This is about as damning an indictment of a criminal defense attorney as I've seen from the Court of Appeal.
San Francisco attorney (and Hastings Law graduate) Daniel Everett represented a criminal defendant charged with two counts of rape. I'll not attempt to summarize his preliminary efforts on behalf of his client. I'll just mention that Mr. Everett repeatedly told the Court that he was not ready for trial, was almost invariably late to court, and even left the courtroom one afternoon and promptly disappeared, "leaving his client, the prosecutor, and the judge waiting for nearly an hour for him
to return."
You can read the entire opinion if necessary. Suffice it to say that anyone who reads this opinion will not likely clamor to retain Mr. Everett as counsel.
The trial court entered the extraordinary remedy of removing Mr. Everett as counsel -- something that the trial judge had never done before in his career. The Court of Appeal is fine with that. It not only refuses to disturb the trial court's decision, but also refers its opinion to the State Bar.
Which is already quite familiar with Mr. Everett's antics in other criminal cases.
That's a lot of trouble for an attorney. Particularly given the brief period of time Mr. Everett's been an attorney. He was admitted only in 2010.
