Law Man by Shon Hopwood

Law Man by Shon Hopwood

Author:Shon Hopwood [Hopwood, Shon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-88785-6
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-07T04:00:00+00:00


I had been thinking a lot about the Supreme Court anyway. History turns on the actions of Congress and the president, and of course on tragedies, wars, booms, and busts. But when you examine the big moments when the conscious decisions of men and women have reshaped our lives, those decisions have often come down from the Supreme Court.

The language of the Court is interesting all by itself. The men and women who argue cases there, and who sit on the bench as justices, seemed to me a breed apart. They are warriors who use words, employing remarkable memories and razor logic as deftly as swords in mortal battle. And lives hang upon their skills. Darth Vader robes and marble chambers aside, there is something fascinating about that. They are almost like more highly evolved creatures. I have never been too easy to impress, but I was constantly amazed as I read the transcripts of these people who think on their feet so brilliantly, with a nation’s future or a human life at stake. If it were a game, which it is not, it would be the best and hardest mental game in the world.

So, like a lost tourist who can’t even read the street signs, I started poking around the Supreme Court law books on behalf of John J. Fellers. But without that law library job, it was hard.

The way I now had it organized, my job with Vincent really took me only an hour a day, so I used the desk time to do my schoolwork and to dig deeper into John’s case. Vincent knew I was working on it, and he respected that. The harder I worked, the better I managed things with him and Terri.

When I couldn’t be at my work desk, I tried to work in the law library, but so many guys were peppering me with questions that it became far easier to work in my cell, especially as Robby was such a good bouncer for me.

John’s case was a puzzle to me—very off-kilter. If I could figure it out, I would be the first to do so.

When the police had come to John’s house, they told him that a grand jury had indicted him on meth trafficking charges. They described what the dealers had said against him. Then they let silence happen, and John started talking. They didn’t interrogate him; they simply created a quiet space for John to fall into.

They arrested him and transported him to jail. When he arrived there, they read him his Miranda rights and he signed a waiver of rights form. He figured he had already let the cat out of the bag once, so he told them the same story again.

The prosecutors would later say that the police weren’t required to read him his Miranda rights at his house because they weren’t interrogating him, and that the real interrogation came later at the jailhouse—after they read him his rights and he waived them.

I started to read hundreds of Miranda cases.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.