Pointpaper Oct11

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University of Maryland Department of Communication COMM386: Experiential Learning Fall, 2013

Rebecca Wells October 11, 2013

POINT PAPER THE LOCK-UP LIST

Subject. Every day, a lock-up list is generated by the DC Superior Court that lists all the people who were incarcerated the day before and who have a pending Arraignment hearing that day. Background. Each attorney at the Public Defender Service for DC is on "pick-up" one or two times a month. During pick-up, any defendant listed who falls under the attorney's specific division here at PDS (general felony, felony 1, misdemeanor) is assigned to that attorney. As interns, it is important that we stay up-to-date with when our attorney is on pick-up and which cases they are assigned. Discussion. The lock-up list can be found outside of Courtroom C-10 at the DC Superior Court. It is printed each day and is comprised of each offender's name, case number, charges, description of the offender, and the offender's court date. We can either walk over to C-10, which is a 5 minute walk, or we can ask the attorney or our supervisor for a copy. After receiving the lock-up list, the attorney goes to court to meet with the offender. They have about 10-15 minutes to meet the client and review the police report. The arraignment hearings begin at 10:30am. The attorney sits and waits for client to be called and then they walk up to the bench and represent their new client. During arraignment, the charges are identified and the offender is giving an official court date. Once our attorney has been assigned an offender, it is the job of my partner and I to collect background information on our client and the complaining witness in the case. This includes running a background check and looking for any criminal records. This is also the point when we try and get the Gerstein (more detailed police report) as well as a copy of any statements our client has made to the police. Recommendations. At the start of the internship, my partner and I never discussed what dates our attorney was on pick-up. We learned about the lock-up list during training, but we never actually confirmed which dates our attorney would be picking up cases. This would have been good to know in advance because during this week, we received 3 new cases on top of the 6 we were already working on. If we had known in advance, we could have tried to free up time this week for new cases.

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