With as many lawyers as there are, I found it a bit surprising that there were six Georgia counties with no attorneys as reported in the Daily Report.
Those are Baker, Chattahoochee, Clay, Echols, Glascock and Webster. The only county near Northwest Georgia listed is Dade County with "6-10" lawyers.
While many might think an absence of lawyers is a good thing, most of the counties lacking are very poor, rural areas where it would be good to have a lawyer around.
Click here for the map.
In performing research locally, I came across the following story which I have adapted from newspaper articles from the day:
On July 1, 1907, the citizens of Dalton awoke to find a dead man hanging from a downtown bridge. Around 6 o’clock A.M., the body of Dock Posey was taken down and, being refused by his wife, shipped by train down to Atlanta. There, it was taken by the Atlanta Medical College, now Emory, for further destruction.
Posey was a middle aged white man, who had recently moved near Dalton from Walker County, the county immediately to the west. Posey married a woman with two daughters, the youngest nine-years old. Posey was a no-count rapist. Upon the little girl, Posey committed “the most horrible affair that has ever occurred in this county.” In the euphemism of the time, he “outraged” her. Realizing that his stepdaughter was near death due to his crime, he took her into Dalton to the office of Dr. J.C. Rollins. Dr. Rollins called in two other doctors thinking that the girl’s injuries so severe she might not recover.
Posey denied he had anything to do with the rape, and fixed the blame on someone else. Even in the girl’s severe condition, he had taken the time to scare her into telling the same story. However, when the girl was able to speak freely, she told exactly what happened. Posey still denied but he realized he was a goner.
The Reverend W. H. Bird, also the president of the local Farmer’s Union, took a personal interest in the matter and did his own investigation. He went and spoke to Posey’s wife. The wife told him that Posey had attempted an outrage of her older daughter recently. With this and perhaps some other persuasion, Rev. Bird was able to get a confession out of Posey. In fact, Posey identified the place, time and physical evidence of the crime.
Word spread of the confession. As some of the locals called for Posey’s neck, the authorities attempted to squelch the town’s passions by calling for an immediate term of court so that justice could be meted out promptly, but judicially. Many of the town folks realized, however, that the little girl was the key witness. She may not even survive, but at least it could be weeks before she was able to testify at a trial and even that would be more than she should have to bear.
All these difficulties worked themselves out on the night of July 1.
Rev. Bird stayed with a jailer to watch Posey that night. Voices were heard around one o’clock A.M. which woke Rev. Bird. He arose from his make shift bed, out into the hall and was held at gun point by a group of 25 or so men. The group included two police officers who had been passed on the way over, disarmed and forced to come along. Except for these officers, all the men had guns. Each of the men wore long black robes, and white pointed hoods, only their eyes, feet and hands were visible.
The leader of the group made himself known and demanded the keys or else he “would blow the jail to hell.” The keys were found, Posey cell was unlocked, and out he was dragged out, limp, begging for his life.
The mob was extremely well disciplined, placing guards around the jail, who fell in line as they left the jail with the prisoner. The group marched double file. It was said no “oaths” were sworn, few words were said and all the orders of the leader were followed with precision.
The leader, being a “gentleman,” said he did not want to hang an innocent man asked Posey for the truth. Posey confessed again, but begged for his life. Satisfied with this due process, the leader and the mob toted Posey out of the jail, into a car and down the street to the bridge running over the railroad. Posey was put on top of the buggy and tied up to a wooden beam under the bridge.
From that position, Posey was given 15 minutes to pray, which he did. He also asked the crowd to pray for him. He again said he didn’t intend to harm the girl. The crowd shouted “die with a lie in your mouth.” As his pitiful last words were uttered, the buggy then drove out from under him triggering the mechanism of his death. He strangled to death from that point.
The mob left, but demanded that the jailer and Rev. Bird stayed. They were not to take the body down until 6 o’clock A.M. at the earliest and also to make sure the spectacle did not spook a horse passing over the bridge. The leader said he “would be sorry to see anyone injured by a runaway horse frightened by the dangling body.
For whatever reason, the jailer and Rev. Bird remained until the morning, leaving the body hanging as instructed.
The local paper suggested none of the mob could be identified and were not thought to be Dalton citizens. The town was not sorry to see Posey go, and went about its business.
There is a photo of the hanging that can be seen here. It's graphic.
As counter-intuitive as it may sound, you will be more productive spending the first few minutes of the workday thinking about where you are headed with all this. What are your long term goals and what are you doing this day to move in that direction?
Although not a cure-all, making a list makes you take random hopes and thoughts and put them in concrete items to perform.
Even with a to-do list, smaller, more tedious tasks tend to get pushed back, and back and back, so that they are never completed. Setting an actual time on your calendar forces you to “eat the frog” and get this stuff done on schedule.
Getting paid is awesome and someone owes you money. As frustrating as collection is, many solos simply neglect to send bills. Take a look at that accounts receivable and send another bill.
They waste your time, don’t pay and are the most likely to lead to ethical complaints. You have the right to fire them; give yourself permission and let them go.
Hypocrisy aside, goofing around on the internet not only takes time, it saps your motivation and yields very little results. Work hard and complete your tasks. Then stop for the day, and read whatever you’d like without the guilt.
You may not know it, but the tooth brush was invented in Alabama.*
I really love Alabama: my mother is from there. A visit to the Collinsville flea market provides a new story every time I go. A lot of my favorite songs are about Alabama. See the documentary Muscle Shoals. I admit that I get a bit defensive when people pile on that state. Georgia, minus Atlanta, is pretty much Alabama.
Bryan Stevenson, head of Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama graduated from Harvard Law School. And despite all the opportunities that brought with it, Stevenson forwent all of that to live an adventure.
Right out of school, he moved to Atlanta, then Alabama to represent the impoverished and oppressed. It sounded a little to me like the young idealists that say they want to move to the inner city/developing world and fix the problems there. That’s usually a very naive view of those communities.
On the other hand, for Stevenson, he was right. There were very bright line offenses taking place that he had the ability to rectify. And what strikes me in the end, is that Stevenson gave up the money and prestige and influence after he graduated from Harvard, only to receive it magnified (minus the money) now.
Alabama-love aside, there are some real, very real problems there. The state’s use of judicial override seems so ill advised. That is where a judge can and often does impose the death penalty over the sentence imposed by the jury. See Woodward v. Alabama.
Stevenson carefully describes injustices that are just hard to comprehend. Besides the judicial override, people are placed on death row with so little evidence. I struggle to get my mind around how these things could happen. Our system, which I have no doubt is among the best in the world, has so many checks: the police have to have probable cause, a district attorney has to look at the case, the accused gets a trial and often a plea deal, and then there are several options for appeal even at no expense to the defendant. Still, these guys with solid alibis, no motive, etc. were getting the death penalty.
Confirmation bias on the part of Stevenson just doesn’t explain it way. There are systematic problems that may be a little more pronounced in some geographical areas, but exist in our great system.
Stevenson explains that people are sometimes placed on death row, or given egregious sentences because those particular people aren’t able to put up much resistance. I’ve done appointed work and realized that the person I was representing really didn’t know what was going on and what the consequences would be. He or she just wanted it over. A lazy lawyer could get a client in big trouble without facing too much retribution himself. Second, minorities are frequently victims of conscious and unconscious biases. There’s too much evidence to deny.
I heard a great lecture from Russell Fowler of Legal Aid of East Tennessee who talked about the history of punishment, including trial by ordeal, hue and cry, etc. Trial by ordeal, as you may know, was deciding the facts by making the perpetrator perform some ordeal, or test. A witch might be thrown in the water to see if she floated, a man might hold scalding hot rocks to see how fast the burns healed.
These things sound ridiculous to our post-Enlightened minds, but they worked very well at the time! The reason they worked was because people believed in them. They actually believed that if you were lying, your sins would find you out.
The same is true of our current system. It’s effectiveness depends not just on logic, but our faith in it. It’s important to have compassionate critics pushing us to better and more thoughtful penal and legal systems. Otherwise, things begin to go sideways.
Stevenson just seems like a remarkable guy. I think the best compliment I can give is Stevenson’s book is that it changed my thinking.
*Otherwise, it would be called a "teeth brush."
As a small business person, and in representing small businesses, I understand the risks and frustrations posed by contemptibly obnoxious people. A story out of Boston shows how an exquisitely trained lawyer can use his powers for bad:
Last week, Edelman ordered what he thought was $53.35 worth of Chinese food from Sichuan Garden’s Brookline Village location.
Edelman soon came to the horrifying realization that he had been overcharged. By a total of $4.
This Harvard associate professor contested an $4 discrepancy in his bill and the online menu prices to the point of contacting state authorities and asking to speak the the restaurant's attorney.
The email correspondence shows a very courteous and apologetic business owner trying to calm an empowered and silly "victim." Publishing the correspondence has now led to a lot of public shaming. Still, these situations can cause intense stress on a small business owner.
Keeping your judgment enforceable is a fairly straightforward process in Tennessee.
A Tennessee judgment is good for ten years. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-110.
Rule 69.04 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure allows a party to renew her judgment within ten years from entry of judgment. To do so, the judgment creditor must move the court for such an extension. This is often done in the general sessions court, depending on the amount of the judgment.
Notice must be sent to the judgment debtor’s last known address. Certified mail is not required, but is a good idea. The judgment debtor then has 30 days in which to show cause why the judgment should not be extended.
This process can be repeated basically forever until the judgment is satisfied.
It’s important to note that notice to show cause must be mailed to the debtor (but not, necessarily the motion see King v. King (Tenn. App. 2013). Just filing in court without notice is not enough but is a fairly common mistake.
The motion for extension should be filed before the 10 years is up. If the order is nunc pro tunc (which means “now for then”) to an earlier date, the earlier date is the effective date. Cook v. Alley (Tenn. App. 2013).
If you need help with this, please let me know.
A lawyer is an artist. But how?
Many "artists" are able to take common things and bring out something new and beautiful. In a recent book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, John Eliot Gardiner writes:
Towards the end of his more than thirty years as music director of Berlin’s Singakademie in 1827, Carl Friedrich Zelter wrote to his friend Goethe, ‘Could I let you hear some happy day one of Sebastian Bach’s motets, you would feel yourself at the centre of the world, as a man like you ought to be. I hear the works for the many hundredth time, and am not finished with them yet, and never will be.’ After knowing them for more than sixty years I feel exactly the same. The glorious freedom that Bach exhibits in his motets, his balletic joy in the praise of his maker and his total certitude in the contemplation of death – this, surely, is the best imaginable response to our mortal entrapment.
If genius exists, then Bach was it as it came to music composition. Part of his brilliance was his insight/ability able to play with the harmonics from a note (which were pleasing to the ear) to create and resolve tension, and then compose multiple lines to be played at the same time. But the music was in the note, Bach just brought it out.
Similarly, Michelangelo commented on his sculpture that “in every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action.”
Likewise, a good story teller or writer is able to take the cacophony of everyday events, sounds, sayings, etc. and bring out of that a compelling story: the thing the character wants, the conflict/tension that stands in the way and the resolution.
Many business people are likewise able to take common things and combine them in exciting and new ways. Cell phones, smart phones, the ability to look up the answer to pretty much any question on the internet, weren't available actions until relatively recently, but the ether for their creation was out there.
As a lawyer, I often wonder how to create something new using my craft. Fundamentally, that begs the question as to what is the substance of the law. What do you think?
I thought that line, long stuck in my head, was from an ancient philosopher. It looks like it’s actually from Ernest Goes to Camp (1987). Still, the question lingers and the answer is probably, “it depends.”
When I travel to my wife’s Idaho, it is obvious that water rights are much different here than back east. God normally waters my lawn in north Georgia, but in eastern Idaho, grass often grows only where the land is artificially irrigated.
Idaho, and the western states, base their water law on “prior appropriation” which is often described as “first in time, first in right.” Under this system, a water right is like a right to land that can be bought, sold, bequeathed without regard to owning the adjoining land. This right is acquired, historically, by diverting (or in some matter of consuming the water) or obtaining a permit. The date this is done gives that water right holder a priority date. Those that obtained water earlier in time, get the water first, in cases of scarcity, like a drought, when there is not enough water to go around.
In the east, the system of water law is known as “riparian rights.” Under this system, the water is not owned, but is part of the land over which it runs. The owners of the land beside or below the water, can use that water reasonably (generally so that water downstream is not diminished in flow or quality).
Among riparian rights, there is a distinction between navigable and unnavigable waters. To that we now turn.
In City of Townsend v. Damico, (Tenn. 2014) a city issued a citation to trespass to Damico for carrying his inner tube from the river across private property to a public road. Damico contested the citation saying that he only sought to avoid going over a water fall, and that he had the right to “portage” around the dangerous area on land, even private land. The Tennessee Appeals Court overturned the trial court to uphold the citation. The river in question was deemed navigable in that inner tubes could float down it. As a navigable stream, “the soil covered by the water, as well as the use of the stream, belongs to the public.” Webster v. Harris, 69 S.W. 782, 784. If not navigable, then the soil beneath the water belongs to the adjoining landowner, but with a public easement on the water for commercial and transportation purposes.
As a navigable stream, Damico had a right to portage around the obstruction onto private property, but he could not simply cross the private property as he did to a public road.
Often times I tell a potential client that she may be right, but it will be more expensive to prove it, than merely paying the ticket or claim. The client often responds “but it’s the principle” which may as well be a cash register ringing. Cases like Damico may not be good for the pocketbook, but they make for good reading.
How did the “richest man ever tried for murder,” (and tried again for hiring a hit man) get acquitted? After all, there were two eyewitnesses who saw the murderer and were shot by him as well, and the hiring of the hit man was taped and recorded by the FBI. Part of the answer, (a small but very important part) was the very capable cross-examination skills of the defendant’s attorney, Richard Haynes.
This was thrillingly documented in a book titled Final Justice, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith who wrote the even more thrilling Mormon Murders. Haynes turned the murder case into a trial of the defendant’s estranged wife, Priscilla Davis, who was shot during the murder and was likely the intended target. She was a buxom blond with lots of sexual misadventures that titillated the jury and turned them against her. She was also very clever herself. However, Haynes started the cross by asking her questions about some very awkward sexual and drug habits which the witnessed fudged, hoping that would be the end of it. Instead, Haynes had vast evidence showing that she was lying about her drug use. From then on Haynes would ask about other awkward situations, which he had made up, but from then on, the witness’ denials fell on the deaf ears of the jury. The jury saw her as deceitful and from then on, they gave her no credibility. The book details the circus that ensued. Among other things, the defense counsel would scour local bars to find witnesses, some were likely paid and were out-and-out liars. But the jury acquitted Cullen Davis after an 8 month trial.
Haynes was evidently a masterful storyteller and had an incredible presence in a courtroom. He used these gifts to get a jury on his side. Not many attorneys can do this the same way, Bobby Lee Cook comes to mind as an exception.
The One Thing to Know About Cross-Examination
Instead, most lawyers need to know one rule when it comes to cross-examination. Which is: ask ONLY leading questions. Do not start with “state your name.” Instead, say “your name is Smith, isn’t that true?”
The goal of cross-examination is to have the attorney testify and the witness just affirm. (So the attorney must know the answers to the questions ahead of time.) When asking very basic questions at the beginning, asking in a leading format puts the witness on his or her heels, afraid to offer up much voluntary material (which will not be beneficial to the cross-examiner). If the witness does not answer “yes” or “no,” the attorney should object and ask the court to inform the witness to answer “yes” or “no.” At this point, the witness is likely to submit to the show.
In Hayne’s case, he didn’t even need to know the answers to the questions. By making the witness out to be a perverted liar from the beginning, he could say anything and the jury believed it over the denials of the witness. That’s not a good thing in the pursuit of justice, but it makes for an interesting read.
So is all fair in love and war?
Not many people like to be told they are wrong, even if it's good news. Thus, settling disputes is not often like the end of Rocky IV where Rocky ends the cold war thru an impassioned speech and good sportsmanship.
More often, true peacemaking is finding a creative solution, and resisting the binary choices offered by either party in conflict. In other words, telling both sides they are wrong, but in a constructive way.
I recently, on the advice of the Rick Steves show, toured Stockholm City Hall. The Hall is very impressive, constructed only by Swedes about 100 years ago. Above and to the side of the Blue Hall, where the Nobel Prize ceremony is held every December, is the gold room. This room is completely covered in gold mosaic. When the building was being constructed, the designers really wanted gold mosaic even though it wasn't a Swedish art form. They found a Swede to do it, but he was very inexperienced, and not given much time. This is fabulously shown at the end of the hall where the wall was not as high as thought, and as such the patron saint of Stockholm's head is missing.
On the other end, is the Queen of the Lake, representing Sweden. On her left is the west, energetically shown with the US flag, Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower.
On her right, more awkwardly, is the East with characters the artist felt were representative. The artist was trying to show Sweden as the bridge from west to east, and as peacemaker. Instead, the Queen of the Lake looks like the Queen of the world. Not to mention, she has big hands, big feet, masculine shoulders and bug eyes. The whole wall was almost torn down due to intense public criticism.
I think it was Lincoln that said the middle ground is often the firmest. However, it takes a strong neutral to maintain it. What do you do when both sides say you are biased, ignorant of the situation, inexperienced and out of your league?
With the Queen of the Lake, the artist later gave a pretty persuasive accounting of his Queen. He defended himself arguing that such an important peacemaker needed big eyes to monitor the situation, strong feet to maintain her ground and broad shoulders to carry such burdens. May we all have those attributes as problem solvers.
P.S. I also learned that Sweden does not have any law against the "unauthorized practice of law." Thus, you can hire anyone to represent you in court, lawyer or not (although it seldom happens). You also have to practice for 5 years, and represent the public for 3 years after passing the bar to call yourself an "advocate."
