More. [inaudible] [applause] up next on book tv, after words with debbie hines creator of legal speaks blog. This week, abbe contributing authors to how can you represent those people, the director and supervisor of Georgetown Law School criminal defense and prisoner advocacy clinic discuss the Defense Attorneys answers to the professional question the year asked most often how they are able to defend those that commit the worst crimes. The program is about an hour. I am so glad to be doubled to interview you on your book how can you represent those people. It was a very interesting and thoughtprovoking book and i dont say that lightly because if it werent i wouldnt say otherwise but it was definitely a lot of emotion and ander and sadness and laughter. It basically ran the whole gamut. Why dont you start by telling us how you came up with the book. We are delighted with the above response. There is nothing like it out there. Psas the answer the question. Psas the answer the question. That is where it tends to be asked and play in the question. And it assembled such a diverse was the great thing and they ranging from age 28 to 85. So, the idea and the was kind of the party idea of a different voice, not the usual suspects talking about criminal law. It kind of involved and i coauthored a book on the legal ethics together which is a nontraditional walls cool treaty on the ethics. So that was interesting but it wasnt as fun as this one was and was kind of time less. With both academics i consider to be a criminal defense lawyer and when i was a public defender and had his own at the time he was involved very actively in the criminal law with members of an Organization Called the american board of criminal lawyers and so we were kind of aware that there was the need for the book like this and the markets and if you put yourself together to write off thoughtfully and personally i think one of the great things about the book is that it has a personal voice to it. Host most of the stories coming and that is what makes it so interesting or from the heart, the stories were being told about the clients that were represented and the stories that come to mind from the various authors. Lets talk about some of the people. Her chapter is one of my favorites because she talks about and i will give her a chance to talk about it but she talks about the influence that her grandparents who were civil rights activists have her kind of career path. They were criminal defenders of the literature and wrote something of a kind of classical piece of the criminal defense called criminal defending the guilty that is more than 30yearsold now and she writes a new interesting kind of updated how can you represent that from everybody i thought i was a great line and move of the controversial defendants who has his signature hes kind of a renaissance man in the Oklahoma City bombing case. He writes about his representation about guantanamo detainees and they are kind of brilliant and the discussion of credible defense since September September 11th and what our policies were before and after that pivotal event. Mcginn shapiro and mcginn are the only coauthors and they write about people defending and i think it is a particularly moving and very strong essay about something most people will realize the told that it takes on the clients, the clients families and the lawyers themselves because you have to take apart the life and understand how a person is born into this world to do something so horrible that it seems to prompt the very worst punishment of all, death by execution. He runs the project and teaches at all ole miss and tells a wonderful story about his representation of a woman who he tried to and mail to take a plea but it was just complete scheerer craziness to go to a trial and she was looking at so much time the jury finds her not guilty and its a wonderful story that i dont want to give away the punch line to. Are there others that come to mind . Friedman writes about his experience representing people and the role his jewish faith plays. David singleton a former public tender in new york and washington, d. C. Now runs a criminal justice litigation oriented Organization Called the ohio justice and policy center and about his efforts on behalf of sex offenders, the phrase he doesnt like because it is such a leader and people are convicted of those kind of defenses. But he took on the state of ohio sex offender registration law running up fledgling nation funded organizations that is just a wonderful tale to take on the powers. But certain kinds of crimes on a really bad crime happens its very distorting and we start doing misguided things it makes it more dangerous. I think that is a very smart thing to share. But its a very personal voice about how they can represent people doing pretty hideous things. It was just different in different age groups and raises because as a compilation of people like you got, it was so interesting to read the different perspectives because in my point of view they were not doing the same kind of representation. They were doing all different kinds of representation but still some of the issues were the same. Why dont you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to represent the clients that you represent. Guest i am so pleased that abbe included me in the book. But i think that this worked because i was inspired by my grandfather. My grandfather was a civil rights advocates. He came of age in the 60s in mississippi and was part of the naacp. This was before i was born but that inspired me when i went off to college and then to law school because i thought i wanted to be a civil rights attorney. As i started to look to spend some time in mississippi working on a class action case on behalf of all of the inmates in mississippi and that was the first rule of the criminal Justice System then later i spent the summer working at the San Francisco public defender and i saw mississippi is 50 africanamerican and its less than 5 of the population and all of the clients sort of ran unlike representing people in mississippi that were charged with a very serious offenses. So in San Francisco i was working on behalf of clients that sort of every stage of misdemeanors and felonies. I spend more time in a clinic when i was in high school the juvenile defender climate salles every single one of the clients is africanamerican and the most petty offenses that you can imagine. I tell a story about a kid that kick a soccer ball at a Police Officer and snowballs being thrown and being charged as assault with a dangerous weapon and they get in a fight at school and have the police called. That never happened at the prep schools that the police would never be called for a fight. So seeing the way that our criminal Justice System unfairly targets people of color is what inspired me to do this work. Host there are several take away this. In essence, you did and up being a civil rights attorney because one of the greatest civil rights problems that we have is the national conservation. I was struck by one of the stories that was in the book about a woman that was charged with prostitution for giving a blow job to an undercover Police Officer because she wanted Fried Chicken in exchange because she was hungry. Those are the kind of problems. So, terms of the mass incarceration issue and just by way of background for people that are listening i was also struck about the fact there were more black men particularly in the jail and the criminalJustice System waiting for trial than a and slavery in 1850 and that is just staggering because i think that puts it in a perspective of what we are talking about with mass incarceration. Because i talk to people and some of the people that i talked to that are more conservative, they will say black people commit more crimes and i just i wanted to have you speak to the problem of mass incarceration and maybe you wouldnt necessarily have that. We can work towards a more fair and just system. Guest it is a horrifying statistics. One in three africanamerican babies born today are destined for jeal with the policies it nasa incarceration continue. Its just certainly a civil rights issue of our time and you look at the conditions of the jails and prisons and it really is staggering. I think that when you hear people say africanamericans are more likely to commit crime it really is unfair. The neighborhoods are unfairly targeted. Africanamericans are actually less likely to use and abuse. But its going to prison and jail for committing those offenses is just so disproportionate. So, when you look at these numbers it is really something that i hope makes people step back a bit. Now, are there any ticker trying to get least do something with regards to the sentences for the nonviolent drug cases. But beyond that, is their anything that you can do because i know that you are representing people on a daytoday daily basis in the past at least, but that is only as testing the system. That isnt doing anything to change the system. That is a fair question. Sometimes we are asked are you really affecting social change or justice by representing individual criminal defendants, poor people accused of crime . I share these with you the criminal defense i think it is also social justice work and human rights work. I think it is the social justice work of our time because in that individual representation, you are making a difference in the individual life and casting some light on the really terrible problem. Those of us in the trenches everyday we know that something has to give that a certain point. I would like to be optimistic about eric holder. I was glad he had spoken out. I wish he had spoken out sooner. I wish he would do more. I hope the u. S. Attorneys around the country are doing with eric holder suggests the do and not the quantity of drugs in the criminal charging documents. That there is a flexibility in the sentencing because it is so harsh in the federal system especially but also many state systems. But i also think this is a more controversial than to say because we often hear people talking about releasing people from prison have committed nonviolent offenses. But the truth is we keep people for way too long for all to kind of offenses even violent. People commit crime for a bunch of reasons. Some are deep systemic social reasons but others are in a bad moment in a moment of rage and impulse. There is a reason that crime seems to disproportionately from people between the ages of 18 to 25 because the studies show that our brains are not fully formed. The frontal part of the brain in particular is growing up the parts that helps us to control our impulses. But we lock people up that to be foolish thing in a moment of control forevermore and people are dying in prison at a certain point we spend gobs of money and that isnt the sort of moral reason but we are out lawyers as a western democracy. There is no other country that resembles the country that lock people up for as long a time in the conditions that we lock people up in. I think it is a little bit crazy and we should prosecute fewer people and there should be diversion during its 50 years after. Every five years there is some kind of celebration or we mark the occasion with a bunch of hand wringing and we never funded criminal defense in the country and there is still such a thing as rich and poor persons justice. One of the ways if we cannot afford that stop prosecuting people for such a silly crime. Treat some things as Public Health problem for social problems. Divert them to they dont exact a guilty plea. But deal with them someplace else and see if we cannot reintegrate people into ociety and put our money where it should be in education and jobtraining. There are some neighborhoods where you dont see young black men. You just dont see them. Its staggering. In the District Of Columbia like los angeles, there are certain places where one in two young africanamerican men are in the system that are locked up or on probation and parole. It seems to be to be such a misguided selfdestructive set of policies. Host even when i prosecuted there were questions that i had to go through. I started directly in misdemeanor and i like okay. Why am i prosecuting the guy that sold the deodorant from the cvs . I had those in my mind like the things that were prosecuting misdemeanors back then. Why are we in court costs because like the woman in your book the person that does say blowjob on the top. But you also talk about not just the system itself in terms of the actor will court that you spoke about just now and that we kind of lock people up and throw away the key. The sentences or the saying is if we did the crime what then do the time. But there are sometimes you tell about to clients in your book that it isnt giving away everything but it does show that in real life the Shawshank Redemption is real. Guest i tell about people who are still the incarcerated and serving incredibly long sentences one for 16yearsold and that was the kind of child impulse kind of crime. He shot his neighbor. Hed been expelled from school. He was afraid of his fathers reaction since he took his fathers hunting rifle and went next door so he could get away so that his father wouldnt beat the hell out of him for getting in trouble in school. He had never been in trouble. He was once involved in the juvenile Justice System and apparently, she said no and maybe laughed and he shot her. Now hes 45yearsold now. Hes been in prison since he was 16yearsold. He looks like a 45yearold 16yearold. There is something about him that will forever be 16. I dont have any doubt that he poses no risk of harm to any other human being to be its something hes deeply remorseful about. He just doesnt want to die in prison. He kind of hangs onto a piece of hope that someday he will be free. A woman that was convicted of killing her baby she has no memory of it. She denied it and went to trial. Its not surprising to me that a mother might disassociate if in fact she did such a thing that she would have no memory i think that is a terribly traumatic thing would ever the circumstances are that cause women to kolbes, but meanwhile, she was supposed to serve 20 years but the judge was very explicit in the sentencing giving her a 20 to life year sentence and meant for her to be released. She now serve 28 years. Shes a model prisoner. Shes a woman of faith and service, she works in the infirmary and the chaplains office. She isnt going to have any more babies and do harm to them. I just dont get it. I understand these are not popular prisoners necessarily. I understand that there is a risk not kind of anticrime culture of politics, but Somebody Just needs to let these people out eventually and you are right about the system. Its become like a revolving door we shuffle people into prison and they get out for a second and they are back why . Because they are not good at following rules, they are not well organized. We got disappointment and kids. There are days that we want to say i cannot control my schedule theyve got to go to treatment or ander management and if they miss one of those appointments if something happens at home, if they dont have the money or they cant figure out how to get someplace they are in violation. We lock up so many people for that kind technical violation or falling off the wagon, getting frustrated or falling into despair and returning to drugs or alcohol and they are back in prison and i think that is awfully misguided. Host mabey some examples that we can relate to. You are speaking about the resources and certainly i worked in the criminals lobby at georgetown law we see every day people charge minor crimes. I will say that 79 of crimes in the criminal Justice System are misdemeanors. That is really most of what we are talking about. And you sort of see over and over again the absence of access to substanceabuse treatment to Mental Health treatment those would be things that would have prevented people from ever entering into the criminal Justice System in the first place and it is just so shameful that you have to get arrested in order to get access to these services to the communities the clients live incarcerating people and they spend on average 45 to incarcerate them in the supervision and more Health Treatment to solve the problems. Its hard to talk about actual clients. The time and time again you see heavy offense is going on there being prosecuted. Those sorts of things are happening. Host that is so sad that were we are basically running the court system and that is a point that by the way i didnt know so that is a good point to get at but the majority of the cases in the system are the misdemeanor because the projection and the view that in the real world weve got to keep these murderers and rapists and killers that is what is shown in the media so that is what people really think. They are not thinking about the cade that brought the birthday card, what he didnt buy the birthday card but basically went in and stole the birthday card to the we are not really thinking about that. So tell us what are some of the rewarding things that you have had . Guest the thing about representing a human being as you know is that that experience in and of itself can be rewarding. Standing out to someone and standing up to the government can sometimes be its own reward when your client does that have anyone to stand up for them and doesnt have any other support against them, the police are against them, just sort of a metal being someones advocate is priceless. Winning is a great. When you run a trial it is a great experience. There is no greater feeling. Hearing not guilty or every Defense Attorneys favorite thing. Some of the problems people have, the clients have oftentimes theres not even their family there in the courtroom with them because all of the socioeconomic issues the would be there to support them that would bring out the point that what we need is some form of moniker muddle intervention. If we could focus on some of the resources that we focus in the criminal Justice System elsewhere we would save money. Its interesting to me that one of the comments in the book we can all kind of get up on our soap box and talk about the incarceration but in some ways that is a motivation for some people during this work. What i really like about the b