DRCNH Home > News > Skibbie 6-29-2004

Local lawyer to share his expertise in Kabul: He will help Afghan attorneys think like defenders

By SARAH C. VOS
Concord Monitor staff
June 29, 2004

As director of the state's public defender program, Michael Skibbie helped new law school graduates learn to think like defense attorneys - to question judges, prosecutors and police officers. Now he's going to Afghanistan to help lawyers there do the same thing.
"You're trying to encourage them to be more assertive with the system," said Skibbie, who will take a leave of absence from his current job at the Disabilities Rights Center in Concord. "Ultimately, that's what defense attorneys are supposed to do. Challenge the system."
Skibbie leaves Friday for two months at Legal Aid Afghanistan in Kabul, where he will work with six Afghan lawyers.
The International Legal Foundation, the New York-based nonprofit that opened the Kabul office, sees criminal defense lawyers as the engine of a good judicial system. They are a check on prosecutors and judges, a way to make sure that justice is just.
"You can train judges and prosecutors so they know what to do," said Natalie Rea, a New York public defender and the group's executive director. "But unless you have a defense lawyer to make them do it, why should they?"
In 1974, Afghanistan adopted a modern legal code based on European models. But a few years later the Soviet Union invaded. Then there was a civil war and, finally, the Taliban. The result was chaos for the judicial system, Rea said.
Over the last month or so, Skibbie has been learning about the kinds of chaos that exists. He's heard of judges ordering prisoners to be released but prison wardens refusing, trials with no testimony from live witnesses (meaning no one who actually saw what happened) and judges leaving the courtroom during a hearing.
"Oftentimes, the judges don't conceive of themselves as independent from the prosecution," Skibbie said.
Since the Kabul office opened a year ago, the attorneys have made progress, said Rea. The newly adopted constitution eliminated debtors' prisons, and the Afghanlawyers convinced a judge to free the men and women who were still in prison because of debts. They have created form letters, such as one to notify prosecutors that they want to look at a certain file on a certain day. Instead of having the clients who sometimes can't write send a letter to prosecutors to say that they have a defense attorney, the client now signs a form.
But more remains to be done. Cases, in general, move slowly. Files get misplaced, and an attorney could spend several days just trying to find a file, Rea said. And not only can the work be frustrating, water pumps break and electricity fails.
Skibbie plans to focus on a few small things.
"This is a process of trying to integrate the fundamentals of a working justice system with the traditions of this society, and that's complicated," he said. "It's kind of a stop-and-start, learn-as-you-go process."
justice Web site. In 2001, he left the public defender program for Justiceworks, a think tank at the University of New Hampshire. This past January, the grant money that supported his position ran out, and he was looking for something to do, so he inquired about the job. In the interim, he was offered a position at the Disabilities Rights Center.
Like the other American attorneys who have gone to the Kabul office, Skibbie, 46, will stay only two months. His wife, June Adinah, and two daughters will remain in Contoocook.