New and events of the Philadelphia Bar Asso.
Issue link: https://thephiladelphialawyer.epubxp.com/i/574228
40 the philadelphia lawyer Fall 2015 "Horses for courses," was knowledge learned through a combination of observation of cases tried by other attorneys, by one's own sometimes painful experience and most often by listening carefully to the anecdotal wisdom imparted by older practitioners during those times when a group of attorneys found themselves thrown together on a given day in a given judge's courtroom, waiting for their cases to be called. An incident illustrating the wisdom of that adage occurred on one such day. While waiting in the lists, the lawyer sitting next to me introduced himself, with a dollop of condescension, as someone whose main practice was not in Philadelphia, but a neighboring suburban county. We exchanged some pleasantries, playing "lawyer's geography," and the talk turned to our respective cases that day. "Well, I've got an easy one," he said, indicating his client in the audience. "My young man is only charged with indecent exposure, no touching, just showing off his wares, I suppose. I hear good things about this judge, so I assume it'll be a suspended sentence, or probation at worst." "I see," I said, pausing slightly for effect, "but hasn't anyone told you our judge is the father of six daughters?" Discretion suddenly became the best part of his valor. "I guess I'll ask for a continuance," he said, meekly; and suiting the act to the lesson learned he did just that, luckily for his client, who escaped to fight for probation another day. "Know thy judge," was advice that I had learned during the early days of my practice – before the revolutionary expansion of the legal rights of criminal defendants via the Bill of Rights – that is, during that antediluvian time when judges were far less subject to judicial review and, sad to say, far more prone to let their personal predilections dictate their decision-making process, especially when, 30 years before the guidelines, it came to sentencing. So, I took notes, clipped news articles, recorded every bit of anecdotal evidence that I learned about our judges and read whatever I could find that they had written. There were, at the start, only 21 common pleas judges and about 10 county court judges, so it wasn't too difficult to build "a book" on most of them. The judiciary has more than quintupled since, so it S ome of the best lessons in the art of criminal defense have less to do with knowledge of the law than with knowledge of the judges on the bench. "Know thy judge," is no less important in federal court today, where 90 percent of the criminal cases are resolved by guilty pleas, than it was years ago in state court when a like percentage of cases went to trial "on a waiver," that is, before a judge sitting without a jury. A N N A L S O F J U S T I C E B y S t e v e L a C h e e n LESSONS LEARNED