Issue 330
April 1, 2005
v Johnnie
Cochran, the Attorney On the People’s Defense Team by Kevin Merida v DNA
tests give hope to convict in 1992 murder by Maurice Possley v Autopsy
samples review ordered by Harold Levy v At
Jackson Trial Psychologist Testifies Briefly About Interview by Charlie LeDuff v Kirkland
firm fired before big trial by Ameet Sachdev v Jury
Finds Bias in Firings of Whites by The Associated Press
The following article appeared on washingtonpost.com on
March 31, 2005:
Johnnie
Cochran, the Attorney On the People's Defense Team
By Kevin
Merida
Washington
Post Staff Writer
What I
remember about Johnnie Cochran has nothing to do with O.J.
It has
nothing to do with Johnnie's oratorical skills or his panache, though I have
never seen another human being so confidently wear an eggplant suit.
The Johnnie
Cochran frozen in my mind was riding up an escalator in a Dallas hotel four
years ago, and I was trailing him to get an interview for a magazine piece on
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Johnnie was happy to oblige, but I was
not the only one who wanted something from him.
I was joined
on that escalator by autograph seekers and picture takers, whose ranks were
even thicker at the top of the landing. They had spotted Johnnie from a
distance and were waiting for him, pens out, Kodak disposables ready to snap.
The knot of Johnnie-followers quickly swelled. Some had business offers. Some
wanted a job in his firm. Others recounted a horrible injustice done to a
relative that could be rectified by only one man, arguably the most famous
criminal defense lawyer in America. One guy simply wanted Johnnie to read his
poetry.
I took in
this display with wonderment, Cochran's skill at handling his renown like it
was a glass of water -- and tap water at that. He handed out business cards,
told someone to jot down a number, promised a meal next time he was in town.
The big shots and the little shots got equal attention, nobody left out or left
behind. And then finally Johnnie grabbed my arm, ushering me to a quiet patch
of carpet behind a pillar, where he hoped we could escape the attention and I
could do the interview. It took half an hour to get to this point, but the
moment didn't last long, as the Cochran herd located their man again.
It was a
small exercise in observing an outsize American character who retained his
authenticity. In the fab-fab world of inflated celebrity, the famous often give
very little of themselves to those who adore them. Athletes and entertainers
routinely sign their names without even making eye contact, and politicians
often appear to be searching for someone more important to talk to. Cochran
talked to, took time for, everyone. He was a cheerleader for his craft, the
Dick Vitale of the legal profession.
True, we
were at the annual convention of the National Bar Association, the nation's
preeminent organization of black lawyers and judges. But the gawking and
giddiness over his presence went well beyond the gathering. A white woman from
the Midwest, on vacation with her family, practically screeched upon coming within
fainting range of the smooth attorney. "Oh, my God, that's Johnnie
Cochran, isn't it? Oh my God. I just want to meet you."
And so
Johnnie introduced himself to the woman and her family, and posed for photos.
Cochran
could turn on the charm like crazy. He could make you rethink something you
thought you knew. He practiced his principles, one of which was emblazoned on
T-shirts for his employees: "Injustice anywhere is injustice
everywhere." When he took the case of Reginald Denny, the white truck driver
dragged from his cab and beaten by black assailants during the Los Angeles
riots, some thought Johnnie had lost it. Was he actually going to represent a
white guy against the brothers? Even in his own firm, lawyers tried to talk him
out of the case. But Johnnie had it all figured out as he filed a $40 million
suit against the city: He argued that Denny's civil rights were violated
because the cops had deserted the predominantly black neighborhood during the
riots and thus had failed to come to Denny's rescue. The suit was eventually
dismissed, but in the name of Denny, he had waged a campaign for better police
protection for that neighborhood.
Harvard Law
professor Charles Ogletree, who considered Cochran a close friend and mentor,
hopes to preserve a legacy for Cochran that transcends his celebrity work for
O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson, Jim Brown and Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs.
"He was
willing to fight for the underdog to achieve social justice and equality,
particularly when it came to police brutality and excessive use of force,"
says Ogletree. "The reason an O.J. Simpson would even know about Johnnie
Cochran," Ogletree adds, "was because he was successful for 25 years
before the Simpson case was even on the radar. That is the Johnnie Cochran I
hope that people will remember."
They
could've formed a line from the Capitol to Washington Monument yesterday, black
luminaries with thoughts on Cochran. They hailed from the spheres of civil
rights and entertainment, from law and politics. Some were community activists
and street preachers; almost anyone Cochran had touched had something to say.
The call-in lines on black radio talk shows were jammed. Cochran's death at 67
on Tuesday from an inoperable brain tumor had caught a whole lot of folks by
surprise. Of course the newspapers all used the well-worn catchphrase from
Cochran's O.J. defense -- "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." New
York's Daily News plastered that gem on its cover. But for those who knew him,
Johnnie's gifts went beyond glove gambits in open court.
"He
became a national frame of reference for the dispossessed," proclaimed
Jesse Jackson, who noted that some of Cochran's cases never actually had to be
fought. "The idea that you could call Johnnie, or 'Johnnie is coming to
town,' made corporations and violators shake."
Many don't
know that after several lucrative years in private practice, Cochran joined the
Los Angeles County prosecutor's office for a few years. He took a cut in pay
and figured he could help change the system. But on a Saturday afternoon in
1979, as he was driving his Rolls-Royce down Sunset Boulevard -- two of his
children in the back seat -- he was pulled over by police.
"Get
out with your hands up!" Cochran heard an officer scream through a
bullhorn.
The cops had
their guns drawn. Cochran's children were crying. The officers searched the
car, rummaging through the Euro-style leather clutch he always carried. And,
voila, they found his badge from the district attorney's office.
"It was
dehumanizing," Cochran recounted to The Washington Post in 1994. But he
never filed a complaint and never demanded an official apology. What he did, in
his own shrewd way, was to tell the story over and over and over again. It
became a signature Cochran anecdote, forever memorialized in magazines and
newspapers across the land. The point: Even a black man with a Rolls-Royce and
his own initials on his plates can be stopped by police and treated like a
criminal.
Some would
argue that Cochran baldly injected race into cases, that he exploited race in
his practice of the law. And yet he was often a more subtle negotiator than he
was given credit for. He also was someone who never felt the need to apologize
for being black.
When we
finally did grab some time in that Dallas hotel in 2001, Johnnie said something
to me that explained a lot about himself and how he wished to be viewed:
"I don't care who you are, you want to be regarded well at home. If you're
from our community and you've done nothing to uplift your people, I don't know
how happy you could be."
Make no
mistake, Johnnie Cochran must have been a happy man. A very happy man.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on chicagotribune.com on March 26, 2005:
DNA
tests give hope to convict in 1992 murder
by Maurice
Possley
Tribune staff
reporter
DNA tests on
evidence from the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan
have excluded the man who authorities say confessed and is serving a life
prison sentence for the crime, according to his lawyers.
Juan Rivera,
32, was notified of the test results by telephone Thursday night at Stateville
Correctional Center. Rivera wept when he heard the news, said Jane Raley, a
senior staff attorney at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern
University School of Law.
"He had
been calling me for the results," Raley said. "That alone told me he
was innocent."
Raley said a
motion for a new trial for Rivera based on the evidence would be filed next
month. She said she hopes the motion will be granted and that Lake County prosecutors
will drop the charges so that Rivera can be freed.
"The
state's attorney's office has been very cooperative," Raley said.
"They could have objected to my motion for testing, but they have not been
obstructionists at all. And I am confident they will do the right thing."
The murder
of Holly Staker, killed as she baby-sat a neighbor's two children, was one of
Lake County's most notorious crimes. It sent spasms of fear through Waukegan
because of its vicious nature and prompted many parents to rethink whether to
allow their daughters to baby-sit.
Lake County
authorities will be asked by defense lawyers to submit the unidentified genetic
profile to the FBI's national DNA database. It contains profiles of 2.1 million
convicted offenders as well as nearly 100,000 genetic profiles from evidence in
unsolved cases.
Michael
Mermel, a Lake County assistant state's attorney who is handling the case, said
Friday that sending the profile to the database "should be done no matter
what." Mermel declined further comment, saying he was waiting for a final
review of Blake's work by the Illinois State Police crime lab.
If released,
Rivera would be the 160th DNA exoneration in the nation and the 28th in
Illinois. His lawyers say this shows the case to be yet another example of a
false confession coerced from a person of lower intelligence as well as an
example of the dangers of accepting testimony from a jailhouse snitch.
Rivera's
parents, Juan Sr. and Carmen, said they were pleased to hear the test results.
"We always believed he was innocent," his father said. "I have
been waiting for the tests to come back."
On Aug. 17,
1992, Holly was baby-sitting a 5-year-old boy and his 2 1/2-year-old sister in
an apartment three blocks from where she lived with her family, including her
identical twin sister.
After eating
pizza, the boy went out to play. At 8 p.m., when a neighbor noticed he was
still outside, the boy said he was locked out.
The neighbor
took the boy to his mother at her job at a nearby tavern. The mother, Dawn
Engelbrecht, called her home but got no answer. Engelbrecht contacted Holly's
mother, and the two of them went to the apartment, where they found the 2
1/2-year-old girl unharmed.
Stabbed 27
times
Holly was
dead in a bedroom. She had been stabbed 27 times and was raped as she was
dying, according to medical evidence presented at the trial.
In the days
after the crime, Rivera was jailed on an unrelated burglary charge. Another
inmate told authorities that Rivera told him he knew who had killed Holly. Police
focused on Rivera, then just a few days short of his 20th birthday.
On Oct. 27,
1992, Rivera was taken to John E. Reid & Associates, Inc., in Chicago, a
company that has refined interrogation techniques for more than 50 years. The
company says that its techniques are "the most widely used approach to
question subjects in the world."
Ultimately,
Rivera signed two confessions to the crimes. He later testified at a pretrial
hearing that he was coerced into confessing and had nothing to do with the crime.
Even before
his trial began, the case took a controversial turn. Police reports filed in
court said that a Waukegan gang member allegedly had bragged to several friends
that he killed Holly during an LSD-induced fury because she denied him sex. The
documents said the man told an informant three days after the murder that he
had committed the crime.
Law
enforcement sources said at the time that the man was 23 years old, knew Holly
and lived on Waukegan's near north side, the same area where Holly was killed.
According to sources at the time, police interviewed the man but said they
found no reason to suspect him in the slaying.
Rivera was
convicted the first time in 1993 largely on the basis of his alleged confession
as well as another prison inmate who said Rivera had confessed to him while
awaiting trial. Rivera was sentenced to life in prison.
That
sentence and the conviction were set aside in 1996 by the Illinois Appellate
Court, which ruled the judge in the case had made errors.
At Rivera's
second trial, defense attorney Patrick Tuite told the jury that the alleged
confession was patently unbelievable. He said it was as worthless as if someone
had come to the FBI in 1963 and said he had killed President John Kennedy by
"standing behind a tree with a bow and arrow."
Rivera was
convicted at the 1998 retrial and given a life sentence by Lake County Circuit
Judge Christopher Starck, who said the case was "of uncommon savagery and
unspeakable brutality."
At the time
of Rivera's second trial, state crime lab analysts said DNA tests were
inconclusive. Since then, scientific testing procedures have improved.
The latest
tests were performed by DNA expert Ed Blake at Forensic Science Associates in
Richmond, Calif. Blake is renowned as one of the best at isolating DNA.
Blake's
report, obtained by the Tribune, states that he was able to locate 400 sperm
from the empty vial that contained at one time vaginal swabs taken from the
victim as well as 20 sperm on a stick that was part of a swab.
Another
man's DNA
From the
sperm, Blake was able to find a genetic profile of a male that is different
from Rivera's genetic profile.
Henry
Lazzaro, one of Rivera's defense lawyers at trial, said Friday, "That is
an outstanding piece of news. I've contended 12 1/2 years that Juan is
innocent. Hopefully, this gets the job done, and the state's attorney's office
will finally admit they made a mistake."
Now an
administrative judge for the U.S. Department of Defense in Maryland, Lazzaro
added, "He has wasted a whole bunch of years in jail for something he
didn't do. I will be extremely thankful that this will work out for Juan to
return to freedom."
Engelbrecht,
whose children Holly was baby-sitting, had initially told police after Rivera
was arrested that he had approached her outside her apartment on the night of
the crime and asked, "What's happening?"
She later
recanted that identification, however, and said she believed Rivera was not
Holly's killer. On Friday, in an interview, Engelbrecht said, "I've gone
through hell for believing it wasn't him. Thank goodness someone had the
foresight to save the evidence."
She said her
belief in Rivera's innocence was "going on a gut feeling and blind faith.
Now, I feel relieved. When it's all said and done, you have to turn it over to
God and go on faith."
Efforts to
reach Holly's mother were unsuccessful.
* * * * *
Autopsy
samples review ordered
by Harold
Levy
Chief
Coroner Barry McLellan has ordered an unprecedented sweeping review of all
exhibits from autopsies conducted at the Hospital for Sick Children since 1991,
in cases involving homicides and suspicious deaths of children.
McLellan
announced the review yesterday after the Toronto Star reported that Dr. Charles
Smith, a veteran pathologist at the hospital, had lost tissue samples that
lawyers say could help exonerate a man convicted in 1994 of murdering a
four-year-old girl.
The story
also revealed that before December 2004, the hospital's pediatric forensic
pathology unit - the largest facility
in Ontario where autopsies are performed on children - had no system for
keeping track of the hundreds of exhibits resulting from autopsies at the
hospital or sent for evaluation over the years.
Smith, who
did not return calls to his office yesterday, works in the hospital's pathology
division but is no longer a member of the five-person pediatric forensic
pathology unit that conducts autopsies for the coroner's office.
McLellan
told the Star that after discussion with the hospital about the missing samples
(known as "tissue blocks") in the William Mullins-Johnson case, he
ordered the review "to ensure that all tissue blocks and any other tissues
taken at the time of the autopsy can be accounted for."
McLellan
stressed that the review of the autopsies was not to determine whether the
conclusions were correct - for example whether the death was a homicide or
natural.
Instead, the
review's purpose is to determine that all the exhibits removed from the body,
such as tissue samples, had been accounted for, he said.
"This
is a very important matter for the coroner's office.
"We
will put whatever resources are necessary into completing this audit as soon as
possible."
McLellan
also said he would personally conduct the review along with Dr. Glenn Taylor,
head of the hospital's pathology division.
Taylor said
that about 15 of about 150 autopsies referred to the hospital's pediatric
forensic pathology unit each year involve homicides or suspicious
circumstances, and that each autopsy can yield about 60 exhibits that can be
used for testing.
The unit was
established in 1991.
Taylor
declined to discuss his personal feelings about the probe or indicate how his
staff felt about it.
"There
are always consequences to these kinds of things," he said.
"The
pediatric pathology unit is under the authority of the chief coroner's
office," Taylor said.
"We are
obliged to assist (in the review) and will do that as best as we can."
Leo Adler, a
Toronto criminal defence lawyer who is a member of the Canadian Forensic
Society, commended McLellan for his quick response.
"It is
highly unusual for a chief coroner to order a probe that would include
autopsies performed by all of the pathologists in a forensic unit over such a
lengthy period of time," he said.
McLellan's
decision was also welcomed by lawyer Cindy Wasser, a director of the
Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, which was seeking the missing
tissue samples on behalf of Mullins-Johnson, who has been in a penitentiary for
12 years.
Mullins-Johnson,
then 24, was convicted in 1994 after a 2 1/2-week trial in Sault Ste. Marie,
throughout which he protested his innocence.
The jury
heard evidence that he babysat his niece Valin and her 3-year-old brother from
7:30 to 9:30 p.m. on June 26, 1993.
When the
girl's mother returned home, she did not check on her daughter.
At 7 a.m.
the next day, she found Valin dead in bed. The jury heard that a local
pathologist performed an autopsy on Valin. Then, "consultation
reports" were sought from Smith and four other specialists, based on
tissue samples and other evidence from the autopsy.
Smith was
the only consultant to conclude that Valin was sexually assaulted at the time
of death.
That
contradicted the defence's argument that Valin, who had a history of vomiting
in bed, might have died of natural causes.
Since the
jury was required to find that there had been a sexual assault in order to
return a verdict of first-degree murder, Smith's view carried the jury.
The Ontario
Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in 1996, although one of the three
justices argued that the trial judge should have alerted the jury to reasonable
doubt raised by conflicting expert testimony.
The Supreme
Court dismissed an appeal in 1998.
The defence
association believes the missing samples could determine key issues in the
Mullins-Johnson case - including whether Valin might actually have died a
natural death.
But McLellan
told the Star the tissue can't be produced because Smith, who was given the
evidence by the pathologist who did the autopsy, can't find it.
"This
is absolutely the correct first step to take, and I applaud Dr. McLellan for
taking it," Wasser said.
"This
will ensure that the hospital has possession of all necessary (forensic)
materials for all other cases, should a review in the nature of Mullins-Johnson
be required in the future.
"The
review will only ensure the material is present - it will not be a review of
Dr. Smith's opinions," Wasser said. "All of his opinions in all of
his cases must be reviewed in the interests of justice."
Smith's work
has come under fire in several high-profile cases across Ontario where mothers
were accused of killing their own children on the basis of his opinions - but
later cleared.
In one case,
prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Louise Reynolds, of Kingston, who
had been accused of stabbing her seven-year-old daughter to death, after other
experts contradicted Smith's findings and concluded the girl was mauled to death
by a pit bull.
Reynolds
served almost two years in pre-trial custody plus time in a halfway house and
was forced to put up another child for adoption before the charge was dropped.
The child was later returned to her.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on nytimes.com on March 31,2 005:
At
Jackson Trial Psychologist Testifies Briefly About Interview
by Charlie
LeDuff
SANTA MARIA,
Calif., March 30 - Testimony in the child molesting trial of Michael Jackson
took an odd twist on Wednesday because of what was not said.
The
psychologist who had first interviewed Mr. Jackson's teenage accuser and who
was widely expected to detail what the boy had told him about Mr. Jackson was
called to the stand by prosecutors. But the public heard no prurient nuggets,
as prosecutors conducted a remarkably brief questioning of the psychologist,
Dr. Stanley J. Katz.
What did
emerge, however, was the contorted way in which Mr. Jackson came to find
himself seated in court, clinging not only to his battered celebrity, but also
to his freedom.
Dr. Katz was
not asked, and so did not offer, any fresh or corroborating elements to the
boy's three days of testimony. The senior deputy district attorney of Santa
Barbara County, Ron Zonen, limited his questions to about three minutes about
interviewing the family and in doing so avoided inconsistencies and lost
recollections that plagued the testimony of the boy, now 15.
Nevertheless,
Mr. Jackson's lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., tried gamely. He suggested that
Dr. Katz was involved in a well-planned shakedown of his client. He pointed out
that Dr. Katz had worked before with the boy's lawyer, Larry Feldman, on
another sex case against Mr. Jackson.
In 1993, Mr.
Feldman represented a 13-year-old who said Mr. Jackson had molested him. The
boy received a $20 million settlement with the caveat that he remain silent.
Mr. Jackson was never charged in that case.
It became
clear as the morning wore on that the current case made its way to trial only
after a circuitous journey. In early 2003, after a documentary featuring the
boy holding Mr. Jackson's hand had been broadcast, the boy's mother spoke with
the owner of a comedy club, Jamie Masada, who had befriended the family. Mr.
Masada put her in touch with his lawyer, Bill Dickerman. Mr. Dickerman put her
in touch with Mr. Feldman in exchange for a percentage of any money that Mr.
Feldman might gain in a civil suit against the singer in connection with the
boy.
Mr. Feldman
then contacted Dr. Katz. The doctor said he conducted two cursory mental
examinations of the boy, each an hour long, for which he was paid $300 an hour.
In June, the
doctor and the lawyer, went to Los Angeles County child welfare investigators
with their complaint. Investigators refused to take an abuse report because the
boy was not considered in immediate danger.
It was then
that Mr. Feldman contacted the Santa Barbara police.
Dr. Katz
also admitted that he had discussed his testimony not only with Mr. Feldman on
Tuesday to "refresh our memories about things," but had also received
from Mr. Zonen a transcript of statements he gave to detectives. Those
transcripts had notes written by Mr. Zonen.
As Mr.
Jackson sat motionless, his lawyer painted Dr. Katz as a self-promoter and a
gun for hire. Dr. Katz has worked on more than 1,000 abuse cases, including
current work against the Roman Catholic Church, and he has a syndicated
television program.
He was
director of training and professional education at the Children's Institute
International in Los Angeles, the agency that gave diagnoses for 360 children
that they had been sexually abused at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach
in 1983. In what became the longest, most expensive trial in Los Angeles County
history, no one was convicted.
"Have
you ever had false claims of molestation in children over the age of 6?"
Mr. Mesereau asked.
The doctor
waffled and said his book "The Co-dependency Conspiracy" was
available on Amazon.com.
Earlier
Wednesday, there was laughter. Cynthia Bell, a flight attendant on a flight
that Mr. Jackson took with the boy from Miami to Santa Barbara, said she did
not see Mr. Jackson ply the 13-year-old with wine, as the prosecution contends.
"Were
they cuddling?" Gordon Auchincloss, a senior deputy district attorney,
asked.
"I
wouldn't say cuddling," Ms. Bell said. "He had his arm around
him."
"How do
you define cuddling?" the prosecutor asked.
She giggled.
"I guess I'd have to show you."
The
prosecutor said: "Permission to approach the witness, Your Honor."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on chicagotribune.com on March 25, 2005:
Kirkland
firm fired before big trial
Client hit
for failure to supply documents
By Ameet
Sachdev
Tribune
staff reporter
Prominent
Chicago law firm Kirkland & Ellis is fighting for its reputation after one
of its high-profile clients fired the firm and threatened it with a malpractice
action just days before a high-stakes trial was supposed to begin.
New York
investment bank Morgan Stanley removed Kirkland this week as its main law firm
in a dispute with New York financier Ronald Perelman, who is chairman of
cosmetics giant Revlon Inc. The dismissal came after the Florida judge in the
case slammed Morgan Stanley for failing to turn over documents to Perelman's
legal team.
The move is
embarrassing for Kirkland, one of the country's biggest law firms, on several
fronts. Law firms are rarely dismissed so close to trial, legal experts said,
so the firing suggests that Kirkland may have acted unethically.
Moreover, it
is extraordinary for a prominent client such as Morgan Stanley to publicly
reprimand a longtime trusted legal adviser. Morgan Stanley's top lawyer, Don Kempf,
is a former Kirkland partner who has a conference room named after him at the
firm's headquarters in the Aon Center.
"It's
an awful situation on the eve of trial in a big case to be in that kind of
public dispute with your client," said Robert Burns, a Northwestern
University law professor who teaches ethics.
He added
that Kirkland has to worry how the conflict will affect other clients.
"Kirkland is in a difficult position because it values its reputation as
hard-nosed, tough litigators, but it doesn't want the reputation of being
cowboys," Burns said.
A Kirkland
spokesman said the firm has received calls of support from clients, but he
declined to comment on the Morgan Stanley matter, citing "ethical
obligations to our client." He added that the firm "takes its ethical
obligations seriously and has worked hard to earn its reputation for
representing clients effectively and ethically."
A Morgan
Stanley spokesman declined to comment on the company's relationship with
Kirkland. A person close to the company said it is unlikely that Kirkland will
be removed from other legal matters in which it represents Morgan Stanley.
Perelman is
suing Morgan Stanley for $2.7 billion in damages related to alleged accounting
misdeeds at appliance maker Sunbeam Corp., one of the bank's investment
clients.
In 1998
Perelman sold his majority stake in Coleman Inc., a manufacturer of camping
gear, to Sunbeam for $1.5 billion, including $680 million in Sunbeam stock.
Sunbeam later filed for bankruptcy when accounting fraud was discovered,
leaving its stock worthless. Perelman alleges that Morgan Stanley knew or
should have known about the financial wrongdoing.
Morgan
Stanley has denied that it misled Perelman.
Perelman's
legal team, co-led by Chicago attorney Jerold Solovy, chairman of Jenner &
Block, has sought access to Morgan Stanley's internal files, including e-mails.
Morgan Stanley has been "grossly negligent" in producing the
documents, Florida state court Judge Elizabeth Maass ruled this month.
As
punishment, the judge ordered that Morgan Stanley would have to prove during
the jury trial that it did not conspire with Sunbeam to defraud Perelman.
Normally, the burden of proof falls on the party bringing the suit. The trial
was scheduled to begin next week.
Earlier this
week Morgan Stanley asked the judge for six more months to prepare for trial
because it was dropping Kirkland. In its request the company said that
"the court has lost all confidence in any statement or representation made
by primary trial counsel."
Judge Maass
postponed the trial for one week. Morgan Stanley has other lawyers involved in
the case, but declined to comment on whether it would hire another lead
counsel.
In an
interview Thursday Solovy suggested that Kirkland's firing was part of a legal
strategy to blame the law firm for Morgan Stanley's misconduct and delay the
trial.
"I
think Kirkland got hurt in that bargain," he said. "But that's their
problem, not mine."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on nytimes.com on March 31, 2005:
Jury
Finds Bias in Firings of Whites
By The
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS,
March 30 (AP) - A federal jury ruled on Wednesday that New Orleans's first black district attorney
discriminated against 43 whites when he fired them all at once upon taking
office in 2003 and replaced them with blacks.
The fired
employees were awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and
damages.
The jury of
eight whites and two blacks returned the unanimous verdict in the third day of
deliberations in the racial discrimination case against the district attorney,
Eddie Jordan.
Eight days
after taking office, Mr. Jordan fired 53 of 77 white nonlawyers in his office -
investigators, clerks, child-support enforcement workers and the like - and
replaced them with blacks.
Months
later, most of the whites sued him, and the federal Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission later made a preliminary finding that Mr. Jordan had
been racially biased.
Mr. Jordan
has acknowledged that he wanted to make the office more reflective of the
city's racial makeup, but he denied that he had fired whites just because of
their race. In fact, he said, he had not known the race of the people fired.
Judge
Stanwood Duval of Federal District Court instructed the jurors to find Mr.
Jordan liable if they concluded that the firings had been racially motivated.
The law bars the mass firing of a specific group, even if the intent is to
create diversity.
Mr. Jordan
said he would appeal.
* * * * *