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The Constitution's Sixth Amendment and its appellate interpretations provide for effective assistance of counsel against criminal prosecutions, regardless of the defendant's ability to pay. Virginia's public defender system delivers beneficial service, but is broken when it comes to the significant percentage of court-appointed private-practicing lawyers, who are ordinarily paid too little to give full meaning to the Sixth Amendment, leaving a devotion to clients and not pay as the motivator for delivering quality defense to indigent defendants. 

Former decades-long chief public defender lawyer (at the local and then state level) David Johnson for the past several years has been a law professor at the University of Richmond. In this Beat the Prosecution episode with Fairfax, Virginia, criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Katz, Dave tells it like it is, from how he provided great service to his clients (and then became a law professor) despite his far from stellar academic performance, to how nothing leads to beneficial settlement negotiations like being known to perform successfully at trial, and how to deal with challenging judges, hostile cross examinees, and prosecutors who do not agree to sensible plea deals. 

Dave also discusses the importance for law students to obtain practical experience and learning while in law school, and the impediment to a better law school system that is caused by the focus to prepare law students for passing the bar rather than focusing better on preparing them to perform well as lawyers. 

Dave discusses preserving the appellate record, avoiding getting consumed by anger at injustice in the courtroom, talking with criminal defendants about the advisability of going to trial when settlement negotiations do not justify doing otherwise, and persuading in court. 

This episode is also available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAuydXKfgLY and in podcast format https://podcast.beattheprosecution.com/2293867/episodes/19892065

This podcast with Fairfax, Virginia criminal / DUI lawyer Jon Katz is playable on all devices at podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com. For more information, visit https://KatzJustice.com or contact us at info@KatzJustice.com, 703-383-1100 (calling), or 571-406-7268 (text). 

If you like what you hear on our Beat the Prosecution podcast, please take a moment to post a review at our Apple podcasts page (with stars only, or else also with a comment) at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beat-the-prosecution/id1721413675