Garth Wright: Maybe someone should check DA’s time cards, too

There is an old saying in the legal field that if the law is against you, argue the facts; if the facts are against you, argue the law. If both the law and the facts are against you, just argue.

One of the oldest of these tactics is to bring into the equation the reliability of witnesses by impugning their veracity, their morality and thus their apparent reliability. Detectives keep time cards of the hours they work. Is the DA’s office now saying that they should take over the finance officer’s job and spend their days enumerating which pile of money their remuneration is to come from? If they do not, then apparently their whole character is to be maligned by people whose sole task is manipulating the law to give themselves an edge.

Charles Dickens summed it up very well in Mr. Bumble’s response to a learned judge: “If the law supposes that ... then the law is a ass...” To prove that there is no bias in the DA’s office, I suggest an independent audit of that office’s financial records; simply to see if he who is casting the stone is without sin.

Possibly, only a non-lawyer can see the fairness in that.

This story was originally published December 1, 2014 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Garth Wright: Maybe someone should check DA’s time cards, too."