TMI

Kansas lawyer Dennis Hawver was disbarred in November for his comically bad (24 separate deficiencies) defense of double-murder suspect Phillip Cheatham in 2005 (Cheatham got a new trial). Hawver admitted to the jury his client was a “shooter of people” (a previous manslaughter conviction) who, as an “experience[d]” criminal would never have left that third victim alive with gunshot wounds. A confident Hawver had virtually invited the jury to execute “whoever” the killer was. At a September hearing to keep his license, he dressed as Thomas Jefferson, banged the lectern and shouted, as reverse psychology, “I am incompetent!” — leading the blog Lowering the Bar to muse that by then, the argument was wholly unnecessary. Cheatham told the Topeka Capital-Journal Hawver is “a good dude [but] just in over his head.”