The thing is, what struck me about the questions he asked and the way he phrased his questions led me to think of this topic. You know... most lawyers treat this as a game. I did, I must admit. When I was in the DA's office and afterwards I treated a trial as an opportunity to win, as if I was in some fantasy football league. The DA's office trains you that way. Nobody ever asks you after a trial whether the defendant was guilty. Not the issue. It was the result. Every year the Harris County DA's office kept score. A memo was passed around which showed the number off cases tried and the convictions obtained. It was a joke when someone was reversed because of insufficient evidence. Think about that for a second... the appeals court decided that a case was so devoid of evidence that "no rational juror could have convicted". That was funny? To be honest, to me it was.?

Some of the things i did in the DA's office embarasses me now. I won, and always. I have to admit that I took advantage of some of the defense attorney's who I came up against. Some were clueless. Some didn't give a damn. I will never, never forget the defense attorney, who after a conviction, pulled out a yellow legal pad and with a black marker, crossed out the name of somebody on a list of cases he had pending. It was as if he was deleting an item on a to-do list.?

I was 24 when I became an Assistant DA. 24? I was making decisions about the future of people twice my age and probably hundreds of times my better. They were accused of DWI or Assault or getting the wrong kind of lap dance. At 28 I was prosecuting people for Rape, Murder and Aggravated Robbery. I once tried a rape case where the complainant was 90 years old and had cateracts. She couldn't identify her accuser and we took a DNA sample from the defendant. My memory may be flawed but I think it was the second DNA case tried in Harris County. The results showed a 1900 to 1 chance that it was the Defendant. At the time that impressed me. The jury convicted. I'm humbled now. The DNA tests these days show odds in the millions. Was the test wrong? Was the application wrong? The company that provided the test had every reason to make the county happy. And consider the latest news story showing the ineptitude of the City of Houston crime lab.?

This lawyer that stopped me in the hall had this mentality. It was the win. I'm not at all troubled by his desire to keep old offenses from the jury. A jury ought not to determine the guilt of an individual by his past... but what will happen if the jury gets those extraneous offenses? Is the game over??

Years go by and transition happens. At some point, the win becomes secondary and the client takes the lead. The client's family becomes primary. Clients hire us to win. But what is winning? An aquittal is winning at it's most basic. I get that. I have never lost a jury trial involving family violence. But I haven't tried every one either. Sometimes a family comes to me with a problem, not a trial. Can I help them with that problem? I haven't any idea what kind of case this young lawyer had to try. Was there a divorce pending? Are there kids? I'm not trying to judge. But I do know this... what he was about to do was not a mock trial. What he was doing meant everything to this man's family and this man's life. That should be the focus. Otherwise, we are just prosecutors.?