EXTRA...

McCowen defense cost State $300,000; Penn Prof faces life in prison

TODAY's quote; "The right to the effective assistance of counsel is thus the right of the accused to require the prosecution's case to survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing. When a true adversarial criminal trial has been conducted ... the kind of testing envisioned by the Sixth Amendment has occurred. But if the process loses its character as a confrontation between adversaries, the constitutional guarantee is violated."
                                                                                    -United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 655-56 (1984)

Cape & Islands DA Michael O'Keefe says:
Twice as much goes to defend suspects than to prosecute them

The case against Christopher McCowen netted his attorney Robert George some $300,000 in taxpayer money. George confirmed that figure but declined comment.

Taxpayers are spending more than twice as much to defend murderers than to prosecute them as the budget to hire court-appointed lawyers for flat-broke suspects spirals out of control.  A Herald investigation shows half a billion taxpayer dollars have been lavished on private attorneys to defend killers, rapists and other indigent suspects over the past five years - even as worried district attorneys are slashing budgets in the face of declining state revenues.

Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, head of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said underpaid prosecutors who make "less than some janitors" in the courthouses must face private defense lawyers pulling down $100 an hour in taxpayer money for murder cases. By comparison, homicide prosecutors, the cream of the DA crop, earn an average of $38.97 per hour...

Neil Entwistle, the sex-site-surfing British husband who murdered his wife and baby girl in Hopkinton in 2006, required two taxpayer-funded attorneys. Defense lawyer Elliot Weinstein pulled in $221,000 from the CPCS the past five years and co-counsel Stephanie Page earns $99,000 annually as a CPCS staff attorney.

Stephen Maidman - who received a whopping $584,000 from the CPCS defending indigent clients in the same period - has just been assigned Entwistle’s appeal. The CPCS refused to divulge the total cost of the Entwistle case...  Herald.
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Court-appointed lawyers quick to support pricey practice
Attorneys say high-level; defense needed in this technological age

"I think Bob George was brilliant. But he didn't have to do that much work to get all that publicity." - Tony Jackett, Worthington's former lover.

Defense attorneys lament that they're vilified by the public - until people desperately need them.

Some private lawyers who pulled in hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars as court-appointed attorneys say they're regularly offered cars, boats, houses and even 401(k) accounts to represent clients who can afford their services.

But when it comes to the state work, they take what the Legislature has given them. The 3,000 or so private attorneys in the state-approved pool are paid a mandated $100 an hour for murder cases, $60 an hour for Superior Court cases and $50 an hour for district court work. "What kind of society are we going to have if you can't defend suspects as they deserve in this technological age?" asked attorney John Cunha, whose Boston firm pulled in nearly $650,000 from January 2004 to September 2008 defending the indigent... Herald.
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Ex-Penn professor admits more porn charges
Lured boy to Cape for underage sex

A former Wharton School professor pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to five child-pornography charges, including videotaping sex acts between himself and a 16-year-old Brazilian boy.

Faces at least 15 more years, could receive life in prison.

The guilty plea by Lawrence Scott Ward, 66, a former marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania school, stems from his arrest on Aug. 9, 2006, at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, where officials found DVDs and child pornography on his laptop. Ward pleaded guilty in February to trafficking in child pornography, and is serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison.  More charges were filed after federal agents investigated further.

When detained at the airport, Ward had been on his way to Sao Paulo, Brazil, known as a center of child-sex tourism, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Pornography was later found in Ward's office at the University of Pennsylvania.

...Federal prosecutors say Ward used his Wharton e-mail account from Jan. 31 to June 6, 2006, to "persuade, induce, entice and coerce" the teen to have sex with him.

According to the indictment, Ward provided gifts, housing and thousands of dollars to the teen and his destitute mother, and threatened to withdraw his support if the teen did not show Ward "love and respect, especially in bed."

In summer 2006, Ward invoked his Wharton professorship and sizable bank account to try to secure a visa for the teen, whom he wanted to visit him on Cape Cod... Philadelphia Inquirer.