MEDIA REVIEWS

The Prosecutors

By Gary Delsohn
By Dutton/The Penguin Group
2003
384 pages
Reviewed by David V. Wilson II

The Prosecutors: A Year in the Life of a District Attorney’s Office is a new, non-fiction book designed to satisfy the public’s unceasing appetite for crime stories and courtroom drama. It is the product of a unique collaboration between the author, Gary Delsohn, senior writer for the Sacramento Bee, and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office. Delsohn spent a year with the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office beginning January 2, 2001. He was given a small office and virtually unlimited access to prosecutors, victims, defense attorneys, judges, police and witnesses.
Delsohn was witness to the behind-the-scenes efforts to prosecute such high profile cases as that of mass murderer and Ukrainian immigrant, Nikolay Soltis, who gained national notoriety for killing his wife, aunt, uncle, two cousins and his three-year-old son. Soltis managed to evade arrest for several days while there was international media attention on the manhunt. Delsohn was also present as the District Attorney’s office grappled with the case of Sara Jane Olson, former Symbionese Liberation Army member who was charged with shooting a law enforcement officer during the SLA’s crime spree. The primary witness against Olson was famed heiress, Patty Hearst. Years of public pressure resulted in the District Attorney’s office charging Olson during the year that Delsohn was behind the scenes at the District Attorney’s office.
The resulting book will have much that is familiar to prosecutors and former prosecutors. One sees the often tense relationship between law enforcement officers and the trial attorneys in a prosecutor’s office. One also sees the inevitable conflicts between prosecutors and victim witnesses. Of course, there are the inevitable conflicts with defense attorneys and the judiciary. However, there are events recounted in the book that Texas prosecutors, for example, will not recognize. Two examples are six figure salaries for prosecutors and 14-month long murder trials, where the death penalty is not at issue. Another contrast with Texas prosecution practice is that the elected District Attorney, Jan Scully, gives virtually 100 percent deference to the chief of her Homicide Division as to whether the death penalty is to be sought. In Texas, the elected official has a far greater role.
One glaring weakness in the book is its almost exclusive focus on homicide prosecution. Indeed, the book could easily be re-titled “The Homicide Prosecutors” without altering a single word of the text. Certainly, one cannot over-estimate the impact of homicide upon families and society. Nevertheless, a District Attorney’s office in a major urban area deals with a kaleidoscope of social ills, and homicides are but a scant fraction of that kaleidoscope. The book focuses exclusively on experienced career homicide prosecutors, without any focus at all on white-collar crime prosecutors, first year prosecutors or family violence prosecutors. A glimpse into the lives of any of these areas of the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office would have been equally illuminating, if not as compelling, to the average reader.
Nevertheless, anyone interested in the functioning of the criminal justice system in America will find The Prosecutors an interesting insight. Our federal system results in a slightly different approach to prosecution of crime within each jurisdiction. In a time in which our current prosecution function is in question locally, it is reassuring to see that other urban areas face the same pressures, and in many instances do not perform as well, as those men and women who toil in the criminal courts of Texas.

David V. Wilson II is a partner at Hays McConn Rice & Pickering, P.C. and a member of The Houston Lawyer editorial board.




Fighting Injustice

By Michael Tigar
American Bar Association
2002
367 pages
Reviewed by Kris Stockberger

In my first year of law school, the vocal Michael Tigar had a reputation around campus for being strategically dramatic and professionally pragmatic. In Fighting Injustice, however, the paper Tigar mixes history and amusement with quite personal anecdotes to gain the confidence, interest and compassion of his readers. The book is structured chronologically from his life as a child growing up in California through the recent past just before 9/11. He uses his own cases to exemplify the quest for justice in such areas as sexual/gender discrimination, military justice proceedings, draft board cases, death penalty and even the carefully orchestrated pomp of debates hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Fighting Injustice is the third book Tigar has authored for the American Bar Association, for which he served in various chair positions of the Litigation Section in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The book includes two important themes that have shaped Tigar’s sense of justice and have gotten him into interesting and sometimes entertaining circumstances. One important theme is the light and dark aspects of affiliating with justice-seeking groups. Tigar begins the book with a discussion about his early childhood. His father worked at various jobs that were available to an ex-military man with minimal education until he ultimately joined a workers’ union in California. His father’s connection with the union resulted in young Michael’s receiving autographed pictures of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, who were his movie heroes at the time. On one occasion, Roy Rogers came over to a table where young Michael and his father were seated to discuss hunting.
Later in life, Tigar would experience a darker side of fraternizing with justice seeking groups. Throughout college, young Tigar worked tirelessly in student body government at the University of California at Berkley to support such causes as the free speech movement in the waning days of McCarthyism, abolishment of capital punishment and racial equality. His efforts included sit-ins, picketing and boycotts of stores that refused service to African-Americans. Later in law school, Tigar successfully led a campaign to remove the loyalty oath from the California bar student application. He argued that the oath unconstitutionally restricted freedom of speech by preventing bar members to “advocate the violent overthrow of the government.” These activities later created political difficulties and pressures from the FBI and other governmental agencies when Tigar later sought employment as a law clerk to Justice Brennan of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Brennan initially promised Tigar the position, but later reneged without any explanation. These and similar experiences recounted in Fighting Injustice suggest that Tigar’s personal experiences with controversy motivated an understanding that justice seeking groups are made up of loved ones and heroes; whereas, those who execute the law can damage a person in ways that may have no practical defense or remedy.
Another important theme of Tigar’s theory of justice is his own desire for independence and control. As early as junior high school, young Tigar gained the election of student body president. Later, he practiced as an attorney for the renowned litigator Ed Williams in Washington D.C. at the Williams & Connolly law firm. Williams was famous for entertaining clients and other lawyers on any number of subjects at bars after work. Tigar, however, preferred to attend such gatherings only on occasion or when absolutely necessary. Tigar also experienced to his displeasure the leadership of Joe Califano at Williams & Connolly. Califano tended to lead the firm toward a bureaucratic practice that conflicted with Tigar’s “organized chaos” conception of litigation.
Fighting Injustice includes very few aspects that will disappoint the reader. Tigar falls short of, however, a complete development of his criticism of civil law practice. He makes a few critical remarks about the apparent importance of billable hours and the apparent bureaucratic management in civil firms, but falls short of proposing an alternative to the problems. Indeed, his criticism appears to be little more than accusing civil law firms of being motivated by money and being too efficient. His contrast of civil practice with his criminal practice, which includes approximately one-third pro bono cases, lacks a fair discussion of the different factors and incentives involved in civil and criminal practices. Although his brief criticism demonstrates perceived problems, its presentation belies a thorough understanding of the differences between the civil and criminal practices of law or a reasonable alternative.
The factors contributing to injustice in the U.S.A. in virtually every criminal law context are developed with mastery and passion in Fighting Injustice. Michael Tigar uses a writing style that entertains and educates readers without assuming legal training, while simultaneously providing gems of instruction in the art of legal advocacy.

Kris Stockberger practices with the firm of Brown Sims, P.C. and is a member of The Houston Lawyer’s editorial board.

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