Governor Nixon of Missouri has been in the habit of cutting the state budget for public defenders to the bone, so the fellow in charge of the public defender system has appointed Nixon to take on a case as a public defender, under a law that let’s lawyers be Shanghaied.
I’m very curious to see how this plays out. My guess is that he will get out of it by pleading that although he is a lawyer subject to that law, he does not have the experience to competently defend a person. If he has a brain, he’ll get some good press out of this by taking on the task with a smile, donate his pay to a worthy cause, and push to have more lawyers work pro-bono. But somehow I doubt if he will take this approach, and instead will get all pissy, and fight the appointment or delegate it to a junior.