Bring her practice to the majorleague. She had a very tortured past, very traumatic childhood. She herself was probably twisted at birth anyway and the combination has made her somewhat unusual. The laws a suggestion that she is free to ignore she frequently does. Is there certain breed for Defense Attorneys . Guest thats a good question. Im not sure. Defense lawyers a prosecutor has to think about a fair trial for everyone as an ethical obligation to make sure it is not just about getting a conviction but getting it in a fair way so everybodys right is protected. The defense have no such obligation. A defense attorney only has to take care of his or her client. And so that samantha, thats what she does. She only worries about her clients and about winning and thats only thing she worries about. Host does the client have to be innocent to defend . Guest for a defense attorney worried about only defending the innocence, that attorney would have no practice. You cannot be that picky. Your clients are are 99 of the time, at least going to be guilty. Host is a former prosecutor, is this cases waited in your way guest we make it that way. Because someone is innocent beyond Proven Guilty its a very heavy burden. We start out over here, the prosecution has to work and turn the table, all the way over here, beyond reasonable doubt. It is not an easy thing to do. Host blood defense, do Samantha Brinkman, what what is the plot of the book . Guest the plot in blood defense is a celebrity case basically. In which an lapd veteran detective charged with the murder of a young actress who had been on the skid after being a child star she spiraled down and climbed way back up and found her way into a cult Favorite Television show. Just about on the brink of restart amid making it as a comeback to kid when she and her roommate are brutally murdered. The detective is charged with their murders because he was dating the actress and so it becomes a big celebrated case in samantha doesnt really want to take the case to be honest with you. She does not like police over paralegal who is also her childhood friend says you have not paid me into months, we need the money, you go get this case. And then she does. Are these characters based on your career at all . Guest in a way. I think someone said that an author puts himself or herself and to every character. I think thats really true. Whether i want to or not, i am in every character, certainly i am in samantha. And i think for think for sure all of my Life Experiences find their way into the stories and into the characters and the clients that samantha represents. I used to be a defense attorney before it became a prosecutor. All all of these experiences in my experiences as a prosecutor all comes in. Host why did you switch from defense to prosecution . Spee2 is really okay to me when i was defending drug cases and prostitutes and all that. That i started more more handling Violent Crimes and that i want up working on a case involving a double homicide and attempted murder in which the defendants, our clients dragged a woman into a current staffed her 17 times and threw her out in the alley. She died. So when i got to that it was like, i dont i want to do this. I dont think i want to stand i think i want to stand up for the victims. Host how long were you prosecutor . Guest fourteen years. Host how did the o. J. Simpson case change a life . Guest in so many ways that i do not even have time to talk. And in so many ways that im probably not even aware of. It certainly did make me look at my life and decide to take another turn. Whether i would have left the Prosecutors Office had it not been for the simpson case, could i tell you. I dont know. Maybe i would have anyway but i certainly did after that case. I found a whole different life. Host this is your sixfoot . Guest yes. Host what got you started . Guest i did a number of things, i was a commentator and i did hosting and all kinds of speaking, lecture series and i did a lot of things. Then i was i was a consultant on a one hour trauma. On lifetime. Then i started writing scripts and in the creator of that show when i started writing pilots. We sold pilots to a few networks and then i decided that i always wanted to write Science Fiction since i was a kid. I thought if not now, then went. And so that is what happened i started writing crime fiction. Host you have one Nonfiction Book. Guest the one Nonfiction Book is about the trial, without a doubt. It is now on ebook and republished an out imprint to get. So that is the only Nonfiction Book that i have written. I really have a stepped away from reality. I have gone into host to find yourself getting defined by that one trial . Guest i dont define myself by that. Host to other people define you that way . Guest other People Choose to or not to. Since ive been writing fiction, less and less so. People less and less defined me that way. Some even, even younger ones dont know. They mean they say oh, you mean the author. Thats great. I love that. Sure a lot of people do, especially after after the the mini series on fx came out. That reinvigorated the interest in the case. A lot of people do associate me with that. More and more theyre associating me also with being an author in writing crime fiction which is really great. Host did you work on the fx series at all, did you consult on that question work. Guest they do not consult any of us at all on that series. None of us. I had nothing to do with it at all. Host what did you think of it . Guest i thought it was great, amazing. I thought the performances were phenomenal. All of them. Just incredible. Host true to life . Guest i cant speak for all of them because i did not know all of them that well. But from what i did know, yes, true to life. Very to life. Very well done. Certainly sterling brown did a wonderful brown did a tremendous job. What he did really amazingly is how she did this i dont know, she had managed to show you how i was feeling on the inside which i just on how she knew that, but she did. It was incredible what she did. Host how is your writing change since your first book, get by association . Guest i was hoping gets better. When people say which book i should read i would say the most recent one because i hope hope that with every book i am Getting Better and improving. And to the series, the verse were four novels that i wrote were based on a prosecution. A prosecutor in los angeles. But you are constrained. When you read about prosecutors there certain ethical boundaries to can cross other ways people are knocking to like them very much. Its also also not very realistic. Prosecutors do have, as i said that the goal obligation to have a fair trial and make sure the defendant is fairly convicted. But when you go to the defense side you do not have to about it. You just went for the defense. I want to trade more darker, complex and while character and that is my turn to Samantha Brinkman in blood defense. Host there has been a lot of it talk National Conversation on our justice system. Incarceration issues, what is your take . Guest i need a little more specifics. Host are we over incarcerating are we too zealous in our prosecution. You have a case that someone is guilty, you prosecute prosecute that. But the thing about that is the question, does everyone who deserved to be prosecuted also deserve to be prosecuted. In my opinion know. To meet drug cases are the very best example. So. So many of the people that about defended i believe deserved rehab. They needed to to be helped, they didnt mean to be incarcerated. Were wasting lives and taxpayer dollars. These people can be rebuilt in rehabilitated. They can go out and actually become good citizens to contribute to society. Instead where wasting their lives in prison. They dont belong there. They have minor theft cases, we are walking back on the incarceration rates and making them misdemeanors and finding more ways to put them in diversion programs instead of incarceration. I think that is the right track. Host theres a new book coming out this year about prosecutors and the increase in the number of prosecutors and the fact that they were given the loss and they went after a lot of criminals. Other too many prosecutors . Guest i dont know. Across the country i cannot comment. In california, it does not seem so. In fact prosecutors seem to have big caseloads which indicate there is not too many them. When there too many prosecutors are not very many cases to handle, you can spread them out. There caseloads, like i said exponentially by reducing the crimes. Crimes that were considered felonies that required sentences have been reduced to misdemeanors on which they get privation. They have also reduce drug crimes that you get diversion programs. For a lot of different kinds of crimes and criminals we are declassified some criminals as victims for example. Girls girls have been trafficked, human traffic, six traffic, now being handled as the victims that they really are. Theyre being diverted being diverted which means when they get arrested for prostitution and we can find out that theyve been trafficked, what they wind up with no conviction whatsoever and they just get put into programs or they can find lives in and stand on their own two feet. So they they dont get stigmatized by conviction. So in california were finding ways to not over prosecute. Host if someone picked up blood defense are they going to learn a little bit how the systems work . Guest they will. To show you how it really worked. The stories fictional. The way in which the way in which he uses the media, twitter and all the rest of the society. Legally as well as socially i try to make it as realistic as possible. Host social media 1994. What was the trial would have been life like . Spee2 can you imagine . I cant even think about it. It scares me. Imagine what it would be with twitter, its that check, instagram, its mindboggling you never hear the end of it. Even as it was during that trial that was relatively new back then, can you imagine. We dont even use faxes back then. Faxes were. Faxes were new and there is an Office Machine because nobody had personal one. They were blowing up the fax machine. We are getting thousands of faxes per day from people commenting on the case. Its crazy. So i cannot imagine social media. What i can imagine is when we look at our Cell Phone Technology. Just Cell Phone Technology alone would make a big difference. Because we could tell based on what people are doing their cell phones where they are. Imagine we could tell you where all of those players were, all day, all night, down to the second. Talking about where would be o. J. Simpson, wheres the coal, worse right, where smart for me. We would be able to track everybodys movement. It would be a very different case. Host is that a little big brother . It is, sure enough. This is the giveandtake that we have. The Technology Makes a lives easier and faster, its also the technology that open stores and try lives that we have no privacy. Host is someone who lived it, do you think cameras in the courtroom are good idea . Guest i had a lot of back and forth with that my life. I have always been ambivalent about it. When i finish the trial i thought, theyre terrible, we should not have them, we have them, we shall at the federal courts have a mission them out. Goldman never agreed with me he said nobody would know the travesty that verdict was if they had not seen it. If the cameras have not been in the courtroom. He is right. Really brought me around to his way of thinking. Having said that, i think there needs to be limits. I think the camera should not be in the courtroom if the jury is not there because then when you have hearings about evidence that the jury should not here, you should not have cameras and there either. So the jurys camp somehow find out about it. You have to be very careful about how much you televise. Host marcia clark, you reference that uis wanted to be a writer, since you are a little, where did you grow up . Guest i grew up. Guest i grew up all over the country. Eyes born in berkeley and then we moved immediately after that and all over the place. Washington down to texas and then california. Southern california, the northern california. Then detroit, maryland and new york. Then we came back. Host what kind of work to do parents to . Guest my father worked for the federal government. Host at what point did you decide you wanted to be a lawyer . Guest i didnt decide wanted to lawyer until i graduated from college. I graduated ucla with a degree in Political Science with a minor in international relations. Focusing on the middle east. I had wanted to work in the state department and the foreign office, and field but not so crazy they were about having girls in the foreign office. When i applied in at the time i spoke french hebrew, english, some spanish, and i thought could this not be good, this could be good, right. And they asked me if i could type. [laughter] host what was your response . Spee2 i said no thank you. I wasnt that good at typing. [laughter] host so you went into law school. Guest yes. Host prior to the o. J. Simpson case what kinda cases did you work on and what was your reputation . Guest prior to that case had been in the office i started with the das office in 1981 after one after having been a defense attorney for a few years. And then in 1980, 1985 i believe i want up a special trials unit which was the elite unit all the handled were the big cases and they tended to be murder cases, capital cases so they were complex cases and at that time is a very small unit, just for older men and when they brought me in i was the only female. So i have been in that unit for close to ten years by the time simpson case came around. Ive been handling what we called highprofile cases back then for quite some time. Host name one of the cases you worked on. Guest i handled the case with the proper part of who was the stocker who murdered an actress. I was in the early, notorious stocking cases. Back before what we really knew what stocking was really all about. Host are you still lawyering in any way . Guest yes. What what im doing now is having courtappointed appeals, criminal appeals. In california when youre convicted of a felony youre youre entitled to one direct appeal to the court of appeals. When you cannot afford a lawyer they. 12 you kind of like a public defender only with private practice. Most of the people who get convicted of felonies i really tapped out. If they had anything they spent it on the trial lawyer. So by the time they are in the state prison and need to file an appeal they have no more money. So the Court Appoints people like me. They will call and say we have an appointment for you, do want to take it or not. Its all in writing, so its all written work. Whats cool about it is i get is i get to see cases from the entire state of california and i also get to see how cases are being tried today, what level level of evidence, what kind of science are they using, what are the jurors like in the verdict like. Its a great way to get my hand in and also do something good for society. So. Host what is the secret to writing a murder mystery . Spee2 i dont think theres a secret secret that you can really impart. It is always a matter of inspiration, whats intriguing to you, what you are you thinking about, or whats happening in the world that intrigues you. Writing about that. You have to find that because you live with a book for a book for quite some time. If youre not intrigued by your is going to be boring for a long time. If youre bored bored the readers going to be bored. But i voice but addicted to crime since i was like for five years old. Africa thats, young. But i love it. I really do. So i am constantly seeing things and thinking about things that interest me like what you do that and why did he do that. Not necessarily always crimes but it always wrapped into a crime somehow. So i think thats really the secret, writing about what is intrigue most recently. Have you considered leaving l. A. I thought about living somewhere else, but i know it so well in the the weather suits me. My kids are in the bay area so i would not want to go very far. I think im probably going to stay there. Host marcia clark, your most recent book is blood defense. This is book tv on cspan2. Cspan is visiting the city of port here are located next to the heart of the sinkler river where we meet up with author joe stone as he talks about the role in the 19th century. At the turn of the last century the river behind us here was one of the busiest waterways in the world. The st. Clair river and Detroit River in 19 oh seven constituted more tonnage than the port of new york and the port of london put together. So this waterway was moving ships at an incredible pace. Some of them were the huge freight carriers, that we have in some of them were the Passenger Ship carriers that were here. Everyone of them of them if youre going from mackinac to detroit to buffalo, you pass right by this point. The history of steamboats on the great lakes started almost 100 years ago. In 1817, two steamboats were launched on lake ontario, one by by the canadians, one by the americans. And that the process rolling. The following year steamboat was constructed in blackrock, new york which is near niagara falls. That vessel ran between the blackrock or buffalo and detroit for about three years before it was wrecked. That was the beginning of the steamboat age. People understood, they did not travel very fast, they traveled reliably. If you are on a sailboat you had to wait for the win. If you are in a if youre in a sailboat working against the current behind us it was almost impossible unless the wind was behind you. With the steamboat, you would get on the boat and the boat would reliably travel at six, eight, or ten knots and you would get there at a regular schedule. You could finally finally rely on shipboard travel to get there where they wanted to be. With opening of of the canal in 1825, there was an influx of immigrants coming inches soon after that, within five or eight years there was a Railroad Running right next to the erie canal. All of a sudden you have two very reliable forms of transportation coming inches unfortunately the in. Unfortunately the railroad stopped at buffalo. Once you got that far you had to find another way to get to