One of the things I pride myself on is being a fairly good judge of human nature since I’ve been up and down a lot of roads in my life. Which makes the following all the more painful to me. It’s not just my sense of pride and judgment that’s on the table, it’s also my reputation I’m concerned with. It could well have been damaged.
Allow me to elucidate: Due to a past life I probably know more lawyers than the average bar association. My freedom often depended on my ability to pick a good one over a bad one.
I thought I knew this lawyer (who shall remain unnamed, he’s got enough problems at present without me putting him on front street about his behavior) and even called him a friend. I’ve known him to do some good work in the past. That’s what makes the hurt all the worse.
And here’s where my reputation comes into play. Due to my past life I get asked, on a fairly regular basis, to recommend an attorney and otherwise give some advice in regards to pending legal troubles. Often it turns out to be as simple as hand-holding: Calming the fears of someone who is in the unfortunate situation of having their head (or the head of a loved one) stuck in the maw of a brutally cold and often complicated criminal justice system, a system known for its tendency to effectively chew up and spit out folks who lack the knowledge and/or financial resources to effectively fight back. A good lawyer can level the playing field, but a bad lawyer can make the situation worse.
That’s why I help, and why my phone rings so often. Due to the fact I’ve given some pretty good advice over the years, people trust my advice. And oftentimes I’m willing to tell parents or loved ones that perhaps the best place for the criminal they raised is in prison. They shouldn’t borrow money or mortgage the house when the case is a lost cause.
But if the case has any chance of being won is I usually recommend three or four lawyers I respect and know do good work. The lawyer in question often was one of them, and some families hired him.
But the lawyer in question has turned out to be a real piece of shit. The Disciplinary Counsel of the Ohio Supreme Court just made public a series of complaints against him, and they read uglier than homemade sin.
When a case against a defendant is hopeless, a lawyer has a moral obligation — after reviewing the facts — to inform the defendant or their family members that the chances of prevailing (in court or on appeal) are slim. But this guy didn’t do that; he told them that, if they pay him substantial sums of money, he could prevail. When families are in crisis they’ll grasp at any straw, and knowing this, he preyed upon them.
However, it’s being alleged by the Supreme Court that in a number of cases, after the money was paid, he did little or nothing. He probably was thinking, “Why should I, when I have zero chance of winning?” Soon he quit answering phone calls altogether, and didn’t even respond to certified letters. He cruelly left these clients and their families to twist in the wind.
If I ever speak to him again (and I sincerely hope I don’t have any reason to) my question would be, “When did your moral compass quit functioning, when did it become broken? When did you become a piece of shit?”
I don’t know any of the many people listed in the litany of complaints filed by the Supreme Court, but I could have, and I could have been the one who recommended this lawyer to these families. And if that had been the case, these folks would have had every right to be just as furious with me as they presently are with him.
He obviously was so greedy (or broke) that he cared little about his own reputation, and even less about mine, a person who had — on occasion — recommended him. Like I said, I once thought we were friends. Man, was I wrong.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.