A Fee, By Any Other Number, Wouldn’t Be As Reasonable

I recently refinanced my mortgage and, as a no-nothing consumer of those services, was amazed about how mortgage brokers made their money. Then I thought about the legal industry and the really inexplicable way that we as profession charge for our time. Now, don’t get me wrong, we have to make a living and are entitled to charge a reasonable fee, but $1,000 an hour? You’d better be pretty darn good for that kind of scratch. Of course, if you break down how much the mortgage broker is making per hour based on the the ACTUAL time he/she is working on your loan, maybe it’s comparable!

Kirkland & Ellis Seeks Fee of $18.50 a Minute for Bankruptcy Work
Posted Jan 28, 2009, 08:09 am CST

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Kirkland & Ellis has requested a fee of $1,110 an hour in a corporate bankruptcy, a possible record amount, according to one expert.

The hourly rate breaks down to $18.50 a minute, Bloomberg reports. The law firm is seeking the fee for its representation of titanium dioxide-maker Tronox Inc.

Two other law firms are seeking nearly as much, requesting hourly rates in excess of $1,000, according to the story. They are Sidley Austin, in the restructuring of the Tribune Co., and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, representing Circuit City.

Bankruptcy law professor Lynn LoPucki of the University of California at Los Angeles told the wire service that fees for lawyers and other professionals in bankruptcy cases are growing at four times the rate of inflation.

“As the economy gets worse, the bankruptcy lawyers are charging more,” LoPucki told Bloomberg. “It seems that each month one sets a new record for hourly billing rates. $1,110 is, to my knowledge, a record for the debtor’s bankruptcy counsel.”

Take note all you criminal defense attorneys! If your trial goes south, you’ve always got this in your back pocket!

Man Attacks His Lawyer In Court With Feces

SAN DIEGO — A mistrial was declared Monday when a home-invasion robbery suspect smeared human feces on his attorney’s face then threw more at the jury.

Weusi McGowan, 37, was upset because San Diego Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser refused to remove Deputy Alternate Public Defender Jeffrey Martin from the case, prosecutor Christopher Lawson said.

At the mid-morning break, McGowan produced a plastic baggie filled with fecal matter and spread it on Martin’s hair and face, then flung the excrement toward the jury box, hitting the briefcase of juror No. 9 but missing the juror himself.

“That juror didn’t even see it coming,” Lawson said.

The prosecutor said the defendant was compliant after the outburst and was taken into custody without further incident.

After lunch, Fraser dismissed the jury, telling them McGowan would have to get a new lawyer and that his trial would be delayed.

The judge scheduled a status conference for Feb. 9 and raised the defendant’s bail from $250,000 to $1 million, finding he is a danger to the community.

Lawson said McGowan originally became upset last week when he claimed one of the jurors saw him in shackles as he entered the courtroom. Fraser dismissed all jurors who saw the defendant in shackles, the prosecutor said.

“The judge had been very fair,” Lawson said. “All jurors who saw it were dismissed.”

Fraser had also denied McGowan’s attempt to represent himself, saying the request was untimely, Lawson said.

The prosecutor said the defendant had previously wiped human feces on himself and was examined by doctors to ensure he was mentally competent to stand trial.

McGowan is charged with kidnapping for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts and could face assault charges in connection with the attack on his attorney and jury, Lawson said.

The prosecutor said the defendant hit a man with a rock in a sock as the victim came out of his home to investigate a commotion on Oct. 17, 2007.

McGowan allegedly ransacked the man’s apartment then stole some of the victim’s belongings and took off in the victim’s car.

He was arrested 20 minutes later, Lawson said.

If You’ve Divorced, Are Seeking A Divorce, Etc., Then Watch Your Retirment Assets

I’ve seen a good deal of bitter divorces, but one common thread in nearly all of them is to make a clean break from the former spouse. So it’s interesting that the U.S. Supreme Court found that a beneficiary designation made before a divorce (giving all of it to now ex-wife) was effective and payment to the ex-wife was proper. I can only imagine how many of my clients would be rolling over in their graves if that happend to him.

THE LESSON: If you’ve been divorced and haven’t fully dealt with your financial assets, you should and need to. You can call a lawyer or simply work with your plan administrator to make your wishes about post-death disposition of assets (i.e., giving it to the person(s) you really want to get it) is done properly.

High court turns down daughter in pension dispute
Associated Press
January 27, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says the daughter of a DuPont Co. worker is out of luck in her effort to collect his retirement benefits.

The justices, in a unanimous decision Monday, said Kari Kennedy, a social worker who lives in Lumberton, Texas, can collect nothing from DuPont because companies are bound by what a worker puts down on forms designating who is to receive retirement and other benefits after death.

In this case, William Kennedy divorced his wife of 22 years, Liv, and she waived her rights to the retirement money in their divorce decree. Kari Kennedy said her father wanted her to have the money after his death. William Kennedy worked for DuPont for 34 years and died in 2001, three years after he retired.

Liv Kennedy sought the divorce and received money, jewelry, furniture and an 11-year-old Mercedes Benz.

But Kennedy never changed his beneficiary on the retirement account, and DuPont properly paid $402,000 to Liv Kennedy, his ex-wife, Justice David Souter said.

The dispute over his retirement money soured the relationship between mother and daughter, who eventually reconciled but never agreed on the issue, Kennedy has said. Liv Kennedy returned to her native Norway shortly after the divorce and died there in 2007.

Kari Kennedy, designated by her father to handle his estate upon his death, sued DuPont and a federal judge found that the waiver Liv Kennedy signed as part of the divorce was valid and ordered DuPont to pay William Kennedy’s estate $402,000.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, disagreed with the judge, saying DuPont correctly gave the retirement savings to Liv Kennedy because she remained her ex-husband’s designated beneficiary.

“My father expressly did not want my mother to have another red cent after their divorce was final” in 1994, Kari Kennedy said in an interview last year. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he wanted me to have everything he had.”

The main federal law on employee benefits requires companies to follow their workers’ wishes as reflected in their designations. Spouses are protected from attempts to cut them out of death and retirement benefits.

Divorce papers aren’t always enough to override the earlier designation of a beneficiary.

The case is Kennedy v. Plan Administrator, 07-636.

More of the same

Divorcing Law Grads, Stressed Over $190K in Debt, Victims of ‘Education Hoax’
Posted Jan 20, 2009, 06:09 am CST

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Some time after he graduated from California Western law school in 1995, Joel Kellum married his law school sweetheart. The couple had $190,000 in student debt.

Kellum and his wife made $145,000 in loan payments, but they paid off only $21,000 in principal, Forbes magazine reports. The variable-interest rate debt, which leapt as high as 12 percent, was a major source of stress in their marriage, according to the couple, and they divorced last year. “Two people with this much debt just shouldn’t be together,” Kellum told Forbes.

The magazine uses the couple to support the thesis of its article. It calls the lawyers “victims of an unfolding education hoax on the middle class”—the myth that college and advanced degrees translate to a life of economic privilege.

The average law grad has $100,000 in student debt, according to the magazine. UCLA law professor Richard Sander says the problem can be compounded for African-American students, who are lured in to improve law school diversity rankings without being told that less than half will pass the bar. Schools also “goose employment statistics by temporarily hiring new grads and spotlighting kids who land top-paying jobs, while glossing over far-lower average incomes,” the story says.

“There are a lot of aspects of selling education that are tinged with consumer fraud,” Sander told the magazine. “There is a definite conspiracy to lead students down a primrose path.”

Private loans can be more onerous than those funded by the government, the story says. Many lenders charge 10 percent loan origination fees and 18 percent variable interest rates that start to accrue as soon as the loan is funded. And student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Many educators tout the statistic that college graduates will earn $1 million more than high school grads. The magazine examines the claim and says the statistic doesn’t account for some facts.

First, the higher salary figure may reflect the fact that college graduates are smarter and work harder—characteristics that could boost salaries for such people even if they don’t attend college. Second, the cost of a college degree has risen at twice the rate of inflation, coming to nearly $100,000 for a private school. Third, college students give up about $125,000 in pay for the four years they are in school.

The story cites a College Board study that found one in four college grads earns considerably less than the top quartile of high school grads.

One law school dean, Richard Matasar of New York Law School, says law schools are “exploiting” students who don’t succeed in life, according to an account of his remarks at a recent program by TaxProf Blog.

Matasar said registrations for the law school admissions test are flat or below the norm for this year. “That’s never happened in a downturn in the economy before,” he said. “They’re catching on. Maybe this thing they are doing is not so valuable. Maybe the chance at being in the top 10 percent [helpful in landing a good job] is not a good enough lottery shot in order to effectively spend $120,000 and see it blow up at the end of three years of law school.”

The Law School Gamble

Not much that needs to be said here, except that we’ve known that young kids have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to a law school education. Now, I actually love what I do and would do it again, but plenty of (perhaps naive) college students look to the law as a “good living” and pleasing career. Unfortunately, in today’s climate where professionalism is subordinate (at times) to the billable hour, young lawyers either can’t or won’t hack it.

Lucky for me, I went to state school!

Law Schools
Law Dean Says Schools ‘Exploiting’ Students Who Don’t Succeed
Posted Jan 20, 2009, 09:27 am CST

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Law schools are “exploiting” many students who aren’t successful, according to a law school dean who spoke at a program on law school rankings earlier this month.

“We should be ashamed of ourselves,” said Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School.

Matasar said schools need to take responsibility for the failures of their students, according to an account of his Jan. 9 remarks by TaxProf Blog. Matasar said a law school education can cost as much as $120,000 for a students who are making a “lottery shot” at being in the top 10 percent of their class so they can get high-paying jobs.

He spoke during a program sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools that is available in a podcast. TaxProf Blog noted Matasar’s remarks and highlighted a Forbes article that questions whether students are being misled into believing that large school debt translates into a life of economic privilege. The article featured a lawyer couple divorcing amid overwhelming stress because of $190,000 in student debt.

“We own our students’ outcomes,” Matasar said at the AALS program. “We took them. We took their money. We live on their money. … And if they don’t have a good outcome in life, we’re exploiting them. It’s our responsibility to own the outcomes of our institutions. If they’re not doing well … it’s gotta be fixed. Or we should shut the damn place down. And that’s a moral responsibility that we bear in the academy.”

At 50 law schools, 20 percent of the students either flunked out, can’t find jobs or have unknown outcomes, according to another speaker at the program, Indiana University law professor William Henderson. TaxProf Blog also transcribed some of his remarks.

Matasar questioned whether students are beginning to understand that law school does not guarantee a good job. He said registrations for the law school admissions test are flat or below the norm for this year. “That’s never happened in a downturn in the economy before,” he said. “They’re catching on. Maybe this thing they are doing is not so valuable. Maybe the chance at being in the top 10 percent is not a good enough lottery shot in order to effectively spend $120,000 and see it blow up at the end of three years of law school.”

More Bad Advertising

I recently saw a commercial of another lawyer whose commercial was pretty obviously designed to be generic as he represented “people in [my] neighborhood.” So, I looked into this guy who is not barred in Maryland and therefore, not a Maryland lawyer, but who seems to be trying to get cases where people used the drug called ‘Avandia’.

I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but it really doesn’t seem fair for these sorts of advertisements and they are probably not in the public interest. What do you think?

http://www.misnylaw.com/

The Case Against Lawyer Advertising

The problem with make-up is that it enabled average looking people to compete with the likes of Helen of Troy and the truly gorgeous/beautiful people in the world. So it is as well with what lawyer advertising has done to the practice of law. I saw the article below and am dumbfounded that this lawyer gets away with spending 20 million in advertising to attract cases and then just feeds off the referral fees. Essentially, this lawyer is reported to never really try cases, and the article intimates he does not do too much but makes a windfall. I’m sure this guy must do something to earn the fee split, as (unless the client consents otherwise) such a fee arrangements would be unethical under ABA Model Rules as well as under Maryland law (and I’m sure many other states).

Still, this sort of advertising blitz is part of a bigger problem that is affecting lawyers throughout the country. Basically, good advertisers are able to hoard clients and then marketshare, thereby making your local attorneys (who actually try cases, get to know you and will help you on other matters and are mostly nice people) less able to compete, make an adequate living, etc., unless they associate with guys/gals like this.

Biggest-Advertising Lawyer Spent $20M in 2007
Posted Jan 7, 2009, 08:20 am CST

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Massachusetts lawyer James Sokolove is the biggest-spending legal advertiser, but he no longer tries any cases.

Sokolove spent more than $20 million advertising his firm in 2007, but he refers all of his cases to other lawyers and takes a percentage of the recovery, Boston Magazine reports in a profile. Sokolove spent twice as much as the next-biggest lawyer advertiser, the magazine says, and his radio and TV ads run once every eight seconds. His firm is keeping tabs on some 10,000 referred cases, and the clients who sought him out have won or settled for more than $2 billion in damages, the story says.

“Despite his prodigious success and his omnipresent image as a bulldog attorney, Sokolove hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom in nearly three decades,” the story says. “Truth be told, he’s argued only one case before a jury; it was back in the early 1970s, and he lost. It wasn’t tenacious lawyering that allowed Sokolove to build a legal empire, but rather his prowess as a businessman and an innovator.”

Asked about his reputation as an ambulance chaser, Sokolove told a reporter, “Yeah, the best you’ve ever seen.”

If You Think Your Lawyer Is Expensive…

Short story to give some perspective to regular consumers of legal services. We all hear and often understand our clients’ concerns about legal fees, but imagine paying $100,000 per day for your case! I didn’t add too many zeros, that’s the actual number. Now I’ve seen padded bills, but it’s hard to imagine how you could perform enough work in a day to justify it, other than if lawyers are becoming like Paris Hilton and showing up for New Year’s parties for cash!

Judge Finds Dewey’s $100K-a-Day Fee Application is Excessive
Posted Jan 6, 2009, 09:15 am CST

By Debra Cassens Weiss

A $100,000-a-day fee application by Dewey & LeBeouf for receivership work is excessive, according to a federal judge in New York City.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said Dewey provided “extensive and outstanding legal services,” but it had overstaffed and overworked the case, the American Lawyer reports. He cut more than $400,000 from the law firm’s request for $2.1 million in fees as receiver for WexTrust Capital.

The law firm was appointed as receiver to safeguard the trust’s assets after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued, claiming the trust was operating as a Ponzi scheme that targeted the Orthodox Jewish community.

The fee request is “excessive in the context of a securities receivership where hundreds of victims of fraud have suffered substantial losses,” Chin wrote in a Dec. 30 opinion (PDF posted by the American Lawyer). He said the law firm can reapply for disallowed fees at the conclusion of the case based on its success recovering funds.

Chin’s ruling came after he raised questions about the firm’s billing rates, which were as high as $950 an hour for some partners, $605 an hour for some associates, and $285 an hour for summer associates.

Why You Need A Lawyer – You Don’t Want To Go To Prison in Maryland but especially not elsewhere!

The AP released a story today about a local sherriff in Alabama who actually profited over the starving on inmates. While Maryland criminal lawyers are always challenging the sentencing paradigms, whether the case involve a drunk driving (DWI or DUI) offense or more serious misdemeanor or felony charges (e.g., drug posession, distribution, murder, child abuse, etc.), what this story underscores is the inevitable abuse of power and profiteering involved in the quiet “War On Crime” that we wage against ourselves in this country. Can anyone seriously argue that starving these men and women, denying basic needs and who knows what else is actually helping them to be ready to come back into our communities? How long can we sensibly deal with the crime problem in our country if we don’t look at the systemic encouragements to crime?

Ala. sheriff locked up over measly jail meals

By JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer Jay Reeves, Associated Press Writer – 18 mins agoBIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A northern Alabama sheriff was in federal custody Thursday after a judge ruled he purposely fed inmates skimpy meals so he could make money from an unusual system that lets sheriffs turn a profit on their jail kitchens.

Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett testified at a Wednesday court hearing that he made $212,000 over three years by cheaply feeding prisoners — every cent of it legal under a Depression-era state law and reported on his tax forms as income.

But U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon ordered federal marshals to arrest Bartlett after hearing a string of skinny prisoners testify they were served paper-thin bologna, bloody chicken and cold grits in the north Alabama county’s jail.

“He makes money by failing to spend the allocated funds for food for the inmates,” Clemon ruled after a daylong hearing in a lawsuit filed by prisoners over jail conditions.

Clemon said Bartlett, who has been sheriff for six years, would remain in custody until he submitted a plan to feed prisoners meals that are “nutritionally adequate,” as required by a previous agreement in the lawsuit.

Ten prisoners testified that they were so hungry after meals they are forced to spend hundreds of dollars at a for-profit store inside the jail for junk food like oatmeal pies and chips.

“We had an apple on Christmas, and I think we’ve had them one other time,” said Clifton Goodwin, who’s been in Bartlett’s jail for 15 months.

Alice Hines, who has two sons in the jail on drug charges, said she gives them all the money she can — $50 sometimes, $100 others — to buy food from the jail store so they won’t go hungry. Prisoners are even forced to buy basics like salt, pepper and ketchup to spice up bland meals.

“You’re supposed to pay for your crime, but good God, feed them,” said Hines.

Bartlett’s lawyer, Donald Rhea, said the sheriff would be incarcerated in his own jail, but the department declined comment on Bartlett’s whereabouts. The U.S. marshal’s service did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Bartlett looked stunned as Clemon ordered him into custody. A lawyer for prisoners called his arrest “extraordinary.”

“I was shocked by the amount of money he pocketed … all while men and women in the jail go hungry,” said Melanie Velez of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights.

Sheriffs in 55 of Alabama’s 67 counties operate under a Depression-era system allowing them to make money operating their jail kitchens. The state pays sheriffs $1.75 a day for each prisoner they house and lets the elected officers keep any profits they can generate. Bartlett said he also received money from the county and the U.S. government for housing federal prisoners.

According to testimony, Alabama’s ethics commission cleared Bartlett of a complaint in December, turning aside allegations that he improperly used his office for personal gain by profiting from inmate meals. The ethics commission cited the state law allowing the practice and a previous legal opinion from Alabama’s attorney general.

Clemon’s order dealt only with Morgan County, but the longtime head of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association said its impact will be felt around the state since counties lack money to feed prisoners and state budgets are stretched thin.

“It’s going to be real far-reaching. It’s going to affect a lot of counties other than this one,” said association executive director Bobby Timmons.

Bartlett testified he made a $212,000 profit over the last three years to supplement his annual salary of about $64,000. Bartlett said last year’s profit was $95,000 — almost half of the total jail feeding budget of about $203,000 for about 300 prisoners. Bartlett said profits from the jail store are used to pay for equipment and training and don’t go into his pocket.

DWI/DUI Murder Story

Great article here about same thing. Watch the video and support their sponsors:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694666.shtml#

DWI Deaths: Is It Murder?
Jan. 4, 2009(CBS) Drunk driving kills more than 13,000 Americans a year – that’s one every 39 minutes. Authorities call it an epidemic. They say that despite all the publicity, all the education campaigns, and all the advertising over the past decade, the number of drunk-driving fatalities has not gone down.

Some prosecutors have started taking a different approach to the problem, getting so tough on drunk drivers who kill people that the penalties they exact were unheard of in the past.

As correspondent Bob Simon reports, one of these pioneers is Kathleen Rice, district attorney of Nassau County, New York. She believes that if you want to stop drunk driving, you have to treat it as a serious crime with serious jail time. Our story begins, however, not in a courtroom but at a wedding in Nassau County – a wedding and the tragic loss of a 7-year-old girl.

Her name was Katie. She and her little sister – the Flynn girls – were flower girls at their aunt’s wedding on July 1, 2005. It was a glorious day for the Flynn family, including Katie’s parents Jennifer and Neil.

“It was a great day. It was a beautiful wedding. It was a fun time all day long and it couldn’t have turned out worse,” Neil remembers.

The family had hired a limo to take them home from the wedding so they could dance and party with no worries. But as they were being driven home on a parkway on Long Island, a pickup truck came barreling straight at them in the wrong direction. Chris and Denise Tangney, Katie’s grandparents, saw the truck coming from the back of the limo.

“I saw this light come towards me. And I had to think for a second of what that was, ’cause that, it was just out of place,” Denise remembers. “I watched this single light come toward me and all of a sudden it went from a single light to a double light. It happened so quickly I remember saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re gonna get hit.’”

They got hit with incredible force. Both cars were totally destroyed, but that was the least of it. Stanley Rabinowitz, the limo driver, was killed instantly. The limousine was so mangled that members of the Flynn family had to be cut out of the wreckage. Virtually everyone suffered severe, life-threatening injuries, and then there was Katie.

“The first thing I heard was my wife screaming, ‘Neil, Katie’s dead,’” Katie father’s Neil remembers. “And I kept saying, ‘No she can’t be dead. She’s just gotta be hurt real bad.’ But I didn’t know what Jen was looking at, what Jen saw.”

“I reached for Kate and she was on the floor. And all that was left of Kate Marie was her head, that I was able to take,” she remembers.

Martin Heidgen, a 24-year-old insurance salesman, was driving the pickup truck. He suffered minor injuries. He had a blood alcohol content over three times the legal limit. On the night of the Flynns’ wedding, Heidgen was drinking at a friend’s party in a house on Long Island. His friends told him not to drive. He did anyway, driving for about three miles the wrong way on the parkway before slamming into the Flynns’ limousine and tearing their lives apart.

“The sadness and despair that is with me every day, I can’t even put into words,” Jennifer says.

“I relive the crash. I think about it every day. I have nightmares about it every night. And I live my life without my daughter because of it,” Neil adds.

“One of the compelling things about this case is that it really ripped the mask off drunk driving,” says Kathleen Rice, the district attorney who prosecuted the case.

Getting tough on drunk drivers has been the centerpiece of her platform since she was elected in 2005. This case showed why.

“A 7-year-old girl is beheaded. The driver of the car is crushed to death. I think too many people think about drunk driving crashes, or accidents as people like to call them, as, you know, driving off the road. Or rolling through a red light. These crimes are incredibly violent,” Rice says.

Katie’s funeral attracted more than 1,000 people. Her death, along with that of Stanley Rabinowitz, became rallying points for the campaign to crack down on drunk driving.

Martin Heidgen was arrested and charged not with manslaughter – meaning accidental killing, as is customary in drunk driving fatalities – but with the more severe charge of murder. That hardly ever happens in America.

Asked why Heidgen fit as a murder case, Rice says, “The statute under which he was charged required us to prove that through his actions, he had a completely depraved indifference to human life.”

Heidgen was charged with murder by depraved indifference, she says, because he acted so recklessly others were likely to die.

“His actions made the deaths of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz inevitable. It was as inevitable as taking a gun and firing it at an individual who’s standing five feet away from you,” Rice says.

She says she really believes that.

Heidgen hired lawyer Steven Lamagna to defend him.

Lamagna’s reaction when he heard his client was being charged with murder? “I could recall saying to myself, ‘They’re not going there. They’re not charging a vehicular homicide with murder, with a life sentence, as if he’s Jeffrey Dahmer or John Gotti.’ Murder in our society, and in every state in the union, is relegated to the most dangerous, cold-blooded killers.”

Not for young men like Martin Heidgen, he says, a recent college graduate who had no previous convictions of any kind. If he’d been charged with manslaughter – not murder – he’d have been facing a possible sentence of probation to 15 years. Murder carries a mandatory penalty of 15 to life – too much, says Lamagna, for a young man who never intended to kill anyone.

“Are we as a society ready to water down what murder is and turn our sons and daughters into murderers who go out and drink and drive and cause a fatal accident?” Lamagna asks. “No matter how tragic these cases are, and they truly are, they’re an unintentional act that was caused by the alcohol. But for the alcohol, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Kathleen Rice says, “Can you imagine if the law allowed Mr. Heidgen to say, ‘Wait, wait, wait. But I was drunk. So I shouldn’t be responsible.’ What kind of lawlessness would you have if intoxication excused that kind of behavior?”

Rice says she is pushing for tough sentences because nothing else is working. In spite of sobriety checkpoints, a recent study by the federal government showed that 15 percent of adult drivers actually admitted to driving under the influence at least once in the past year.

And when it comes to recent high school graduates, a study from Duke University says that ten percent of them admitted to drinking and driving within two weeks of being questioned.

“Do you think that charging someone who’s driving drunk and kills someone with murder is a deterrent?” Simon asks.

“Anything that makes someone think before they make the bad decision to drink and get behind the wheel of the car, that’s gonna be a deterrent,” Rice argues.

Rice says people drink and drive because they’re not afraid of the law, that they think they can get away with it. And until recently, the penalties were not all that severe, even when fatalities were involved. It’s been less than a decade since some maverick prosecutors have pushed for serious prison time. Even today, the sentences vary wildly from state to state, from probation to life in prison.

Right in Nassau County, Police Officer Danielle Baymack was drunk when she went driving with a friend. She crashed her car. Her friend, Marlene Rivera, a fellow police officer, was killed. Baymack plea-bargained with the judge, bypassing Kathleen Rice altogether. She got just one year.

In Los Angeles, actor Lane Garrison, one of the stars of the TV show “Prison Break,” took three teenagers for a drunken ride in Beverly Hills. He smashed into a tree, killing 17-year-old Vahagn Setian and injuring two high school girls. His case went to trial.

Garrison’s sentence: three years, four months. The prosecutor was angry that Garrison didn’t get more time.

Katie Flynn’s family is angry about all the light sentences being handed out. Her grandfather Chris Tangney, who was in the car that night, almost died in the crash. “They asked me if I would like last rites and the priest, that priest gave me last rites, and ironically, six months later, he was killed by a drunk driver in the Hamptons walking on the sidewalk. A woman, 44 years old. She mowed down this priest. I mean, they’re killing us.”

The priest was Monsignor William Costello. Karen Fisher, a repeat offender, was charged with manslaughter and is serving four to 12 years in prison.

“Is it difficult sometimes to obtain harsh sentences because so many people on the jury have, at one time or another, driven when they shouldn’t have?” Simon asks Kathleen Rice.

“I think there is a lot of identification with the drunk driver, almost too much and we need, as a society, to identify first with the possibility that we could be a victim of this crime before we say, ‘Wow, I can identify with the drunk driver.’ We need that shift to occur,” she says.

As for Martin Heidgen, his murder trial began a year after he ran into the Flynns’ limousine, and the Flynns made sure they were at the courthouse every day.

“Just like some families decide they wanna forgive and ask for leniency, we were there for the opposite. I wanted that courthouse on top of him. I wanted him buried under the jail. I want him dead,” Katie’s father Neil says.

The trial took six weeks; Heidgen was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 18 years to life. The verdict sealed Rice’s reputation as a leader in campaign against drunk driving. She has continued on the warpath: she pushed for and got new legislation passed in New York making it easier to get long sentences for drunk drivers who kill.

Kathleen Rice broadcasts her message wherever she thinks it will be heard. She regularly goes to high schools in her county and talks tough to students.

Her message to them is the same as it is to everyone in Nassau County and to everyone in the country: “And I can guarantee you one thing, that if you make the decision to drink and drive one of two things are going to happen. You’re either going to end up dead or you’re going to end up going to prison for a long, long time.”

Martin Heidgen’s case is under appeal, which he says is why he declined to talk to 60 Minutes Meanwhile, District Attorney Rice prosecuted the case of another drunk driver who killed someone. He was also convicted of depraved indifference murder and got 25 years to life.