By B John Burns
December 2, 2009

This guy plays golf for a living.

He doesn’t do anything else.  He doesn’t act.  He doesn’t write.  He’s not involved in politics.  He plays golf.  He’s been in the limelight for it since he was two years old.  He makes more money at it than all of us put together.  He does one thing only, and it he does it pretty well.

I haven’t heard anyone say this yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.

“Hell, if I was married to a blonde Swedish supermodel, you wouldn’t catch ME messing around with random cocktail waitresses.”

True.  But YOU’RE not Tiger Woods.

We’re already starting to hear the lament of the public mourners.  Who do my kids look up to now?  Tiger Woods was a role model for my kids.  I wanted my kids to grow up to be just like Tiger Woods.

Well, guess what.  None of YOUR kids are ever going to grow up to be Tiger Woods.  You may have a son or daughter who wins a national collegiate championship in the 10K.  That’s great.  But that’s not Tiger Woods.  Face it.

I could understand some of the public outcry about John Edwards.  The guy’s wife was fighting cancer, for God’s sake.  He was running for President, and lying to the whole country.  It raises some concerns.

But THIS guy plays golf for a living.  

I’m not a golfer, but I bought a TaylorMade r7 driver a few years back as a gift for someone who had done some good work for me.  I know how much those suckers cost.  My guess is that Tiger Woods plays with something substantially more sophisticated.  My guess is that if Tiger’s blonde Swedish supermodel wife put one of HIS clubs through the rear window of his late-model Cadillac Escalade, you can pretty much call it even.

But I’M not Tiger Woods, so I can’t say.

By B John Burns
November 20, 2009

During the day on Monday, the Des Moines criminal defense bar learned of the loss of two of our giants within hours of each other.  Before I talk about Ray Rosenberg and Terry Wright, I want to say a word about K.D. Briner.

Karl passed away about a month ago.  Like any of you who have been around a few years, I can say that Karl was a good friend of mine.  When we knew him, he was working on his second life – he had been a college English professor before turning to law.  We knew him as a tenacious but reasonable public defender before capping off his career on the First District bench.  He left about two years ago after suffering a stroke.  Karl was extremely intelligent, could go right to the heart of an issue, persistently compassionate and, most importantly, a hell of a nice guy.  I miss Karl.

Ray Rosenberg was just a couple weeks short of 88 when he passed on Sunday.  One of his sons told me the next day that it was probably the stress of the Iowa/Ohio State game that finished Ray off.  His Des Moines Register obituary contains similar tongue-in-cheek references.  

Ray’s career was waning when mine was starting up, so I didn’t know him as well as I knew the others.  During a recess in a Des Moines jury trial I was involved in a little over a decade ago, the prosecutor commented to the legendary Judge Ray Fenton that he must have seen some good trial lawyers in his day.  The one name that came out of Judge Fenton’s mouth was Ray Rosenberg’s.  In so many words, Judge Fenton described Ray in the same way everyone else characterized him.  Ray Rosenberg proved to the world (at least to the Central Iowa community of trial lawyers) that an attorney need not be a fast talker, or a long-winded one, to be an effective advocate.  

Then there was Terry Wright.  Terry Wright started out as a prosecutor, both in State and Federal Court.  But as long as I’m known him, Terry has been in the trenches with us.  Long enough, I’m sure, to have redeemed himself.  Terry was a common sense, down-home type of lawyer, who saw the humanity in his clients (as illustrated by a relatively high-profile case he had handled very recently, up until the time of his client’s suicide).

Here’s my best Terry Wright story.

About seven or eight years ago, I was down in St. Louis to argue an appeal before the Eighth Circuit.  There were six cases scheduled for argument, and mine was the last.  Terry’s was second to last.  Chief Judge Loken was on the panel.  For anyone who has ever argued a case before Judge Loken, I need to say no more.

In each of the first four arguments, the attorneys would stand up to argue their case, and Judge Loken would mow them down.  Like bowling pins.  So it was time for Terry’s argument.  

Terry took the podium, managed to utter a couple of words, and Judge Loken laid into him with a question.  Terry answered the question.  As often happens, Judge Loken fired back with pretty much the same question.  Terry gave the same answer.  Judge Loken hit him again with the same question.

Two minutes into a ten-minute argument.  Terry looked Judge Loken in the eye, and told him (in so many words), “Well, Judge, I’m not going to change my answer, and it’s clear you’re not going to accept my answer.  So I’m just going to sit down.”

And he did.

And there was this what seemed like a good five-minute silence (it was probably 20 seconds) before Judge Loken called the next case – mine.

There were no questions for me.

Terry Wright took a bullet for me in St. Louis that morning.

Thanks, Terry.

By B John Burns
November 13, 2009

On my last day of work before taking a week’s vacation, I attended last Friday the farewell party for outgoing United States Attorney Matt Whitaker.  The room was full of law enforcement and prosecutorial types, many of whom were bemoaning the Iowa Supreme Court decision that had been announced that morning in State v. Bogan.

The Court decided an issue that wasn’t even before it, a particular county attorney complained, and set out a new standard for the admissibility, under Miranda v. Arizona, of confessions by juveniles.  Neither of these criticisms is entirely accurate, although both contain strands of truth.

The holding in Bogan is that a 14-year-old student is in custody, for Miranda purposes, when he is led to the principal’s office by a detective and a uniformed police officer, after being heard to say he would not speak with anyone, to be questioned about a drive-by shooting death, where one purpose of detaining him was to keep him in custody until police could obtain an order for collection of non-testimonial identification evidence, and where the student was told to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office.

Contrary to the county attorney’s perception it wasn’t a situation where the Court was presented with a different issue, and took up the Fifth Amendment issue sua sponte.  Mr. Bogan challenged both the voluntariness of his confession and the failure to sever his case from his co-defendant’s.  The Court of Appeals ruled in his favor on the latter issue.  On further review, the Supreme Court has the authority to consider all issues raised in the appeal, not just those that form the basis of the Court of Appeals’ opinion.  Justice Wiggins did not disagree with the Court of Appeals’ finding that Mr. Bogan was prejudiced by the failure to sever.  On remand, he left it to the district court  to determine whether Mr. Bogan will be prejudiced by introduction of evidence against the co-defendant.(whose conviction had been reversed on other grounds).

By B John Burns
October 10, 2009

I was hoping I’d be wrong about this.  Unfortunately, in many cases, I wasn’t.

Notwithstanding the labels placed upon us, I’ve always believed that liberal Democrats loved the United States of America as much as anyone else.  What truly sets us apart from the societies from which  we endeavor to distinguish ourselves are things like the First Amendment and Due Process, the values that we spend much of our lives fighting for.

The other faction in our increasingly polarized society nevertheless proclaims that only THEY love America, and that WE are trying to bring it down.  We are fascists and  socialists and we hate our country.  America – love it or leave it, they used to tell us during the Viet Nam era.

So you’d think that someone who truly LOVES the United States of America, who is truly on OUR team, would feel nothing but a twinge of national pride when OUR President is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  I’ll admit I’m still working through the logic of awarding the prize to a leader who has been in power for only eight months.  But the bottom line is that Barack Obama didn’t RUN for the Nobel Peace Prize.  He didn’t ask for it.  He didn’t expect it.  Someone somewhere, people who aren’t even FROM the United States, felt that OUR leader, for whatever reason, was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

That’s a win for all of us.  And nobody died getting it.

So what kind of an ANIMAL would complain about THAT?

Rush Limbaugh.

Michael Steele.

Representative Gresham Barrett from South Carolina (whoever the Hell THAT is).