Monday Musings: Injustice Anywhere…

She calls herself 123txpublicdefender123, a reflection of her roots as a Texas public defender. Her blog title, Injustice Anywhere…, not only reflects her attitude, but took on an entirely new meaning when she moved to Washington State. Although she still blogs regularly about news from the Lone Star State, her sensibilities and interests continue to catch injustices anywhere as she ensures they are brought to light on her blog.

It was with great pleasure that PD Stuff sat down with (figuratively speaking) the woman behind Injustice Anywhere… and was rewarded with a wealth of information and insight as she reflected on her job, indigent defense, and blogging.

INTRODUCTION

Almost six years ago, I met a client who changed my life. I was working at a large law firm doing complex civil litigation and white-collar criminal defense. I was making lots of money and working long hours, but I was starting to feel really bored with what I was doing. Then, I met Felicia. Felicia was an illegal immigrant, as Lou Dobbs likes to call them. She was from Cameroon, and she had fled to the U.S. after barely escaping torture and imprisonment at the hands of her government. Her initial application for political asylum in this country had been denied, and, she had been placed in deportation proceedings. Through a friend of a friend, my law firm had taken her case pro bono. Because I had done an immigration clinic in law school, I was drafted into the case with another young associate. I spent almost 200 hours working on her case. I found myself in tears more than once. I’ve never been so nervous going into the courtroom—it truly felt like a death penalty case. After we presented our side of the case, the INS trial attorney announced to the court that they no longer opposed her being granted asylum. We had won. There were tears all around that day.

When the case was over, I asked myself why the hell I was working at a big law firm representing big corporations when I could be representing people like Felicia every day. I couldn’t think of a good answer. All the money in the world couldn’t make me feel the way I felt when we won Felicia’s case. I had loved criminal law since my first year of law school, and that’s why I decided to give public defender work a shot. As hopeful as I was that it would be right for me, I don’t think I could have imagined how right it has been.

I love criminal law. I love being a trial lawyer. I love working with real clients, with real problems, on a personal basis. I love being the person who stands up for someone who has no one else to stand up for him. I love knowing that the Constitution has some meaning in my clients’ lives because I am defending their rights. I truly love being a public defender. And I know this sounds incredibly cheesy, but I can’t help it, because it’s true.

How long were you a public defender in Texas?

Four-and-a-half years.

Why the big move to Washington?

It was a combination of personal and professional reasons. Personally, my mother had recently moved to Washington, where she grew up, and where all her family lived, and I missed her. I also had been thinking for a long time about whether I wanted to settle permanently in the city where I lived, and had decided that I didn’t. Professionally, for various reasons that I’ve decided not to blog about (see below), I felt like it was time to leave my office, and make a new start somewhere. I’ve always thought Washington was beautiful and had loved the time I had spent here. I did some research and discovered the two very important things: 1) they had reciprocity admission, so I would not be required to take the entire bar exam (just the ethics portion) to get my law license; and 2) they had a number of public defender offices throughout the state. It was a tough decision to make because I left a lot of good friends and colleagues behind in Texas, but I’m very happy with how things have turned out.

What are the differences/similarities between the approach of the two states in providing indigent defense services?

The major similarity is that neither system is controlled on a state-wide level. Each individual county is largely responsible for how it handles indigent defense. The major difference is that Texas counties predominantly use private practice attorneys paid on a case by case basis, whereas Washington uses more public defender offices and contracts for indigent defense services.

Very few Texas counties have a public defender’s office. Even the county I worked in, which had the largest public defender office in the state, had a hybrid system that relied on the public defender’s office and private practice attorneys for its indigent defense. The majority of Texas counties use a system where an attorney is appointed to a specific case. That decision used to be made primarily by the judge. After some legislative intervention a few years ago, more counties have set up some sort of system whereby the judges are involved in approving a list of qualified attorneys, but don’t regularly choose which lawyer is assigned to any particular case.

I haven’t been in Washington long enough to feel like I have an expert understanding of indigent defense, but from what I’ve seen, it appears that most counties either have a public defender office where all the attorneys are employees of the county (like the office I work in) or the county contracts with an attorney or attorneys or a law firm or law firms to provide the indigent defense services. Individual judges seem largely removed from the process, and it is instead handled at the county government level or through the county’s office of assigned counsel. I think there has been somewhat more state involvement in Washington, as in Texas, since a scandal a few years ago involving the lawyer who had the contract for these services in another county. Skelly was pretty on top of this story, and could probably provide a lot more insight into that and indigent services in the state overall.

Last April you announced your arrival in Washington, and hinted you might blog about your old job, then went silent for a few months. Can you talk about what was going on?

I could talk about it, but I’ve decided not to. Blogging is a tricky thing. I am what I like to call “semi-anonymous” in my blogging, and I am always conscious about how what I say might affect my job or the people that I’m “ranting and raving” about. I feel like I’ve worked through the issues from my old job in my own way, learned from them, and just want to move forward without putting something out there in cyberspace forever memorializing a tough period in my life.

When you came back, you said you thought you had given up on blogging. Of course, we are all very happy you didn’t give up. And it makes you the perfect person to answer this question: What is the pull of the blog that brought you back?

I don’t know if I can put my finger on it exactly. I certainly love the opportunity to vent frustrations by putting my thoughts out there somewhere, whether someone is reading it or not. I also get some fulfillment from knowing that there are people out there who are interested in my experiences, even if it is only about 100 people a day. I hope that at least some of the people reading my blog are gaining some insight into the criminal justice system. I think the news media does a poor job of covering legal issues in general, and the criminal justice system is no exception. I also think public defenders get a bad rap in a lot of the discussion in the media about the system, and I like to think that I contribute to a better understanding of what we do. I also feel a strong sense of camaraderie with other public defender bloggers out there. I read their blogs whenever I get the chance, and I do feel like we form sort of a cyber-community—something beyond the community I have in my office.

You are now working in the juvenile division. What are the differences you see between working with adult clients and with juvenile clients?

I honestly didn’t have any idea how big the difference would be when I started doing juvenile work. On one level, much of the legal work is the same—I still spend about 80-90% of my time defending criminal cases (the other 10-20% is spent on the civil side of juvenile law). But, representing kids charged with crimes has proven quite different from representing adults.

One major difference is that I feel responsible for much more of what is going on in my clients’ lives than I did when I represented adults. A lot of my clients are engaging in criminal behavior due, at least in part, to their circumstances at home. With adult clients, I didn’t feel like their home lives were really my responsibility. I may encourage a domestic violence victim to get counseling or get out of the relationship, or encourage a drug addict to get treatment, but, ultimately, advice and encouragement was where my role ended. They were adults, and it was their responsibility to get their lives in order. With kids, it is very different. They don’t have the same legal rights or life experience or maturity and understanding to just “get their lives in order.” If they are legally ordered to live with their parents, they can’t just leave, even if they wanted to. If they have parents who aren’t physically abusing them, but also aren’t providing them at all with the supportive home environment that parents need to provide their kids as they are facing difficult choices in their lives, then it is hard for them to make the right choices. This is where I feel the responsibility to step in. Sometimes, I am finding safe housing for a child either through a relative or community services. If the parents won’t cooperate, we sometimes have to use the civil side of the system to make that happen. I spend a lot of time just talking to my clients about the fact that they DO have a right not to be hit or molested by their parents, and finding ways to get them to the services that they need. I have been appalled at some of the situations my clients have been living in for years, with little to no intervention by the authorities. I do feel responsible to do what I can, but I obviously find myself unable to solve all these problems. That is the part of juvenile work that is so heartbreaking. If I can “fix” anything at all, it is often only temporary, or just a small part of their life, and then I just hope that other people will do something to help the other parts, or that, if they don’t, the kid will somehow manage to come out of it without being so damaged that they can’t live a productive adult life. With the huge percentage of adult clients, letting go after the case was over was pretty easy. With a lot of my kids, that is really, really hard.

What words of wisdom would you like to share with relatively new public defenders?

Don’t do it unless you believe in what you are doing. You will rarely get fulfillment from this job if you are relying on the gratitude of individual clients. Don’t get me wrong. The moments when you get that are fantastic—I have shed many tears in those moments. But, in my experience, they are few and far between (albeit more frequent in juvenile cases than they were in adult land). I believe that your reward—your fulfillment—has to come from knowing that the rights of everyone in this country are being protected because of the work you and your fellow defense attorneys are doing for individual clients each and every day.

THE PD STUFF FIVE QUESTIONS

If you weren’t an attorney, what other job would you like to try and why?

There are a lot of things I’d like to do, but don’t think I really have the skills to do. I’d love to be some sort of journalist or writer. The problem is that I’m not a very good writer. I would also love to have Charlie Rose’s job—to get to spend my days meeting and interviewing interesting people from all areas of life—politics, art, sports, business, science, etc.—would be an absolute dream.

Best moment on the job?

It’s really hard to pick just one. Any of my cases where I won a not guilty verdict for someone I believe was a victim of domestic violence, but ended up being charged as the perpetrator, would be up there as a “best moment.” Getting a no-bill (no indictment) from the grand jury in an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon case where my client had stabbed her live-in boyfriend in self-defense ranks up there with all of those, too.

Worst moment on the job?

Any time a client I truly believed was innocent was convicted, whether in trial or by his/her choice to plead guilty. Sadly, there were too many of these, especially the latter.

If Heaven exists, what do you think God will say to you when you arrive?

I agree with Feige that this is a tough one for an agnostic . . .

“Even when you didn’t believe in me, you still tried to do the right thing, so come on in.”

If you could only pick one, who is your hero/heroine?

I’ll go with my professional hero–Johnnie Cochran, Jr. O.J. may have been his most famous client, but he spent plenty of time representing the downtrodden as well. And nobody did it better than him, in my opinion. Nobody.

Thank you, Injustice Anywhere…, for taking the time to share with PD Stuff’s readers your thoughtful and considerable insights.

Next week’s guest on Monday Musings is Sanchovilla of Tales of a Public Defender Investigator. If you have some questions you would like me to consider for Sancho, please email them to me by late Tuesday so I can get the questions to him in plenty of time.

You can also schedule your own interview on Monday Musings. Simply email me with some information about yourself and an upcoming open date (the MM schedule is near the top of the sidebar).

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