Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,misc.legal From: [r--nd--s] at [nyx.cs.du.edu] (Mr. Nice Guy) Subject: Gerry Spence on Randy Weaver Date: Mon, 23 Aug 93 03:40:41 GMT The Sunday Aug. 22 Denver Post had a article on Gerry Spence, the lawyer who defended Randy Weaver. The article started below the fold on the front page with the headline "Gerry Spence: A legal legend", it ran another 1/2 page inside. The following is from the article, without permission of course. -On the Randy Weaver trial- He says he understood Jewish friends who objected to his involvement, but took the case for a more important principal. He was fearful Weaver, accused of murdering a U.S. marshal wouldn't get a fair trial. "I was afraid Randy Weaver was going to prosecuted and persecuted and convicted for what he thought rather than what he did," Spence says. "For his beliefs rather than his alleged criminality." Spence made it clear from the outset Weaver's politics and beliefs troubled him. "This man is wrong," Spence says. "His beliefs are wrong. His relationship to mankind is wrong." But, Spence continued, Weaver was wronged too - by government agents eager to entrap. Weaver, Spence says, " is as poor as an empty cupboard." He lived in the woods with a wife, three daughters and a son in a house without running water or electricity. U.S. agents spent three years trying to snare him, Spence says. Knowing he was dirt poor they finally entrapped him - "intentionally, systematically, patiently, purposefully entrapped " - by offering cash to cut down the barrels of a couple of shotguns. "Justice," Spence insists, "demanded Randy Weaver"s defense." Before trial, the current of public war running strongly against Weaver. It looked like open-and-shut case - a mad-dog, white racist marshal killer from Idaho's backwoods. It's just the kind of mind-set Spence enjoys. The prosecution paraded 56 witnesses on and off the stand. Spence attacked and attacked, tearing at the government's case. He called no witnesses of his own, so that there was on chance for government counterattacks. If you don't put on a defense, Spence says it forces the jury to focus hard on the prosecutions evidence alone. "Then, you can become the prosecutor," he says. "You can attack their evidence and you don't have to defend any more. You can prosecute the prosecution. That's what happened with Weaver." -end of comments on Randy Weaver- other items of interest from article Spence was a law school whiz, first in his class at the University of Wyoming. He then humiliated himself by flunking his first bar exam in 1952. He hates the exams still, cursing them as a "damned, stupid bar examination that a computer grades." He bumped into a crippled man who, because of Spence's legal skill, had lost his rightful claim for damages against the drunken driver who maimed him. The man said he had no hard feelings; Spence was just doing his job. But Spence felt like a Judas. He dropped insurance defense on the spot. Since than Spence has become the insurance industry's implacable antagonist. He has stripped millions from their purses on behalf of the lame, the mangled, the deformed. Spence says 80 per cent of his trial work is done for free, financed by the huge awards he often wins, such as a $50 million-plus verdict earlier this year against a firm that refused to insure a quadriplegic. He says he spent $100,000 of his own money on the Weaver case. "The money I've made was taken away from the insurance companies. It's a great pleasure," he says. "It's like Robin Hood, who robs the rich and gives to the poor. There's nothing wrong with that, and Robin Hood always took pretty good care of himself along the way." One of the ways Spence wins cases is by bringing the jury over to his side during jury selection. He is legendary for his jury selection skills. But in federal court and some state courts, the judge picks the jury. It's mostly a quick and superficial process and Spence doesn't like it. "A lawyer ought to get to know his jurors," he says. "Even worse, when the judges choose jurors, "it's almost a delivery of the case to the government." In defense of the judges, Spence says they pick juries because "most lawyers do it so abysmally." Judges also pick juries, Spence adds, because "they think lawyers are trying to brainwash the jurors." Spence thinks this is baloney. "You can't change people, who they are, in a few hours or days of questioning. You can't remove the prejudicial cells from their minds." But if a lawyer could "it would be the right thing to do. Jurors are supposed to believe the defendant is innocent or the presumption of innocence is just so much bull." The juror "isn't supposed to go in with an open mind. He's supposed to go in with a prejudiced mind. And the defendant and innocence. It's the prejudice that is mandated by the Constitution." With the judges' connivance, "we are permitted only to have jurors who will say they are not prejudiced." It's a legal fiction, he says. "The judge knows, the jurors know, I know and the courtroom knows they believe the defendant is guilty as hell and they can't wait to hang the rotten bastard." -- Rod Anderson N0NZO | "I do not think the United States government Boulder, CO | is responsible for the fact that a bunch of [r--nd--s] at [nyx.cs.du.edu] | fanatics decided to kill themselves" satellite N0NZO on ao-16 | Slick Willie the Compassionate