Hello everyone out there,

I hope that you had a great week last week!

My week was pretty busy - lots to report here!

First off, I had my first post-graduate job interview for a superior court two-year clerkship. The judge said that she called me in because of the diversity of my resume (from teaching to recruiting to becoming a law student) and that while she isn't currently in need of a clerk (her clerk has a few more months to fulfill), she wanted me in her pipeline. The interview went very well and I feel very confident about my interview performance. I do need a job sooner than six months though, so we'll see what happens.

On another front entirely, we went to Alabama last week to interview people for our upcoming evidentiary hearing. Through this visit I learned quite a few things.

First, people can get very damaged from sitting on a jury where the crime is death penalty eligible. Consequently, their willingness to help you can be impaired. I never thought about jurors feeling guilty after sentencing a person to die and to witness it was very enlightening and quite sad.

Second, there seems to be a serious need for community-wide education about the death penalty - people are strongly wedded to their ideas and they are largely based on myths...now, if you read my entries a few months ago, I was definitely ignorant about the death penalty, so now that I know more, I recognize this sentiment is a bit judgmental. It's just very frustrating and difficult to balance respect for people's ideas (and people who you need to help you!) and the fact that their ideas are often very far from reality. Add that to all the evidentiary rules and you have a very thin line that you're balancing on.

Finally, the reason I love the coop system so much is that you really do get a feel for what you want to do (or at least, what you don't want to do) as an attorney. I have realized during this coop that if I decided somewhere down the road to practice anti-death penalty work, it would have to be at the trial level. The trial level can be fascinating - from selecting jurors to determining a defense theory. So, that's the revelation for the week.

The evidentiary hearing is next week, so hopefully there will be lots to share then!

Take care!