Having fun while fighting on the side of the angels- Art Spitzer, longtime local ACLU legal director

Beat The Prosecution

Art Spitzer for four decades served as the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the national capital area. Fairfax, Virginia criminal and DUI defense lawyer Jon Katz has known Art since before the time Jon served on that group's board for three years in the early 1990's, and through that experience has met such great civil libertarians as Art Spitzer, Eugene Fidell (a dean of military criminal defense lawyers), and Mary Jane DeFrank, who for years served as the affiliate's executive director.
Art tells a fascinating story about how he started his post-law school career in a traditional path of serving as a federal judicial law clerk followed by doing litigation with one of the nation's most prestigious corporate law firms, except he did not personally care whether his corporate clients won or lost, even though he was professionally invested in their winning. He did enjoy the pro bono work his law firm did for such groups as the ACLU. Attending college in the 1960's, Art witnessed the political demonstrations of the time, and ultimately he learned that the D.C. ACLU was hiring a replacement legal director, a job that he loved throughout.
Art won the essential Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68 (1984), which provides that when the defendant's sanity at the time of the alleged crime is likely to be a significant defense at trial, the government must pay for a psychiatrist to assist on the issue for an indigent defendant. Our recent previous podcast guest Stephen Bright thirty-three years later won McWilliams v. Dunn, 582 U.S. 183 (2017), which breathed further strength into Ake.
Hear Art and Jon discuss the overlap between the First Amendment and criminal law, demonstrators' rights, and the ACLU's opposition to criminalizing the possession (versus production) of child pornography. When Jon asks how to beat the prosecution or any litigation opponent, Art sticks to fully preparing and fully serving clients. He credits his initial law firm experience for enabling him to learn how to do this work.

This podcast with Fairfax, Virginia criminal / DUI lawyer Jon Katz is playable on all devices at podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com. For more information, visit https://BeatTheProsecution.com or contact us at [e-mail], 703-383-1100 (calling), or 571-406-7268 (text). Hear our prior podcasts, at https://podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com/
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