Response #2: Why I do what I do (and how I got here in the first place)

Womanofthelaw asks, why do I do what I do? What I do, in case you didn't know, is  represent indigent prisoners in habeas corpus cases.

Because few lawyers and even fewer non-lawyers understand the first thing about habeas corpus, I offer you a bit of background. I have three general categories of clients:  (1) state prisoners raising federal constitutional challenges to their convictions; (2) federal prisoners raising constitutional (and, occasionally, other) "collateral" challenges to their convictions and sentences; and (3) federal detainees challenging the fact and duration of their detention (this last category includes federal inmates' challenges to prison disciplinary sanctions).

Habeas corpus is the end of the line for most prisoners' efforts to challenge their conviction or detention. Over the years, Congress has made it more and more difficult for prisoners to file federal habeas corpus petitions and to obtain relief on the merits of their claims. The procedural rules are rigid, complicated, and confusing, and the standard for granting relief seems often impossible to satisfy. For state prisoners, for example, the federal courts will grant habeas relief only if the state court's decision on the constitutional issue was "unreasonably" erroneous. Whatever that means.

Except in death penalty cases, indigent habeas corpus petitioners also have no right to court-appointed counsel. (The Sixth Amendment has been interpreted to require court-appointed counsel only through the direct-appeal stage.) Thus, although habeas corpus practice is one of the most complicated, confusing, and procedurally rigid areas of the law, most prisoners must represent themselves in preparing their petitions and responding to the government's arguments. Only if an indigent petitioner gets lucky, and a law clerk or judge or screening attorney decides that "something" in his case warrants it, will I or another habeas lawyer be appointed. Sometimes I get appointed because the case includes serious, and fairly obvious, constitutional problems, sometimes I get appointed because the court is tired of dealing with my client's pro se rantings, and sometimes, I can't quite figure out why I've been appointed.

So, now that you have some sense of what I do, I can try to explain why I represent convicted murderers, rapists, robbers, and drug dealers in mostly hopeless cases. I do it because I love it, and I love it because it feels, in some small way, that I am keeping the "justice" in the criminal justice system. By holding the cops, prosecutors, and judges to the law, I feel like I’m doing my part to protect the balance of power from shifting even more sharply against poor people and people of color than it already has.

I also love what I do because it allows me to provide high-quality, caring, compassionate advocacy for people who’ve never before had someone fight hard for them. Many of my clients have been long since abandoned by their families and their communities. For many of them, too, their original trial lawyers were overworked, underpaid, burned out, and detached, just trying to clear the case from their dockets as quickly and painlessly as possible. And while many of my clients have committed horrible crimes, just as many have been horribly victimized themselves. I like to believe (perhaps naively) that by working hard to protect their constitutional rights - and when I can't do that, by listening to and caring about them - I might in some small way restore their faith in justice.

Rereading the above, it sounds pithy and contrived, the words of a privileged college sophomore railing against the world’s injustices. But in truth, public defending requires a great deal of idealism (along with a high tolerance for losing). It’s not for everyone, but after four years, it remains my dream job.

So how did I get into law in the first place, WotL also asks. During college and while doing human rights work with my father the year after I graduated, I developed a strong interest in both environmental issues and international human rights. From what I could tell, a law degree would enable me to have a professional involvement in such issues at a fairly high level. So, off to law school I traipsed, sure that I would soon be working for the UNDP someplace exotic.

From the beginning of my law school career, I was involved in things both international and environmental (and international-environmental). I took classes in those areas, worked on relevant journals and projects, and published papers in the field. I even co-founded a student organization that eventually became known as the Global Challenges Network, through which we held an annual conference bringing together fascinating speakers to discuss various multidisciplinary topics. Even my summer jobs tracked my interests: my first summer I worked for a law firm whose managing partner was heavily involved in an international-environmental NGO; my second I split between the environmental torts section of the Department of Justice and the human rights bureau of the State Department Legal Adviser’s Office; my third, I worked for a gimungous D.C. law firm, primarily in the environmental and international practice groups.

And so, when I began my 9^th Circuit clerkship in Seattle, in the fall of ‘96, I felt pretty confident that I would soon be heading back to D.C. to begin work at the State Department or at the big international law firm, both of which had offered me jobs. Then two things happened: one, my D.C.-based boyfriend and I split, and two, I started working on death-penalty cases. Thus began a series of geographic and career moves that eventually led me to where I am today.

Of course, the shortest, and equally accurate answer to both questions is this: my parents are both die-hard liberal activist lawyers.

Comments

[The Happy Feminist]

Clerking for the 9th Circuit must have been a terrific experience . . . you should post about that sometime!

I was once watching oral arguments in my local district federal court when one of the attorneys referred to a 9th circuit decision. Opposing counsel immediately snapped back, "Well, they're the crazy circuit!"