This is incredible!
Please read this story about a lawyer who inadvertently got his client’s sentence reduced. Actually without doing anything, but just sleeping!
Leaving that aside, the character is quite colourful too!
Moral of the story, anyone?
16 thoughts on “Interesting Story About A Lawyer.”
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He has clearly risen to the level of his incompetence. In spite of this client’s good fortune thos song seems appropriate…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWh0DOAfc7A
Shackman recently posted..Daydreams – LBC
Parkinson will be laughing wherever he is!
It’s amazing that no one noticed earlier!
Cheerful Monk recently posted..Preparations
The whole story is amazing!
I’m surprised the guy was found guilty in the first place if the judge was aware his lawyer had been asleep and obviously wasn’t defending him properly. Surely that was an obvious mis-trial?
It’s astonishing also that it took 30 years for this legal cock-up to be recognised and for the poor guy to be released. Presumably he could sue someone for a miscarriage of justice.
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As another commentator points out, may be even the judge was sleeping!
Too bad he had to serve 10 years of his 30 year sentence before this was rectified. It’s also too bad he didn’t have a better lawyer as he was probably guilty.
The appeal ruling was quite interesting.
Moral (stated multiple times in the ruling): “An unconscious or sleeping counsel is equivalent to no counsel at all.”
Some interesting points.
(1) Mackey was a court appointed attorney.
(2) The judge may not have been aware in the original trial how much Mackey was ‘sleeping.’ — “perhaps like other witnesses in this case, the district court (judge) was looking elsewhere most of the time — for example, at the witness and juror box.”
(3) Ragin initially lost his motion in an evidentiary hearing, where the district court issued an order denying and dismissing Ragin’s §2255 motion. The court held that the requisite showing of prejudice for ineffective assistance of counsel varies depending on the evidence: a presumption of prejudice only applies “when the evidence shows counsel slept through a ‘substantial portion’ of the defendant’s
trial,”
(4) On appeal, the 4th Circuit Cout of appeals noted
(a) all of the witnesses in the evidentiary hearing had noted they had observed that Mackey had slept one or more times.
(b) “‘it appears not only that the jurors discussed their observations of Mackey “resting his head” during jury deliberations but also, even more troubling, that the jurors may have held Mackey’s conduct against Ragin in reaching their verdict.”
Mike recently posted..Before Shots Were Fired.
The whole story is full of such contradictions!
Counsel sleeping through the case is a new one on me….
I no longer know where English law stands on judges sleeping, but a fair number used to concentrate by closing their eyes after a good lunch which was grounds for appeal only if they missed an ‘important’ part of the case…. often used to wonder what their lordships in their collective wisdom held to be the unimportant parts of a trial…
I hope that some story will pop up about some judge sleeping and thus the convict gets a remission!
I’m a little amused but really sad at the ignorance on so many levels. And compassion for the people who end up with an attorney like this – and they are usually the people who need the help the most and have the fewest resources.
That is an angle that had not occured to me and it is a very valid one.
what a nightmare he is. from beginning to end.
no pun intended.
HOW do people like this guy get ELECTED???
SHERIFF from where he was FIRED? and then on to the state congress???
good grief.
because so many people vote charisma. they don’t READ or follow the facts.
it would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic. like mother says “on so many levels.”
My one word description of the whole story is that it is bizarre!
crazy!
Such a pithy and apt comment! Thank you.