If there was any doubt about which segment of the criminal bar the four-day continuing legal education seminar was meant for, all anyone had to do was consider the title: "Capital Trial Advocacy -- The Defense. . . ."
But on Jan. 26, the first day of the event, numerous criminal defense attorneys attending that Plano, Texas, seminar were hopping mad when they discovered a prosecutor in their midst at the program put on by the Center for American and International Law.
The prosecutor, Stephen Tittle, a Hunt County, Texas, assistant district attorney, . . . gained entry by taking the spot of a defense attorney who was unable to attend the seminar, says Tittle's boss, Hunt County District Attorney Duncan Thomas. . . ."[W]e have speakers that won't even show up if they know that there [are] prosecutors there," Wischkaemper says. "That's a real concern for us, because some people feel that they are giving out proprietary information that we [defense attorneys] don't want to give to prosecutors. . . ."
[L]ater on the first day of the seminar, several criminal defense attorneys recognized Tittle as a prosecutor, Thomas says.
On Jan. 27, seminar officials "took it upon themselves to unprofessionally and, I believe, wrongly throw him out of the seminar," Thomas says.
"There's nothing that said that any segment of the bar was to be excluded," Thomas says of the seminar materials. "And it seems to me that because this seminar is funded by the Court of Criminal Appeals, any licensed attorney should be able to attend."
Details are here from Texas Lawyer via Law.com.