Sweet Christmas

Merry Christmas, fans/stalkers!  Ho Ho Ho!

Christmas Day is upon me, and not a day too soon.  Although I haven’t exactly been overwhelmed at work, I still get worn out at the end of each day.  Furthermore, it can get discouraging when I can’t find a clear way of helping clients, and I tend to feel guilty (pun not intended) as they sit in jail.  I’m starting to think I may need to find a way to separate my work thinking with my non-work thinking; the plight of detained clients can make it difficult to relax.  Still Christmas is a day for me to take off—because the court and DA’s office are closed, it’s impossible to do any meaningful work.  As such, I got plenty of rest and resolved to not do much.

The most eventful thing that happened this Christmas was that I headed downtown to catch the 6pm showing of Star Wars: Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker at the Tillamook Coliseum (Tillamook’s only movie theater, with just one auditorium).  Side note: one of the best parts about having an office in town?  Free legal parking!  As a lifelong diehard Star Wars fan, I’d been itching to go for the past few days.  I was not disappointed: Rise of Skywalker was a great movie and an excellent conclusion for the Sequel Trilogy. :)  Moreover, I haven’t been to the movies in a while, and this was a pleasant return to cinema-going since becoming a lawyer.  I don’t know how often I’ll be seeing movies, but I know the Coliseum is there!

Star Wars (and a little grocery shopping) aside, this day was spent relaxing: eating cheese, eating ice cream, napping, surfing the web, reviewing a client’s case file (hey, I still felt like doing a little bit of work—I’ve got a hearing tomorrow I want to be ready for), calling loved ones, etc.  It wasn’t exactly the most exciting holiday, but it was one day where I wasn’t racing around, sitting in a jail visiting room, or nervously talking into a courtroom microphone.  In other words, it was just what I needed!

It's not exactly snow, but check out that frost; winter is here in Tillamook!

Over Thanksgiving, Cthulhu's parents gave me a Lego Star Wars advent calendar.  Having reached Christmas, behold my total bounty!

Decorations in the Tillamook Coliseum.  Rather appropriate, given the show. :)

It's also the fourth night of Hanukkah.  I may not have a proper candle menorah, but my electronic travel menorah works wonders.

But all good things must come to an end, and this includes relaxing days off.  My batteries are charged, and I’m ready to buckle down.  Tomorrow, I’ll resume doing what I (try to) do best: defending the guilty, protecting the innocent, and sticking it to the man.

Pleading Heart

Another week is done.  As usual, this means I received a new batch of clients to help and work with.  However, I also managed to finish work with a few clients in very short order.  How did I do this?  Through the magic of plea bargaining!

What is plea bargaining, you ask?  It’s a very major part of my job!  When a prosecutor charges someone with a crime, there’s usually some time before anyone talks about getting a trial ready.  In that meantime, the prosecutor will usually make an offer to the defense attorney and client: in exchange for pleading guilty to 1 charge (or just a few charges, if there are a lot of alleged crimes), the prosecutor will drop the remaining charges and/or make a low sentence recommendation to the judge (the judge doesn’t have to listen, but they almost always do to facilitate deals).  If they choose to accept, the attorney and client fill out a specialized form (known as a “plea petition”), which the judge goes through with the client in court before accepting the plea and imposing sentence.  It is an extremely common procedure in the criminal justice system and is the reason why less than 10% of all criminal cases ever go to trial.  As such, it’s something that I dealt with all the time. I get plea offers in my court mailbox almost as often as I get evidence reports from the DA’s office, and I was involved in the process almost every day this week—from talking to prosecutors about offers to filling out plea petitions, from going over them with clients to presenting petitions in court.

Love them or hate them, plea bargaining pervades just about everything I do—and trust me, there are indeed plenty folks who love or hate plea bargaining.  Some claim that it lets criminals get away with multiple crimes without punishment.  Some claim that it violates the right to trial by jury and lets the state punish people without proper proof.  Still others claim that it pressures the innocent into pleading guilty to crimes they didn’t commit.  My own feelings on the process are a bit complicated.  On one hand, it definitely helps some of my clients; they get fairly low sentences and can get their cases over with.  On the other hand, I have seen detained clients insisting on their innocence accepting plea offers because it’s the fastest way out of jail.  In truth, I think that’s a testament to the unfairness of pretrial detention, but that’s an angry rant for another time (and probably a different forum than this blog—this kind of thing is best discussed in person).  Plea bargaining can get disheartening, but it’s unfortunately necessary; courts are already plenty clogged, with trials taking weeks or months to schedule.  As such, I’ll keep on informing clients about plea offers, explaining all the consequences, and letting them decide.  That’s pretty much all I can do, morally and ethically.

Because I don’t want to end on such a heavy note, I’ll leave you with a humorous moment from one such plea hearing from this week:

GREAT MOMENTS IN TILLAMOOK JURISPRUDENCE

*insert sophisticated music*

Episode II: Business as Usual

Judge: Sir, you have had a chance to discuss the charges and state’s plea offer with your attorney?

Client: Yes.

J: Has Mr. Fischberg answered all of your questions?

C: Yes.

J: Do you have any problems with Mr. Fischberg’s representation so far?

C: Yes.

[awkward beat]

J: So, you have a problem with Mr. Fischberg’s legal advice…?

C: No, I mean no!  I was expecting to say yes to most of these.  He’s done OK.

[Hearing goes on as planned.  Hopefully, client will remain satisfied with representation.]

Trial by Fire

WHEW!!  I’ve finished my first two weeks of active legal practice.  As of now, I’m relaxing in my room, mentally preparing for another busy week.  The last two weeks or so has been a crazy whirlwind of new experiences, but I’ll try to recollect what I can.

First of all, Thanksgiving at Cthulhu’s (which was the other potential title for the last entry) was pretty swell.  There was lots of yummy food, glass blowing on Black Friday, some binge-watching of The Mandalorian and Castlevania, some playing of Pokémon Shield, and a general feeling of calm as I desperately tried to not think about my impending doom.  As with all good things, my break came to an end, and so, after a stopover in Salem, Oregon and the customary 2–3-day trip to the coast, I was back in Tillamook ready for whatever legal gauntlet was to be thrown in my path.

I expected a lot of work, yes.  But what I didn’t count on was how fast everything is and how often I’d have something exciting happen!  Honestly, every day brought something that I could have spun into a blog post (were it not for time constraints and the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct).  I’ve ended up spending relatively little time in my office; most of my days seem to revolve around me going to court or the county jail (I’ll probably elaborate on both kinds of experiences in future blog posts).  Still, one thing has been a pleasant surprise: regardless of how difficult the work is, I find it extremely rewarding!  Every day last week, I was out late visiting clients at the jail (an experience type that probably warrants its own blog entry) and was exhausted upon my arrival home.  But in spite of my fatigue, I’ve never felt so alive!  In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten several people out of jail, reunited a mother with her kids, helped some clients navigate through the bail system, facilitated medical evaluation, and acted as the primary contact with the outside world for some of my detained clients.  I’m only one man doing so much, but I feel very proud of the work I’m doing and look forward to fighting the good fight as my career goes on.

Because I’m a very busy man, I may not be able to updated this blog as frequently as I’d like.  Still, I’ll be sure to write about any exciting adventures that come up in the near future.  I’ll finish this entry with a new segment I might continue in the future:

GREAT MOMENTS IN TILLAMOOK JURISPRUDENCE

*insert sophisticated music of your choice here*

[The transcript you are about to read is a slightly dramatized version of an actual interaction I had in court.  All names but mine are withheld to professional/ethical reasons]

Episode I: The Awkward Afternoon Arraignment

Benjamin D. Fischberg, Attorney at Law: Your Honor, based on my client being charged with only a misdemeanor, I would like to move for a conditional pretrial release.

Judge: Very well, what is defense proposing?

Fischberg (to client, who is in court via video conference from the county jail): Sir, do you have stable housing you could stay at if you were released from jail?

Client: Yeah, I can stay in the area around the courthouse.

F (taken aback by response): So, you have an apartment or something…?

C: Nah, I’ll just be sleeping in the nearby park.

F (mentally facepalming):…that is our proposal, Your Honor.

J: Noted.  What is the State’s position?

Prosecutor: Your Honor, the defendant is homeless, is well-known to our office, has several robbery convictions, and has not shown up to court in the past.  Also, the misdemeanor he is charged with in question is violating a restraining order…

[Video chat to jail crashes, possibly out of embarrassment on defense counsel’s behalf.  Arraignment has to be finished an hour later, with the client physically being brought to court.]

[Client does not get a conditional release.]

[Defense counsel Fischberg dusts himself off, assures himself that there was no harm in trying, and goes about his day.]