Police

Defense Lawyer Arrested For Following Proper Procedure -- Police Lie About It

There's a lot of anger over HOW she was arrested, but there should be a lot more concern over WHY she was arrested at all.

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Or perhaps the title should say “Defence Lawyer” because this story proves that America doesn’t have a monopoly on abusing defense attorneys. Fresh off the San Francisco Police Department’s public arrest of Assistant Public Defender Jami Tillotson for the egregious act of “representing her client,” authorities in Canada made a public show of arresting a lawyer and parading her through the courthouse as an intimidation tactic to all other counsel.

And then the police lied about it. Well, until the Peel Regional Police got caught in their own lie and had to admit they made s**t up.

This is the story of Toronto lawyer Laura Liscio. Last Thursday at the courthouse, she got slapped in handcuffs while in full regalia because Canada still makes lawyers wear dumb costumes. At least it keeps the patriarchal judges from ranting about proper skirt length. But Canada takes their dress up time seriously. In fact, the Canadian coverage seems to be more outraged that the cops arrested Liscio while she was dressed up like Senator Jar Jar Binks than the fact that she was arrested at all.

And they’re not entirely wrong to be up in arms about the manner of the arrest. The flipside of forcing defense lawyers to wear a uniform is that marching one up and down the halls in handcuffs is a glaring show of intimidation to every other lawyer there. One of Canada’s top constitutional lawyers, Clayton Ruby, put it bluntly:

Peel police’s conduct was not an act of policing. It was an act of thuggery.

Meanwhile, Dudley Do-Wrong explained that Liscio was never handcuffed in her court garb and that they were shocked (shocked!) at the suggestion they would do anything of the kind. So stung by the implication were they that they went so far as to issue a public statement that, “At no time was the accused handcuffed while in her court attire.”

Yeah, that was a lie.

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“It has subsequently been determined that the information that was originally relied upon was in fact incorrect,” police said in a statement. “Peel Regional Police sincerely regrets publishing the misinformation and the impact that it has had on members of the community, members of the media and Ms. Liscio.”

But even though what she was wearing when she was arrested is important — important enough for the cops to feel they needed to lie about it — a bit more attention should be paid to the gross intimidation implicit in arresting Liscio at all.

Police charged Liscio with drug possession, trafficking, obstructing justice, and breach of trust all while standing at a courthouse security checkpoint. Accounts generally agree that Liscio showed up to court with a change of clothes for her client — presumably obtained from the client’s personal wardrobe. Not unusual. As lawyer and professor Dyanoosh Youssefi explains:

When accused persons who are detained in custody are transferred to court, they are often brought in their prison gear: their orange or blue jumpsuits. Most people don’t want to appear before a judge or jury in these jumpsuits. They want to give their evidence, their side of their story, or to listen to the evidence against them, in their own clothes. They want to be presentable. They want to feel as human beings. They don’t want to dress as if a guilty verdict has already been issued against them. This is perfectly understandable.

Well, in Liscio’s case, the clothes allegedly contained drugs. But rather than try to covertly smuggle drugs to her client by hiding them in, say, her bra, Liscio took clothes she’d been given and willingly handed them over to the police for the express purpose of screening them. Either Liscio is the dumbest person ever or she probably wasn’t trying to commit any crime here. And the police will never admit it, but even they realize it’s the latter.

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Because this isn’t about stopping cut-rate Scarface Liscio, it’s about forcing practical change to disadvantage defendants.

“We don’t assure anybody there’s no drugs or weapons in them,” [Ruby] said. “That’s why we hand it over to the jail guard. They are trained to detect those kinds of things. They are the experts, not us.”

Indeed, but what if they weren’t? Because drawn to its troubling logical conclusion, the police’s stance with Liscio is that lawyers, and not the trained guards with high-end equipment, should bear the burden of guaranteeing that clothes brought to defendants are entirely free of contraband. If there’s any risk that the lawyer is going to get tagged as a criminal for failing to detect some contraband, then they’re going to just stop bringing anything to their clients.

Then “Hello jumpsuited defendants!”

Kind of brilliant in an evil sort of way.

Peel Police admit their version of Toronto lawyer’s arrest was wrong [The Hamilton Spectator]
Why The Arrest of This Defence Lawyer Was So Wrong [HuffPo Canada]

Earlier: Lawyer Arrested For Doing Her Job

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