Leonard Joy - Federal Defender in NY retires

Leonard Joy, in patrician portrait pose
 at his Morristown, NJ home

It is not often that a public defender gets the credit that is properly due him - or her.  Prosecutors, in the public mind, stand for rectitude.  Defense lawyers, in the public mind, too often stand for, well, for their clients - the accused, the guilty.  Defense lawyers are accused of relying on technicalities.  I've never heard the accusation addressed to a prosecutor.  

So as a one-time defense lawyer, a "pool attorney" for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, I was pleased to see the New York Times give Leonard Joy his due: as the retiring long-time leader of the Federal Defender in New York.  He and his staff brought to their jobs the integrity and competence needed to maintain the integrity of the system, to provide the legitinacy the courts need - the assurance that evidence not bias was the ground of verdicts entered.