Monday, July 02, 2007

Honor for Cheshire

WRAL is reporting that Joe Cheshire has been elected the 33rd president of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers.

It is, somehow, fitting to see this news break today: as Mike Nifong, who represents all that attorneys should not be, officially leaves office, Cheshire, who represents all that attorneys should be, is honored by his peers.

20 comments:

MikeZPurdue said...

Professor Johnson: that was very well put!

That is great news! Joe Cheshire is an exceptionally
outstanding lawyer!

gak said...

Bravo!!!

Anonymous said...

Wait! Wait! Has anyone asked Cheshire if he's ever given a fake name to a Chinese takeout place or told a telemarketer that they had the wrong number? This man is no angel. He didn't even volunteer to pay for the education of an insane hooker. How are we to look up to this man?

Seriously, this is how some people think. We should all be very afraid.

Anonymous said...

Actually the vote was incredibly close. Cheshire won by just one vote. Unfortunately, Mike Nifong was unavailable to cast his vote, due to being disbarred and all. {sarcasm}

mac said...

Way to go, Joe!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Joe. You made North Carolina proud.

Anonymous said...

What an honor for an honorable man!

Gary Packwood said...

Joe, because of your work I understand now why many scholars see law as one of the helping profession.

I enjoy learning from you.
::
GP

Anonymous said...

He ain't no ordinary Joe!

fmfnavydoc said...

Congratulations to Mr. Cheshire on this achievement - chalk one up for the good guys!

Anonymous said...

where's Coach Koward. Broadhead's the leader of the putz's

Anonymous said...

people in the triangle area know that cheshire usually represents the rich and the guilty, like the husband killer, Ann Miller. he is no angel but is rather a highly paid liar,imo, with a lot of political pull who used his power to force an unprecedented action of the state bar during an ongoing case to persecute nifong.

Anonymous said...

"Angel?" I get tired of hearing "they weren't angels" (the Lacrosse team) and now "he is no angel" (Mr. Cheshire who did a fabulous job). When has anyone claimed anyone in this case to be an angel?

None of us are angels and we all fall short of the glory of God (I may be paraphrasing the Bible, many apologies if so). But what does that have to do with either innocence of the team or the talent of this gentleman? Give it a flippin' rest.

Anonymous said...

What people dont understand is that in the lawyer game, if you take on one noble cause, it allows you to more easily manipulate the system for your rich guilty clients. Cheshire is a master at the game. He scored big because he got to represent rich people who had a noble cause ie the Duke kids, so now all these other slime balls he represents that can pay his bill, dont effect his reputation as easily. Plus he gets paid a mint.

Its too bad he wasnt involved in this kind of case for someone who was poor, who was assumed guilty in the beginning, yet couldnt afford his fee. I wonder if he takes on such a case if the person calling for his help didnt have the Dukies money. Then his self righteous approach atleast would have seemed a little believable.

As a member of the NCATL myself, I can only laugh.

Anonymous said...

Magnifico!

I love you Joe Cheshire!

Debrah

GaryB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
GaryB said...

[deleted and re-post to edit typos]
nonymous said...
What people dont understand is that in the lawyer game, if you take on one noble cause, it allows you to more easily manipulate the system for your rich guilty clients.


But wait, he was fighting corrupt lawyers who were scapegoating white, supposedly rich kids for a supposedly noble cause.

I get your point, but I think the adversarial system works better than, I donowhat, a "noble cause" system where people would only be defend if they were ... "honorable". The adversarial system is also better I think than a system where, I donoagain, everyone no matter how rich would only get the same stock public defense.

See, I think you should be able to hire the best defense you can and they should defend you the best they can. People think Machiavelli was some evil guy, and "The Prince" an evil work. But it really is just a description of the human condition. In it, he makes what I think is a true claim: When you try to "pretend" that powerful people don't have power, all you get is hypocrisy. It is better that power has public representation in the light of day, because it will have representation, if necessary, in the dark.

You do still have the problem of justice for the poor and powerless, and I don't have a perfect answer for that beyond more transparency such as helped by community minded bloggers who at very least can expose corruption.

There are other ways perhaps to help improve public defenders. Maybe cases should go into a weighted pool (weighted by peers as to winnability) and then the public defenders who win the most and harder cases get paid proportionately more.

MikeZPurdue said...

To anonymous at 7:42: maybe Mr Cheshire
thought the boys were guilty at first, and that's
why he agreed to represent them. Then it was
kind of too late to bail out when he realized
they were innocent? :)

"persecute" nifong -- haha :) You know there
are some really good anti-psychotic medicines
available these days to help with your delusions

One of the many things I admire about Joe Cheshire
is that he was not intimidated by Nifong or
Linwood Wilson, quite the contrary. Here's
a great story:

David Evans defense attorney Brad Bannon: "Mike Nifong didn't necessarily threaten [Mr. Bannon's senior partner, Joseph Cheshire] with discipline, but on May 15 (the morning Dave was indicted), he threatened to rip his balls off in a profanity-laced tirade to Kerry Sutton. You know why he did that? Because Joe had been calling him out since Day One and had just called a press conference that Friday night to announce the results of the DNA Security tests (well, at least those we had been provided at the time). Then when Joe went to confront Nifong about the threat when he was told about it moments later, Nifong refused to come out of his office and make the threat to Joe himself."

I also love the letter that Mr Cheshire sent
to Linwood the Intimidator, after
Linwood spoke up at a press conference Joe
was running and said Ms Magnum never said
there were 5 attackers. I like to think about all
the things that got broken in Linwood's office
that day when he flew into a fit of rage for
being made to look like the idiot that he is.

Anonymous said...

I remember the Ann Miller case and trial. Sure, she was shifty and clever and able to hire the best defense she could afford. But she is sitting in jail (should be put to death, in my opinion, but that's another matter). As Dave's dad said, one is allowed to have a lawyer under our system. If you can afford a good one, then go for it. Does that make Chesire evil? I think not.

Anonymous said...

the only reason that bitch is in jail is because the wake county da dared to challenge Cheshire!! and your memory is in error; there was no Ann Miller trial! she only appeared in court once to agree to her plea deal to avoid the death penalty; there was no jury trial. Cheshire used some of the same tactics he used in the duke 3 case to he help her avoid justice for 4 years and would not let her be questioned by police, etc. i believe she only gave a deposition( sounds very familiar) and Cheshire was on TV saying to let her get on with her life and that the police and the da were harrassing this fine woman( sounds very familar!) who had lost a husband.

the da of wake county never gave up and eventually got a judge to force another defense attorney to turn over his notes from his meetings with Miller's dead co-conspirator(her lover and fellow-poisoner). Miller never spent a day in jail until those notes were turned over. she had moved out of state, remarried and had a child, etc; as Cheshire had requested, she had indeed moved on with her life. she was living scott free and Cheshire was instrumental in making this possible. it was very fitting that Cheshire had to be right there in open court when she was forced to admit giving her young husband( and AIDS researcher) the final, killing dose in the hospital.

Cheshire is not a truth teller and he has represented many other guilty people so all this "he is one of the good guys, etc" is idiotic as the man is a highly paid liar and a slease like all defense lawyers,imo. he cares nothing about victims and will do anything to "win", even slandering the black community of durham by saying they would attack jurors( this has never happened in durham and to say this was a lie!). As to who is evil and who is not, i will reference Dante, who positioned lawyers like Cheshire in the 7th circle of hell in a river of feces coming from their mouths in his immortal work "Inferno". however, that is imo( and Dante's) so feel free to place them in your own cosmology.