Word: bazelon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...words of Justice Bazelon's Court of Appeals opinion in the same case, though reversed by the Supreme Court, now resonate with a special prescience: "To the extent that uncertainties necessarily underlie predictions of this importance on the frontiers of science and technology, there is a concomitant necessity to confront and explore fully the depth of such uncertainties." The Supreme Court thought otherwise and gagged the public...
...York City Lawyer Abraham Pomerantz. "Each side pulls out the facts that help and ignores those that don't. Out of that come confusion and distortion, and the cleverer guy wins." The system also suffers from disparity among lawyers. Some are superior, and others are what U.S. Judge David Bazelon labels "walking violations of the Sixth Amendment" (which guarantees the right to counsel). As Bar Critic Jerold S. Auerbach put it, "Equal justice under law" all too often means "unequal justice under lawyers...
Chief Judge David Bazelon, long a pioneer in civil rights decisions, prescribed that a defense attorney must at least discuss a client's rights with him, outline "fully" the possible trial tactics and conduct all "appropriate investigations." Perhaps such rules would not be necessary, said Bazelon, "if all defense attorneys had the skill and experience of a Clarence Darrow. We do not live in that kind of world, however." Bazelon then reversed the 1970 robbery conviction of Willie DeCoster Jr. because his lawyer had not interrogated some witnesses who might have backed the defendant's story...
...decision prompted a bitter dissent from Judge George MacKinnon, who pointed out that DeCoster's lawyer had not talked to the suggested witnesses because he believed DeCoster was guilty, a fact DeCoster in effect conceded during posttrial procedures. Reviewing Bazelon's liberal record, the conservative MacKinnon sounded an unusually personal note, saying that "practically all criminal convictions would be set aside" if Bazelon had his way. "What my colleague overlooks is that the public has some right to have the guilty convicted." Colleague Bazelon may also have neglected to consider fully the increasingly conservative view of the Supreme...
Many of Sirica's colleagues on benches around the country seem to agree with him (see box page 15). More broadly, his handling of the Watergate cases is widely seen as a vindication of the legal system at a time of great stress. Chief Judge David Bazelon, who heads the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has sometimes reversed Sirica rulings, contends that "Sirica became enraged not because he believed he was being lied to personally, but because he thought the court was being lied to. He has humility, which is not a universal virtue...