Slager’s 20-year sentence was one of the longest in recent memory for a police officer for an on-duty killing. Slager pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge for shooting Scott in the back five times on April 4, 2015.
Slager’s new lawyers didn’t question his guilt, just a sentence that according to federal prison records will keep him behind bars until 2033. While Slager pleaded guilty to a civil rights offense, the length of his sentence depended on how federal judge David Norton interpreted the shooting.
Savage took it to believe Norton was going to rule it was a manslaughter case where the upper end of the sentencing guidelines were eight years in prison, nearly four years less than the lower end of the prosecution’s offer. He recommended Slager plead guilty without the deal. Savage never asked Norton for clarity.
Savage said in court papers as part of Slager’s appeal that he did not tell the ex-officer about the potential plea deal offered eight months before because of a conversation he had with Norton during a private meeting about public funding for Slager’s defense where the judge said this "is not a murder case.".
In the end, even a great lawyer could not overcome the video of Slager shooting nine times at a running man’s back and then lying about it, Gergel said.
But Norton ruled the shooting amounted to second-degree murder because Slager fired nine shots total and lied about Scott stealing his Taser.
Gergel praised Savage and his fellow lawyers in his ruling for being "zealous advocates" and said their work that led to a four-day sentencing hearing that cost nearly $100,000 in taxpayer money "far exceeded a minimally acceptable standard of performance and showed elements of originality and creativity in the face of a daunting set of facts."
Elena Kagan (1986): First female Solicitor General of the United States (2009-2010). She later became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Pamela Carter: First African American female to serve as an Attorney General in the U.S. and Indiana (1993) Kamala Harris (1989): First Asian American female (and Asian American overall) elected as an Attorney General in the U.S. and California (2011-2017).
Ada Kepley (1881): First woman to graduate with a law degree (1870) and practice in a court of law in the U.S. Charlotte E. Ray (1872): First African American female to earn a law degree in the U.S. Claudia L. Gordon (c. 2000): First deaf African American female to earn a law degree in the U.S.
They grew increasingly powerful in the colonial era as experts in the English common law, which was adopted by all the colonies. By the 21st century, over one million practitioners in the United States held law degrees, and many others served the legal system as justices of the peace, paralegals, marshalls, and other aides.
The earliest people who could be described as "lawyers" were probably the orators of ancient Athens (see History of Athens ). However, Athenian orators faced serious structural obstacles. First, there was a rule that individuals were supposed to plead their own cases, which was soon bypassed by the increasing tendency of individuals to ask a "friend" for assistance. : 202 However, around the middle of the fourth century, the Athenians disposed of the perfunctory request for a friend. Second, a more serious obstacle, which the Athenian orators never completely overcame, was the rule that no one could take a fee to plead the cause of another. This law was widely disregarded in practice, but was never abolished, which meant that orators could never present themselves as legal professionals or experts. They had to uphold the legal fiction that they were merely an ordinary citizen generously helping out a friend for free, and thus they could never organize into a real profession—with professional associations and titles and all the other pomp and circumstance—like their modern counterparts. Therefore, if one narrows the definition to those men who could practice the legal profession openly and legally, then the first lawyers would have to be the orators of ancient Rome. : 90
Lawyer organizations are powerful at the village level. In response to high illiteracy legal middlemen are needed to translate into common terms the weltering mass of bureaucratic codification. These para-professionals are as important as lawyers in the workings of Indian justice.
Like their modern-day descendants, the civil law notaries, they were responsible for drafting wills, conveyances, and contracts. They were ubiquitous and most villages had one.
A civil law notary is roughly analogous to a common law solicitor, except that, unlike solicitors, civil law notaries do not practice litigation. The legal profession has its origins in ancient Greece and Rome. Although in Greece it was forbidden to take payment for pleading the cause of another, the rule was widely flouted.
After the fall of the western Roman Empire and the onset of the Early Middle Ages, the legal profession of Western Europe collapsed. As James Brundage has explained: " [by 1140], no one in Western Europe could properly be described as a professional lawyer or a professional canonist in anything like the modern sense of the term 'professional.' " : 185 However, from 1150 onward, a small but increasing number of men became experts in canon law but only in furtherance of other occupational goals, such as serving the Roman Catholic Church as priests. From 1190 to 1230, however, there was a crucial shift in which some men began to practice canon law as a lifelong profession in itself.
Claudius's fee ceiling lasted all the way into the Byzantine period, though by then it was measured at 100 solidi. Of course, it was widely evaded, either through demands for maintenance and expenses or a sub rosa barter transaction. The latter was cause for disbarment.