Raison d'etre

Air Force JAG

Yes, this is where I started...idealistic, a military prosecutor and chief of military justice.  Meant I was in charge of military justice on an Air Force base (three to be exact).  Kind of scary when you think that I had only graduated from law school shortly before going into the military.  It was educational to say the least.  Most of the time, I was a prosecutor but since I had dreams of having a career in the military, I decided that I needed to become a defense attorney.  One of my good friends, who was an Area Defense Counsel (the local defense attorney for the base), inducted me as an honorary member of the "Dark Side Society".  At the time, I wasn't sure if that was an honor or not....I still thought that the defense was "bad"...

Then I went to a local prosecutor's office and spent the next 14 1/2 years there dealing with men (mostly) who abused kids (physically and sexually), people who beat up and murdered other people and lots and lots of druggies (both those who used and those who sold).  I became jaded and cynical.  I dealt with some very honorable defense attorneys but I also dealt with some very shady and careless defense attorneys.  Sadly, they were the ones who fashioned my concept of defense attorneys.  I couldn't conceive of anyone who would voluntarily choose to do that job because it meant, to me at that time, that you were willing to do whatever it took to get the "guilty off"...



Then I was forced to make a decision that involved my career and my family after a terrible time in my life.  I decided to leave the prosecutor's office and work in a Juvenile Court as a defense attorney.  At first, my rationale to myself was that I wasn't defending those whom I had spent the last 14 1/2 years putting behind bars.  I was defending children.  I would be helping....or so I thought.  I convinced myself that I would be "saving the planet"...one kid at a time.  Boy, was I naive!  I expect that my first clients looked at me as someone who would believe whatever they told me and I would do whatever they wanted me to....I did believe some big fibs and made some laughable (now) mistakes.  Every day was a learning experience.  I had some heart to heart conversations with some people who had been involved in Juvenile Justice for a long time and were excellent at their job.  I learned some things that shocked me and some things that I never dreamed of in law school. 

This blog will attempt to be a microcosm of the laughably absurd and the piteously sad...