LET US PRAISE DUE PROCESS

            Unpopular defendants in high profile cases have never had it easy.  The lawyers who represent them do some of the heaviest lifting in our legal system.

            For their trouble, such attorneys deserve respect, not reproach; but as we see from two current cases in South Jersey, reproach is winning.

            This past May, local high schoolers in Haddonfield commandeered a family’s home in the absence of parental figures, partied long and ugly into the night and desecrated the place, defiling even a piano with various bodily excretions. 

            The press had a field day. Privileged kids acting badly make the easiest of targets.   Who could dare rise to their defense?  

            Speaking of easy targets, in Camden federal court, we are fast approaching trial in the case of the "Fort Dix" conspiracy, where the government arrested several men from the Balkans for an alleged plot to murder military base personnel.  Another banner day for public outcry.

            As the Haddonfield charges ripened in juvenile court, defenses did materialize.   Worried parents hired counsel.  Those lawyers properly sought exculpation, or at least mitigation of culpability, for their clients.   The press decried these parents’ decisions to retain lawyers and their attempts to protect their children from damage in the courts.  Columnists glibly derided the defendants for “lawyering up” -- as if the exercise of the right to counsel and to question the state’s charges was some unseemly sin.

            The press and the public often convict an unpopular accused before counsel has filed a single motion.  The rush to judgment increasingly includes this cheap shot at due process:  that the presumably guilty defendant has “lawyered up.”      No doubt this new pejorative came to some minds when the Duke Lacrosse teammates and their families hired counsel to protect against the onslaught of Prosecutor Nifong.   Given the penchant of the media and public toward a presumption of guilt, the defendant in a high profile case needs zealous counsel now more than ever.

            When the press and public criticize a defendant for “lawyering up,” they exact a price for the exercise of a precious civil right.  The phrase not only impugns the defendant, but casts aspersions on the mission of the defense attorney to protect the rights of an often demonized defendant.  Unfortunately, the subtle pejorative can grow into something uglier and more ominous.

            In the Fort Dix case, popular sentiment runs high against the accused “enemy in our midst.”  Deeming them monsters, the court of public opinion easily abandons any pretense of a presumption of innocence.   

            Representing these young men are several appointed lawyers, including Michael Riley, a distinguished former prosecutor now in private practice.  Tracey Riley, his wife, is also a lawyer who has worked at times in Mr. Riley’s office.  It so happens that Ms. Riley is running as a candidate for State Assembly from a section of Burlington County in which Fort Dix is located.   

            In the eyes of several opposition party leaders in towns near Fort Dix, Tracey Riley is supposedly unfit to represent the people of her district because of her husband’s work for a Fort Dix defendant.  In a letter to Ms. Riley made public during the current political campaign, three mayors from the Fort Dix area accused her of a “conflict of interest” in seeking to represent the people of Burlington County, when her husband represents one of the “thugs” who plotted against the lives of Fort Dix personnel.   The mayors say that their constituents are “sickened” by Michael Riley’s decision to accept the appointment to represent a defendant in such a case.  These elected officials demanded that Ms. Riley “answer some questions about how your penchant for defending lowlifes like this would affect decisions you make in the Legislature.” 

            So much for the presumption of innocence and the right to effective assistance of counsel. 

            Public officials swear to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and New Jersey.  That solemn responsibility ought to include promoting respect, not contempt, for the institutions and the lawyers who safeguard constitutional rights—even the rights of the most unpopular of defendants.

The attack on Michael Riley and Tracey Riley is an attack on every lawyer who stands with and defends an unpopular accused.  Mr. Riley honors the highest traditions of the profession in assuming the defense of his “Fort Dix” client.  His decision deserves respect, not reproach.

One or more of the public servants or candidates who have criticized Attorney Riley for accepting the Fort Dix case are lawyers themselves. In public statements, they denounce the Rileys for a supposedly “clear conflict of interest” in representing “someone who was targeting  soldiers at Fort Dix, while seeking to represent the people of Burlington County in the Legislature.”  Such rhetoric bespeaks little regard for the Constitution or the Rules of Professional Conduct.  Those Rules provide that a lawyer’s representation of a client does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social or moral views or activities.  Accusing Michael and Tracey Riley of a “conflict of interest” lacks substance and devalues the precious currency of professional duty and individual rights.  

Eight hundred years ago, some defiant Englishmen secured from King John at Runnymede the right of trial by jury.   For centuries courageous lawyers and citizens have defended and deepened that right and the constitutional promises that inhere in it. These rights are our greatest strength as a free people.  Let us praise, rather than reproach, the exercise of such rights and the lawyers who fight to safeguard them.