Slain MDPD officers Amanda Haworth and Roger Castillo laid to rest today and the Straw Buyer is reminded of another funeral...

The two Miami Dade county police officers, Roger Castillo and Amanda Haworth, that were senselessly murdered last week while trying to serve an arrest warrant will be laid to rest this afternoon.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to their family and friends.

This reminds me of another funeral that occurred about a year ago, the funeral of an old time Miami criminal attorney.  Obviously among the friends and family members that attended the funeral there were several of the deceased's fellow colleagues from the criminal defense bar.  At some point during the viewing, two of these old school attorneys who just happened to be working on the same case bump into each other and start chatting about their clients.  The first attorney is emphatic about taking the case to trial since he insists that his client is innocent.  The other attorney says dismissively that he got his client full immunity two days after he was arrested and had gotten him a sweetheart deal in exchange for his cooperation with the state.  Stunned, the first attorney steps back and asks his friend to reiterate what he just said.  Stunned because a year and change into the case, this was the first time anyone had heard anything about anyone in the case cooperating against the other defendants, let alone getting immunity.

Did I lose you?  Imagine you're the poor guy whose been charged with a crime that's trying to prepare a defense for over a year, all the while being kept in the dark about one of your co defendants cutting a deal and to add insult to injury getting immunity in exchange for ratting out everybody and their brother that they've ever done business with.  Does that seem fair?  In fact it's not only unfair, but it's illegal, a clear violation of due process rights afforded to an individual under the constitution.  Fact of the matter is that when there is such a deal in place it's the prosecutor's duty obligation to inform the defense counsel.

So what's this got to do with anything we've been talking about?  Another hypothetical situation or did this occur in one of the cases that we've discussed?  

More tomorrow...