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By B John Burns
September 3, 2009
Under the topic “Historical Perspective,” I received the following message from Judge Patrick Grady concerning my post yesterday about his elevation to the position of Chief Judge of the Sixth District:
Thanks for your kind words about my becoming Chief Judge. It might be interesting to note that three of the original Appellate Defenders (Doug Staskal, Scott Rosenberg and myself) are now all district judges. As you pointed out, three of the attorneys on the staff at the Linn County Public Defender at the time I was there are judges. Fae was an intern in 1989.
Finally, Judge Donna Paulsen was one of Emmanuel "Charlie" Whiteside's two trial attorneys in Linn County.
As Linn County Attorney Harold Denton, who prosecuted Whiteside, has said. "It's that sudden, uneasy realization that you are old enough to really know who's in charge." |
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The Honorable Chief Judge Patrick Grady |
By B John Burns
September 1, 2009
I remember waking up on a crisp, October morning three years ago and, not recognizing the surroundings, asking myself, “Is this heaven?”
“No,” replied the voice in the back of my head, “it’s the Sixth Judicial District of Iowa.”
That, of course, was the morning following the elevation of Judge Nancy Baumgartner, who spoke movingly and articulately at the February 24, 1993 joint hearings on the restoration of the death penalty in Iowa, to the Sixth District bench. I said it then and I say it now. The Sixth District is Iowa’s garden spot for the few remaining of us who hunger and thirst for justice. It’s a district where a public defender actually has a shot at a seat on the bench. Ask Nancy, or Amanda (now on the Court of Appeals), or Fae, or Casey, or Dave.
Well, Nancy has a new boss.
Now, if the Nancy Baumgartner in the black robe is anything like Nancy Baumgartner the public defender, I don’t envy anyone assuming the position of Chief Judge in that district. You’re an authority figure, and we all know what that means.
But the new Chief Judge of the Sixth District, effective September 15, is a career public defender himself. I don’t know if that helps him or hurts him.
After a couple years in private practice, Judge Patrick Grady was an assistant state appellate defender. I’m not sure exactly when he started, but I know when he left, because I took his spot in that office in February, 1985. From then until 1989, Pat joined the ranks of the illustrious Linn County Public Defender’s office. For the next six years, he served as a juvenile referee/associate juvenile judge before becoming a district judge in 1995.
Probably Judge Grady’s most noteworthy achievement is Whiteside v. Nix, regarding an attorney’s responsibility to inform the court when his or her client is prepared to lie on the stand. He held on to the case when he left the appellate defender’s office and took it right into the Supreme Court. I have to say that Pat ultimately was lambasted by the Supremes, but he’s one of the few attorneys we know who can say that at least they got into the game.
At least as of the time I worked there, Pat Grady had the reputation of being among the best attorneys to have practiced in the appellate defender’s office. Roxann Ryan, former chief of criminal appeals in the Attorney General’s Office, once told me that she knew when Pat had a good issue, because the argument in his brief would be one paragraph long. He’d state the question, identify the controlling authority, explain concisely how it applied, then take it home.
Congratulations to Judge Grady. |
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By B John Burns
September 1, 2009
When I joined my first band in the winter of 1975, we would practice in the evenings at the rehearsal hall of the Des Moines Musicians Union. As we arrived at about seven, an old, old man was in there playing jazz on a Fender Rhodes stage piano. The old man was bald on top, with a white beard. He wore suspenders. At that age, we didn’t listen to jazz. We shooed the old man away.
Twenty-two years later, I’d concluded my music career, and then college, and somehow I find myself chairman of Jazz in July, the annual month long festival featuring at least one jazz act at a different location each day in July. One of the acts turns out to be Stu Calhoon, the old man we’d shooed out of the Union Hall two decades earlier. He’s still alive. It turns out that Stu is a very well known, very proficient jazz player in this area. Stu not only has his act, but he’s playing as a side man for probably a half-dozen other jazz bands throughout Jazz in July. That was 1997.
So I get to know Stu a little and, with a greater appreciation for jazz than I’d had 20 years earlier, join the many others in the Des Moines area who respect him as a musician. I was chairman of Jazz in July for six years, and saw a lot of Stu Calhoon during that period.
Last year, I saw on the Jazz in July schedule that one of the shows was a special tribute to Stu Calhoon. It turns out that Stu turned 80 last year, and they were celebrating that. That’s nice, I thought.
Until I did the math.
That’s when I realized that the old, old man with the white beard and suspenders that we had to run out of the Union Hall in 1975 was SIX YEARS YOUNGER THAN I AM NOW!!
That’s my Stu Calhoon story. Stu passed away early Sunday morning. |
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By B John Burns
August 20, 2009
As you can probably surmise from the paucity of my blog entries over the last couple of months, there hasn’t been much new to write about in our area. So now for something completely different.
Most of you who know me are aware I like to think I’ve got these two careers. Next February, I’m coming up on the 25th anniversary of doing what we all do for a living. And then there’s that other thing I’ve been plugging away at now for 37 years.
Before coming in to the office in the morning and after arriving home at night, I spend several hours each day running through sets, writing new songs, scrounging for new gigs, and stoking the furnace of self-promotion. Sometimes the self-promotion machine gets to working so effectively and efficiently that I start believing it myself. That works fine until I find myself exposed to the work of other local songwriters, and discover that maybe I'm not as special as I tell people I am.
Over the past week, I purchased three CDs recorded by two Des Moines-area songwriters. I listened to each of them multiple times, and now I want YOU to listen to them, too. So, instead of writing about fresh wins and losses in the appeals courts, today I’m donning the hat of a music reviewer. |
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By B John Burns
August 7, 2009
I am just in the process right now of going through the last few opinions of the 2008 Term of the United States Supreme Court (I’ve got one more to go). Yesterday I polished off Justice Kennedy’s dissent in Melendez-Diaz v. United States. I started thinking about the email that Steve Japuntich sent to all of you, and to me, a full month ago about Melendez. Steve attached the syllabus of the decision and posed the question to all of us as to whether DCI lab reports are now fair game for Confrontation Clause objections.
I didn’t see anyone’s responses, and I don’t know how many of you have gone through and read Melendez. But it’s clear (in my mind, at least) that Melendez applies directly to DCI lab reports. In his screaming dissent, Justice Kennedy cites to all the pre-Melendez state rules concerning the admission of scientific reports, including the Iowa scheme. I don’t think there’s any question.
Then I thought back upon the first time I ever heard that there was an attorney in the Iowa public defender system named Steve Japuntich.
You all know the rest of the story. |
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Poems From Guantanamo
Published by the University of Iowa Press
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