the 50's and 60's it's amazing. [laughter] he was a big liberal. he talked in massachusetts. just people picking up the saturday evening post and not really bothering to look at his paintings and describing rockwell paintings and i don't think that people really took the time to realize what an original he was. but i think in many ways it goes beyond the in many cases so much

more. >> [inaudible] [applause] up next on book tv, after

words with debbie hines creator of legal speaks blog. this week, abbe contributing authors to how can you represent those people, the director and supervisor of georgetown law school criminal defense and prisoner advocacy clinic discuss the defense attorneys answers to the professional question the year asked most often how they are able to defend those that commit the worst crimes. the program is about an hour. >> i am so glad to be doubled to interview you on your book how can you represent those people. it was a very interesting and thought-provoking book and i don't say that lightly because if it weren't i wouldn't say otherwise but it was definitely a lot of emotion and ander and sadness and laughter. it basically ran the whole gamut. why don't you start by telling

us how you came up with the book. >> we are delighted with the above response. there is nothing like it out there. psas the answer the question. psas the answer the question. that is where it tends to be asked and play in the question. and it assembled such a diverse was the great thing and they ranging from age 28 to 85. so, the idea and the was kind of the party idea of a different voice, not the usual suspects talking about criminal law. it kind of involved and i co-authored a book on the legal ethics together which is a non-traditional walls cool treaty on the ethics. so that was interesting but it wasn't as fun as this one was

and was kind of time less. with both academics i consider to be a criminal defense lawyer and when i was a public defender and had his own at the time he was involved very actively in the criminal law with members of an organization called the american board of criminal lawyers and so we were kind of aware that there was the need for the book like this and the markets and if you put yourself together to write off thoughtfully and personally i think one of the great things about the book is that it has a personal voice to it. >> host: most of the stories coming and that is what makes it so interesting or from the heart, the stories were being told about the clients that were represented and the stories that come to mind from the various authors. let's talk about some of the

people. >> her chapter is one of my favorites because she talks about and i will give her a chance to talk about it but she talks about the influence that her grandparents who were civil rights activists have her kind of career path. they were criminal defenders of the literature and wrote something of a kind of classical piece of the criminal defense called criminal defending the guilty that is more than 30-years-old now and she writes a new interesting kind of updated how can you represent that from everybody i thought i was a great line and move of the

controversial defendant's who has his signature he's kind of a renaissance man in the oklahoma city bombing case. he writes about his representation about guantanamo detainees and they are kind of brilliant and the discussion of credible defense since september september 11th and what our policies were before and after that pivotal event. mcginn shapiro and mcginn are the only co-authors and they write about people defending and i think it is a particularly moving and very strong essay about something most people will realize the told that it takes on the clients, the clients' families and the lawyers themselves because you have to

take apart the life and understand how a person is born into this world to do something so horrible that it seems to prompt the very worst punishment of all, death by execution. he runs the project and teaches at all ole miss and tells a wonderful story about his representation of a woman who he tried to and mail to take a plea but it was just complete scheerer craziness to go to a trial and she was looking at so much time the jury finds her not guilty and it's a wonderful story that i don't want to give away the punch line to. are there others that come to mind? friedman writes about his experience representing people and the role his jewish faith

plays. david singleton a former public tender in new york and washington, d.c. now runs a criminal justice litigation oriented organization called the ohio justice and policy center and about his efforts on behalf of sex offenders, the phrase he doesn't like because it is such a leader and people are convicted of those kind of defenses. but he took on the state of ohio sex offender registration law running up fledgling nation funded organizations that is just a wonderful tale to take on the powers. but certain kinds of crimes on a really bad crime happens it's very distorting and we start doing misguided things it makes

it more dangerous. i think that is a very smart thing to share. but it's a very personal voice about how they can represent people doing pretty hideous things. it was just different in different age groups and raises because as a compilation of people like you got, it was so interesting to read the different perspectives because in my point of view they were not doing the same kind of representation. they were doing all different kinds of representation but still some of the issues were the same. why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to represent the clients that you represent. >> guest: i am so pleased that

abbe included me in the book. but i think that this worked because i was inspired by my grandfather. my grandfather was a civil rights advocates. he came of age in the 60's in mississippi and was part of the naacp. this was before i was born but that inspired me when i went off to college and then to law school because i thought i wanted to be a civil rights attorney. as i started to look to spend some time in mississippi working on a class action case on behalf of all of the inmates in mississippi and that was the first rule of the criminal justice system then later i spent the summer working at the san francisco public defender and i saw mississippi is 50%

african-american and it's less than 5% of the population and all of the clients sort of ran unlike representing people in mississippi that were charged with a very serious offenses. so in san francisco i was working on behalf of clients that sort of every stage of misdemeanors and felonies. i spend more time in a clinic when i was in high school the juvenile defender climate salles every single one of the clients is african-american and the most petty offenses that you can imagine. i tell a story about a kid that kick a soccer ball at a police officer and snowballs being thrown and being charged as assault with a dangerous weapon and they get in a fight at school and have the police

called. that never happened at the prep schools that the police would never be called for a fight. so seeing the way that our criminal justice system unfairly targets people of color is what inspired me to do this work. >> host: there are several take away this. in essence, you did and up being a civil rights attorney because one of the greatest civil rights problems that we have is the national conservation. i was struck by one of the stories that was in the book about a woman that was charged with prostitution for giving a blow job to an undercover police officer because she wanted fried chicken in exchange because she was hungry. those are the kind of problems. so, terms of the mass incarceration issue and just by way of background for people that are listening i was also

struck about the fact there were more black men particularly in the jail and the criminal-justice system waiting for trial than a and slavery in 1850 and that is just staggering because i think that puts it in a perspective of what we are talking about with mass incarceration. because i talk to people and some of the people that i talked to that are more conservative, they will say black people commit more crimes and i just -- i wanted to have you speak to the problem of mass incarceration and maybe you wouldn't necessarily have that. we can work towards a more fair and just system. >> guest: it is a horrifying statistics. one in three african-american babies born today are destined for jeal with the policies it

nasa incarceration continue. it's just certainly a civil rights issue of our time and you look at the conditions of the jails and prisons and it really is staggering. i think that when you hear people say african-americans are more likely to commit crime it really is unfair. the neighborhoods are unfairly targeted. african-americans are actually less likely to use and abuse. but it's going to prison and jail for committing those offenses is just so disproportionate. so, when you look at these numbers it is really something that i hope makes people step back a bit. >> now, are there any -- ticker trying to get least do something

with regards to the sentences for the nonviolent drug cases. but beyond that, is their anything that you can do because i know that you are representing people on a day-to-day daily basis in the past at least, but that is only as testing the system. that isn't doing anything to change the system. >> that is a fair question. sometimes we are asked are you really affecting social change or justice by representing individual criminal defendants, poor people accused of crime? i share these with you the criminal defense i think it is also social justice work and human rights work. i think it is the social justice work of our time because in that individual representation, you are making a difference in the individual life and casting some

light on the really terrible problem. those of us in the trenches everyday we know that something has to give that a certain point. i would like to be optimistic about eric holder. i was glad he had spoken out. i wish he had spoken out sooner. i wish he would do more. i hope the u.s. attorneys around the country are doing with eric holder suggests the do and not the quantity of drugs in the criminal charging documents. that there is a flexibility in the sentencing because it is so harsh in the federal system especially but also many state systems. but i also think this is a more controversial than to say because we often hear people talking about releasing people from prison have committed nonviolent offenses. but the truth is we keep people for way too long for all to kind of offenses even violent. people commit crime for a bunch of reasons. some are deep systemic social

reasons but others are in a bad moment in a moment of rage and impulse. there is a reason that crime seems to disproportionately from people between the ages of 18 to 25 because the studies show that our brains are not fully formed. the frontal part of the brain in particular is growing up the parts that helps us to control our impulses. but we lock people up that to be foolish thing in a moment of control forevermore and people are dying in prison at a certain point we spend gobs of money and that isn't the sort of moral reason but we are out lawyers as a western democracy. there is no other country that resembles the country that lock people up for as long a time in the conditions that we lock

people up in. i think it is a little bit crazy and we should prosecute fewer people and there should be diversion during its 50 years after. every five years there is some kind of celebration or we mark the occasion with a bunch of hand wringing and we never funded criminal defense in the country and there is still such a thing as rich and poor person's justice. one of the ways if we cannot afford that stop prosecuting people for such a silly crime. treat some things as public health problem for social problems. divert them to they don't exact a guilty plea. but deal with them someplace else and see if we cannot reintegrate people into ociety and put our money where it should be in education and job-training. there are some neighborhoods where you don't see young black men. you just don't see them.

it's staggering. in the district of columbia like los angeles, there are certain places where one in two young african-american men are in the system that are locked up or on probation and parole. it seems to be to be such a misguided self-destructive set of policies. >> host: even when i prosecuted there were questions that i had to go through. i started directly in misdemeanor and i like okay. why am i prosecuting the guy that sold the deodorant from the cvs? i had those in my mind like the things that were prosecuting misdemeanors back then. why are we in court costs because like the woman in your book the person that does say blowjob on the top.

but you also talk about not just the system itself in terms of the actor will court that you spoke about just now and that we kind of lock people up and throw away the key. the sentences or the saying is if we did the crime what then do the time. but there are sometimes you tell about to clients in your book that it isn't giving away everything but it does show that in real life the shawshank redemption is real. >> guest: i tell about people who are still the incarcerated and serving incredibly long sentences one for 16-years-old and that was the kind of child - impulse kind of crime. he shot his neighbor. he'd been expelled from school. he was afraid of his father's

reaction since he took his father's hunting rifle and went next door so he could get away so that his father wouldn't beat the hell out of him for getting in trouble in school. he had never been in trouble. he was once involved in the juvenile justice system and apparently, she said no and maybe laughed and he shot her. now he's 45-years-old now. he's been in prison since he was 16-years-old. he looks like a 45-year-old 16-year-old. there is something about him that will forever be 16. i don't have any doubt that he poses no risk of harm to any other human being to be it's something he's deeply remorseful about. he just doesn't want to die in prison. he kind of hangs onto a piece of hope that someday he will be free. a woman that was convicted of killing her baby she has no

memory of it. she denied it and went to trial. it's not surprising to me that a mother might disassociate if in fact she did such a thing that she would have no memory i think that is a terribly traumatic thing would ever the circumstances are that cause women to kolbe's, but meanwhile, she was supposed to serve 20 years but the judge was very explicit in the sentencing giving her a 20 to life year sentence and meant for her to be released. she now serve 28 years. she's a model prisoner. she's a woman of faith and service, she works in the infirmary and the chaplain's office. she isn't going to have any more babies and do harm to them. i just don't get it. i understand these are not popular prisoners necessarily. i understand that there is a

risk not kind of anti-crime culture of politics, but somebody just needs to let these people out eventually and you are right about the system. it's become like a revolving door we shuffle people into prison and they get out for a second and they are back why? because they are not good at following rules, they are not well organized. we got disappointment and kids. there are days that we want to say i cannot control my schedule they've got to go to treatment or ander management and if they miss one of those appointments if something happens at home, if they don't have the money or they can't figure out how to get someplace they are in violation. we lock up so many people for that kind technical violation or falling off the wagon, getting frustrated or falling into

despair and returning to drugs or alcohol and they are back in prison and i think that is awfully misguided. >> host: mabey some examples that we can relate to. >> you are speaking about the resources and certainly i worked in the criminals' lobby at georgetown law we see every day people charge minor crimes. i will say that 79% of crimes in the criminal justice system are misdemeanors. that is really most of what we are talking about. and you sort of see over and over again the absence of access to substance-abuse treatment to mental health treatment those would be things that would have prevented people from ever entering into the criminal justice system in the first

place and it is just so shameful that you have to get arrested in order to get access to these services to the communities the clients live incarcerating people and they spend on average 45 to incarcerate them in the supervision and more health treatment to solve the problems. it's hard to talk about actual clients. the time and time again you see heavy offense is going on there being prosecuted. those sorts of things are happening. >> host: that is so sad that

we're we are basically running the court system and that is a point that by the way i didn't know so that is a good point to get at but the majority of the cases in the system are the misdemeanor because the projection and the view that in the real world we've got to keep these murderers and rapists and killers that is what is shown in the media so that is what people really think. they are not thinking about the cade that brought the birthday card, what he didn't buy the birthday card but basically went in and stole the birthday card to the we are not really thinking about that. so tell us what are some of the rewarding things that you have had? >> guest: the thing about representing a human being as you know is that that experience in and of itself can be rewarding. standing out to someone and standing up to the government can sometimes be its own reward

when your client does that have anyone to stand up for them and doesn't have any other support against them, the police are against them, just sort of a metal being someone's advocate is priceless. winning is a great. when you run a trial it is a great experience. there is no greater feeling. >> hearing not guilty or every defense attorneys favorite thing. >> some of the problems people have, the clients have oftentimes there's not even their family there in the courtroom with them because all of the socioeconomic issues the would be there to support them that would bring out the point that what we need is some form of moniker muddle intervention.

>> if we could focus on some of the resources that we focus in the criminal justice system elsewhere we would save money. >> it's interesting to me that one of the comments in the book we can all kind of get up on our soap box and talk about the - incarceration but in some ways that is a motivation for some people during this work. what i really like about the book is that especially there's personal stories. it's the stories about actual people that we represent. angela davis and in her essay has a wonderful story representing a juvenile in the case. they have a long record of juvenile offenses and he's going away. he's going to get what we sometimes called juvenile life and she's trying to come up with

some creative defense because he's already in the adult system in another jurisdiction so she tries to use the provision that is usually with no record that's kind of like in the interest of justice to take them out of the system, the judge doesn't buy that and then he's convicted and tries something kind of creative yet again and tells a story about losing and her client being sent away to an institution and she keeps it together in the courtroom and goes in the back and cries and then she comes out and encounters her client's mother who comforts her. >> i think it is true of committed offenders. we take it to heart. you have to take it to heart to do this work and you have to have the kind of personality that is kind of open enough to be able to reach out and connect with other people the matter what. i like that story. we have all been there.

the beautiful thing about the work we do is we don't win all the time. having a client that understands how hard you work is so rewarding. that brought me back not as a defense attorney but as a former prosecutor because the first capital punishment case i didn't try but i wanted to watch the closing arguments and during that time, the defense attorney was talking about a trial of the case. during the first trial of the case when they came back with the sentence of death he couldn't keep it together so he broke down in court and cried and his client laughed at that particular moment.

the decline at this time as the one that was actually speaking and he told that story. he was saying how much he had changed but he gave the respect knowing how much the public defender had done for him. but yes sometimes they are more emotional for the attorney at that moment in time. >> guest: i think people don't kind of get that. that's not picture they have of people accused or convicted of crime. >> guest: a ottilie story about a client that i visited. he always brought us candy every time we would visit because he knew it took us are worse to get there. our office was in new orleans and i am sure it was a cost to him with prison wages being what

they are to buy commissary candy and give it to us that it was so sweet and this was a man convicted of murder. >> host: what are some of the lessons you have learned representing your client? some of them may come to mind. >> and angela davis has an essay called there by the grace of god and i think that is a brilliant title in this book. that resonates. i often say to students i feel lucky that i was born to the family that i was born to and i had the educational opportunities that i had and whenever i'm in a prison and the doors shut behind me i have a feeling like i'm really lucky. it teaches a kind of humility. there's another kind of humility that it's true we don't win all the time. you become kind of a gracious loser i suppose.

it's kind of humbling because no matter how skilled you are there is a kind of randomness to justice that kind of shakes your sole. that is another thing that i learn all the time about bad, how difficult and challenging the work is and in perfect the justice can be. the kind of small mass. we have the personalities. there is no grandiosity of the occupational hazard. i think it is humbling and lots of ways to read one of the reasons i feel so privileged to do the work and i think that our witnesses get this is what a privilege it is.

they let us try to help and we've learned a lot about ourselves in the process. >> when you have a natural client that you are representing it makes it so much easier to put in those long hours. i think some of the other lessons, too. it's mandatory sentences. the criminal-justice system is basically the system the trial is 95% of the cases are resolved by the guilty plea and that's what they do to these incredibly in punitive sentences and

mandatory sentences to build the statutes. they are often the tanned prior to trial. so innocent people feel guilty and go to their jobs and that is something that i really wasn't aware of and i feel lucky to practice in d.c. that doesn't have a punitive bill statute that is doing this work and seeing what it's like in other places that's been i opening. >> host: there's a great scene in the movie justice for all in which al pacino playing a criminal defense lawyer. he says they are people, they are just people. i feel like you like some, some are incredibly smart and creative, gifted, some have a great leadership skills and other people have been kind of tossed around in life that they

are really just people. there are fewer of my clients. people are just people and that's something to remember. personally we don't think about that. in this system we think we are about to become a victim. we never think someone gets arrested whether it's for something they did or didn't do but it's a mistake. people make mistakes and they are just like us. >> host: your book brought back so many things to me that as a former prosecutor i hadn't representative lot of clients about 1i did i represented the gentleman who was accused and did plead guilty to a sex offense charge against two young girls. when i took on the case, and the

family really wanted me to and for some reason i couldn't convince them that i didn't think i was the person to the kept coming back to me and i did but i had a different point of view of him when i came into the case. by the end of the day -- the case went through the system longer than most but at the end of the day when i was actually standing up there with him in the sentencing i had learned so much from him because i have learned the whole thing which seems very simple that people are people and they do make mistakes so that as one of the things that does come out in this book. >> how are you able to learn that? >> i got to know him and his family but the things that you're talking about, i got to know his family, his sisters,

one was a schoolteacher i think the other one was a schoolteacher. so i got to know him a lot because he was in the putative system in maryland in baltimore. he wasn't on a nobel status but you were on a friday and it comes down to which a dozen the system, okay you've got some do we want to get you out or do you want to try to pay an attorney? it's one way or the other. que don't have money for both. so i got to know him and talking with him and his employer who basically told the court he would take him back to work if the court didn't to give him a sentence. i got to learn just by talking to other people and finding out there was a back story. he had been working at the same job for ten or 12 years and i don't remember i don't recall what the job was but he was working at the same job. he was a supervisor on his job and a variety loved him and they knew what he did.

he still would have taken him back. so, that's basically the things that you're talking about in the book is making people share their humanity and the other side of the story and there is a lot of that. new >> so many of them have been victims of sexual abuse themselves as children and again, with the services they might not have been in the system and that is something we all need to focus on as a community. >> he writes about his efforts of people being convicted. when we have a couple of books about when he talked about it is a kind of beautiful job of explaining when you are a lawyer and you are called upon to represent somebody that is charged with an especially controversial and unpopular crime and you have a feeling that everybody keeps them and then there you are in the room with them or in a kind of jail

or prison visiting room, you just can't judge them to treat you realize that repeals this kind of full of hatred and here is this person they are terrified and they are just terrified. to know, whatever it is. and i think that israel, too for criminal defense lawyers i think you have to be able to do that. you have to kind of be able to grapple with the conduct, put it somewhere in your brain. i think that for most of us the client becomes a much bigger figure in our brains and hearts and whatever. and angela davis has a saying that when we are in the trial there are so many things to think about and you always think like it's just you you stand between this client in the terrible punitive sentence or whether they did it or not there is no room in my brain under the circumstances and i just think that can breathe some of it,

too. >> i talk about some of the clients that are the more typical clients that you represent but there is one person in the book and i feel bad with names so i don't remember the one that there's one person in the book that represented clients from guantanamo bay and that whole islamic terrorist, you know, situation is a whole nother ball game. so, how has mine a leffinge change and what is going on so that we have a backdrop with a five prisons because it is so interesting and that is the one that made me feel angry, sad and of the emotions to possibly feeling terms of what was being done. >> he's kind of a brilliant writer and i love his piece because he's very smart about the politics. he kind of captures the history of the approach to crime that used to be much more enlightening.

frankly the turn-of-the-century the people sometimes make mistakes and you have to discharge your debt to society and maybe do some time, but then that should be it. it should be discharged and you should be able to try again. there is a time and he attributes it first i think to the nixon administration and that there was much more of us in them and we wanted it to be as far away as possible as if there was a clear line somehow. but he talks about a post-9/11 kind of criminal justice environment as those folks alleged they are the people we should be the most afraid of and

so we put them as far away as possible on this island. it's just peculiar to and lock them up forever with no end in sight prior to any proceeding. most haven't even been before any meaningful tribunal. but he tells a very personal story about the client that he meets who he is supposed to represent and i think that he tells it well because it is so easy to relate to this particular client that he moved to australia and got married and raised children and like many people when they start to have children, he became more religious. that is a kind of a great way to describe it because that is when suddenly we are back in the church and our kids have to go to sunday school or wherever and he said he became muslim and became more religious and wanted to explore perhaps moving back to a more religious country like

afghanistan and when they got swept up in the budget arrest and they are taken and tortured and then eventually sent to guantanamo it is actually innocent, but he kind of talks about his own journey with that client and what it was like to try to so it has a happy ending but most of those stories don't. i love the story because as best you could put it had a happy ending and that the client did get out and they were able to resume their life with their family but most are still just sitting there. >> money into the system. there's been cutbacks in the system and the layoffs and one that i was more familiar with.

they were always working on a shoestring budget and there was always a problem. is there a true justice where there really isn't enough resources, not just resources but beyond the criminal justice system of resources that your office or clinics that they need to represent the people? i'm assuming that you don't have the resources of the most recent trial when he could get money collected online. therefore he was able to have animation's done and experts and everything that they were able to do. >> it is a disadvantage. unlike george zimmerman most of the clients are at the margins of the country had people spend a lot of time thinking about

mentally ill people and people of color who just don't have access to those kind of resources and then when you add to that that there is a crisis in the defense they are woefully underfunded and they have 400 cases at a time and can't possibly know the fact is a fall of the cases. the national defender association has guidelines for how many cases the public defender office should carry. most don't meet that standard and would be hard for most to imagine they have something like six hours under the standards. when you think about all of the different things he would want your lawyer to do to investigate the case, go to the jail come

interview the client multiple times, spend time with their families and learn things like collect documents and records, file motions, advocate, and then the actual trial itself isn't going to be a good outcome for the client. so that is a huge problem in the system and it's something that i think should scare people. and when you think about the number of wrongful convictions, certainly the fact that defense lawyers are underfunded is one of the reasons. >> the sequester has had a concrete impact. most people don't realize it is actually kind of an exemplary defense system because it has been properly funded, but the offices across the country are laying off lawyers, taking more cases than they can properly handle and that is really shameful.

>> the department of justice for those who don't know it seemed to important. meanwhile that for the district of columbia. they are facing the sequestered so these are the people they are going against in court and they are not facing these furloughs and cuts to their budget and resources and so that is something that really needs to be rectified before there is a huge toll and i will say the only outcome would be something that cost more money and its then proven that the attorneys cost more than public defenders in terms of the amount of money per case and something that does me to get fixed and fast.

>> host: we do care in our country that there is a fair fight and that the system seems fair. it shouldn't work for somebody that house money and happens to be poor. the fairness part should matter more than it does. >> i didn't know about the question being applied so there will be more prosecution but against people and less funds against them. there is something wrong with that. you touched a little bit on the mentally ill. i know that there is a definite issue and a problem to represent those, not just those that are judged to be incompetent or mentally ill in the eyes of the

law but those that have personality disorders where the law doesn't quite recognize them because it says you had choices. if you could help your thoughts of concession disorder but had you have any experience, either one of you, representing those challenges and how that plays out? >> that is an area that we need more training on behalf of law enforcement. we have represented folks like claiming to be the owner of the hotel and the prison was prosecuted. these sorts of status crimes and mentally ill people go places they shouldn't go and get in order to stay away from that place and they understand and go back and then they are charged with content. right now there is something

like five times more people in prison with mental illness and mental health institutions and not something that we really need to focus on as a country. >> i thought about a case as you were talking about what happened in virginia, and as a young man that is 18 or 20, its media than two or three years ago and he is optimistic. he had a format as workers and he was waiting outside to go went to the library. i don't remember if you know that. he was waiting to go inside the library because that is basically what he did. for whatever reason because i think it was a call that the the library was closed so he wasn't able to go in. but he didn't know that so he's just sitting there. and he is african-american, probably larger in size. the policeman comes over to him and because he does have mental challenges and the police man is

trying to solicit some information from him about, you know, why he is just hanging around here on the bench he goes ballistic. and in the words of the law he assaults the police officer and try as you must they were not able to get any resolution, so he is in jail. he got convicted. he can't fit within the categories that you need to fit within in order to be at adjudicated and competent. so he ends up being in jail and charged with assaulting a police officer and those are as you said the cases where we've really need to be putting more resources and because he just didn't understand when the police officer touched him on the shoulder, what that meant. >> the fairness of the system and i think for anyone, whether you are a prosecutor, criminal defense, whatever to get you have to be a moron to know that the system isn't fair.

whether what we talked about what are some of the other challenges in terms of getting a fair trial for your client? >> that is a really good question. and i think that as you have pointed out, there's the question of meeting a fair fight on both sides, and i think that would be a really important first step. i don't know. that is a big question. i think there's probably a lot of different things we need to do. >> i love how you post the question because ie agree with you that you need to be kind of a moron or not paying attention. if you are not out raged you're not paying attention. it's one of the first thing i think students see when they spend any amount of time in a criminal court house. do you have fairness? so you see like you've never seen a white person in the d.c.

superior court except they get kind of pulled into the system otherwise, juneau, it doesn't reflect a demographic of the city there is something that feels wrong with that. but -- and likewise they have enough houses of justice or injustice. they are gathering spots for poor people. it's kind of unfair and not right about that. it's not that incidentally the criminal defense lawyers are big fans of crime. we don't celebrate the criminals. we are human beings. we are worried about certain kind of crime and what not but you go into those places and it's the land of the poor to get with on fairness though you watch the calendar in a large courthouse and see how the

justice defense, how little time is given to each case and sometimes they settle the barriers and sometimes they are not so subtle. from a lawyer's perspective i think one of the things the lawyers have to be able to do is predict and have a kind of judgment that is a decent predictor of outcomes. but as often as not, that is a hard thing because you sometimes can't predict nothing less that happen in court and the random mess. the random testimony of judges or juries. so there's a kind of on the fairness in that and i don't know if i am making that clear. ..