When I started trying criminal defense cases two years ago, I felt I needed some inspiration, somewhere to turn for a little mental lift. Honestly, I was scared shitless. There is nothing scarier, I thought, than having someone’s future in your hands. If you fuck up, that’s it. Game over. Sit down and have a nice day. Watch your client’s family weep and scream and cry out in the agony that is the rest of his life spent in prison. I had been a prosecutor for so long that I never even acknowledged the human element, that these people we call ‘defendants’ are human. Things are easy as a prosecutor. The cops are your friends, everyone is dying to give you information, your cases are all set up for you before you ever get into the courtroom – all in all, a cakewalk. Then, when I switched sides, it dawned on me what a minefield defense work was. In New York State, its trial by ambush, you’ve got very limited discovery and you don’t know what proof the government has against your client until you swear in a jury. Its strange because in civil cases, you get a ton of discovery. When money is at stake, you get the whole world delivered to your doorstep, but when its your life or your liberty, eh, well, f you. Figure it out when you get in court and you are looking at the 12 people who will decide your fate. .. Oh, but I digress.

Inspiration, yes. I started reading about the leaders of the civil rights movements. I mean, yeah, being a criminal defense attorney is tough going, its some scary, tense shit. But, being black during the civil rights movement? Now there is some stress for you. I read all that I could stand, trying not to feel like a complete pussy compared to the people who stood up to an entire nation. So, at some point I stopped reading because, well, I did start to feel like a pussy, like a whiny baby who really had no business feeling all tense and sorry for herself because of her job. Then I started to read some practical stuff, like books on cross-examination and auto-biographies from attorneys that I had some respect for. I started with Alan Dershowitz. Why? Because I knew who he was since I’d seen him on t.v. Then I read Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck. I actually met him at a conference in New York and he is totally rocking (for a criminal defense attorney, I mean). Then I read Michael Tigar and Gerry Spence. It was all great stuff, but a lot of it was self-promoting bullshit. All of them talked about all the millions of cases they won and how they kicked ass all the time and never fucked up. Except Gerry Spence who was not afraid to say that trying cases scared the shit out of him. I wanted to read about people who were afraid, who wanted to crap their pants or throw up before they started questioning a jury. I wanted to hear about how someone forgot to put in a notice of alibi until it was too late then had to beg the judge for an extension. I want to read somewhere in an autobiography that an attorney went back to the office after their first defense trial and cried and cried because their three time felony loser client is going to jail for 15 years no matter how hard you worked. Oddly enough, these millionaire criminal defense lawyers were not going to give those stories up. Ruin their veneer, I guess.

So, finally, I put it all away and turned to Darrow. Clarence Darrow. You know him, he was the guy who defended whatshisname in the Scopes Monkey trial – the evolution guy. But, Clarence Darrow is actually better known in legal circles for his work defending the unions. He was one slick bastard, and I have decided that, well, as far as rock starts of the legal world go, he’s one of them. He fought the good fight, even when it was an extremely unpopular fight, even when he wasn’t getting paid for it, even when it was fucked up. When someone told me a while back that your entire case hinges on voire dire, (I’ve now learned from personal experience that your entire case hinges on whether your client is asshole enough to take the stand in his own defense after you’ve advised him a hundred times not to) I decided to google everything I could about picking a jury, and I came up with This Clarence Darrow Link . It really is quite good, quite amusing, and maybe even quite true.

In any event, right before I have to pick a jury, I read that article, along with the Ten Commandments of Cross Examination. I also think about people who have lost loved ones, people with cancer, and I just go on Lexis and look at all of the cases and remind myself that we wouldn’t have case law if people didn’t lose cases. That makes me feel better.