What are we really here for?

I had a client in court recently who was arrested on a warrant that had been taken out against his brother. This sort of thing happens all the time at Rice St (location and short-hand name for the Fulton County Jail), but it usually gets straightened out pretty quickly. If the warrant is because someone was arrested, bonded out, and then missed a court date, it’s no big deal to straighten out; you just compare the prints from the original arrest with the prints of the guy now arrested. My client (let’s call him Dave) was not so lucky.

Dave’s brother, call him Mike, had been accused of beating up his girlfriend, call her Sally.  Sally had done this after Mike had left the scene, by calling a police who investigated the case and got a warrant for Mike’s arrest.  About a year later, Dave is arrested for this warrant.  Dave is not Mike, and this is not Dave’s warrant, but Dave has Mike’s name as one of his AKAs in the crime index, so when he was stopped by an officer for something else, the warrant popped up.  He had at least one other arrest, so the judge at his first appearance set a good bond in his case, refusing to let him out on his own recognizance (or sign his own bond, as Fulton County calls it).  Dave is set for a preliminary hearing, traditionally two weeks later, but because of calendar issues, Dave has to wait three weeks.

Three weeks later, I am the lawyer representing him at his preliminary hearing.  Dave’s girlfriend is there, as is his mother, to testify that the system has arrested the wrong brother.  I have learned from Dave where his AKA came from: he used his brother’s name once, six years ago, when he was being questioned by an officer.  Not a nice thing to do, not a legal thing to do.  But he was about eighteen years old at the time, and he has had a clean record ever since.  For a young black male to avoid arrest in certain parts of Fulton County means that he is very law-abiding and very respectful.  And very lucky, for that matter.  I have no doubt that with the girlfriend and mother both there to testify to his identity, we will get my client out on a signature bond, even if the judge doesn’t dismiss the case.

I was wrong.  The judge decided that he should have to pay for having used his brother’s name, never mind that he has just done so by spending three weeks in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, a crime he wasn’t even accused of.  The officer is present, but cannot confirm or deny that this is the accused.  My client is scheduled to have a prelimiary hearing, and the State’s witness is present and unable to establish identity.  The alleged victim told my client’s mother that she knew it wasn’t right, but she wasn’t coming to court.  We are entitled to a dismissal, or at the very least, a signature bond with a reset for the State to investigate.  But the judge refuses, sets the case a week out, and tells the officer to check his file, which has a photo of the accused from his original investigation.

I immediately begin preparing for a writ of habeus corpus (something we never have to do for misdemeanors in this county), only to find that we wouldn’t even get our initial hearing for ten days, at which point the defendant will be out.  I go ahead and prepare the order, in case the next court appearance is equally disastrous.  The next week the officer shows up with his file, says that it’s the wrong brother, and the case is dismissed.  My supervisor asks the officer when he knew that the wrong defendant was being held; he said last week, when he left the courthouse and checked his file.  She asked why he didn’t call the Solicitor then and get the case dismissed.  He says that he thought the kid deserved to spend an extra week in jail, because he’d used his brother’s name six years ago.

My supervisor wrote a long letter to the police department, informing them of the officer’s actions.  She included information that I’d located about false imprisonment suits.  It’s almost impossible to win these, but knowingly holding someone on a warrant that belongs to someone else is one instance in which plaintiffs are on strong ground.  Based on this, the officer was disciplined; my boss told me that he was suspended for a couple of days.

In case you’re feeling no sympathy for the defendant, and think that he got what he deserved, don’t forget the nature of the charge.  This was a domestic violence case.  I asked my client’s mother why the alleged victim wouldn’t come to court.  “Is Mike being really nice to her until Dave just takes a plea to get out of jail?” I asked, knowing that the plea would satisfy the warrant and set Dave up for Mike’s punishment, knowing also that many defendants avoid prosecution by wooing old girlfriends before court dates.  “No!” she said.  “He’s got her locked in her apartment.  She’s scared to come to court.”

So, not only did Dave spend four weeks in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, in spite of evidence that they had the wrong man, the real accused party was at large, terrorizing the same woman who’d come to the system for protection.  Apparently, the investigating officer and the judge decided that a six-year-old count of giving a false name to an officer, for which the defendant had already been prosecuted, was more important than this victim’s safety.

Cell phone crime

I had no idea how much trouble cell phones cause until I took this job.  All of my colleagues are in agreement with me (as are the solicitors) that a lot of domestic violence cases seem to stem from cell phone use, one way or another.  There’s the woman trying to call 911 whose boyfriend slaps the phone out of her hand.  There’s the woman who finds naked pictures of some other girl on her boyfriend’s phone (BIG fight).  There’s the woman or man who finds elicit text messages on the  significant other’s cell phone.  And most frequent of all, there’s the argument, followed by one person trying to leave the house, with the other person refusing to let them take their own cell phone with them, which leads to a physical fight (“tussle”) over the phone.  My best estimate is that about eighty percent of our domestic violence cases arise from cell phones, one way or another.

Then there’s the issue of people driving while talking.  I walk and use MARTA a lot now, so I get a good view of passing traffic, and it scares the daylights out of me to see how many people do this, and how little attention they pay to anything other than the phone.  I did it all the time until I got a scooter and had to stop.  Having seen the number of people doing it and the way they drive, I’d bet money that cell phones cause far more accidents than booze.

Lately I’ve seen a rise in the number of cell phone extortion cases, too.  Somebody loses a phone, calls their number, and gets an answer from a borderline homeless guy who found it and arranges for a pickup, in exchange for a reward.  Of course, on my end, I just hear the defendant’s side of things, which is usually, “Hey, I could’ve left the phone sitting there, in which case somebody else could’ve made all kinds of calls on it.  I deserved a reward.”  Given that the requested reward is usually ten dollars, I see their point.  The police NEVER see their point.  Nor do the victims; in fact, the sense of personal affront exhibited by the victims seems disproportionate to me.  I guess the cell phone carries a strong aspect of an extension of self that used to belong only to a journal and address book all rolled into one.  This is how I find my people.  This is how my people find me.  It takes on a sense of importance that has sometimes caused me to lose my sense of perspective (as in driving while dialing).  It has certainly caused me to shut out the world (talking on the phone at an outdoor cafe when I could be people-watching and making small talk, actually interacting with the people around me).  And there have been times when turning it off seems like a much bigger deal than it should be: “but what if someone wants to call me!?  What if I miss something?”  More than once I’ve had to stop myself and think: “What if I’m missing what’s going on right here, right now?”

Which brings me to the worst cell phone offense I’ve seen, which was in court.  One of the solicitors was done with the direct examination of her witness and apparently thought that cross examination wasn’t worth paying attention to: she pulled out her phone and text-messaged her boyfriend until the defense lawyer finished.  Let this be a reminder to all of us to remember to hang up once in a while.

I got to help somebody today

Just left the jail from the AM first appearance calendar. One inmate refused to give any information or to accept representation from my colleague when she offered her services. He said that he wants drug treatment and when she told him that that wasn’t an option, he refused to talk any more. At the podium, she told the judge that he declined representation and was only interested in drug treatment.

We get a lot of people asking for drug treatment who really just think that it’s a way to divert their case from the regular trial calendar. Maybe in felony court– I don’t know– but at the misdemeanor level, people come and go with such regularity and in such great number that unless there’s a mental health issue, we can’t offer them anything beyond the jail’s N.A. meetings and some information about local charities. This fellow seemed a bit different, because he told the judge that he wanted drug treatment and said “and if you let me out, I won’t come back to court.” That said, the judge (who isn’t actually at the jail, but conducts court via video from the courthouse) asked the defendant whether he wanted to have a preliminary hearing or to bind his case over to State Court. The defendant said State Court and the judge started to address bond.

Something about this guy made me think that he really wanted help, and wasn’t just trying to be difficult. Mainly it was his apparent reluctance to leave jail unless it was to enter drug treatment. I’ve seen one man stay in jail an extra six weeks while a judge had his father come to court and order the father to release the son’s disability checks– all because the son was afraid to leave jail without going to a treatment facility, and he needed money for that.

So I told the defendant “If you don’t want to get out, a preliminary hearing takes longer.” He got it at once, faced the camera and said “Your Honor, I changed my mind. I want the hearing.” While the judge ordered the hearing, the defendant looked at me in apparent shock and asked “Why did you do that?” I shrugged. “You helped me. Why?” I shrugged again and said, “Well, you seemed to want to stay in jail. I guess you can’t get drugs here, so it seemed like you needed to know how to stay longer.” He nodded and thanked me, still amazed.

Not that I do this job for appreciation, but it is nice to know that there are times that I can actually help someone in a substantive way, and I’d like to think I did so today. Whether the extra two weeks in jail will do any good or not, maybe just knowing that someone thought that he was worth a minute of my time– not as a lawyer, but just as a person– will give him some amount of resolve to keep looking for the next person who might think so. Or maybe it will give him a bit of self-worth that lets him reject the next person who wants to pull him back into a lifestyle that he desperately wants out of. Who knows? But maybe….

Molested in MARTA

Well, it finally happened to me, the quintessential urban Atlanta experience: I was touched in a demeaning way by a strange man in a MARTA station. My sense of “how dare you! This is ME you’re dealing with!” caught me off guard, but honestly, I should’ve seen it coming. A good five to ten percent of my cases come from MARTA encounters, and the number goes way up when you look at just batteries, simple batteries, and especially sexual batteries.

I understand that there are some cities where people sleep during their commute. NEVER sleep on MARTA. I promise you that you will wake up with a homeless or homeless-smelling man stroking your inner thigh, at best. I had one client who was accused of massaging a girl’s thigh and telling her that she had a “fat pussy” (Great, one more area where we have to worry about weight gain.) She ended up coming to court in a belly shirt, low-cut jeans and a bolero jeans jacket, and the solicitor took her upstairs to change clothes AFTER the jury saw her, so he was acquitted.

Another guy was charged with beating a woman in the face on the train. He explained that no, he was simply concerned about the woman on the seat next to him because she was crying, so while it may have looked like she was crying because he hit her, he actually was wiping the tears from her face. His touching her had nothing to do with her distress.

In a way, I’m glad that a weirdo messed with me in the MARTA station. It gives me cred with the complaining witnesses and all things considered, it was a pretty mild episode. I was leaving the station, some too-familiar stranger in his late forties or so caught my eye as he approached, I put on my “no, we don’t know each other and I have nothing for you” face, and he started acting like he saw something on me. I tried to veer away, and he kept barreling at me, ending with “What is that? What is it? Oh! On your shoulder!” and pinched my shoulder as he walked by. It reminded me of my uncle Terry, who used to enjoy mildly demeaning jokes when I was a child– I think he might’ve quit doing “got your nose” when I was seven.

So, whatever, I was pestered on MARTA by some guy who has a poor sense of humor and no sense of boundaries. It annoys the daylights out of me to know that I could’ve gotten this turd arrested, and that there are a lot of people in Atlanta who would’ve done just that. I represented one guy who was actually arrested for flicking a family friend on the ear, after the kid complained to his mother about it. You could tell that the cop was really pissed about the mother’s insistence that he arrest the poor sap for battery. Unlike most police reports, this one was oozing with PRO-defendant sarcasm (“I charged the defendant with simple battery rather than battery because there was no visible injury, in spite of the flicking.”)

Personally, I think this is the sort of situation where vigilante justice is wholly appropriate. Why bring the courts into something this stupid? I would’ve gladly socked the dumb-ass who messed with me if he’d stuck around– or maybe I just would’ve screamed and run, I don’t really know– but as it was, I said something like “What the fuck?” scrunched up my face in annoyance, and went home through the courtyard of the High so I could see something pretty. Come to think of it, that probably is the most acceptable solution; last time some of my clients tried hitting back, it started as “play fighting” with pillows and ended up with both parties drawing knives. Better just to adopt a “get thee behind me weirdo” attitude and go looking for something pretty to take your mind off him.

See, what happened was…

It seems like any time I get invited to a barbecue, book group, or other gathering of ambitious professionals who tend to comprise my law school classmates’ circles of friends, I always end up talking to the emergency room doctors and the legal aid lawyers. We understand each other. We may have more in common on an individual level with some of the corporate lawyers, sales managers, etc in the room, but not when they’re en masse. They talk their talk, we talk ours. But sooner or later, one of the corporate set hears one of us say something about being yelled at and spit on by a client, or used as masturbation material during what we had hoped would be a professional interview– the usual– and they start asking for war stories. I wasn’t surprised to learn that emergency room doctors get yelled at and blamed for lack of pillows, same as I get yelled at when a prosecution witness shows up. But one universal that surprised me was the “what happened was” story.

“What happened was” is your client’s version of what happened that led to his arrest, or whatever his legal issue is, or the incident that got him to the hospital, and it’s basically a confession. But he’s convinced that it totally exonerates him. He’s convinced that anyone who simply hears his “what happened was” will see that he has been horribly wronged and deserves everyone’s sympathy, perhaps accompanied by a public apology. In my job, I pray that I get to hear this story before we get in front of a judge, because otherwise the judge will hear it all straight from my client’s mouth. Lots of times my client doesn’t trust me but is convinced that the judge and solicitor are wise and understanding people who will bend over backwards to help him if he just tells them his side of the story. A good half of my job consists of getting this story out of my client so I can feed a minuscule amount of it to the judge and preempt my client’s airing the whole sordid tale. Unfortunately, even when I’ve heard it enough times to be able to repeat it in my sleep, I don’t always succeed at keeping my client’s mouth shut.

A few weeks ago, for instance, I had a client who was from somewhere in Africa, by way of New York, and was in Atlanta for a family reunion. While he was in town, he decided to go shopping at the Underground (a mall), and was spotted by a local girl who decided to take him for all he was worth. As he tells it, she approached him at the mall, made it clear that if he spent some money on her, she’d make sure that he had a great night, got as much as he was willing to pay for, and then ditched him. The day apparently ended with him running after her in a MARTA station yelling, “Give me back my money if you won’t have sex with me!” When he finally caught up to her, he grabbed hold of her and yelled for the police, leaving her with no way out except to tell the officer that he’d hit her and then grabbed her to keep her from running away. He couldn’t understand why he was the one charged with a crime, and not her. After all, as he’d explained to the officer, he was just holding onto her because she wouldn’t even hug and kiss him.

He was befuddled that the officer didn’t arrest her for stealing instead of arresting him. He was incensed when I told him that grabbing hold of a woman who wants to get away from you does actually constitute simple battery. But, he knew that he still could get the whole thing taken care of; he just had to explain it to the judge. “I took her shopping; I bought her clothes; I got her hair done. She said she would have sex with me if I spent money on her, and then she told me the wrong way to go in the MARTA station and she ran the other way. I never hit her. I was treating her like a lady. I just hold her so she give me back my money if she won’t have sex with me.”

Okay, you may be thinking that it was borderline malpractice to let my client confess to solicitation in open court. And if I hadn’t known the judge, known that she loves a good story, and known that I’ve never seen her add charges in a situation like that, you’d have a point. Not that my client would’ve shut up no matter what I said, owing to the need to tell the “what happened was.” And as a recent article in an alternative news rag taught me, a lot more people have this need to confess than I’d ever realized.

Creative Loafing recently did an article about the eleven least influential people in Atlanta. http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A333662

Number 5 on the list is a man named John Fitzgerald Page, who earned web notoriety when a woman who winked at him on Match.com took umbrage at his response, which listed what he considered his relevant stats (Ivy League education, Buckhead condo, number of times per week he works out, etc) and asked for a photo that showed her body. She replied that she didn’t think that they’d be a good match, and he responded with an angry letter listing even more of his positive traits (was on best-dressed list in an Atlanta magazine, had lunch with the Secretary of Defense, is a member of Mensa, can squat or bench press X amount, etc). She sent his response to gawker.com, where he was summarily crucified by a bunch of strangers.

What gets me is that now he has a forum to set the story straight for the whole city and he demonstrates how clearly he still doesn’t get it. In classic, “what happened was” fashion, he explains that he neither threatened nor harassed the scorned woman, but “just sent her an email saying basically, ‘I have these statistics and you can’t hang.’” As for the gawker responses, he complains that “They’re threatening my life because I blew off a fat chick on the Internet.”

All I can say is, I’m glad he’s so gorgeously rich. If he needs an attorney, he’ll have to pay for one. And good luck keeping that mouth shut.

Obedient revolution

I get at least one new client every month who has fought their speeding ticket all the way from city traffic court until it ends up accused as a state court misdemeanor. Unless there were two nuns in the car with you, willing to swear that you were following both the letter and the spirit of the law, I consider this really stupid. The cheapest and easiest way to deal with a traffic ticket is to pay the damn thing and be done with it. If you take it to trial, you will have an angry jury who can’t believe that you’re wasting their time because they all know that you were speeding. Because everyone does. They do, too, and when they’re caught, they pay up. That’s exactly what the system is counting on, and that’s why your opportunity to be a rebel was before you drove too fast.

Forget those emails telling us to show the oil companies who’s boss (they are) by not buying gas for a whole day. If you really want to stick it to the man, start following every traffic law to the letter. Anyone who’s ever driven down county roads and state highways on the way to the beach knows that local communities rely on traffic violations as a major source of revenue. The more I work in the law, the more I see this in action. I never really believed the stories about quotas until I became a public defender, but now I can safely say that Atlanta police do operate under a quota system, and not just for traffic citations, but for actual arrests. Going out and fighting dangerous criminals, solving old cases, etc– good TV material, bad way to get promoted. The cops are judged by the number of arrests and tickets, at least in the beginning of their career.

There are more people with an interest here than you can imagine. By the time someone gets to court and is willing to plead guilty, there is the fine, there are surcharges for various funds, and there’s often a hike in insurance rates. If you have to take a defensive driving class, that costs money, too. If you can’t afford to pay it all at once, probation gets monthly fees for handling you– and in Fulton County, misdemeanor probation is a for-profit company, reputedly owned by former cops.

So why should this bother you? For the same reason it bothers me; a large portion of society relies on these fines, yet it also criminalizes them. I find that galling. A group of Georgia Tech students infamously decided to prove a point about interstate speed limits in the city by driving 55 mph during rush hour on I-285. They made the news: helicopter cameras showed the line of commuters stretched out behind them as they drove abreast as fast as the law would allow. I’d like to take it a step further. I’d like to see everyone obey every traffic law for a solid month– minimum. I’d like to force law enforcement and the courts and insurance companies and everyone else who has an interest in these fines, to drop the pretense, drop the charade that this is criminal behavior that should be stopped. I want it acknowledged that we need people to violate this law because of the way that we have chosen to enforce it.

As for the alternative, I think something akin to a “cuss jar” would work fine. Go this fast, pay this much. If that sounds like the same thing to you, it isn’t. A speed tax would be critically different from a traffic citation in that there’s no criminal act involved. You aren’t subject to a search of your car. You aren’t subject to being hauled in and jailed. You don’t get a record. And bottom line, you aren’t labeled a criminal, a bad member of society, for doing something that society relies on.

Impersonating an officer

I went to a Halloween party with a couple of neighbors the other night, one of whom has just moved to Atlanta from Paris. He travels a lot, and lived in Buenos Aires for a few years, but has never lived in a country where they celebrate Halloween. When I told him about the party, he was more than a bit skeptical. “But, what do you dress as? Everyone dresses like this? Adults and everyone?” I assured him that, yes, everyone dresses up for Halloween, at least for Halloween parties, and that he’d feel out of place if he were not in costume.

The next day he called me from the costume store. “What should I get? They don’t have Louis Quatorze.” I made a few suggestions, none to his liking. He said he’d find something. Later he called me back. “As public defender, you don’t hate cops, do you? I think I found a costume. You have to wait to see what it is.”

So, yeah, he was a cop, in the style of the Irish cop on the beat from Prohibition-era movies, the kind with the wide belt worn really high on the waist. My friend Joanna was Paris Hilton with jail numbers, so that was a nice coincidence. The funny thing was, Jean-Francois was really into the whole costume thing once we got out. “You there, passport, please,” he would say, pointing at a random pedestrian. “You, give me a hundred dollars. I am corrupt cop. Pay me and you can do whatever.”

It hit me that it probably wasn’t the costume thing so much as the cop thing. Apparently, wearing a police uniform, pretending to be a police officer, has a universal appeal. One of my friends is defending the City of Atlanta on a civil suit for false arrest filed by a former cop. The guy’s case isn’t so much false arrest as it is false dismissal, from what I heard. The arrestee was a retired cop working some parking attendant job near Turner Field. He dressed in full cop gear, including a vest that said “Police,” and was directing traffic and taking money for parking. Some people called the police department and complained that a uniformed officer was taking money from people, so they sent some guys to check it out. Whole thing is on tape, including the part where the officers ask the guy to please just take off the vest– or heck, even turn it inside out. He refused, so they arrested him for impersonating an officer. The D.A.’s office declined to prosecute, so he sued for false arrest.

Then there was the first guy I ever knew who got arrested for impersonating an officer. He was middle-class, white and impatient. I represented him at first appearance, and I figured that it might have been a joke taken too seriously, or maybe taken too far. At first appearance, we almost never get too much into the facts of the case, just get our clients set up for their next hearing. Besides, they generally won’t tell me about anything that happened, preferring to wait and spill their guts to the judge and prosecutor, who they are convinced will dismiss it if they just hear their side of the story. So I didn’t really get to hear details about his case, just the basic charge. I figured there were equal chances that he had been arrested on a misunderstanding or that he was a dangerous kook who pretended to be a cop so he could abduct women. He kept focusing on his bond, totally ignoring the procedural issue of what to do with his case, so I put the odds way more in favor of a misunderstanding based on a boneheaded joke. Surely criminal masterminds have enough cunning to be able to forget about bond for a second and think about how they want to proceed with their case.

Turns out I was overthinking it, or maybe overestimating criminal masterminds. The woman from Pretrial Release kept hissing at me every time my client tried to get my attention. “Don’t talk to him anymore!” she’d spit, eyes bulging. “You’ve talked to him enough!” “What the heck’s up with her?” I’d think, merrily going back to answer the same question a fourth time. Finally she grabbed my arm. “You don’t need to be talking to him. He’s been charged with embalming without a license.”

Oh.  An amateur undertaker who impersonates cops.

Well, at least I know what Jean-Francois can be next year….

You were doing okay until you said that thing about Jesus

I’ve been meaning to take an improv class for years, and after several false starts, I went to watch a friend’s class the other night. It was exactly the kind of environment I’ve been looking for: a small class, a professional instructor, lots of fun, and students who have far more dorky charm than actor egos. Seemed like a great creative outlet, the kind of place I could make an idiot of myself, and best of all, make friends with intelligent people who aren’t lawyers.

I forgot that some of them might be clients.

One of the students– let’s call her Simone– got there late; I was having too much fun to pay much attention to her, except to notice that she kept making the obvious sex jokes that you hope everyone gets out of their system by the second or third class. She was kind of stilted and a little more aware of herself than the others, too, and it was obvious that she got on their nerves. That’s all I noticed until the end of class, when she asked me how she knew me. A lot of times this just means that the person has seen me on my bicycle or that they frequent the same bakery where I basically live. Other times I can tell that they’re lawyers. And then there are people like Simone. This chick knew me from the courthouse or the jail, I’d bet good money on it. It was partly because of her general weirdness, partly how she asked me (“You look very familiar. You look like you should be famous. I know I know you from somewhere.”), and partly– I don’t know, but I’d have bet on it. I decided to alert her to the likely connection and give her an easy opportunity to laugh it off.

“Well, do you work for Fulton County?– or hang out at the jail?” I added, melodramatically sotto vocce . Normal people would realize “Jesus God, that’s right, she was at the jail when I got hauled in for that DUI.” Normal people would then laugh and say “Yeah, that’s it– you got me off that murder charge.” Maybe follow up by asking if I play trivia at such and such a bar on Tuesday nights. But this lady was not normal.

“That’s how I know you!” she beamed. “I’m there all the time! You wear those cute little suits!” This is a typical reaction when my repeat clients recognize me in public. They act like second graders seeing a teacher at the grocery store. At this point, I want to leave. I don’t want to give this woman the idea that I’m her special lawyer– not that it isn’t too late for that, but maybe if I leave, she won’t start stalking me. Class is over; I had fun; I’ll be back for the graduation show– I’m heading for the door. My friend Craig wants to go get dinner. Sounds great. Let’s go now. He lingers a bit, wanting to ask the instructor to join us. But Simone is talking to the instructor about what to wear for the show. I inch towards the door, ready to ditch Craig if I have to bolt. And Simone gives me a reason.

The instructor tells her not to wear a hat; people need to be able to see her eyes for the show. Simone tells him: “But I’m a prophetess; I have to wear a head covering.”

I leave. Until now I’ve wondered exactly what sort of behavior gets Simone arrested so much. She’s apparently got a job; she has the wherewithal to decide to take an improv class, find one, and pay for it. In spite of her weirdness, this is all unusual for one of our frequent flyers. Now it all makes sense. I don’t know exactly what sort of behavior gets Simone arrested. I don’t need to know. I just know that she probably claims to be not subject to the laws or courts of the United States or the State of Georgia. She may claim that her name is a registered trademark. She is apparently part of one of a few groups that operate, at least in Atlanta, under the guise of a religious organization, but that seems to boil down to doing whatever the crap you want and claiming that the laws don’t apply to you. I see them in the jail or at the courthouse more and more frequently. The best thing about them is that they sometimes challenge my law license, based on the authority that issued it, and refuse my representation. (“The flesh and the blood always represents himself,” one told me. I happily told the judge that she’d have to deal with him without me.)

One of the things that’s most interesting about this group is that they tend to be like our paranoid schizophrenic clients who have some sort of religious mania, at least in one regard. They appear perfectly functional, if a little weird, and make absolute sense, until they start talking about Jesus. Maybe the schizo guy is complaining to the judge about a psych eval that’s keeping him in custody. He wants to take a plea and can’t, because his competency is challenged and we’re waiting on the doctor’s evaluation. The social worker gets calls from his mother saying please don’t let him out; he comes here and just starts tearing my house apart, trying to get in and hurt me. He tells the judge that his mother is unhinged and imagining things; he worries about her, but if he has to leave her alone, he will; he’s been held forty days on a criminal trespass charge and wants to take a plea. “And Your Honor,” he adds, “I’m a prophet king. Tupac’s father needs me to clear him in the death of his son. It’s imperative that I get out to deal with this.” Once you get them on the Jesus thing, there’s no putting the crazy back in the box.

As for Simone, Craig gave me a nice example at dinner. She has been late to class before. She explained that she’s a cab driver and her pet turtle had gotten lost in her cab. So she had to drive to Savannah because that’s the only place where they have an X-Ray machine big enough to X-Ray a cab and find her turtle. I have a feeling that I will be seeing these facts in a police narrative soon, under “suspect statement,” and that she’ll want me, her special lawyer, to tell the jury why she had to speed.

Hello world!

I’ll never forget my introduction to life as a public defender. I’d been working in insurance defense for six months, my first job out of law school, and I’d pretty much decided that I was working for the devil. Either the plaintiff had a genuine case and I had to stoop to the sleaziest means the law allowed, or the plaintiff was a total crook, trying to get something for nothing. And by the way, the devil is boring to work for. I had no interest in convincing a court, through a series of briefs, that my client was not primary or secondary, but tertiary in the stack of uninsured motorist carriers. I’d gone to law school to be like Perry Mason or Clarence Darrow, strutting around court, getting somebody out of jail, and celebrating with steak and martinis.

And lucky me, through connections on a mock trial team I coached, I was going to do just that. Within a series of days, I applied for a job at a local public defender’s office, was interviewed while driving home for Easter weekend, and got hired during the same phone interview. I arrived at my mother’s house, thrilled that I was going to do God’s work. My mother, a romantic to the core, was equally elated. She’d been against my becoming a lawyer in the first place, for fear I’d become “a shyster.” Now there was no chance of that. Public defenders do not use legal shenanigans to kick families off their farms, or steal from widows. On the contrary, they help poor people in big trouble. She couldn’t wait to tell her friends at church. And the next day, we got the chance.

During the reception after service, I was approached by a smiling man in his mid-sixties or so who greeted me warmly and asked how work was going. I told him how happy I was to be leaving insurance defense, where I’d always represented money interests, and going to a public defender’s office, where I’d be working more in line with my values, helping “the least among us.” I finished paraphrasing the Gospels, smiled, and waited to be congratulated.

He turned around and walked away.

My mother was devastated when I told her, laughing. I explained that ninety percent of everyone thinks that criminal defense lawyers are scum and that she might as well get used to it. Personally, that’s part of how I knew I was doing the right thing. The sheen of respectability was part of what disgusted me about my last job. I am respectable; I don’t have to look over my shoulder afraid that I don’t appear that way. And refusing to do important work, just because it’s unsavory, is frankly beneath me. I couldn’t wait to push back my sleeves, go to jail, and work in nasty circumstances to help people who had nothing to give me for it. I couldn’t wait to take some of the load off my clients, fight for the underdog, and do good.

A year later, I found myself bitching with a priest in Sunday school about “The Poor.” One of my hapless classmates had posed a rhetorical question that occurred to her when driving home from the homeless shelter where she sometimes volunteered. “How did they end up there and I ended up here?” she wondered. I jumped in: “I’ll tell you how!” expounding that based on my experience, the young ones live (or “stay”) with whatever girlfriend or female relative will let them, leaving when said female gets sick of them, rarely working any job other than day labor or occasional landscaping, until they’ve burned every bridge they ever had. “They piss away every opportunity they’re given,” I heartlessly summed.

The priest commiserated that he used to romanticize “The Poor” and the impact he could have on their lives, until he realized that they can be just as mean, bitter, and impossible to like as anyone else. We were never able to resolve that, not that we attempted. We pretty much contented ourselves with taking the wind out of the sails of the other bleeding hearts in the class, the ones who work and live in pleasant surroundings and feel a little guilty about it.

Fast forward another year. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve learned everything that I’m going to learn in this job. Initially I meant technical knowledge: I’ve tried jury trials and bench trials, argued motions, found my way around the Fulton County Courthouse and several of the jails, met two hip-hop artists and one former NBA player, and almost grown comfortable saying “baby mama.” I can sense trouble like you wouldn’t believe, and I know when to get the hell away or when to stand up straight and look someone square in the eye. What I’ve come to realize is that my knowledge is deeper than that. I’ve learned, but not articulated, even to myself, why I’ve quit giving money to panhandlers, why there are some people I dismiss out of hand when I meet them as people I will never understand or trust, and how I know now that people are not all the same, and that maybe it’s wrong for the law to treat us as though we were.

That’s why I’m writing this. I need to articulate what I’ve learned, for myself and for its relevance in our society. It isn’t about whether the system works or doesn’t work. There is no system that works or doesn’t work, just specific goals that we meet or fail to meet. As for me, I’ve met my goals. All of them. That’s when it’s time to move on, mainly because there’s nothing left to do but get bored, disillusioned, and bitter. Every day I see people without goals. Their lives shouldn’t even be called lives. And it’s hit me that if I stick around, having no long-term goals left, then I’ll become like them. Like the defendants, who refuse to think about their pending criminal cases beyond the issue of bond. Like the lazier solicitors, who are so preoccupied with staying off their boss’s radar that they risk damaging their credibility rather than dismiss a case. Or more to the point, like the burnt out public defenders, who took the job as a stepping stone and then got too scared to step off of it, and end up going through the motions rather than zealously advocating.

So this, then, is my last goal, and my purpose here: tell the story, as many sides as I know, find the common themes, and see what I’ve learned.