In Laconia, New Hampshire there is an interesting case that may give some of our clients pause before accepting a plea bargain. Jonathan E. Lord, 25, had accepted a plea bargain to spend one year in jail for trying to run over Police officer Michael Finogle. However, Judge James O’Neill III rejected the plea (because he felt the plea was too lenient) so the case went to trial . . . and Lord was acquitted of one felony charge of reckless conduct and two misdemeanor charges of disobeying an officer and reckless operation.
Finogle was on foot patrol in the parking lot when he said Lord drove a car “at a rate of speed and manner as to narrowly miss” him.
The jury appeared to accept the defense’s contention that Lord was not the man in the car. One juror is quoted as saying “the guy (Lord) took his shirt off and he had a million tattoos. There was no mention by the cops that he had all these tattoos, even though it was a well-lit area.”
While most judges go along with agreements between prosecutors and defense counsel, O’Neill has a record of rejecting plea agreements (here).
Source: Lacnida Daily Sun as found on Reddit.
@Frank: In this case, I think the judge pre-judged the defendant. I think he assumed the guy was guilty because he agreed to the plea, and being biased toward law enforcement instead of neutral, he wanted a tougher punishment.
I think the JURY followed the law: The officer apparently failed to describe the defendant accurately, and the defendant’s claim was that he wasn’t the driver, and the Jury had a reasonable doubt. To put somebody in prison for a year or more I would guess the standard had to be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” If they doubted the officer’s testimony, they did exactly what they should have done; i.e. they didn’t risk what would amount to, in current society, the destruction of an innocent life and probable creation of a career criminal. They presumed innocence until proven guilty, and the “proof” offered was not convincing.
@Tony – I’m sure judges see a lot of ugly. I know a few police officers and I know that dealing with crooks and schnooks messes their mind up so you have a good point. But I expect judges to be more analytical and more dispassionate about the law than a jury would be. In this case it looks like either the opposite happened, the jury got bamboozled or the judge just isn’t that clever.
@Blouise; Anon Nurse:
Blouise is right, I am not a lawyer. I am a currently a full-time research scientist at a university. Due to an unusual opportunity I “retired to academia” and basic research after about 25 years in business, where I alternated between working as an employee, working as contractor, and partnering with peers on our own businesses.
I’ve never been a lawyer. I have been to court on both business issues and personal issues, but as I said, not as a defendant. In general I like my lawyers; some have been downright heroic.
AY,
More useless info: the portion of Ohio known as the Western Reserve was also know as Little Connecticut … in fact, every five years or so, there is a group that starts pushing to secede The Western Reserve from Ohio and return to “our mother state, Connecticut.” They are really pushing it now due to the teabaggers and Kasich’s election as governor.
a.n.,
I don’t think Tony is a lawyer but he possesses a good legal mind.
It’s not about fairness either. It’s about substantial justice. What’s that? – just enough redress that the hue and cry remains a thing of the past.
And while litigants are in it to win, two realites must be respected: a bad settlement is often better than a good lawsuit, and a litigant is more apt to accept a loss if his lawyer foought like hell for him. Sometimes, however,those two realities get in the way of each other.
“In the times I have been to court (never as a defendant) my goal was always to redress a wrong and force a criminal to pay for his crimes; not as a matter of catharsis, but as a matter of civic duty.” -Tony C
“Sometimes even if the truth is muddy due to conflicting stories and a lack of evidence, a decent approximation of what is fair can still be achieved.” -Tony C.
Tony C.
You’re the kind of lawyer that all would like, but how many of you are there? Not enough, I fear.
All I really know about “the social body” at this point is that it’s AFU…
If I’m ever in trouble — the kind of trouble that requires an attorney — I hope that I’m able to retain one of the good guys…
Re: Bostwick: I’m convinced that its function is cathartic.
Ha! Not an attorney I would want representing me, that’s for sure. In the times I have been to court (never as a defendant) my goal was always to redress a wrong and force a criminal to pay for his crimes; not as a matter of catharsis, but as a matter of civic duty. Criminals must be punished, and the fact that I am about $50,000 in the red in getting them punished would not stop me from doubling the amount if I (or my family) were victimized again.
I have not paid attorneys and private investigators and experts so I can have some emotional release, I paid them to get criminals punished, jailed, and saddled with a criminal record so others would not be victimized like I was. The fact that I feel victorious when that succeeds is secondary, because I would feel even more anger should I fail. There is no lessening of tension in the social body if I get victimized twice, first by a criminal and then by the judiciary; there is an increase of tension.
The judicial process doesn’t have to seek truth, it has to seek fairness. Sometimes even if the truth is muddy due to conflicting stories and a lack of evidence, a decent approximation of what is fair can still be achieved.
Always learning from the legal minds that grace this space…
From a nurse’s perspective, an excerpt from an article in The Nation (06/2011), comes to mind:
The Trials of Janet Malcolm
by Miriam Markowitz
Attorney Gary Bostwick’s wife, “Janette, a Gestalt therapist says to Malcolm, “In my work, a patient will come in and say, ‘This is the truth about me.’ Then later in therapy, a significant and entirely opposite truth may emerge — but they’re both true.”
“It’s the same with the judicial process,” Bostwick said. “People feel that it’s a search for truth. But I don’t think that is its function in this society. I’m convinced that its function is cathartic. It’s a means for allowing people to air their differences, to let them feel as if they had a forum. You release tension in the social body in some way, whether or not you come to the truth.”
(“Gary Bostwick represented Jeffrey MacDonald in his suit against Joe McGinnis, and was later hired to defend Malcolm in her final legal battles…”)
Malcolm’s newest book is “Iphigenia in Forest Hills” — “Anatomy of a Murder Trial”…)
Sometimes the Judge like to play Prosecutor, Judge and Jury….
I wonder if a case can be made to recuse the Judge from future criminal cases….Or maybe the town folks got tired of him….as being the Hanging Judge…..
Good one for the defense….
@Frank: You can’t count on what a judge will decide, either, but IMO at least the jury isn’t being marinated in crime sixty hours a week, like a judge. I’ve been on a jury, I think the jury will think like normal people do and come to what they feel is a fair conclusion, I think judges have a job and live in an environment where they see so much more crime than the average person that this biases them. What seems like a grievous harm to me may seem like small potatoes to a judge, just because they see far worse harm literally every day. I think they can become dismissive, as if I am wasting their time over a few thousand in damages when they have million dollar embezzlements to prosecute.
I will always go with a jury, they aren’t jaded, the experience may well be unique in their lifetime, and I think they will take it seriously whether it is a small bore civil suit or a life hangs in the balance.
mespo…thanks for the bit of more useless trivia….like I need more…New Hampshire….the outer reaches of Virginia….But which came first….
rjs,
Excellent points
rjs – then he wouldn’t get to wear that slimming black dress at work every day or bang his little maple hammer to make people pay attention to him. No, that just won’t do.
The prosecutor and defense lawyer have the better idea of what the proofs may be at a trial. The judge stuck his nose into the prosecutor’s job…and this time got burned. If he wants to be a prosecutor and control the plea bargaining, he should resign from the bench and apply to the prosecutor for a job.
Years ago I had a civil case & my lawyer explained to me that the other side would not offer a deal until just before trial. He said you can never count on what a jury may decided so we should settle if the offer was close to reasonable. You might get more but you might get nothing because there is no guessing what a jury might think. We settled about 30 minutes before jury selection was set to begin. For just about what he said to expect.
The obvious questions:
1. Was the accused pleading to something he knew he had not done because of threats from the cops?
2. Did it occur to the (dimwitted) judge that the prosecutors might have a good sense of the strength of their case?
A quick check on Judge James O’Neill III suggests he has a habit of rejecting plea deals.
proof \ˈprüf\, n.,
1a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact b : the process or an instance of establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning
Careful what you ask for. You just might get it. Or not.
Good for Lord; this judge sounds like a prick. I think judges get captured by the same psychology as cops, they presume guilt without evidence, go with their gut, and in general don’t do their damn job.
It is entirely possible Lord pled out because the cops convinced him he’d be sent up for five or ten years if he didn’t.
Personally I dislike plea bargains, no matter how much they might save. I think they encourage the lower class innocent into false confessions, and plea bargains let the guilty get away with crimes without paying the price the law has set for such crimes. Not only that, but plea bargains let the judges and police and prosecutors discriminate and exercise their bigotry or prejudice. Did the judge deny Lord’s plea because of his tattoos? Do prosecutors offer more pleas or more lenient pleas to cops, or whites, or the wealthy than they do to blacks, or hispanics, or the poor?
I think all cases should go to trial, and if that load is too much for the courts to handle, then good: raise taxes to handle it, or reduce the number of laws.
Judges traditionally favor the police in these cases. O’Neill thought the jury would too. Our Granite State jurist just forgot the maxim: it’s not what actually happened; it’s what you can prove that happened that matters. The prosecutor understood that.
New Hampshire trivia: The land was originally named “North Virginia” by Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame.