Dispatch From the Public Defender Trenches
Being a public defender in charge of a rural county gives a rhythm to the weeks and months. Today is Wednesday, when I have my morning appointment at the jail. It's my chance to visit with clients before the associate circuit judge's criminal law day tomorrow. Every week, the same pattern, except for the Wednesday of the second full week of the month -- that's circuit law day when the felonies are heard. I have to budget my Wednesdays to make sure I get a chance to talk to each of the guys with felony charges every month.
It's hard to wrap my mind around how much the rural communities have been devastated by meth. At least it was. After two years, I just assume that clients have a meth problem, and I'm rarely surprised. Everyone's lost someone to it; everyone knows someone in prison for it. Sometimes, I can't even get transportation for someone to go to treatment, because the judges won't let that transporting friend have a criminal record -- and the client doesn't know anyone without one.
The state brings us to trainings that emphasize the racist nature of the system. My county hasn't achieved Martin Luther King's dream so much as that of R. Lee Emory's drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket: no one is treated differently because of their color. They are all considered equally worthless and equally fucked over by the system. One of my current clients was called a drunken heifer by the associate judge; some white privilege she has. And to give you an idea of how messed up her upbringing was, she appreciated the judge for being so paternal.
Then there are the sex offenders. My God, the never ending sex offenders. What is in the water here? Recently, it's been a trio of gentlemen not abiding by the sex offender registration rules. One was only 700 feet from the school bus barn instead of the mandated 1000. One didn't report his new address within the mandated three days because he was staying with different friends. Another couldn't get a vehicle working, couldn't walk the nine miles to the sheriff's department, and couldn't get a ride so he could show up in person for his mandated 90 day check-in. Someday, someone is going to recognize that just like the horror movie phone call, the child molesters are coming from inside the house. All these post-prison restrictions aren't protecting kids from stranger pedophiles; they're just making more criminals.
As mentioned, tomorrow is the associate docket day. The judge is a germophobe, so five years after Covid, we'll all be appearing in a video call: the judge, clerk, and bailiff in the big courtroom; the prosecutor in his courthouse office; me in the small courtroom; and the incarcerated defendants from the jail less than a mile away from the courthouse. My bond reductions will probably get denied, and we'll be waiving the preliminary hearing because, well, the judge would send a ham sandwich to the circuit court. The only reason to have a prelim is to get a free deposition of the officers, and there's nothing useful we could get out of them. Just pushing the cases along …
This isn't a job that favors introspection. If I thought my job was to get not guilties and dismissals, I could never manage. Ninety some percent of my clients will plead guilty. I'm there to negotiate with the prosecutor: getting the charges to match their conscience and the punishment down to what they're willing to take. Even when I have a motion to fight against bad police practices, I lose. I just keep trying to make the system a little more honest, a little more fair. It's the most and the least I can do.