Dean's Court Comments Draw Fire
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Vermont--Politics and government.
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Thursday, July 31, 1997
Valley News
Dean’s Court Comments Draw Fire
Associated Press
MONTPELIER (AP) – Gov Howard Dean’s continuing criticism of judges is off the mark and reflects a lack of understanding about the court system, say several lawyers and constitutional experts.
“Dean is just ignorant. I don’t think he understands what judges ought to do,” says Micheal Mello, a Vermont Law School professor who teaches advanced courses in constitutional law. “He perceives the Supreme Court as being broken in some way and sees himself on a mission to fix it.”
“That is pure, ignorant, political demagoguery,” he said.
Dean, who has now made two appointments to the five member Supreme Court, has said the direction of the court needs to be “changed dramatically.”
“I’m looking to steer the court back towards consideration of the rights of the victims,” Dean said three weeks ago in a radio interview with Bob Kinzel of the Vermont News Service. “I’m looking to make it easier to convict guilty people and not have as many technicalities interfere with justice.”
Asked if that reflected a “get-tough-on-crime” approach, Dean responded: “My beef about the judicial system is that it does not emphasize truth and justice over lawyering. It emphasizes legal technicalities and rights of the defendants and all that.”
Such comments may play well with the general public ,but they have sent a chill through the collective spine of lawyers – particularly defense lawyers – around the state.
Throughout his six year tenure, Dean's public chiding of the judiciary has led many lawyers to question the doctor- governor's grasp of constitutional law. In their eyes, Dean views the protections contained in the Bill of Rights as mere “technicalities.”
As Mello sees it, the rights that Dean sees as “technicalities” are there to preserve the rights of all citizens, including citizens accused of crimes, to be free from government intrusion.
“These are not technicalities. In my view, any lawyer who said that would be speaking irresponsibly,” said Mello. “I am not a doctor, and I would not take it upon myself to tell Howard Dean how to practice medicine.”
“I don't think he has any regard for any process that gets in the way of what he wants to accomplish,” said Leighton Detora, a Barre, Vt., lawyer who said he was once a supporter of the governor, but is no longer.
“He’s a doctor, and as such, he has all the learned responses to the legal profession – that we are just out here and lawyer’s jobs are to make things more complicated.
“In his own arrogance, I think somehow he thinks he has a lock on truth and wisdom,” said Detora, who is president-elect of the Vermont Trial Lawyers Association. He stressed that he was speaking only on his own behalf. Defender General Robert Appel says he does not share the governor's view that the Supreme Court has gone too far in weighing a defendant's rights.
“I would say it is a fundamental difference in perspective between me and my boss,” said Appel. “I don’t think our Supreme Court or, any appellate court, lightly reverses a criminal conviction.”
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