interning, week three...
this afternoon at work, i had what may qualify as the most humbling experience in my young legal career. i sat in on a sentencing hearing for a man convicted of rape.
a number of things went through my mind while i sat in the courtroom. first of all, i realized that i've never actually seen a rapist. sure, i've read the cases, i've heard the stories, i understand how it works, but as for actually making eye contact with someone who has committed the act? never.
secondly, the defendant's attorney -- the public defender -- was a woman. i want to do criminal defense work. i understand that means defending the rights of men and women who are guilty. and i've gotten the questions from friends about how can i represent people who have committed crimes and all, but today really cemented for me how much of a big deal that question is. i couldn't help but imagine myself in that situation, advocating for someone who has committed rape or murder or child abuse or something that is just so, for lack of a better word, criminal that it becomes seriously difficult to see past the act to the humanity of the actor. i sat there while the PD went over all the mitigating circumstances, but when the prosecutor read the victim's impact statement, my heart just broke.
thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, i felt a little ashamed that i was so affected by this experience. the shame was not because i personally was so affected by the experience, rather, it was because i realized how bad we are, as a profession, at keeping the focus on the client, be s/he plaintiff or defendant, victim or attacker. the whole notion of "zealous advocacy" seems so misplaced in this context -- it's not about standing up for someone or trying to do the right thing. it becomes this ugly game of win or lose.
every single law student should have to do what i did today -- should have to watch a man cry as he gets sentenced to years in prison for a crime he knows he has committed. every law student should hear the statements of victims of real violence. every law student should remember that it's not just a constitution we are expounding, we're dealing with real human lives with real pain and sorrow, on both sides of the aisle.
i am completely floored.
posted by emily @ Thursday, September 21, 2006
3 comments
3 Comments:
see, we don't have to deal with that in bizorgs.
-tyler
a few thoughts.
i second sandra's observation that it's very likely that we all have made eye contact with rapists, perhaps even murderers -- it's just that we tend not to know it.
once, as an intern, i sat in on a parole hearing once for a fairly notorious mass murderer of yesteryear, a man perceived to be dangerous enough that, unlike the other parole hopefuls that day who came in to sit unrestrained and unattended with the parole board unattended, he was brought in in shackles and leg irons and two beefy corrections officers stood behind him as though he might otherwise have launched himself, jaws gaping, at the board. it was appalling being in the room with someone who, for want of a better word, was palpably evil. this wasn't a guy who killed once in the heat of passion. the sense of illness, the utter lack of regard for human life, emanated from him like an odor.
with regard to your experience today, it's interesting that you frame it as defending the defendant, reflected most vividly in your notation regarding our failure to represent the client. i don't think ethics or the fact of the matter really means either side in criminal law merely zealously represents a client. the DA, as the simpler matter, does represent the people, but only as animated by principles of justice; his or her ethical obligations are far more complex than those of any other attorney, and it is incumbent on him or her not to become an emissary of a lynch mob, prosecuting whomever without regard to guilt or innocence based upon suspicion or hysteria. criminal defense attorneys, by contrast, are bound zealously to represent their clients, but more often than not this amounts to testing the prosecution's case rather than articulating any particular position on behalf of the defendant. in some sense, this is common to all defense, or any part where a given burden falls on the other side, but in criminal law in particular even incoherence is no limitation because the burden on the prosecution is so great. and i think that's how the criminal defense attorneys i know reconcile themselves to the superficial challenges of the job: it's not that their guy can't, or shouldn't go to jail, but rather that he or she shouldn't go to jail unless the entire process has functioned precisely as it is supposed to. interestingly, it is precisely this aspect of criminal defense work that makes it almost a truism that virtually any acquittal is the product of a "technicality."
the one criminal attorney i interviewed to work with, a specialist in federal cases in NYC, said to me "everyone's guilty. all you're doing is ensuring they spend no more time in jail than the law requires." hyperbole, perhaps, but by how much? how many innocent people do you know who've been arrested and run through the system?
I literally had a mental breakdown over rape cases the week before last. I was out running, and thinking about what I'd seen at the office earlier in the day, and I just completely fell apart--I burst out in tears in the middle of the trail. It's just as hard and heartwrenching on the other side of the criminal equation.
I think that rape is the MOST emotionally difficult crime to deal with. Harder than homicide, much harder than narcotics offenses...it's just a situation where every person is absolutely destroyed.
I'm still not sure I can hack it in this unit. I want to, but I don't know if I can. I'm going to try to keep toughing it out, but there's only so much crying I can take before I'm going to have to transfer.
-elizabeth
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