Lived Through This
Why I Defend Guilty Clients
Years as a public defender taught me that guilty people are still people
“How can you defend someone you know is guilty?” That question was leveled at me too many times when I was a public defender. My answer was usually that I was helping to even up the odds since the criminal justice system’s machinery was arrayed against defendants. But sometimes I countered the question with one of my own: What do you mean by “defend”? What do you mean by “guilty”? What do you mean by “someone”?
Rayanne was someone, the eldest child of four, a good girl who liked helping at home. She wore her hair in tight braids when I first met her, but by the time she killed her seven-year-old neighbor, she was 13 and had gone over to a medium-length Afro. Her mother, Donut, was my friend. A white woman of size, Donut moved as if weighed down by more than her girth. What she lost in physical speed, though, was more than made up for by the swiftness of her thought and speech. She could use language like a flower or a flamethrower to keep her children and her husband, Everett, in line, to navigate labyrinths of medical services, to get her car fixed almost for free.
Donut drove a 1970 Buick sedan, a metal beast big enough for her and Everett and the four kids. Something…
