Monday, April 28, 2008

Send them a legal aid attorney

Mayor Bloomberg's offer to use taxpayer dollars to pay for a criminal defense lawyer for the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, and possibly for other council members, is a sharp departure from practice in Washington, where public officials who may have violated criminal statutes almost always pay for their own defense.

The federal government usually covers legal fees in civil or administrative cases, but rarely in criminal cases, a former federal prosecutor who has represented President Clinton, Senator McCain, and two former secretaries of defense, Robert Bennett, said.


Lawyers for Council Seen as a Departure

When Mr. Bennett was told that the criminal defense lawyer hired to represent Ms. Quinn, Lee Richards III, is charging $600 an hour, he said he thought that the rate was "pretty unusual."

"Normally when the government pays, there are rates that are significantly less than that," he said. Governments often pay a discounted rate when hiring private lawyers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

With the money they got from their unnecessary raises, they should be able to afford their own attorneys.

Anonymous said...

Why haven't these criminals been arrested?

Keep your eyes on the Commissar. He's deep into this crime. Why else does he want the attorneys to be paid by taxpayers?

At $600 an hour?

We owe these crooks nothing. They owe us.

Anonymous said...

I'm a proponent of folowing
ancient Islamic traditions in this case.

The penalty for a thief
is the removal of the offending hand.

In the case of city council crooks
I'd remove all appendages!