Good News - April 2019

ENCOURAGEMENT 18 APRIL 2019 Good News • South Florida Edition "…And Justice For All" Omar Aleman Aleman & Associates Arthur Kirkland was a respected defense attorney in Baltimore; Henry T. Fleming was a District Court Judge in the same city; they disliked each other intensely. The judge customarily and arbitrarily ruled against the lawyer on shaky grounds. One day the judge was accused of brutally assaulting a young woman and incredibly asked Arthur to defend him in court. When the lawyer refused, Judge Fleming blackmailed him with information regarding a past client-confidentiality issue that would cause the disbarment of Mr. Kirkland. The judge, who admitted committing the crime to Arthur, figured that having someone who loathed him as his attorney would be beneficial during the pro- ceedings. On the day of trial, Arthur began to brilliantly prepare the defense of his client as he addressed the jury for the first time; then he unexpectedly turned to the prosecutor and yelled, "you are not going to get my client; I am going to get my client. The Honorable Henry T. Justice is a rapist and belongs in prison." The courtroom erupted as Mr. Kirkland was ousted from the premises. This is the final scene of "…And Justice For All," one of Al Pacino's best in his illustri- ous career. Sentencing I worked for the U.S. Department of Justice for 32 years, and my early rec- ollections were clouded by a system that was confused at best, complicit at worst, and which occasionally left me wondering who the "good guys" really were. In order to get the "bad guys" and bring them to "justice," we had to pre- tend to be "bad guys" ourselves, leaving too little difference between the two. In time, we settled into the belief that there are only two kinds of people...the caught and the uncaught. Working with informants, who had to be "bad guys" to gain access to the cartels, who then we tried to "bleach" in front of the jury, became common in a rather free-wheeling system. In the middle 70's, I was assigned to the El Paso District Office, where we worked many international investigations. One such case involved the seizure (Continued on page 20) Al Pacino