John Flannery II

IN RESPONSE - I am not concerned with "enrichment." If i were, I would have chosen business or a very different kind of litigation practice when I was much younger. I have always wanted to make a difference for the better. My career from beginning to end, for more than 40 years, has preferred public service over private "enrichment" as a federal appellate law clerk in the 2nd circuit, as a ny federal prosecutor, as a Capitol Hill adviser, as special counsel to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, appted by both parties, and I have done much more. I have no regrets and my path has allowed me to see opportunities some other counsel miss. I work for the client in very difficult cases. I can do that because I care deeply about the people I represent. I have also spent thousands of hours representing individuals who could not afford counsel. I saved the life of a man from execution, and that case took 2000 hours; I was paid $10 to seal the representation. I worked to unseat a bigoted representative from office; I was paid nothing. In the 15 months we have handled this case, that is characterized as "disappointment," I was the third counsel in the case, each of the two attorneys before I came into the case were fired. Each former counsel was told they were incompetent and no good. I can't say if any disparaging remarks were made public about them. In this case, I was confronted with a victim who claimed she had suffered a terrible sexual assault and she created an incriminating taped conversations of what the Accused, my client, said on that tape. Incidentally, this unflattering review of my work was not made by the person whom I actually represented, the Accused. It was made by the family. In this case, I had no authority to agree to any confinement, no sentence that involved custody, as part of any plea agreement I could convince the State was right and just. I thus conducted an aggressive motion practice to attack the case. While there are things I can't discuss, there is plenty I can say, because it can be found in my motions in the public record. I filed motions attacking the credibility and motives of the alleged "victim," and the legitimacy of the recording she made. I didn't just rely on what the prosecution gave us. We interviewed witnesses. Our aggressive discovery practices uncovered the fact that the "victim" had released only part of the text messages she had on her cell phone and, when we convinced the court to examine her cell phone, she said it had been destroyed. We charged she should be held in contempt. We won the right for a hearing that was repeatedly adjourned by the court or the state counsel for months and months, although we arranged to appear and to subpoena witnesses on each of the several occasions. It appeared in early January 2017 that we were finally going to have that hearing. Not the client, the Accused I represented, but his family insisted I withdraw, making yours truly the third attorney that they got rid of. In this attack on my practice, it is said that "countless" attorneys questioned my work. Really? Not one of them has ever called to tell me what they thought was "wrong: with my representation. I doubt that there were "countless" attorneys because "countless" really means something like infinite. I have not been asked to forward any of our pleadings to any other attorneys to judge our work and comment on what we did. I was solicited to handle this challenging case because the local counsel, I was told, couldn't do what I do. I do not believe my approach to cases, criminal and civil, is unique. Its experience, and hard work, and an effort to achieve what is best for the client. We did that while we represented the client. I have always believed that a defense counsel in a criminal case is liberty's last champion. that was my model in the handling of this case, to champion my client.