We have recently discussed attacks on lawyers for simply doing their jobs in representing accused individuals. It is truly vile and McCarthyist trend that seeks to punish professional working within our criminal justice system. It is particularly offensive therefore when a large, presumably respectable organization unleashed such an attack. However, that is precisely what the Republican Governors Association has done in the attack ad below against State Senator Vincent Sheheen (left) who is being opposed because he represented people accused of crimes. To its credit, the South Carolina Bar Association has stepped forward to denounce the ad as containing “uncivil, misleading political rhetoric.” It is a shameful and shocking ad that attacks the very notion of due process guaranteed by our Constitution. The ad is designed to help Gov. Nikki Haley in her reelection campaign.
The ad proclaims that “Sheheen defended violent criminals who abused women and went to work setting them free.”
Eager to join the mob in attacking these due process values has been the South Carolina Republican party which issued a press release entitled “New Research Shows Vince Sheheen Defended Sex Offenders, Child Molesters, and Spouse Abusers for Pay.” Even Eugene McCarthy would blush at the premise of the campaign: Sheheen should be opposed simply because he agreed to represent those accused of crimes. It states:
Candidate-Vince wants to be governor and wants South Carolinians to entrust him with the oversight of our pardons and parole system, yet lawyer-Vince has proven he will sell out South Carolinas children, women, and victims if it means he can personally cash a paycheck.
But there is a lot more to Vince’s profiting from defending hardened criminals than The State’s recent report indicates.
And South Carolinians deserve to know exactly who Vince Sheheen is and what that means before casting a vote in this year’s general election. Let me walk you through new information that court records has revealed about the kind of work Vince Sheheen does for money.
They then detail with breathless rhetoric how Sheenen was . . . wait for it . . . a criminal defense attorney.
Attacks on this kind are used to deter young lawyers from defending criminal defendants. The message is clear: if you accept an appointment or a client in a criminal case, you will be making yourself ineligible for any public office. Already, the federal and state courts are heavily populated by former prosecutors while few former criminal defense attorneys are even considered for the bench.
The South Carolina Republicans ignore the possibility that some people might actually be innocent and that being accused by the government does not make you guilty. Yet, GOP chairman Matt Moore dismisses any notion that the attack ads raise any issues of “due process or the right to have counsel, . . . It’s about someone who wants to represent South Carolina not standing up for our citizens. He could have stood with abuse victims and exploited children and instead took a paycheck. Vincent Sheheen made a choice that was wrong.” That wrong choice was simply being a criminal defense attorney. Yet, Moore does not think that that has anything to do with the right of counsel.
Of course, those criminal defense attorneys that defended such Republican politicians like Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens, David Vitter, and others presumably are not bottom feeding, corruption loving lawyers.
The RGA Communications Director Gail Gitcho is fueling the anti-lawyer and anti-due process theme: “Actions speak louder than words . . . As he attempts to court voters with ‘tough on crime’ and ‘defender of women’ rhetoric, they should remember Vincent Sheheen has fought for the very same criminals he now decries, not for South Carolina.” Gitcho’s comments are being made (as is this campaign) in the name of all GOP governors from Chris Christie to Bobby Jindal and others. They should all be asked why they have not denounced this campaign and held accountable those who would seek to demonize candidates for simply being defense lawyers. Notably prior and current Republican candidates have represented criminal defendants. Ironically, when Arlen Specter switches parties in 2009, conservatives demanded that his representation of the notorious Ira Einhorn be raised in the campaign.
The South Carolina Bar has taken an apparently unprecedented step and condemned an attack ad. It includes a simple fact sheet with such obvious points that “Lawyers have a professional duty to ensure that justice is not rationed but is available to everyone, a right guaranteed to each of us by the Constitution. It is the job of a criminal defense lawyer to ensure his or her client has a fair trial, not to defend the crime.”
The absence of a national condemnation of this campaign from Republicans is equally astonishing. I realize that politics in this country has become a blind rage from both parties, but there has to be limits. When we start to demonize people for fulfilling constitutional functions, we have descended to a new level of self-destructive, hateful debate. The campaign by the RGA and the South Carolina GOP truly shocks the conscience. The same campaign could have been used against John Adams for representing the British soldiers accused in the Boston massacre. It follows the principle that all is far in love and politics. However, when you start to effectively campaign against core American values of due process and the right to counsel, you have reached lost all sense of propriety and proportion. I am most shocked that GOP lawyers must have played some role in this attack on our profession in the development of the campaign.
The Republican party has strived to convince the public that it is not an extremist or radical organization after being painted by a series of embarrassing candidates in the last election. Yet, many independents are likely to recoil at this crude and thoughtless campaign.
I will leave you with the words of Joseph Welsh who faced Joe McCarthy on June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army–McCarthy hearings. Until that day, politicians thought that the public would continue to rally around the attacks on filmmakers and others who were paraded before Congress. However, the public saw for the first time the hatred and ignorance behind these attacks in the televised hearing and they were as repulsed as Welch.
As I watched this disgraceful ad, Welch’s final words seemed all to prophetic and poignant:
Are we at one with Jonathan?
The problem with this ad is NOT just that it is an unfair attack against someone running for political office; this ad is awful because it feeds into the rightwing conspiracy theory that the government and the courts are bad and should NOT be used to help anyone but the already rich and powerful (and, preferably, other rightwingers).
I don’t recall Professor Turley saying I was horseshit. He would not use such descriptions. He has clearly come down on the side of this as being seriously wrong, whereas somebody else here is obfuscating. Foot in mouth syndrome, noticed by commentariat.
Paul,
I thought you were against negative attack ads. From thread to thread, do you change the way the wind blows. Adjust the sails and man the helm as you’re about to be tipping over.
Mike A.,
I think you are right that Atticus would be a wanted man!
Paul,
I did read your 9:38 statement, but your comments in total still indicate a disconnect on how our justice system works. Even if a client is “guilty”, the state or charging authority has the legal duty to prove its case. The attorney does not need to hear the client say he/she is innocent before the attorney decides to represent the person. Representing a person who may be guilty is not “part of the territory”. It is part of the job as an attorney and doing his job legally is not a disqualification for public office.
rafflaw – I agree with your comments. However, being attacked for defending people goes with the territory. I guess I did not make myself clear. It is certainly not a disqualification for office, but it is fodder. I know that prosecutors have been known to use a big win to up the chances for higher office, so why should there be a flip side?
Mr. Harris,
How am I being prejudice?
I firmly reject the notion that an attack on a candidate based upon his or her criminal defense experience is a function of ignorance. It is instead a carefully designed effort predicated upon the cynical notion that average voters need help tying their shoes. That may or may not be a rational assumption about South Carolina voters. But I think it safe to conclude that Matt Moore and Gail Gitchko would gladly lead a torch and pitchfork parade to the home of Atticus Finch.
Again, While both Jonathan AND MYSELF find this ad horseshit, I have 5k that says the good professor does not think it should be actionable. It seems quite clear he believes it should be met squarely and forcefully w/ some of the points made here by people who understand this topic.
There are no angels in politics. I don’t know if Jefferson used Adams defense of the British soldiers against him in his campaign or not, but he did run around calling Adams a “hermaphrodite”, and Adams campaigned by telling people if Jefferson won their towns would be burned and their children raped. Pretty ugly stuff.
Remember the LBJ ad that shows a cute little girl playing in a field with daisies? The camera fixes on the little girl’s eye. As it zooms in closer and closer the narrator goes into a dramatic countdown from 10 to 1. The narrator reaches 1 at the exact moment the girls entire eye becomes enveloped by the camera – then Kaboom! and an image of an erupting giant nuclear mushroom cloud appears on the screen. The announcer tells viewers those are the stakes. Vote for LBJ or risk having your cute little daughter blown to pieces by nuclear annihilation. That campaign was so negative, with Democrats smearing Goldwater as an “extremist” so often (some things never change, huh?) that in his acceptance speech Goldwater felt he had to embrace the term and famously declared that “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice….”. The LBJ negative campaign was despicable. But effective. The Willie Horton ads were despicable. But effective. So was Swiftboating of John Kerry. Harry Reid uses truly McCarthy-like tactics to take to the Senate floor and refer to two private citizens who also “work within the system” as un-American. That is despicable. But he believes a negative campaign against the Koch Brothers® is more effective than a positive message.
I don’t like the ad. I prefer positive messaging. But the consultants apparently believe that negative campaigns work. So it certainly does not surprise me. Plus, holding the guy responsible for how he earns a living is pretty much what Obama did to disqualify Romney. And when Larry Flynt ran for the presidency I suspect his opponents let it be know that he made a living as a pornography publisher. If there are any boundaries at all, this ad doesn’t seem to cross them relative to recent experience.
Is Spinelli calling Professor Turley a “self righteous Dem”?! : shock: It would seem so as the Professor comes down on the side of this as being clearly wrong, hence this blog post of his.
It seems to me, and I allow that I may be in error, that Paul Schulte and Mr. Keebler may have been demonstrating aspects of prejudice?
What seems to be is often, in my life experiences, vastly contrasting with what actually is. If I have imagined a demonstration that never happened, please forgive my error.
If only I were not sufficiently autistic as to have not noticed something labeled “Civility Rule” on the Turley Blog… ??? …
What is delusional projection of self-imago? What is scapegoating? What is being deceived about the nature of deception? Or, perhaps none of those can ever actually exist?
What is child abuse? What happens to abused children who do not die from their abuse, and live to become of adult age?
If negative ads did not work, Harry Reid would not be using them from the well of the Senate.
I first encountered these tactics when I worked on the campaign of a state senator that was also a public defender. The opposing republican candidate send out smear sheets that detailed the cases that the public defender handled as a county employee. We ended up winning by working harder and countering the charges.
Never, use “never or @ least be prudent w/. it.
Bernie Madoff, Mark Dreier, The Enron folks, and many more were rich right folks. so, there’s that.
I’m not certain if some folks slept through history classes or are just the victim of our dysfunctional public education system. Two of our Founding Fathers swapped MUCH nastier barbs during their election. Thomas Jefferson called john Adams “A hermaphroditical character w/ neither the firmness of a man or the gentleness of a woman.” Adams, understand you answer political speech w/ political speech, NOT LAWASUITS, replied, “Jefferson is a mean spirited low lived fellow, the son of a half breed Indian squaw and sired by a mulatto father.” “Life’s hard, wear a f#ckin’ helmet.” Denis Leary
Mr. Raff,
Only rich white people never have charges brought against them. That’s the difference. So Paul thinks that’s the way the law works, only guilty people are charged.
Let’s ask that deceased Alaska Senator that was convicted. Oh yeah, the prosecutor used purgery to obtain a conviction and withheld material information from the defense.
The RGA is not going along with Christie at this point they figure he is an Obama liability. The folks are also trying to separate themselves from the bridge scandal.
In terms of 2014 biological science, and not merely in terms of 1950s (as in the work of Gordon W. Allport) psychological science; in the manner of the TV show, “Jeopardy”:
What is prejudice?
(I welcome both opinions and facts…)
Which leads me to ponder:
How does prejudice put the future of humanity into jeopardy?
It is obvious that the demonization of defense attorneys for the sole reason that they might represent someone who is guilty or was previously guilty of a crime is exhibit A of either the lack of knowledge of how our justice system is supposed to work or an outright arrogance that anyone accused of a crime must be guilty. I could have sworn that everyone is entitled to a defense.
Paul, are you suggesting that only certain people are entitled to a defense? So when a Republican or conservative who is charged with a crime, can they hire a defense attorney or do they just fall at the mercy of the State because they must be guilty if they are charged with a crime? Or is it just a Democrat who cannot act as defense attorneys or hire a defense attorney because the accused must be guilty?
rafflaw – read me at 9:38 am.