A tale of two lawyers: prosecutor versus trial lawyer

[andym]

It's not surprising that we have two lawyers as the leading candidates for the nomination. It's also not surprising that their styles reflect their law careers.

John Kerry was a prosecutor and his serious style is detail oriented as a prosecutor must be to make his case to put away a mobster. He will attack as needed.

John Edwards was a very successful civil trial lawyer, where ability to appear sympathetic and make your clients sympathetic to the jury are the real keys to success.

Both styles suit their former profession and both will make good candidates in the general election. Kerry will likely more attack Bush with details of his misdeeds, Edwards will present his case for healing a divided America. It's a matter of taste as to which one is thought be the stronger campaigner with the best chance of winning.

Neither will likely "take the country back," as Dean might have, as Nader is promising, or as Jerry Brown promised in 1992. But that does not mean that they don't represent a very positive change from *.

[Caution]

1. uh oh...the voice of reason?

I'm not sure that has any place in GD: 2004.

seriously though,
nice post.

[emulatorloo]

2. Nice analysis

You put it so succinctly and it does explain a lot about their styles and strengths.

Thanks for this post - I really enjoyed it.

[AP]

3. I have a friend who's a prosectur. His first trial was a victory -- a

conviction of a black man who was speaking up at mall. He was arrested for disorderly conduct after the mall complained to the cops that he was disrupting shoppers. His defense was that he had a first amendment right to speak out in the mall. It's private property. He lost.

My friend was proud that he won, but he felt a little sick that he gave this poor guy a criminal record in the course of protecting a big company from having their commerce momentarily disrupted. The punishment was way out of proportion with the crime. However, it's the owners of those malls who fill the campaign funds of the DAs (Dem and Republican) and they expect their interests to be protected.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

4. More: Kerry a public servant- Edwards in private practice

although to be fair, Edwards had nowhere near the money Kerry had starting out with, so the need was there for Edwards to maximize his income.

[AP]

5. Edwards clerked for Fed Gov't for two years (public servant). How long

was Kerry a prosecutor?

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. It must suck to come down on the wrong side of a case

philosophically and ethically.

[AP]

7. My friend the DA? Yeah. They're all democrats in his office, but he's

considered the communist because that case actually bothered him.

[sandnsea]

8. 5 years

1977 - 1982

He not only did a great job as a prosecutor, he also reorganized the DA office to bring in more women and also set up one of the first rape victim units in the country.

You knew that I bet. :-)

[AP]

9. I don't know many DAs who get that kind of control after only 5 years.

What was his final status when he left?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. He was ADA not at the top. nt

[Raven]

12. Kerry took over the DA"s office

from a very, very old guy whose name I can't recall but who was beloved but had become pretty incompetent. He did a very good job getting that office in shape.

[AP]

14. ADA or DA? (everyone who isn't the DA is an ADA, I presume)

Did Kerry run for DA and win? After five years as an ADA???

What's the timeline here?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

16. He was never DA.

But obviously he made the most of his role as an ADA.

[AP]

18. Is it possible that, as ADA, Kerry sat on a few committees which did the

things for which he's taking credit, but that it's overstating things to say that Kerry, as a 3rd or 4th or 5th year ADA was dramatically chaning the whole tone of the DA's office from a leadership position?

For DA's the big hurdle is moving up to felonies. However, in most offices, it's vacancies that move you up the ladder. When did Kerry start doing felonies?

[THUNDER HANDS]

11. after reading that NY Times piece on Edwards and his lawsuits against

Neonatologists, I got really turned off to his style of lawyering.

Channeling the thoughts of a dead infant?

That's just creepy, not to mention smarmy and deceitful.

I wish he would have just taken on large corporations instead of doctors.

Of course, i work for neonatologists, so I'm biased. But that story still creeps me out when I think about it.

[Raven]

13. Are you sure Edwards went after Docs?

I thought he went up against big corporations.

[AP]

15. He went after insurance companies that refused to settle these claims.

[AP]

17. That quote is straight out of Four Trials. Edwards explains that the

judge overturned the award on the basis that that argument was an appeal to emotion, which was lame. The judge did that because he was a RW'er who couldn't find any LEGITIMATE reason to reduce the award.

If Edwards weren't running for president against someone you liked more, we'd be using that as evidence of how corrupt republican-appointed judges can be in their attempts to protect big business.

I add criticism of Edwards for this quote to my list of crazy things Democrats would never say unless they were trying to invent reasons not to like Edwards.

[SangamonTaylor]

19. There was never a dead infant

get the story right please because it's deeply disturbing for you to use that phrase because the little Campbell girl survived her horrible breached vaginal delivery.

The 'channeling the thoughts' came from closing statement where Edwards was describing what was happening to a baby during delivery according to the heartbeat monitoring strip. He showed the jury where the heart beat was dropping. Where the observing nurse noticed this, where the doctor ignored this warning, and finally where the infants' brain began to give out because of lack of oxygen.

While the nurse stood watching a heart monitor drop for hours, she was afraid to go against the delivering doctor and ask for a second opinion from the supervising doctor.