Apparently there have been Bar complaints made against seven or eight Assistant Circuit Attorneys in the City (a large proportion of the CAO’s trial staff) for things like egregious discovery violations, dismissing and refiling cases, etc. In other words, for business as usual for Kim Gardner’s office.
The prevailing sentiment is that these may have originated as part of a plan by attorneys within the Public Defender’s Office.
I’ve also learned that prosecutors in the County are on alert because they believe that the Public Defenders there are instructing their clients to carefully watch the prosecutors when they are in court, and if they see anything that they believe is “inappropriate,” for example, a prosecutor joking around, that they should make a Bar complaint against that prosecutor.
I don’t know whether this is part of some “master plan” by Mary Fox or if it is just a coincidence that two Public Defender’s Offices are simultaneously behaving like douchebags.
The Assistant Circuit Attorneys who were targeted for Bar complaints are all new prosecutors (in terms of their experience being a prosecutor) who joined an office that had no depth of experience to draw upon, who were not provided any significant training or supervision, and who were required to essentially learn as they go. On top of that, they were then assigned unmanageable caseloads, often with types of cases that were well-beyond their level of experience.
To add to their plight, Kim Gardner required that all plea agreements had to be run through her! (Only a mind as dim as Kim Gardner’s could think this was a good idea.) This naturally greatly slowed any effort to resolve cases and only caused caseloads to expand.
And, these prosecutors found that they were having to deal with a hostile and often non-cooperative police force. I’ve had hearings and trials (including a murder trial) where some police officers simply refused to appear! I have cases where they apparently are refusing to provide prosecutors their reports.
All of this is, of course, a direct consequence of Kim Gardner’s mismanagement of the CAO and her alienation of the police (hint: it’s really difficult to get someone to work with you when you think they are racist, liars, and should be prosecuted).
I understand how very frustrating this can be for defense attorneys and that criminal defendants are in the end getting screwed because of these issues. My clients are not immune: I am having to deal with this daily. However, I recognize that there are two diametrically opposed ways to deal with this situation: either with professionalism or by acting as a douchebag. Professionalism is the high road.
Making a Bar complaint is a very serious undertaking — you are putting someone’s license to practice law, hence their livelihood, at risk. Such an action can have potentially life-altering repercussions. I can’t imagine a more serious attack any lawyer could make on another lawyer. To make that sort of an attack on over-worked, out-of-their-depth prosecutors is unconscionable.
Nothing good is going to come out of this — not for the client, not for the prosecutor, and not for the lawyer making the complaint. It is nothing but a lose-lose scenario. My educated guess from 30 years practicing in the trenches is that when the dust clears, the person who will be most negatively effected from these Bar complaints will be the person who made them. After all, we don’t work in isolation. There are long-term consequences to being a douchebag.