Tuesday, August 25, 2009

A Day in Court for a Couple of Assistant District Public Defenders

We had two lawyers in court today to represent around 50 clients. We started court at 9:00 a.m. and we went straight through until 4:30 p.m. without any lunch-break. Some clients had to wait a long time before we even talked to them. There were about 15 people in jail and the rest sitting out in the court room. Now that I think of it, we probably had closer to 60 clients, but that's the point, I don't even know for sure, there were so many. And, we were supposed to carry out our professional duty as criminal defense attorneys for every single person. I had one guy with an aggravated assault charge, another woman with an aggravated robbery charge, and there were a few lower level felonies and the rest misdemeanors: DUIs, misdemeanor thefts (shoplifting), Driving on Revoked License, Drug possession, Assault, Vandalism, Criminal Impersonation, etc. At times I was talking to two or three clients outside the courtroom in the hallway; at other times, I was talking to the D.A. about three or four cases at once; other times, I was talking to one of my clients in the inmate group, and then interviewing an officer about a case I was dealing with. A few clients would let me know they really needed to get through to get to a job or a medical appointment or because the person who gave them a ride was having low blood sugar trouble and needed to go. I basically said: "I'll get you out of court as soon as I can. We have a few too many cases today."

And, there was a point today when we weren't even adversaries with the D.A. - hell, I think we even felt sorry for her, and she felt sorry for us! She even picked up my lunch I had left over at the Public Defender's Office and I wolfed it down why we were working out cases. What an overwhelming mess of human problems to handle, whatever side you were on. We could see it in her face, and she could see it in our eyes - "if we get through with today, I will find another job, live another life, never come back here again!!!" So many people, so many upset people, so many people who are expecting this and that. So many people in so much trouble, so much of it such stupid trouble. So many people without jobs, without anything much to do, not taking care of much of anything very well. Just living on. Most of these criminal defendants were not doing anything too awful, but just plain not seeming to do much at all very good either. It is the doing nothing much that really lands them in such deep shit. When you do nothing over and over and over again, you dig a pit that's very hard to get out of. And, then a number of our clients have just made some mistakes as young people that so many of us made without getting caught.

In the Public Defender's Office, we get some sense of the pit our clients are in, and we try to help them take a step or two out of it - then the rest is up to them. It seems like we ought to walk at least a few more steps with them. But, we are damn good at helping people get another chance, helping them make it out of the pit. We can't get everybody another chance, but we do it a whole lot. And, sometimes with so many people, they've been down for so long and without anyone standing by them for so long, that when you take their case, assert their rights, and win something for them; it may not change their life; but, they do have the experience of having someone take their side, stand beside them for a while. And, we are proud to do that, especially for those who didn't think anybody would really listen to their side and consider their side of the story worth standing up for. And, truth is, we just don't like authority. And, when authority gets out of hand and tries to smash our client like a bug - well, then authority finds out that there are forces stronger than authority.

Tommorrow morning I'll be back in court with about 15 clients, not sure how many in jail, how many out. It will mostly be misdemeanors, violations of probation, but maybe something serious as well. We never know what new cases we will get. There will be young women with babies watching boyfriends in jail suits, grandmothers asking about their grandsons, probably a pregnant woman crying as she is getting put in jail for violating her probation, a mentally ill inmate or two. Most of our clients will be pretty nice; one or two will be real obnoxious and bug the hell out of us. Somebody will tell us something so wierd that we will have to take each other aside a second to talk about it. One of us will get real pissed at either the judge or one of the D.A.s and we will have to take each other aside and talk about it, and then back to business. I'll get paged two or three times about why somebody is late to court. We will be giving advice right and left, making decisions on cases every few minutes, telling our clients their odds on winning their case, on going to jail or not if they don't win their case, etc. Finding out how much jail time our clients would accept and then telling the D.A. that our clients would accept less than they really would, in order to get what our clients would accept.

When you've handled cases for 20 or more clients in a day, it leaves you tired. It is like my nervous energy is all stirred up, and at some point somewhere inside you start to wonder whether you gave people what you should have given them today. Sometimes you get the legal work right, but the people work wrong. Sometimes just taking one extra minute makes such a difference to a person who is worried about what is going to happen to them. I keep trying to find those extra minutes during the court day. It may be that in finding those few extra minutes for clients that we remember what it means to be human. One thing it means is to remember that the person you are dealing with is a human being, which is a damn important thing to be.

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