SENTENCING A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

Tomorrow my client and I will appear before a federal judge for sentencing. 
Of course that is wrong. My client will appear for sentencing and I will be there with him, defending him to the best of my ability every step of the way. 

My client and I have spent a lot of time together. Well over  300 hours in court, as well as hundreds of hours preparing the case for trial. I can recognize his hand writing at a glance, as it was a case involving records he prepared. I can easily decipher his shorthand notes, a skill I obtained while working with him in preparation for trial, and a skill that gave us a small but distinctive edge over the FBI agents that were tasked with deciphering the records. Unfortunately, while my client was acquitted of some conduct, it wasn't enough. 

So Friday will be the first time that his future and fate goes completely out of my hands and into the hands of someone else- the judge. The judge is a good judge, with an excellent reputation for being fair and hard working, and from what I've seen, the reputation is well earned. 

But I feel like I will be sentenced as well, as I lost the case. Earlier this week when we met, my client apologized for being late, as he had to drop his son off at school. I winced. Is this the last week he will be able to do that? I've never met his son, not wanting to get too close to my client and allow my feelings to affect my ability to think clearly in court during tough moments. 

And yet, like myself, my client is a professional. He has a degree. Dresses well, drives a better car than I do (more on my beat up old red pickup truck some day when I feel like explaining why I won't get rid of it). He has a family and a life and now all of that is more than in jeopardy. All of that will change Friday, whether or not the sentence is lenient, whether or not I am successful in keeping my client out during appeal, and whether or not we are successful on appeal. Tomorrow my client gets a prison sentence and his life will be inexorably altered. While he made poor decisions that brought him to the point of being arrested and indicted (the phrase "when you sleep with dogs you get fleas" came up fairly often in our discussions), the fact remains with me that he entrusted me to explain his decisions and frame them in a non-criminal manner to the jury. And I failed.  It will make me wake up earlier to work longer on his appeal. It will make me read those obscure cases in different jurisdictions to see if I can discern some point on appeal that I can use to undue this damage that has been wrecked upon his life, but it will not ease the pain of my failure. 

So tomorrow my client will be sentenced, and whether or not the US Marshals ask him to put his hands behind his back and lead him away while I stand there powerless; and although  I will go home tomorrow no matter what, (I'm fairly certain, although there were a few dicey moments when I pushed the judge a little bit too far) I feel like I am being sentenced as well. 

I once heard a college basketball coach say that he quit coaching because while he only barely remembered all the wins, he could remember every agonizing detail of every loss. I feel that way about every case I have lost. And although I am fortunate that those loses have not been as frequent as the coach's, they stay with me. The murder case in Daytona Beach in 1997 (lessers). The tax fraud case in 2000. That DUI I lost after not losing a DUI trial in over a decade (I will never try a case with facial hair again.) Even that DUI injury case I lost as a prosecutor in 1988 still bothers me every time I walk in that courtroom in the Miami criminal courthouse. 

That will be my sentence tomorrow.