As many of you may know, my career goal is to become a Public Defender. This is a criminal defense lawyer paid for by the government, who represents those too poor to afford a lawyer for themselves. Anyone who has the possibility of jail time has a right to a lawyer to represent them, according to the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. People are often surprised and sometimes horrified/disappointed at my decision, so I thought I'd share a few of my motivations.
1. I love to be in the courtroom and go to trial. Public Defenders get to do this more than anyone else.
2. My mom always says I'm a crusader; I want to live up to her expectations.
3. I enjoy it so much that even when I had an internship doing criminal defense all day, I still went home at night and watched hours of Law & Order.
4. I'm good at it.
Now, you may be thinking that all of the above reasons could just as easily lead me to become a prosecutor. I guess that's true. But there are a few things I've learned about criminal law and about myself that lead me to believe otherwise. First, there are plenty of prosecutors in the world. Second, they say that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and prosecutors have a LOT of power. Finally, I just don't want to send people to jail all day every day. Judging people is not my thing. I prefer to hold out hope that they will improve, try to help them despite their mistakes, and believe that there is something good in everyone, rather than looking to condemn. Putting people in jail just sounds depressing.
Now I realize that most of my clients are going to go to jail, and that's because many of them are guilty. Doing the best thing for your client often means negotiating a decent plea bargain, not getting your client off. But I can be a friend to that person who is so alone, and I think that's important.
If you'd like to know more about the how the criminal justice system actually works and what sorts of things I'll be doing, I can suggest some reading and movies for you. Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis is the story of how the right to lawyers came about (this is a book and a movie). John Grisham's The Innocent Man is actually nonfiction and a very quick read. Actual Innocence talks about how so many DNA exonerations came about. If you don't know what a DNA exoneration is, the book will explain it to you. Courtroom 302 by Steve Bogira follows the happenings in a Chicago courtroom for one year (be aware, the language is often quotes so it's not for the faint of heart). You can also watch Anatomy of a Murder and Twelve Angry Men. And while we're at it, if you want to know anything of the realities of criminal justice, you should not watch CSI, it belongs in the fantasy genre. But that's a topic for another day.... If you had to read To Kill a Mockingbird in school; it's also a great one. If you didn't have to read it, you should read it anyway. There's also a great movie. And if you think that sort of thing doesn't still happen today, you're absolutely wrong.
