Why I Do What I Do

My father always used to say that "if I had a nickel for every book I bought for you, I'd be a rich man."

He wasn't wrong. But I think about that whenever someone asks me how I can defend "those people." You know: "If I had a nickel for every time someone scowled at me, formed a facial expression reminiscent of smelling a garbage heap, and asked me how I can defend 'those people' I'd be a rich woman."

I have spent virtually my entire legal career in criminal defense. As a Public Defender. Yes, "THOSE PEOPLE." Poor people who get convicted of crimes.

The events that surrounded, and this week ended, the Duke Rape Fiasco illustrate exactly why I do it.

What a difference a year makes, huh.

A year ago, there was a lynch mob at Durham and beyond, the pitchfork wielders consisting of the Duke University campus and administration, the media, the usual camera hogs like Jesse Jackson, and lots of otherwise perfectly nice people who made certain assumptions based on their feelings about privileged white male college students who use their parents' money to hire strippers for their parties.

Now, the mob participants are pretending like nothing happened. While most never said the accused were guilty, they behaved as though they were.

But most people are guilty of precisely this. One quick look at any response board of any online paper asking the public to comment on some criminal case will prove it.

And this is just plain WRONG. Sadly, not many realize that.

I fear the lesson here will get buried in light of the media's haste to bury their own guilty judgment under the news cycle rug. Not everyone accused of a crime is guilty. And it is immoral to behave in a manner that belies this very simple truth.

Luckily for those three young men in the Duke case, they had money and resources to fight. Most do not. And those who do not often as not find themselves in prison. And once there, it is practically impossible to get out because the appellate system is not designed to release the innocent, and prosecutors and police officers find it absolutely impossible to admit that they blew it. It happens. It is no answer to say that it doesn't happen very often. The fact that it happens to even one person is a travesty of justice.

As saddened as I am by a society and a justice system that behaves this way, I save and heap my scorn on prosecutors who abuse their nearly unfettered power to charge people with crimes, not having the decency to admit they made a mistake, or caring what happens so long as their personal agenda is fulfilled.

The only true punishment for prosecutors who do that is Karma. The only punishment that fits this crime is for Mr. Nifong to find himself at the wrong end of a grand jury, unable to fight the charge, find himself convicted, and then placed in prison. Merely losing a license to practice law is insufficient to right this wrong.

What everyone in this country needs to understand is that if prosecutors can do this to one person, can charge people with crimes even in the face of evidence of their innocence, can suppress exculpatory evidence, and march easily to a conviction, then it can happen to each and every one of us.

Not everyone has the extra thousands and millions of dollars it takes to fight this kind of abuse of process. In fact, few do. Innocence is not just confined to the rich and white. What happened to the young men at Duke happens to the poor, too. Their fight for justice is our fight. The very integrity of our government depends on this.

I hope that anyone reading this now gets it, and loses that judgmental look of disgust when they ask me why I do what I do.