Delay does a "Public Defender" in definition of Victory

For those of us who work with cases that can be complete losers all the time, we are used to coming up with creative definitions of victory. Doing a death penalty trial and your client gets life without parole? That's called a huge victory. Client is offered 10 before trial and gets 5 after trial? Another huge victory. He gets convicted of only 3 of the 5 counts in the complaint? That's a victory. On trial for murder and is convicted of manslaughter? That's a huge victory also.

So, seeing the Republican reaction to Tom Delay's getting one of 3 counts dismissed yesterday reminds me of being a public defender. Which suggests to me that his case sucks about as bad as our typical client's case sucks. They probably have boatloads of evidence against him, and on come small technical grounds he was able to get a dismissal of one charge. I noted that none of his arguments to dismiss the other counts were substantive arguments going to the heart of guilt or innocence as to the main allegation. For instance, he argued that money laundering is only for illegal activities (not true), and that money laundering has to be with cash only, not checks (also not true, but very creative, I can only assume that we'd see a lot of drug dealers doing transactions by check if that actually was the case).

So, the fact that he's trumpeting the dismissal of one count sounds so, well, shall we say it, "Public Defender" to me. It smacks of the little victories we often have to be satisfied with as we are getting are asses handed to us in the courtroom.

Of course, they feel all the more satisfying often because we are frequently going up against DAs who consider anything less than a complete conviction a devestating loss. The fact that they acted like they lost makes it feel all the more satisfying for us.

Anyways, fight on Delay, it's nice to see you in the role of the underdog, the poor persecuted individual against the big evil government. I'm sure the memories will stick with you once you get back to the majority leader position when you're finally acquitted, and that you will be reformed - a champion of the underdog.

Yeah, right.