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:
Paul
Yes, that felon thing is a real travesty. All those men tossed into prison for a toke or two, and bang-o. no voting for you. I think I’d like a real tough DOJ Civil Rights Dept head to get that fixed. I knew FL pulled that crap – I hadn’t known AZ did it, too.
Paul, Chicago pols only like to give their citizens their rights if they pay for it. It took the Supreme Court to make these corrupt, sleazy, Chicago pols to make sure their law abiding citizens had their basic 2nd Amendment Rights.
Paul, the CNN is worthless. It is not a ranking – a comparison to other cities. It is from the Police Chief. He is totally unreliable. You need a whole years worth of data to do rankings. We have 2012 available. Looks like 2013 has not been completed.
The numbers for 2013 are in there as is the number to-date for 2014. I just wanted you to be up-to-date. The other materials we were working, at least I was working with, was 2012.
Mr. Spinelli re Raffs inquiry
This also is not a joke. Is this where we get to get all pissy and shout at you? Maybe tell you to Focus.
Further, I followed up with you over at the really long AA thread with some questions. I’d like the courtesy of a reply. Can you do that? And the number one question I’d like to know now, is did Prof. Turley contact you to tell us to shut down the thread? Or was that your own idea?
And then, I’d really like to know just what was uncivil. Really. Because we were rolling along with some really good stuff and then WHAM. We were told we got real boring two hours ago.
Here are the latest Chicago murder stats
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/24/us/chicago-violence/
There is a big controversy regarding the REMARKABLE decline in murders in Chicago. They brought in a new political chief and he reports murders way down. Anyone here watch The Wire. That’s what this lackey did to please the Teeny Tiny Mayor. Chicago Magazine did an expose of how this idiot reclassified murders and cooked the books. Typical Chicago politics. Everyone but one person from Chicago that I know, and I know a lot, knows politics is a hardball, nasty, slimy business, not for whiners or the faint of heart.
Dredd
You made my day!
I got as far as “in modern times – truthiness” and said what the hell? They’re doing Colbert in briefs these days? I then managed to glance down at the authorship. Oh. P.J. O’Rourke.
But then another puzzle. Isn’t he a Republican? Why is he saying these things? Have I lost mt sense of humor?
Please advise.
Dredd – you are aware that PJ O’Rourke is a well-respected satirist who went from the Harvard Lampoon to founding National Lampoon. He is also partially responsible for and appears in the greatest college flick of all time “Animal House.”
Objection your honor, asked and answered TWICE.
COURT: Objection sustained. Mr. Rafferty, I suggest pay attention to the testimony.
Sure we can move the murder conversation is you want.
rafflaw – there is a lot of stuff that happens in politics that I do not like. I do not watch the commercials and I hang up on the calls or if I am feeling feisty or annoyed enough I will lie to them to throw their stats off.
Have you ever been in a mall where they have given the Pepsi test? You are blindly supposed to select the better tasting of these two products. Well, Pepsi is sweeter than Coke and so, by their definition, should taste better, thereby allowing them to convince you to buy Pepsi. However, if you know this, you select the less sweet product, their little faces look at you in amazement because it is not the reaction they were expecting. It is priceless. However, you do not get a prize if you select Coke. 🙁 That is how I feel about political surveys and push polling, since I can identify it early on, I always give them an answer they are not expecting. 😀
Paul
Will you tell me how you are supporting those stats? Who came in 2nd thru 5th and what do your stats show as their rates.?
Can we take this over to the cop/gun post?
feynman
….
Aren’t the Supremes going to rule on truth in political advertising by June?
I suspect they will say anythings goes – it’s free speech.
=====================
Here is some language in one of the amici briefs:
(Amicus Brief of satirist P.J. O’Rourke).
firefly
I had heard about the Roberts example and that’s the way I thought it was supposed to work.
But I’ll dodge your rhetorical question, and offer my idea as to why. Democrats don’t “herd” well and they are lousy predators.
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts was a practicing lawyer, he was assigned to defend a serial murderer in court, which he did.
His defense of that serial murderer did not harm Roberts; he won confirmation to the highest court in the land.
That’s the way our legal system is supposed to work.
Every day in courtrooms across America, lawyers defend people charged with crimes — some of them heinous crimes — but that does NOT mean those lawyers are guilty of the crimes, only that every defendant in a criminal case is entitled to be represented by a lawyer.
Even the worst Nazis were entitled to be represented by a competent defense lawyer at Nuremberg — and crimes don’t get much worse than theirs.
But, and here’s the but: no one confused the lawyers with the defendants back then.
Are Americans (well, Republicans) stupider now than they were back then?
Paul,
So unless Mr. Spinelli has objections, I’m going to rule in favor of the Wiki document which puts Chicago about 8th place in murder rate.
Paul, the NPR story is as I remember it. The man he was defending was a cop killer. The widow and the police unions ran a very effective campaign in order deny the man who defended (on appeal) the man who killed the cop. It was a very emotional appeal. Who the heck is going to oppose the widow of a murdered cop in order to take a stand for the guy who defended the killer! Well, in the “greatest legislative body in the world” the answer is “not enough”.
I didn’t bring up the Republican senators opposition based on the fear that an attorney from the NAACP would too vigorously defend civil rights ( voting rights). I wanted to keep it simple. Why battle on multiple fronts – the first concern should be sufficient to carry the day – the right for citizens in capitol cases to effective defense counsel.
Paul,
how can your right to bear arms be taken away? I realize that a felon may not be able to get a gun, but the NRA suggests that even blind people and mentally ill people are allowed to have a gun? It would seem that you can carry your gun into schools and churches in some states now, but I can be denied the opportunity to utilize free speech in some areas. What other circumstances can a gun be denied?
nick,
This is not a whining issue. This is an issue where a candidate is alleging, along with the entire state party, that an attorney who represented alleged felons should be disqualified for public office. It is wrong if it is done to a Republican or a Democrat, isn’t it? It is wrong when the Senate won’t confirm an attorney because he represented alleged felons, isn’t it?
I want to go with my stats on the murder rate. I just ‘feel’ better about those. 🙂
Chicago, until recently banned all firearms except for cops and criminals. Although Arizona is a concealed carry state all stores are allowed to decide if they will allow firearms (never firearms in the courthouse because judges want to be the only ones armed and no firearms in bars [actually you turn your firearms over to the bartender who returns them when you leave]) I see a lot of places posted but since most people are carrying concealed they would not know. It was a lot easier to know when people were strapped in public. 🙂
Of course, felons lose their right to bear arms, until they have their rights restored. They also, at least in this state, lose the right to vote.
You have no free speech right in a public school. Even some clothing is suspect.
The murder rate thing was so longer ago I barely remember it
Paul, do you accept my stats on the top murder rate in cities?