He's a defense lawyer and a lobbyist — a 'tough row to hoe' on Capitol Hill

SALT LAKE CITY — As the Utah Legislature winds its way through its opening month, Steve Burton is at his usual hangout location, just outside the House chambers, waiting for yet another opportunity to educate, enlighten and hopefully enlist into his cause the people who make the laws.

Burton is a lobbyist with the Utah Defense Attorney Association, an entity partially funded by a state grant that recognizes good lawmaking is best done when an effort is made to make sure both sides of an argument are heard.

A defense lawyer himself, Burton is self aware of his status in the pecking order on Capitol Hill.

"Lobbyists get a bad rap, defense attorneys get a bad rap — and I'm both," he says good-naturedly. "I represent the interests of the accused: thieves, sex offenders, people accused of murder — the least popular constituency in the state. So yeah, being a defense attorney lobbyist, it's hard to imagine a tougher row to hoe if you're just counting wins and losses."

And yet he does it. Why?

"Because everybody needs somebody to stick up for them," he answers. "Because there's always tons of people from the law and order and prosecutorial side of things to speak up and hardly anybody from the defense side. The power of the government is so strong that defense attorneys try to do anything they can to create some kind of balance."

'What they're asking for is not just'

Case in point: Early in this legislative session a bill — prompted by the high-profile child abuse case of Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt — was introduced calling for 10-year minimum mandatory sentences for anyone found guilty of torturing a child. The so-called torture bill.

Who wouldn't agree with that?

Well …

Burton and his colleague, Mark Moffat, went on the record opposing the bill.

"This is potentially bad policy because you're treating everyone the same," says Burton. "In the Franke case, they know from the sentencing that one person manipulated the other person. The prosecutor said that one person thought she was doing God's work and once she realized she wasn't she was really remorseful, while the other person didn't even apologize. This bill would make no differentiation between the two. So the case they're using to push the bill is an example of why what they're asking for is not just."

He shrugs.

"So now we're the pro child torture people."

You don't win popularity contests doing what he does.

'Somebody had to stand up'

He remembers a bill a few years ago that called for people accused of crimes to give DNA samples when they were arrested. Burton was upset, "because if we're supposed to be presumed innocent, they shouldn't be collecting DNA until there's a conviction."

The legislators brought in Elizabeth Smart to testify in support of the bill. To a packed house, the kidnapping survivor and ardent victims advocate applauded the bill.

"All the legislators praised her bravery and thanked her for coming," says Burton, "then they asked, 'Who from the public is here to speak in favor of this bill?' and probably 30 hands were raised. After that, they asked, 'Who's here to speak against this bill?' and I looked around the room and slowly raised my hand.

"They said, 'All right, Mr. Burton, come on up.'

"I just felt like even though I knew there was absolutely no chance I'd be successful, somebody had to stand up and say this was taking away individual rights we hold near and dear to our hearts in the United States, going against ideals of privacy and presumption of innocence we say we value."

'The bully I'm fighting is public perception'

This year, nearly half of the more than 500 bill proposals that have already been introduced deal in one form or another with criminal justice reform, most calling for stiffer penalties and identifying more crimes.

"We're up to 218 and it's only week three," says Burton. "The majority of what we do is try to help create policies that are a better longterm solution. The more you get into the policy of it, the more I've become convinced that tough on crime is usually a bad policy decision. More often than not, it just kicks the can down the road. You put somebody in jail for a longer amount of time, but when they come out they're potentially more dangerous or at higher risk, so you've just addressed the short term and created a bigger problem for the next generation."

Then he adds, ruefully, "Even when legislators want to agree with us, no legislator will get elected on a platform of reducing penalties."

And so the beat goes on. It's not unlike football practice, muses Burton, who played on the line in high school. "I was always one of the smaller linemen and played a lot on the practice team, and the bigger varsity guys would just beat up on us. I'd watch them kneel on guys, keep them down, put their helmet in their face, and it would just make me so mad; so I probably got in the most fights on our football team because I was always fighting the big bully linemen who were picking on the practice squad guys."

The "bullies" in this analogy, the defense attorney hastens to add, do not equate to Utah's lawmakers. "The legislators I've come to know are really trying to do the right thing," he says. "The bully I'm fighting is public perception and the stark political realities surrounding criminal justice. The prevailing wisdom that higher penalties and longer sentences is the answer — that's what I'm continually lobbying against. I'm optimistic we'll figure out a better way to do criminal justice in the state, it's just going to take time and work to get there."

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