Point & Glick

This post is some­thing I have been think­ing on for a while, but Laura McWilliams prompted me to post it with her Love of the Law, part 2 post.

I went into law school with a gut feel­ing that I could never defend crim­i­nals, and that if I went into Crim­i­nal Law it would be as a prosecutor.

Then I was intro­duced, through the eyes of cases skimmed dur­ing class and through the per­spec­tive of the Crim­i­nal Defense attor­neys I “met” through twit­ter, to the Crim­i­nal Injus­tice sys­tem of our country.

I men­tioned in an ear­lier post that my Mary­land Crim­i­nal Prac­tice class was taught by Judge Dana Levitz. Judge Levitz was the State’s Attor­ney in Bal­ti­more County for a num­ber of years, and he has many incred­i­bly inter­est­ing sto­ries from his time as a prosecutor.

I think the best way I can sum up the way I feel about crim­i­nal law now is with the fol­low­ing story:

One par­tic­u­lar story involved two young men who were dri­ving in a pickup truck, on their way to rob a col­ored tile store. While en route, they saw an older gen­tle­man dri­ving a moped. The pas­sen­ger of the of truck told the dri­ver that “he was going to get that moped” and to pull up along­side the older man. When the truck caught up and was even with the moped, the pas­sen­ger reached out the win­dow with a gun and shot the older man in the head. At that point, they drove off.

An oncom­ing car wit­nessed the truck pulling even with the moped, heard a loud bang, and saw the old man fall. The wit­nesses called 911 and the police caught the two men in the truck, but they had no idea which of them actu­ally shot the older man.

Dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tion, the dri­ver gave a state­ment with all of the infor­ma­tion — that they were going to rob a store, that the pas­sen­ger told the dri­ver to pull up and that he didn’t know what the pas­sen­ger was going to do, and that the pas­sen­ger shot the older man. It turned out that the pas­sen­ger had a long his­tory of vio­lent crime, and it was the driver’s first offense. The dri­ver had just grad­u­ated col­lege, and was join­ing the Navy. The pros­e­cu­tion cut a deal with the dri­ver; if he tes­ti­fied, the State would only ask for 20 years. The State asked for death for the passenger.

While hear­ing this hor­rific story from the pros­e­cu­tor of the case, the first thing I felt was pity and sym­pa­thy for the vic­tim and his fam­ily. I mean, I really felt for them; ever since I had kids, I find myself tear­ing up when­ever fam­ily is impli­cated in any­thing — hell, cheesy car­toon movies can have me furtively wip­ing the cor­ner of my eye.

The next thing I felt was out­rage. But not towards the defen­dants. Here’s the pros­e­cu­tor who rec­og­nizes that the dri­ver is a young man with a whole life ahead of him. He grad­u­ated from col­lege already. He went to col­lege and grad­u­ated — you can imag­ine how proud his fam­ily is of him. He is already enlisted in the Navy and ships in a mat­ter of months. Off to serve his coun­try. The pros­e­cu­tor rec­og­nizes all of this and offers a plea bar­gain — only 20 years instead of death. 20 years. Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that those 20 years will com­pletely nul­lify what­ever pos­i­tive direc­tion his life was going pre­vi­ously? 20 years in jail, where his coun­try will serve him (only in terms of the cost of incar­cer­a­tion, obviously).

I won’t dis­cuss the death penalty; you might like to know that though the pas­sen­ger was con­victed and sen­tenced to death, he is still alive on Maryland’s death row.

I love jus­tice. I truly and deeply feel for vic­tims and their fam­i­lies and the suf­fer­ing they are forced to endure, but they are not (or should not) be a party in a crim­i­nal case.

Laura says that life with­out pros­e­cu­tors would be anar­chy, and she is right. But life with­out Crim­i­nal Defense attor­neys would be hell.