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For those of you who aren't "friends" with me on FB and assuming you are interested which is probably not the case; here is what I have been up to.
BACKGROUND
From 7/03 to 12/10 I prosecuted major felonies in the Ohio court of appeals for a small town DA's office. Cases included major drug cases, cases of savage violence, and sex offenses of various descriptions include those against children. The pace of the office, the pressure to win, the repressed attitudes of those who worked there and the nature of the cases cased me much anxiety and a lot of health problems. I worked long hours, but was proud of what I was doing because I felt I was making the world better.
One problem has always been my supervisor, the elected DA. He is a typical small-town politician and has a glass ego that can never be criticized and must be stroked constantly. He practiced appellate prosecution in the 1980s when the county had a third as much population as today and before computer research was available. (Being available means we are expected to use it. Like fax machines and cellular phones, it makes more work rather than making things easier.) When I started we had a pro-prosecution, all R. court and we won cases we really should not have. By 2010, the court had a D. majority (yay!) but were decidely prosecution-skeptical. We we started losing cases including a few big ones. In the spring of 2010 I was working feverishly on a serious case involving some conduct that made me swig pepto bismol while reading it. I realized suddenly that because of an error by the trial court (wrong verdict forms) we were going to lose. I also knew from a recent Ohio SC decision and from talking to other appellate asst. DAs from around the state that there was no way around it. We were screwed. The boss was away at the time attending to his sister's funeral (ugh!). I called him and left a message saying as much and that I would make as good of an argument as possible, but would spend most of the remaining time working on possible errors I could salvage. We lose on verdict forms and some of the charges get reduced. We lose on prosecutorial misconduct and the whole ship sinks.
Well, he didn't want to hear that (that's literally what he said) and invented some bullshit argument give the court that is plainly contradicted by case law. (The micromanaging drove me crazy.) He called me arrogant, said the quality of my work was slipping and said I gave up too easily. In November, he said he wanted me out by the end of the year. Well, part of me said, "thank gods!" But part of me was deeply insulted. His budget was cut by the county too, and my replacement is a lot cheaper. Somehow, he offered to keep me on in civil division for six months. So I did very little in the land of dead careers in exile until June 30, 2011. He told me in the past that he didn't know how civil division works and didn't care. (He also told me that Blacks ruin a neighborhood and that he would quit before seeing gay marriage become law.) BTW, I got the decision from that case a few weeks ago and the court reversed on the jury forms, did not even respond to my (his) arguments and declared that while the error was harmless to the case, the asst. DA who tried it should be referred for disciplinary action.
Lawyers are always at-will employees, so there is no legal redress available.
NOW
So, I applied for grad school in history, my interest being Middle East, was accepted at U. Akron and signed up for three classes: Empire, Genocide and Mass Violence; Historiography and Beginning Arabic. I've lost a lot of weight and am much happier now even if it is taking some time to get used to the pace and reading load of graduate school. After 17 years in the law, I have not had a good career experience and--sorry to generalize--the reason is that with few exceptions the legal profession is populated by assholes. Life is too short to work for a corrupt tool of a system while being surrounded by assholes. School is great. It's about an hour drive to and from four days a week. The language class (undergraduate) is as much work as the other two. I started slowly for first semester, but will ramp it up next year.
I tried to get all my medical problems squared away. I lost my voice about a year ago and it has been slowly improving since surgery in June. There were some irregular cells and growths on my vocal cords that the doc ablated with a laser. Test results are negative for malignancy. So I am recovering from the surgery. I ad a hernia fixed in July and oral surgery in July. That still needs two more surgical procedures ending in spring 2012 before it is done. I am on COBRA so I can see the Cleve. Clinic doc who does the voice stuff. Otherwise, my wife's insurer, Kaiser, is handling everything else.
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