” Almighty God, the giver of wisdom, without whose help resolutions are vain, without whose blessing study is ineffectual; enable me, if it be thy will, to attain such knowledge as may qualify me to direct the doubtful, and instruct the ignorant; to prevent wrongs and terminate contentions; and grant that I may use that knowledge which I shall attain to thy glory and my own salvation, for Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.” – Samuel Johnson.
(BY KEN WHITE, JULY 18, 2016 )
Let me tell you a story about taking clients seriously.
Years ago I had a young client who got into a summer program at Big Prestigious University, or BPU. The Client didn’t go to BPU — he went to a community college, but was accepted by an on-campus summer program at BPU.
Client got arrested for having a gun and a bag of serious drugs in his dorm room at BPU. He was turned in by his roommate, a full-time BPU student, who found the gun and the drugs. Having a gun on any sort of campus is a very serious crime in California, and the DA was in the middle of a safe-schools kick, and Client was looking at hard time and a bad record.
Client swore to me the gun and drugs found in his dorm-room dresser weren’t his. He said that someone — perhaps his roommate? — must have planted them. Sure, I thought. A BPU student acquired a gun and hard drugs and decided to use them to frame some rando — a rando who was, perhaps, not completely unfamiliar with drug culture. That makes perfect sense. Nothing in the evidence the DA turned over suggested any motive for the roommate to do any such thing. I was deeply skeptical, and planning for a very grim set of choices. (more…)