The Meaning of America

Friends-   How we treat juveniles in this system is as disgraceful as anything I have ever seen.

It is one thing to provide ineffective assistance of counsel to adults. It is an entirely different and more odious thing to provide ineffective assistance of counsel to Children. I will  defer to the reader to opine whether any children in Harris County were likely to have recieved ineffective assistance of counsel in 2012 based on the Auditors Statistics. I thank my colleague, lawyer and civil rights advocate Randall Kallinen, for obtaining and sharing the Auditor’s Statistics with me. The link to the statistics is below.

The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommends no more than 200 juvenile cases a year.   In 2012 the Harris County Auditors Records show that at least 5 lawyers handled over 200 juvenile appointed cases. This does not  include their other appointed cases or their retained cases.  The lawyers and their reported appointed Juvenile cases for 2012 are as follows:

Geraldo G. Acosta         284 Juvenile cases, handled in 291 days;

Jerry Michael Acosta  301 Juvenile cases

Michelle Bush              282 Juvenile cases

Oliver W.  Sprott Jr.   255  Juvenile cases

Mark A. Castillo           229  Juvenile cases

Query:  Mr. Geraldo Acosta, how do you handle 284 juvenile cases  in 291 days?  I think we all know,  but I would be happy to publish your answer.

Robb Fickman, Houston

2012 Juvenile records
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0By1E7SWXMpKnZng1QWs0OTN4ZVE/edit

Full Disclosure:  Windi Akins is one of my 8 office-mates. She was paid $64K for one case.  That was a murder case involving a  girl whose father was sexually abusing her. The child shot her father in the back. Windi worked on the case for 3 years. Motions took 2 weeks. Trial lasted 4 1/2 weeks. Windi won the case.  Windi won  HCCLA s  2012 Lawyer of the Year  Award for her outstanding work on this case.