Ignoring the Warning Signs

Bright-Line

My mother is from an authoritarian state. If one breaks the law, he or she goes to jail; that’s the message she grew up on in Iran. The bright-line between law-abiding and law-breaking was prevalent in my mother’s rhetoric during my childhood.

My father is a Republican, Irish-Catholic raised by a devoutly religious mother of six in San Francisco, California. Don’t let the geography fool you; this family of eight had very little interest in the anti-establishment counterculture that pervaded San Francisco and Berkeley in the 1960s.

His brother, my Uncle, was the former Chief of Police of San Francisco, and I grew up on his stories. They were simple: cops caught “bad men,” the DA tried “bad men,” and the “bad men” went to jail to answer for their sins. He once told a story of him leaving his bed at four in the morning to answer a distress call from a woman trapped in her house while her armed ex-boyfriend stood outside, yelling at her to come out. He handled it, everyone went home safe, and the neighborhood was better for it. I wanted to stand between predator and prey, just like my Uncle.

I was supposed to be a cop. I even filed the application and had an aptitude-test date. However, my parents begged me to “put [my] GPA to use.” Even my uncle told me I was “too smart for this shit.” I caved, either because of my ego or because there was something to their “higher purpose” spiel. Instead, I decided I would be a District Attorney; that way I could fight the same kind of devil I always wanted to fight.

Standard

Then I saw the dirty work.

Cop, criminal, or DA, in the realm of criminal law, nothing is as simple as my Uncle’s stories. His law enforcement career ended by way of public outcry right before I started law school. It happened when his 4 A.M. distress calls were replaced by press conferences, and his “do-no-wrong” choices to march up to the armed ex-boyfriends of the world were replaced by choices between degrees of disciplinary measures to be taken against his alleged “good-ol’-boys” police force. In other words, it happened when justice turned into politics.

Criminal law gives its participants ample opportunity to drown. Joseph Lawrence articulated what I had been ignoring in order not to disturb my childhood dreams. I wanted to remain Robinson’s ordinary man who revered the criminal justice system for its mystifying concepts of “mens rea” and “reasonable doubt,” but I now stand face to face with the reality that something beyond good and evil governs this area. I shadowed an Assistant District Attorney in Oakland during a misdemeanor trial and asked myself what the hell was accomplished by the guilty verdict: just a dumb kid once again not getting a break. I put myself in the place of the DA tasked with prosecuting Robinson’s client and knew it would only be a matter of time before I was asked to do a favor in this line of work. How could I stand between predator and prey if this was the nature of the work?

A new rule?

Perhaps I am so arrogant that I think I can walk a different path, but I am holding out hope that I can figure out a way to make this job work better for its community instead of crushing its citizens. Robinson’s client’s dilemma is a product of human decision; the outcome is not something inherent in the criminal justice system. There’s no rule in criminal law that says a DA is prohibited from contemplating the implications of his or her decisions on the defendant and then using that information in deciding on how to proceed. Joseph Lawrence’s DA was not searching for justice; she was searching for powerful friends. That rule exists as a product of politics. The question becomes whether a DA can avoid getting fired while ignoring the rules of politics. Will I be able to excuse defendants where justice requires and still keep my job? It is a question I am unable to answer.

My sister, a 2L at Stanford and former aspiring public defender (disenchanted after a summer of PD work), works full time at an externship with a District Attorney. She jokes that she spends most of her working hours writing memos to her boss regarding why she feels uncomfortable taking cases assigned to her. Her most recent successful effort to duck a case came when a homeless man had been booked on a weapons charge after he was found sleeping in his car by a police officer. He kept the gun for protection because it is dangerous business, sleeping in parking lots. She is figuring out how to stand between the awesome power of the state and its citizens in a role not typically known for that sort of endeavor.

I admit ducking cases is a thin vision of positive social change, and yet, I still want to be a DA. Perhaps it is just the cumulative effect of my parent’s discourse when I was young, but I remind myself about the assailant threatening to attack his ex-girlfriend. I remind myself that sometimes the choices are clear and the cause worthy. The challenge will be to remember that when I hear clamoring for a district attorney more “tough on crime.” I will need to be willing to find out the hard way whether I can be a keep my job while ignoring statistics and “favors” in a profession mired in politics.

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