Catch Me if You Can
Closing Argument
In America's Court
I've finished reading three books over the last three weeks. The first was Catch Me if You Can which is a description of how Frank W. Abagnale traveled back and forth across the United States and Europe as a kid cashing an amazing number of checks (about $2.5 million) which he faked, hopping rides as a fake airline pilot, posing as a lawyer (a prosecutor no less) and posing as a doctor. I don't usually read "true crime" types of books and I must admit that the main reason I picked this up was because of the movie. It turned out to be an amazingly good book. Abagnale is not a humble sort and he tells the story with some pride showing thru. On the other hand, he is not so full of himself that the book goes on for ever. It is an interesting read as he goes from point to point, a step or two ahead of everyone until it gets to the point that there are just too many eyes looking for him. Then it gets even more interesting as he describes the Hell of a French prison, the country-club "prison" in Switzerland and the last second switch which returned him the U.S. rather than going to another European hellhole. A short, good book which I highly recommend.
The second was Closing Argument: Defending (And Befriending) John Gotti and Other Legal Battles I Have Waged by Bruce Cutler. This story follows Cutler thru his life and legal career. A LARGE part of this book is about his representation of Gotti (which is what made his career). The book is handicapped by restrictions imposed on Cutler by attorney client privilege and the fact that he has to be careful what he says so that the federal prosecutors can't use his words to try (again) to indict him. It's not a spectacular book but it has enough substance to make it interesting for fellow travelers.
Of course, it also feeds into the paranoia that defense attorneys tend to develop. There isn't a defense attorney out there who hasn't been a courtroom with the feeling that there are two prosecutors in the courtroom: one at the Commonwealth's table and one behind the bench. And sometimes a defense attorney might even wonder if the prosecutor might be willing to sacrifice the integrity of the system in order to secure a conviction by resorting to dirty tricks such as trying to get a good defense attorney removed for spurious reasons (such as the prosecution might be stupid enough to call him as a witness). And that same defense attorney might suspect that there is an unspoken collusion between the judge and prosecutor which allows such a sham because everything possible has to be done to assure that the guilty defendant is convicted. The government went after Gotti's first lawyer and sent him to jail for 15 years. Then Cutler won two cases defending Gotti. In the third trial Cutler was removed from representing Gotti at the government's insistence. Then Cutler was tried for contempt and they tried to get a grand jury to indict him. He got six months house arrest for the contempt and must have been harder to indict than a ham sandwich because the government gave up after three years of trying.
The third was In America's Court: How a civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal Trial by Thomas Geoghegan. It's about how a civil lawyer is affected when he sits thru a jury trial and is exposed to the way a courtroom really works. He flails about and doesn't do or say anything useful. Then, at the end of the book, he just goes off into his own personal fantasyland where the U.S.'s laws are abrogated by useless international treaties which nobody follows. He just ends up on a leftist rant and even gets weirder at parts talking about "Kimberlys" and I've already quoted part of it here.
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The second was Closing Argument: Defending (And Befriending) John Gotti and Other Legal Battles I Have Waged by Bruce Cutler. This story follows Cutler thru his life and legal career. A LARGE part of this book is about his representation of Gotti (which is what made his career). The book is handicapped by restrictions imposed on Cutler by attorney client privilege and the fact that he has to be careful what he says so that the federal prosecutors can't use his words to try (again) to indict him. It's not a spectacular book but it has enough substance to make it interesting for fellow travelers.
Of course, it also feeds into the paranoia that defense attorneys tend to develop. There isn't a defense attorney out there who hasn't been a courtroom with the feeling that there are two prosecutors in the courtroom: one at the Commonwealth's table and one behind the bench. And sometimes a defense attorney might even wonder if the prosecutor might be willing to sacrifice the integrity of the system in order to secure a conviction by resorting to dirty tricks such as trying to get a good defense attorney removed for spurious reasons (such as the prosecution might be stupid enough to call him as a witness). And that same defense attorney might suspect that there is an unspoken collusion between the judge and prosecutor which allows such a sham because everything possible has to be done to assure that the guilty defendant is convicted. The government went after Gotti's first lawyer and sent him to jail for 15 years. Then Cutler won two cases defending Gotti. In the third trial Cutler was removed from representing Gotti at the government's insistence. Then Cutler was tried for contempt and they tried to get a grand jury to indict him. He got six months house arrest for the contempt and must have been harder to indict than a ham sandwich because the government gave up after three years of trying.
The third was In America's Court: How a civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal Trial by Thomas Geoghegan. It's about how a civil lawyer is affected when he sits thru a jury trial and is exposed to the way a courtroom really works. He flails about and doesn't do or say anything useful. Then, at the end of the book, he just goes off into his own personal fantasyland where the U.S.'s laws are abrogated by useless international treaties which nobody follows. He just ends up on a leftist rant and even gets weirder at parts talking about "Kimberlys" and I've already quoted part of it here.
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