Are sexy and jobless now the best adjectives to describe federal criminal justice in SD Ohio?

The somewhat bizarre and silly question in the title of this post was my reaction to this somewhat bizarre and not-so-silly article in my own Columbus Dispatch this morning concerning the US Attorney and (former) Chief Federal Public Defender in the Southern District of Ohio. Here are the details:

It turns out that at least one Columbus lawyer ranks pretty high in sexiness. According to a popular business- and technology-news website, the No. 2 sexiest lawyer in America is the city’s own Carter Stewart, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.

“He doesn’t know how he got on the list,” said Fred Alverson, a spokesman for Carter’s office in Columbus. “By that, I mean we don’t know how he got noticed, but we’re honored he’s at the top of the list.” Stewart, 44, is a Harvard Law School graduate and has been in his current job since 2009.

First on the Business Insider list, not surprisingly, is California Attorney General Kamala Harris. President Barack Obama called her “by far the best-looking attorney general in the country” at a fundraising event in early April.

Though his animal magnetism was never brought up, Stewart’s opposite number, Steve Nolder, made an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show last week. Daily Show reporter and comic Aasif Mandvi traveled the country to learn how the federal sequestration is affecting people, and he came to Columbus to interview Nolder, the federal public defender for the Southern District of Ohio.

A straight-faced Nolder told Mandvi he hadn’t had to fire any employees in his office because of the automatic federal spending cuts. Instead, he fired himself. “That’s stupid,” Mandvi blurted out. After that, Mandvi took Nolder to “the only place he can now afford to eat” — a Columbus soup kitchen.

Nolder’s decision to ax his own position is no joke.  He has been with the public defender’s office in Columbus since it opened in 1995 and has been moved to tears several times when talking about his decision to leave the job he loves.

 

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

I have embedded the Daily Show segment in which Steve Nolder appears at the very end of the end. Though I am not exactly an expert on sexy (and though I am surely biased toward folks who are follicly-challenged like me), I think Nolder might be able to give Carter Stewart a run for his money on that adjective. Jokes aside, though, I wish there was a well-staffed US criminal justice research commission (hint: USSC) or federal department focused on the administration of justice (hint: DOJ) who would be regularly reporting to the press and others on the seemingly very serious impact that the sequester seems already to be having on the day-to-day operation of the federal criminal justice system.

Recent related posts on federal sequester:

• Should anyone eager to see federal criminal justice reform be rooting FOR the sequester?
• Smarter Sequestration: simple statutory ways to save prison monies (and avoid federal furloughs?)
• "How the Sequester Threatens the U.S. Legal System"
• Lots on sentencing, sequester and other stuff at "Hercules and the Umpire"