Public Defender Tauman is a hard act to follow

I arrived at my interview in July of 2002. I exited my car. I was wearing my best suit and the tie I'd worn at my wedding. It was near 100 degrees. I felt overdressed. A container filled with half-smoked cigarettes sat beside the front door. A man with slightly wild gray, curly hair, wearing a T-shirt referencing Tijuana or Hawaii stood outside the door blowing smoke into the hot air. Despite his appearance, the man seemed important and I felt like I should get permission from him before entering. I hesitated near the front door, visibly unsure of what to do, but he just kept smoking. Sweat accumulated on my forehead and under my suit. I pressed my fingers over my eyebrows and winced as the salt stung my eyes. The man dropped half his cigarette into the container, leaned in through the doorway and said to Patricia, the long-time receptionist, "Tell the new guy to lose the suit." The office was utterly unimpressive - a life-size version of some tinker-toy creation that a 3-year old had put together, adding on pieces here and there until there were no more in the box. Some attorneys shared tiny offices, while others had their desks in the narrow hallways. The interview took place in the makeshift conference room that also served as the lunch area and copy room.Len (Leonard Tauman) and I met for an hour or so. We talked about books we'd read over the past year. We talked a bit about criminal law. Toward the end of the interview, he told me in that Len-manner that left you with no doubt that it was true: "You'll be good with jurors." I was thrilled to hear it, but had no clue if he was offering me a job. As I came to learn, this was Len's way of communicating: If you really needed a direct answer, he'd give it, but he preferred to come at you with an analogy, a joke, a clue. Len's office was always open - even if the door was shut. If I had a question, Len was always there (the only vacation he took over the last four years was to visit his daughter who had traveled abroad). If I couldn't talk to Len in the office, I'd e-mail him. I'd check e-mail sometime before 11 a.m., and inevitably, his thorough response would be sitting there, waiting to be digested. I spent my first two years doing misdemeanors. Len had a murder case during that time, but there was never a time when I couldn't talk about any case or any part of any case. He'd begin a dialogue between himself and a juror to illustrate the point:"You agree that if someone is attacking you, then you should be able to defend yourself." "And of course the law protects you if you do use reasonable force in self-defense. "Now you will agree that if someone comes at you with a knife, you may have the right to shoot that person if you have a gun." "You would agree with that even though a gun is more lethal than a knife?" "Well, if someone comes at you with a knife that would be lethal enough!" "Now if someone were across the room with a pair of scissors and said, 'I am going to attack you with these scissors,' you wouldn't have a right to pull out a gun and shoot them while you are still out of harm's way?" "So we have to study the situation very carefully when we say that someone might have acted in justifiable self-defense?" "Now it is comfortable in here, and courtroom decisions in criminal cases generally require reflection and thought out conclusions.""And I take it you agree with that, you as a juror wouldn't want to be rushed to judgment?" "As this case unfolds, you will keep in mind that decisions in a fight must be made in a split second, under the most stressful situations."Several months ago, I had a case in which I was debating what I had to turn over to the prosecutor. You have to turn over statements of witnesses you intend to call at trial. My investigator had interviewed a witness about a particular fact that, in the end, I decided I would not ask the witness about. I reasoned to have my investigator delete the part of the statement I no longer thought would be relevant. I asked Len about it. "It's got to stay in," he said. "But it's not relevant," I argued. "I'm not going to ask the witness anything about it." "It's got to stay in." Len always knew what was ethically and legally right and never hesitated in making this clear to the attorneys who worked under him. Len wanted to win, but not at any cost.Len cared deeply about the clients and it was not uncommon for him to be at the jail after 10 p.m. While he could joke about a client's predicament or slim chance at staying out of jail or prison, he never spoke ill of a client. For a hundred reasons, Len was the guy you wanted on your side and the guy for which I would have done pretty much anything. Last week, Placer County replaced Leonard Tauman as the public defender. The county awarded the contract to a firm whose bid was lower and whose owners appear to be businessmen rather than people whose purpose in life is to defend those without a voice. Len: Thanks for the nearly four years. I wish there were more.Joshua Kurtz is the former assistant public defender of Placer County.