Dear President-Elect Trump:
I’ll never forget my first case as a young lawyer. Just out of law school, Chelom and I opened a law practice in rural America; rural Utah to be more specific. My first case was a court-appointed criminal case—aggravated assault.
The crime occurred in Utah’s West Desert. Utah’s West Desert is indeed a place to behold. Desert mountains and cliffs, moon-like science fiction terrain dominate the landscape. It extends for miles and miles and miles with no inhabitant other than antelope, deer, and jackrabbits.
It is where the deer and the antelope play.
Comparatively few people on earth ever visit it. When they do, they travel along dirt and gravel roads that crisscross and meander through one of the most vacant parts of the planet.
My client was an elderly gentleman. He had held up a group of deer hunters at gunpoint seventy miles from the nearest pavement or cell signal. The deer hunters were understandably disturbed to have a man walk into their camp pointing a gun at them as they sat around the campfire eating and exchanging stories.
It didn’t take too long visiting with him to realize that he was mentally ill. He had multiple personality disorder. In fact, he had five personalities. One personality was a minor with mining claims in the West Desert. Another was a minister; another a researcher for a large corporation. Another was an FBI bounty hunter. His fifth personality was just his normal self.
What occurred was this: His mining personality traveled to the West Desert to work his mining claims. While in the desert, his mind shifted to his FBI bounty hunter personality. In the distance, he saw the group of deer hunters, and he convinced himself that they were fugitives from justice.
So he did what any FBI bounty hunter would do—he quietly crouched in the sagebrush as he kept surveillance on the fugitives. He noted that their guns were not with them around the campfire; they were either in their vehicles or in their tents or camping trailers. Once he determined that they were not noticeably armed, he rose from the brush and moved in; rifle pointed directly at the group.
Once he had them lined up against one of the pickups with their hands in the air, his mind shifted from FBI bounty hunter to his normal personality, and he suddenly couldn’t figure out why he was holding half a dozen men at gunpoint. Quickly, he left the group as quietly as he had arrived—not having any idea what he had been doing there in the first place.
The deer hunters pursued him and got his license number and called the incident into the Sheriff’s office, who hunted him down and arrested him.
As I spoke to him, he passed seamlessly from one personality to another. It took some time before I realized that I was essentially talking to five different people, all housed in the same body.
He was a nice, harmless man. He had sufficient means to live on his own after a modest fashion. He had no family. He had never married. I knew that I could have him declared not guilty by reason of insanity. But that would have consigned him to the state mental hospital. I wouldn’t be serving his interests by doing that.
The plea bargain offer from the prosecutor’s office was to plead guilty to one felony. My advocacy for my client didn’t occur in the courtroom. Instead, it took place in the prosecutor’s office. I pushed hard enough to help the prosecutor see that the man neither intended harm nor was he someone that should be in a secure mental institution. We came to an agreement: He voluntarily gave up his firearms. In exchange, the state dismissed the charges against my client.
My client lived his five lives to the fullest of his capacity—without harming anyone after that.
We had the leeway to find a suitable answer to an individual problem.
Had this case occurred in the federal system, the result would have been very different. The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t give local federal authorities the leeway to find individual solutions. Instead, it uses a cookie cutter approach and insists that decisions that deviate from that approach be made in Washington.
In 17 days you’ll be the head of the Justice Department. I hope you’ll recognize that local federal authorities if given leeway to handle individual cases, will avoid injustices in the Justice Department far better than if the decisions are made in Washington.
It’s time to concentrate federal power locally whenever possible.
Sincerely,
David O. Leavitt
