Being Oscar Read Online Free PDF

distraught. He told the police he was the driver. He was arrested and charged with manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident.
    His family posted bail and hired me to defend him. I was able to get the manslaughter charge dismissed. It was dark, and the woman clearly stepped out in front of him. It was tragic, but it was an accident.
    To his credit, Dino told me not to contest the leaving the scene of an accident charge. He did that, he said. There was no disputing that fact.
    In Nevada, a victim’s family is permitted to address the judge at sentencing. When we went to court, the elderly woman’s family packed the courtroom. In all my years of practicing law, that hearing might have been my most harrowing experience. One family member after another got up to address the judge. They all told the same story. The woman had been a Holocaust survivor. The victim’s daughter was shouting and crying, pointing at Dino, who sat at the defense table with his head in his hands.
    “He did what Hitler couldn’t do!” the woman screamed. “My mother was in Auschwitz. The Nazis tattooed her. Hitler couldn’t kill her.”
    Then she pointed at Dino and said, “But he did. Put him away forever.”
    A chill went through me. My knees were buckling. Part of it may have been the memories of that case my father defended. But part of it was also my concern that justice might be distorted by emotion. Dino didn’t deserve jail time. It was an accident. He was a kid who momentarily panicked, but who ultimately did the right thing and was ready to take his punishment. But not this.
    I started to make an argument, but Judge Tom Foley, who later became a good friend, stopped me.
    “I know how the family must feel,” he said to everyone in the courtroom, “but if ever there was an accident, this was it.”
    He said Dino’s action in coming back to the scene showed that he had a conscience. And he said prison wasn’t the answer. Probation, he said, was designed for cases like this, and that is what he imposed.
    The judge said he knew that the thought of having caused someone’s death, even accidentally, was something that Dino would have to live with for the rest of his life. That, Judge Foley said, was punishment enough.
    I thought of my father and his case. In both instances, I believe, justice was served. That’s what being a lawyer and being part of the legal system is all about. I’ve had many other bigger, high-profile cases, but probably none were more important in demonstrating how important our legal system is, and what it means to be a part of it.

    My first law office was over a flower shop at Las Vegas Boulevard and Bridger, and as soon as I hung out my shingle, I started earning a living. In the beginning I didn’t have any big cases, but to me and my clients, they were all important. Every day was a learning experience. People watch television and think that’s the way it happens in the courtroom: Perry Mason and Law and Order are the common perception of the criminal justice system. They think that cases get presented in a neat and orderly fashion, and then the jury comes back with a verdict. Maybe sometimes there’s a dramatic confession, and then the innocent person goes free.
    It’s a lot more complicated than that.
    Sometimes you practice law the way they teach it in the textbooks. Sometimes you practice law with a baseball bat. I learned that difference in the beginning of my career. I was court-appointed to represent Lewis “Brown” Crockett, a black man and a suspected drug dealer accused of killing a guy who was going to testify against him in a narcotics case.
    I never asked my clients if they were guilty or innocent. Most of the time they wouldn’t know the answer anyway. The law is both art and science. For instance, imagine that you get home from work one day and your front door has been jimmied open, your house has been ransacked, and you’re missing a lot of valuables.
    The first thing you do is