  But I did get to say that I pulled off one of the great Wendell Kay’s greatest hits.

Criminal lawyers defend those charged with crimes, while lawyer criminals are people with law degrees who commit crimes.  People often confuse the two, understandably so.   After all, what kind of a man would use all his skills defending people who are guilty of the most disgusting, repulsive crimes imaginable?  I’ve never understood that myself.

Starting my law practice, I not only was a public defender in the federal court in Alaska, a little later I was also appointed to represent defendants in state court as well.  This was when the state Public Defender’s Office had a conflict of interest, and I made $35 an hour doing state work.  That was close to a fair rate of $50 an hour, and when I kept track of the time I spent on a case I was reasonably generous to myself.  As long as I wasn’t a pig about it no one really cared, so I liked getting these appointments.   Even a lawyer has to make a living to support his family, for Pete’s sake.

Some of these defendants were truly despicable, but I never had to take any of those cases to trial.  The evidence was so overwhelming that I always convinced them to plead guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.

That meant I had to argue for leniency in the sentence, and even that was sometimes difficult to do.  One miserable little bastard was guilty of first degree arson, and, try as I might, I couldn’t think of one reason why the judge shouldn’t throw the book at him.  The judge asked me if there was any reason whatsoever for a reduced sentence, and all I could say was , “Well, your honor, he is young.”

The most appalling criminal I was appointed to defend was a young Alaska Native from Valdez charged with kidnapping.  The young gal who worked alone at night at the Valdez Police station, dispatching officers in the field, was forced at knife point by this kid into his car.  He drove off with her, and, fearing for her life, she jumped out of the speeding vehicle, tearing off both of her knee caps.

The first time I appeared in court to represent this kid the family of the victim was there, and to this day I can remember the look of contempt in their eyes as they looked at me.  I didn’t blame them one bit.

I’d read somewhere that if a criminal defendant wrote out their life story, there might be something in there which could be used at sentencing.

So this kid went to work, and wrote out an account of his life.  I could barely read it, it was so disgusting.  This kid had the most evil, twisted mind I’d ever seen.

The judge gave him 30 years, a very heavy sentence.  As his lawyer, I could have appealed this as excessive, and I may have had a legal duty to do so.

But I couldn’t do it.  The way that girl’s family looked at me made me too ashamed.