So you don't want him to go to school, then?

Client is a 15-year-old black kid. On Tuesday they told him he was suspended from school; on Thursday he went back to school anyway and attended classes as normal, with no incidents. The entire school administration -- all the principals and vice principals -- meet Client out in front of the school at the end of the day and tell him that if he comes back they're going to have him arrested. Client tells them he doesn't care and that he's leaving anyway.

Cop follows Client as Client is walking off school grounds. Client asks cop to stop, because he's leaving anyway and the cop is making him nervous. Cop responds by saying"I can do whatever the fuck I want" and grabbing Client and shoving him into the ground. Client is face down with his hands underneath his body. Cop tells Client to give him his wrists so he can cuff Client. Client responds that he can't, because the cop is standing on Client's back. Cop yanks out Client's arms and jerks them behind Client's back. Cop is about 300 pounds; client is 5'5 and 130. Client has no weapons.

Cop calls for backup. Three more cops arrive, for a total of four. The four cops literally lift Client (who is already in cuffs) off his feet and drag him to a cop car across the street. They slam Client into the side of the car, then throw him face-down to the ground, put him in a leg-lock, and grind his pelvis into the pavement. Client tells cops they're hurting him. One cop responds, "oh, so you're not in enough pain then? well now you're in pain" and shoves Client's locked legs into his own back. Client actually starts to cry from the pain, which really says something, considering how often you see teenage boys in tears out in public.

Client has bruising and spraining to his face, arms, wrists, knees, and pelvis. He was unable to walk immediately afterward and continued to have trouble walking for another month. As Client is sitting in a holding cell at the police department, one of the cops says to his buddies, "damn, I wanted to put that kid in the hospital." Client points out that he can hear him, and the cop responds that he doesn't give a fuck. The cops took photos of the Client's injuries and charged him with resisting arrest.

Fashion crime

Client is a 15-year-old kid who worked at a mid-grade department and clothing chain store (rhymes with "Swervyn's"). He let some friends use his employee store discount to buy things.

Even though the kid was fired and has since paid the store back the amount of the discounts his friends received, he now faces criminal theft charges. Presumably the D.A. has nothing better to do than go after teenagers who hook their friends up with 15% off on a $15 t-shirt.

He doesn't understand

There's a law here that allows prosecutors to send people who have done certain kinds of misdemeanors (mainly drug use and family abuse) into therapy and treatment programs, rather than having them serve time in jail.

Client is developmentally disabled. Despite the urgent plea of his attorney, the prosecutors will not allow him to spend time in a therapy and treatment program instead of jail, even though he is eligible under the law for the program. The decision whether to send this client to a program is entirely the prosecutor's; if they don't want to do it, there's nothing that even the judge can do.

So they're going to send a retarded guy to jail. Nice.

Seriously.

Client is charged with causing great bodily injury to police officers because the cops suffered bruises to their knuckles as they were beating up the client.

Spitting mad

Client is arrested on a DUI. The client is not violent, but he is genuinely annoying. The cops beat him up so badly that the client's nose and orbital bone (the one around the eye socket) are shattered. The client spit his own blood on the cops after they broke his nose, so he is charged with felony assault on a police officer.

Flee collar

Two cops are on the beat near a downtown park, wearing jerseys with “police” written on the front and back. Client approached them, became belligerent, cussed at the cops, and yelled that he did not have anything illegal on him.

The officers told the client to stay back, but the client ignored them. When cops asked to see the client's ID he told them to “fuck off” and took off running. The client elects to run down the street that has the police station on one side and the courthouse on the other. A cop at the station looks out his second-story office window and sees the client right outside with a baggie in his hand and some pieces of crack cocaine on the ground nearby. The client gets arrested and tells cops where they can find some more drugs in some bushes.

Note to clients: if fleeing police officers, run away from the direction of the police station. Also - do not go out of your way to meet up with some cops and then tell them to fuck off.

Feeling punchy

Client is a freshman in high school. He's on probation for having brought marijuana and a bong to school when he was in the 8th grade. Apparently he got mad and punched a wall in the house, and his mom called the cops. The cops said they were going to arrest him but couldn't because their computers were down.

If he really deserved to be arrested, is it a good idea for the cops to avoid arresting him because they don't want to fill out paperwork?

Is it a good idea to arrest a 15-year-old who punches a wall at home?

Not feeling well

Client comes in with her 2 1/2 year old daughter. This kid has big beautiful eyes and the sweetest smile you've ever seen.

Mom is on her own, gets no financial help from her two kids' dads. She was on welfare but finally got a job interview. She had to take her kids with her to the interview, because there's nobody else to look after them. On the way to the interview they fall asleep in the car. She decides she doesn't want to wake them up, so she leaves them in the car sleeping while she goes in for her 30 minute interview. She is charged with child abuse.

Mom starts crying hysterically during intake. Her little girl stands up on the chair next to her, so their heads are at the same height. She puts her head on her mom's shoulder, hugs her mom to comfort her, and turns to me and says, "Mommy doesn't feel good today."

Riding in cars with boys

Client is a passenger in a car. Despite the fact that the car has license plates with current registration stickers on them, the cops decide to run the license plate. They seem to do this a lot when they see dark people driving old cars in bad neighborhoods who don't otherwise appear to be doing anything wrong.

Turns out the registration on this car is actually expired, so the cops pull over the car. Again, for reasons that they never explained, the cops drag the driver and passenger out of the car and ask to search the car. I can't figure out why: the occupants were not high, they were not driving erratically, there was nothing obviously wrong. Anyway, the driver of the car tells the cops that they're going to find some drugs hidden in there and gives details of the quantity, where he bought them, etc. My client, the passenger, didn't know there were drugs in the car, much less own the drugs that were found. Nonetheless, client gets charged with possessing with intent to sell.

Wrong place, long time

Client was in an apartment 15 years ago that got raided by cops who were looking for somebody (not the client) who was manufacturing meth and LSD. (LSD! That's new; it's always meth aroud here.) The cops arrested somebody else in the apartment but did not cite or arrest this client.

Six months later, the client moved someplace else in the state. Eight months later (after she'd already moved away), the D.A. filed drug charges against the client. (The client, of course, had nothing to do with owning, taking, or selling drugs; she was just in the apartment that had been raided.) Nobody ever bothered to tell this woman that there were these charges against her. She never received paperwork or even a phone call from the Court or District Attorney's office. Then, because she failed to appear in court on the charges she knew nothing about, the court issued a warrant for her arrest. (This is standard procedure when defendants don't appear when the court expects them to.)

Two years later, the client moved back to the county we're in, and she's lived here ever since. During the past 15 years, nobody did anything to contact this client and tell her there were not just charges against her, but a warrant for her arrest.

She's been pulled over for traffic tickets, had background checks for jobs - nothing ever came up suggesting that there were these lingering charges from back in 1990. She was charged with a misdemeanor in 2000 (the charges were dismissed), so she was even back in the system and nobody bothered to haul her in on this outstanding arrest warrant.

This past January, a cop pulled her over in a grocery store parking lot because she didn't use her turn signal. This time, he ran her license and it showed an arrest warrant was out for this woman. She had no idea what it was for. They arrested her on the spot, and she stayed in jail for a day until she could scare up enough money from the bail bondsman to be released pending trial. Can you imagine being pulled over for not using your turn signal and ending up in jail?

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial in the 6th Amendment. The District Attorney's office is preparing to prosecute this woman after fifteen years. Fifteen years = not speedy.

So I wrote a motion to dismiss the charges against the client based on the violation of her right to a speedy trial. If ever a person's right to a speedy trial were violated, it was here. Fifteen years, people! Still, instead of just going along with the motion, the D.A. insists on wasting everybody's time arguing that there is nothing wrong with this.

So I have to spend all this time preparing to make oral argument at court. I have to wear a suit. And then, after the prosecutors hem and haw for *two hours!*, the judge finally grants the motion.

The good news: the client is now free and clear of the charges. The bad news: she still has to pay back the $5000 she borrowed from Sleazy Bail Bonds, Inc. at some outrageous interest rate. (She makes minimum wage as an in-home health care assistant.)

Also, for those of you concerned with how much money is wasted defending criminals, the county is out several hundred dollars at least, if you add up my time, the other attorney's time, the court's time, and so on. If prosecutors had just done the right thing, they'd have saved everybody stress, hassle, time, and money.

Public Defender Law Clerk basics

Public Defenders are attorneys paid by the county to represent clients who do not have the means to hire their own attorneys to represent them in criminal cases.

A post-bar law clerk at a Public Defender office is a position you can hold after you become an attorney but before they let you have your very own caseload. Kind of like how med students are residents after they become doctors. You're a real lawyer and everything, but you're still a newbie, so they ease you into the hard stuff.

At a Public Defender office, making oral arguments in court is where the fun is at. This is why as Law Clerks, we rarely get to do this. When we do make oral arguments, it's usually when the arguments are either really hard to win or really hard to lose. In between is the complicated stuff that we work our way up to.

In the meantime, we write a lot of motions (documents that explain to the court why, based on the law and the facts in your case, the court should do something for your client, such as drop the charges or suppress evidence that was obtained illegally). We also do all the intake, where we receive the clients who have just been referred here by the court and get their stories for their files.