News
Apr 21, 2008
Discounted Registration for DUI Seminar Extended
Steve Barnard and Mike Bloom, co-chairs of AACJ's 21st Annual Aggressive Defense of the Accused Impaired Driver seminar, to be held at the Tucson Marriott University Park on May 2 and 3, have announced that the discounted registration fees for members and non-members have been extended to Friday, April 25. After that date, late registrations, whether on-line or at the door, will pay a substantially higher rate.
"This year's seminar promises to be the best yet," said the chairs. "We'll be taking on the Intoxilyzer 8000, blood testing and trial tactics, as well as new legislation and new cases" they said.
The widely acclaimed seminar brings in speakers with national and even international reputations, this year drawing from as far away as Sweden. You can get complete information, register on-line, or obtain a paper registration form right here.
Apr 02, 2008
In Memoriam: Robert Hooker
Arizona's defense community is shocked and saddened by the death of Robert Hooker. Bob was killed yesterday evening in a car crash in downtown Tucson.Before joining the Pima County Public Defender's Office in 2005, Bob was a longtime criminal defense lawyer and member of AACJ. He also served as a Pima County Superior Court judge from 1980 to 1983.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Mar 24, 2008
Justice Project moves to Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU
The Arizona Justice Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to exonerating those wrongfully convicted and correcting other manifest injustices, is moving to the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. For 10 years, the Project has been housed at Osborn Maledon, P.A., where attorney Larry Hammond has served as chair.The move is made possible by a $150,000 grant from the Arizona State Bar's non-profit Foundation, which also will allow the Project to hire its first permanent staff, including an executive director, a development director and an administrative assistant.
"The Arizona Justice Project has long set a high standard for the quality of its work in its pursuit of the rights of those who have been denied the justice our legal system has been set up to guarantee," said Dean Patricia White of the College of Law. "The quality of the legal work its volunteers have provided, and the enormous commitment to justice that they have shown, have made it a national exemplar.
"We are very proud to welcome the Project to the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and are confident that those standards will continue and that our students and faculty will benefit enormously from the opportunity presented by its being here."
Hammond praised the move.
"The Arizona law schools have been the lifeblood of this Project from the beginning, but this relocation will allow us to work at levels never before possible," Hammond said. "Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice (AACJ) and all of those who have volunteered with the Project over the last decade owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Dean White, the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, and to the Bar Foundation's leadership."
Professors Bob Bartels at Arizona State University and Andy Silverman at the University of Arizona have coordinated work at the law schools. Students from Phoenix School of Law also will participate.
"The project runs on volunteer work, and the best source is law students," Bartels said. "Moving to the law school will make it easier for the students and will forge a connection with faculty members who are experts in the area."
Bartels said it is also more feasible for the Project to conduct its research in an academic environment.
Carrie Sperling, a visiting associate clinical professor at the College of Law, has been chosen as executive director. Sperling spent five years as an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in Norman, Okla., and has more than a decade of experience in civil rights and post-conviction relief litigation.
"You learn that mistakes can be made, innocent people convicted," Sperling said. "Someone has to hold the system accountable.
"My real excitement is the ability to bring in students to get hands-on experience in the real world. It exposes them to a side of the law they might not have thought about. And these are rewarding cases."
Also joining the Justice Project's staff is Vera Hamer-Sonn, a member of the College of Law staff since 1998.
The Arizona Justice Project was founded by Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, and was one of the first handful of innocence projects that now number more than 40 across the country. It relies almost exclusively on the volunteer work of lawyers, investigators, experts and consultants. More than 2,500 cases have been reviewed, and about 50 are either in court or being evaluated at any one time. The cases have included actual innocence, overly harsh sentencing and ineffective assistance of counsel, among other issues.
In one case, State v. Lacy, Byron Lacy was convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault and sentenced to a total of 17 years. The convictions stemmed from an incident outside a Phoenix "social club" in which shots were fired from several different directions and a security guard was killed and a bystander wounded. Lacy claimed he only fired warning shots into the air from his handgun after others had started shooting. A Justice Project team from the ASU College of Law showed that Lacy's trial attorney had not investigated the case adequately, and that the State's own evidence demonstrated that the fatal bullet hole in the victim's skull was too small to have been made by a bullet from Lacy's gun. Lacy's convictions eventually were reversed and the charges were dismissed because the evidence was not consistent with his guilt.
A permanent staff will help manage the numerous volunteers. Over the past decade, hundreds of students have been involved, nearly 50 at any given time, and 60 to 70 in any academic year. Private attorneys, law professors, and investigators also volunteer their time for the Project.
Students research and investigate cases, write briefs, prepare cases for court, and argue before the Board of Executive Clemency.
Laura Ciancanelli, a third-year law student, worked with the Project this year, researching the statute of limitations on a habeas corpus petition.
"I was doing research that could potentially make a difference in someone's life," Ciancanelli said. "It also allowed me to delve into a specific area of criminal law in a much deeper way than I would get in a survey course."
Bartels said the students learn a tremendous amount about the legal system by working on the cases.
"There is a lot to learn about how the system works," Bartels said. "They see what bad lawyers and good lawyers can do. In class, law students usually deal with established sets of facts, and very few ever get to investigate the facts. Through the Project, they learn how hard it is to find and deal with evidence, how to prove what really happened."
The Project also is seeking additional funding to help analyze the use of DNA evidence in Arizona.
From its beginning, the Project has been interested in forensic science and state crime laboratories.
The Project also has evaluated wrongful convictions and created training materials based on wrongful convictions like that of Ray Krone, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a young female bartender in central Phoenix more than 15 years ago. His sentence and conviction were reversed by the Arizona Supreme Court, and he was tried a second time, convicted again and sentenced to life in prison. Finally, after 10 years, Krone was the 100th person in the country exonerated by DNA evidence.
Feb 22, 2008
In Memoriam: J. Conrad Baran
One of AACJ's Lifetime members, Conrad Baran, age 63, died peacefully on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008, in Lakeside, Arizona.
He was a graduate of the University of Arizona College of Law at the age of 23, which began his proud service to the public. Before becoming one of Arizona's first certified death penalty defense attorneys and the 2008 chairman for the Attorney Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Arizona, he was an FBI agent from 1969-1976. Conrad was a member of AACJ for eighteen years. At the time of his death, he was a trial attorney for Navajo County Public Defenders.
Conrad loved to sing and in doing so, was able to sing his way across Europe and Asia. This led him to achieve one of his greatest ambitions, climbing the Great Wall of China. At the age of 10, Conrad was a member of the Tucson Boys Chorus, and he was also a member of the Northern Arizona University Mas-ters Chorale from 1991-2002.
Survivors include his wife, Linda Houle of Overgaard, also an AACJ Lifetime member; one son, Scott Baran of Flagstaff; three grand-children, Jesse Robert Baran, Sean Joseph Baran and Sadie Ann Benford; as well as numerous nieces, nephews, extended family and his beloved pets.
Jan 16, 2008
AACJ Launches On-Line Seminar Registration
Starting today on-line registration will be available for all AACJ seminars.
On-line registrations can be done through the AACJ Store or by direct link from the particular seminar's own page.
The addition of the AACJ Store to this site will eventually allow us to make AACJ memorabilia and other items available for purchase and to make seminar materials available to those who cannot attend in person.
Jan 07, 2008
In Memoriam: Marc Budoff
Our dear friend and former president, Marc Budoff, 58, passed away January 4, 2008, in Phoenix, surrounded by his family. Marc graduated from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, and Rutgers Law School. In 1975 Marc began his legal career as a prosecutor at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office where he worked until 1984. In 1984, with Jeffrey D. Ross, the law firm of Budoff and Ross was established. They have been partners ever since, specializing in criminal defense. Marc was a prominent member of the legal community in Arizona and nationwide. He was a member of the State Bar of Arizona as well as AACJ, serving as its president in 1994.
In 2006, Marc was awarded the AACJ Tom Karas Indigent Defense Award. The award was presented to Marc "for years of leadership and dedication to championing indigent representation issues, Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice extends its sincere gratitude."
Marc, in a president's column in the AACJ magazine, The Defender, wrote, "Find whatever inspiration you need, but at all times, know that what we do is necessary and right." For many of us, Marc was, and will continue to be, the inspiration we need in our quest for justice.
Aug 22, 2007
AACJ Weighs in on Prop 100 Proposed Rule Change
On April 10 AACJ filed a comment with the Arizona Supreme Court objecting to proposed changes to Rules 4.2, 7.2, 7.4, 27.7 and 31.6 of Criminal Procedure. The proposed changes are intended to implement Proposition 100 relating to denial of bail to illegal aliens. However, the proposed rules, if implemented permanently, would result in serious violations of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the Separation of Powers Doctrine.
The Comment Opposing Amendment of Rules 4.2, 7.2, 7.4, 27.7 and 31.6, Rules of Criminal Procedure, was filed by AACJ President Christopher B. Dupont on behalf of AACJ and is available here. Chris's message to the membership regarding the filing is available in the Forum.
Aug 06, 2007
Members Only area of this website has opened!
The Members Only section of the AACJ website has opened. Members were sent an email with their permanent username and instructions for obtaining a randomly generated password. They now can login to the Members Only area and go to the My Account page to change their passwords to something of their own choosing.
Members are able to view and download documents from the Document Library and to upload documents, including court documents, appellate briefs and transcripts of expert and law enforcement witness testimony. They also can search for other members by name, firm name, private or public practice or location.
The AACJ Forum promises to be extremely useful. There members can post public or private messages to other members or the membership at large requesting or rendering assistance, or discussing matters of interest. The Forum is actually more than a dozen forums (fori?), each set up to handle a different area of intrest. While several deal with the business of the organization, most are for practice areas -- Indigent Defense, Capital Defense, DUI, Expert Witnesses, Federal Courts and so on. Within a practice area a member can create a new topic, leave a message under that topic and other members can reply to it, creating a thread of messages on the topic.
There are many ways in which you can can choose to be notified that new messages have been posted, ranging from receiving a single email each day that digests all messages that have been posted (and which contains links to the messages) to having the system "watch" particular forums or topics for new messages and notify you only of those. You can also opt to be notified by email when any message is posted to a forum in which you have posted a message.
You can even choose an RSS feed which can put a little button in your browser which, when clicked, will show the subject lines of any messages posted to the areas or topics you select, and a click on the subject line will take you right to the message.
The Forum is, in effect, a listserve that doesn't clutter your mailbox with dozens of messages you may not be interested in. It will also eliminate the emailed "Member Help Requests" that you receive from time to time, as all such requests can be posted in the Forum.
In addition to the features of the Members Only section, you may be pleased to know that henceforth you will be able to renew your membership online with a credit or debit card, or, if you are a member of PayPal, a PayPal credit. New members will be able to sign up in the same way.
We're very excited about the possibilities of these new features. Their potential will only be realized if you participate actively. If you draft a pleading or brief that may have utility beyond your immediate case, go to the Document Library Upload page and share it with other members. Do the same if you have transcripts of very good or very bad experts, or police officers or agents. And please, please, please use the Forum. We will have to overcome the inertia associated with using anything new, and the livlier the site is the more inclined folks will be to join in.
As always, we welcome your feedback. In fact, there's a forum set up just for that!
Jan 26, 2007
AACJ's New President takes on Thomas
This article appeared in the My Turn column in the Arizona Republic on January 26, 2007 in response to an article in which Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas blamed the backlog in death cases on defense lawyers.
Thomas' Power in Capital Cases Shows Flaw in System
By Christopher B. Dupont
The suggestion by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas that defense attorneys are responsible for the staggering number of capital cases in Maricopa County is nothing more than political rhetoric designed to divert attention from his own role in turning us away from mainstream society ("County faces 'avalanche' of capital cases," Republic, Friday).
To the point: there were 111 death sentences in the entire United States last year; right now, there are more than 130 death allegations pending in Maricopa County. Thomas alone decides which cases to file, and he files death in nearly half of all first-degree murders.
The discrepancy between Maricopa County and the rest of the country illuminates the fundamental flaw in a system that allows a single person to decide when to seek the death penalty. The influences of political ambition, a desire to refer paying cases to his political allies, and a skewed sense of justice are all reasons that many propose death decisions be made not by a single person but by a statewide prosecutorial commission.
Thomas' extreme position has taxed an otherwise efficient and industrious judicial system past its limit.
Despite the political and administrative pressure on defense attorneys to represent more and more people, we have a legal and moral obligation to, under American Bar Association guidelines, "provide each client with high-quality legal representation." The Judicial Conference of the United States estimates that an attorney must spend an average of 1,889 hours to defend one capital case. There are only 2,080 work hours per year.
Thomas, who has never tried any felony case to a jury let alone a capital case, has no basis to accuse anyone of practicing law in a "leisurely" way. Most capital defense attorneys have dedicated their lives to this unpopular yet necessary task at great personal sacrifice and expense. Because of Thomas, we now face a situation in which there are not enough defense attorneys in the entire state to represent those accused in a single county.
Defense attorneys did not create the problem identified in The Republic's article; it was created by a system that permits Thomas alone to decide whom the county will try to execute. The solution to this problem is not to place a greater burden on defense attorneys - that's how innocent people get convicted. The solution is not to call names and cast aspersions - that diverts attention from the true source of the problem. The solution to this problem is to take away Thomas' ability to unilaterally decide which cases are filed as a death penalty case.