Ohhh Boy.

Another regurgitated headline of an employee from a Public Defender's Office in New Orleans being accused of providing a cellular telephone to a client awaiting trial for murder.

A former employee with the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Defender’s Office was arrested Friday for allegedly providing a cell phone to a first-degree murder suspect awaiting trial in Parish Prison.

Samantha M. Moore, 40, 622 S. 14th St., Port Allen, gave Derrick Williams a cell phone during one of eight visits with him at the jail between Aug. 4 and Aug. 22, an arrest warrant says.

East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies working at the prison found the phone Aug. 24 in a cell, the warrant says. During the deputies’ investigation, the phone was tied to both Moore and Williams.

After reading the story, I'm still not clear on whether she was actually an investigator or some sort of interviewer since there seem to be conflicting opinions from law enforcement and the Public Defender's office.

I'll try and follow-up with the story to see what happens.

Yikes!

Yikes!

I don't know if my paranoia comes from a very good place, but I just want to say that having 20+ hits a day from multiple United States Department Of Justice IP's makes me just a wee bit nervous.

Sure, these readers seem to be sticking mostly to my Myspace/Social Networking Investigations related posts but still...its The Man! If you DOJ people are still reading this and are interested in some classroom and lab time to learn the latest in Social Networking Investigations, I'm thinking about starting to charge for this shit....so um...feel free to email me.

Those Devilish Hispanics

A very good friend of mine emailed me a link to a letter to the editor that was recently sent to a local newspaper.

I should explain that my friend is an attorney at a Public Defender's Office, also located in California. Originally she sent me this letter because she was curious to know how I felt about it.

I won't post a direct link to the letter, but I am posting it below (with just a few changes to hide the identity of people named in the story) so you can read it for yourself. Of course anyone with a little net savvy will be able to pull up the newspaper it came from but I'm not too concerned with hiding that (or I wouldn't be posting this at all)..just read the letter first:

Kudos to Mary Carey for her letter regarding enforcing our immigration laws . I was happy to see that others were just as outraged about the horrible accident that injured Mrs. Carey. Incidents like this should make us all open our eyes and start talking about these touchy issues. Every night I read the police and fire section of the paper and always there are Hispanic names, and I have to wonder: Are all these offending parties here legally?

Why are we doing so little to enforce immigration laws, or are they not tough enough to make an impact? After Mr. Lopez serves his sentence for the hit and run and is deported, there is little to stop him from returning here. So while he’ll get a slap on the wrist, Mrs. Carey faces a lifetime of dealing with the aftermath of losing both her legs. I don’t know what to suggest to solve this problem, but we have a serious problem with crime committed by illegal immigrants, and we can’t wait for changes to be made, we need to make them now!

My friend just wanted to know how I felt about the letter, so I told her, Well, the whole Hispanic names part of the letter bothered me but I couldn't hold it against the letter writer. Its just a letter to the editor and obviously this person felt strongly enough about her feelings to express them to a major newspaper...its just how this person feels...I find the letter writer more than just a bit uninformed but there is nothing illegal about that.

My friend then told me that the person who wrote this letter, is a new Deputy Public Defender that was hired to work at her office.

Okay, now this bothers me.

I should probably add that her office is one that routinely represents undocumented immigrants on a regular basis. Will our new Public Defender be able to maintain a professional relationship with her clients and not throw them under the bus when push comes to shove?

My friend asked if it would be wise to anonymously mail a copy of the letter to the supervisors in her office in the hopes that they would have an idea that the fresh faced PD they just hired was also disgusted enough by undocumented immigrants in the United States to write a letter to a newspaper, sign his/her name to it, then decide to work in an office that represents those same people when they are fighting for their livelihood and sometimes even their lives.

I wish I had the balls to mail the letter for her but I don't think its really my place....and maybe I'm just overreacting. Am I?

Raising The Bar

I have been enjoying the first season of Raising The Bar so far, although for reasons I can’t really explain, I should say that I’ve already watched the first few episodes on DVD and this week will finally be a new episode for me.

There was a story on David Feige (Indefensible) in Bloomberg.Com today on Raising The Bar and Feige. Its an informative short read so click here to read it. I did find one part particularly interesting:

Television critics have been mixed about the series. After Episode 1, Feige received about half a dozen e-mails from current and former public defenders who were unhappy about an affair between Feige's doppelganger in the show, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar (``NYPD Blue''), and an assistant district attorney (Melissa Sagemiller)…

…He describes the affair as a necessary compromise in creating popular television and a useful plot twist.

How and why are we unhappy about the affair between these two? I don’t think you’ve been working in a PD office for very long if you haven’t seen some serious f*cking going on in the office and between the different species (Public Defenders and District Attorney’s). I’m not saying its right, I’m just saying that its realistic.

I do have two very minor complaints on what so far is an outstanding series. 1) The transitioning between scenes involves a weird blurring thing that for some reason really bugs me and 2), where the hell is the PD investigator!?!? Please don’t give us some cute young paralegal who is magically an amazing investigator. I want an ex-journalist or disgruntled ex-attorney who fell into investigations…something juicy, ya know? Maybe even someone with a wild past and his name starts with Sancho and ends with ***...I think you know where this is going.

Alright, nuff said. Watch the show!

"He could find any witness, anywhere..."

I hate to have my posts just regurgitate other peoples sad news stories but I'm gonna do it again .. we've lost another brother in our fight for justice.

Mr. John Hollis, The Chief Investigator of the Griffin Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s office (Georgia) passed away last Friday, apparently suffering from heart failure.

You can read the news story on his death by clicking here.

“John was a great person to work with,” said Randy Coggins, who worked with Hollis in the DA’s office in the past. “He could find any witness, anywhere. He will definitely be missed.”

Now, I don't know what people will say about me when I'm gone, but I certainly hope they are nice things. Knowing the life I've lead, I understand that it may not be a guaranteed thing but I hope if someone does says something nice, it sounds something like the above quote from the guy at the DA's office.

Ex-Riverside County PD Investigator Acquitted!

Due to my caseload, I had not been able to to follow the trial I blogged about earlier this week of the ex-Public Defender Investigator from Riverside County, but I woke up yesterday to find this email in my inbox:

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 7:32 PM, Rights Protector <***********@gmail.com> wrote:
Just to let you know. Mr. Navarro was found Not Guilty on all counts. The jury even waited for him, outside the court room, to tell him they were sorry he had to go through that. I have never seen a jury do that in my life.

The Defender.

I did a quick check for news stories in Riverside to confirm the story and found the following:

By TAMMY J. McCOYThe Press-Enterprise
A jury acquitted a former investigator from the Riverside County public defender's office of rape in connection with a 2007 incident at his Temecula apartment.
Mario Navarro, 43, wept after jurors at the Southwest Justice Center found him not guilty of the sexual assault crimes, his attorney said Thursday.
"They did the right thing," defense attorney Andrew Linehan said. "Mario was very happy with the jury's verdict. I was just happy to see the process work."

Good luck Mr. Navarro, in whatever you do down the road.

Myspace Investigations: Examples Of Their Use In Court

There have been some great stories in the Santa Barbara Independant regarding Myspace pages, their possible uses in court, and the results of defendants using them like complete f*cking morons. These aren't new stories but I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of them.

In a murder trial:

...The second witness was Detective Brown, who took the stand primarily to answer questions about information collected from the MySpace pages of the defendant and others, as well as to testify about the so-called “Whisper Tape.” The defendant’s MySpace page, which was shown on a projector, was filled with pictures of Juarez and his friends making “ES” and “TRS” hand signs, wearing Eastside shirts and Texas Rangers hats (which have a large “T” on them that Brown claimed was worn as a sign of affiliation to the Eastside Traviesos)...

A compilation of different cases:

There have been three other prominent local cases—all involving young women in fatal drunk driving cases—where information on someone’s MySpace page has come back to haunt them...

Yup. There is a reason some of them are clients I suppose. Oh, and if like the prosecutor, my other named me Hilary...I would punch myself in the face every single day.

Defense Investigator Charged With Rape

In a sad story out of Riverside County in Southern California, an ex-Public Defender Investigator with the Riverside Public Defender's office is on trial...accused of rape.

10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, September 9, 2008
By TAMMY J. McCOY

The Press-Enterprise A former investigator for the Riverside County public defender's office is on trial, charged with raping a woman at his Temecula apartment in 2007.

"Not only is there physical violence -- sexual violence -- there is a violation of trust," prosecutor Jess Walsh told a jury. "He took her virginity."

Mario Navarro, 43, is on trial at the Southwest Justice Center in French Valley. Navarro worked as an investigator for the public defender's Murrieta-area office between 2006 and 2007, Assistant Public Defender Robert Willey said.

Of course I want justice served fairly in this case but I'm hoping that he is acquitted of the charges against him. If you're a friend or just someone who is curious about how the trial is going, you can review the Case Report Here and searching by case number: SWF023049 .

***NOTE: I started this post last week...I will follow-up with the outcome of the trial in another post.***