What I Need To Know:
My parents are very involved in politics and stay up to date with the news. Growing up, I became accustomed to watching the news every evening. The stories began to fascinate me, thus sparking my yearn to know more about current events.
Social media has grown significantly over the past ten years. It has become a platform for news cast to present stories to a wide audience in the click of a button. Using social media sites, such as twitter, I recently began to see more news stories on the daily. Stories that cause outrage in society tend to make their way onto my social media feeds. Many of these stories seem to be centered around injustices. I knew deep down that some stories may be altered or fluffed to cause such an outrage so I decided to do what I do best, conduct my own research on these articles.
With the idea in mind of pursuing law in college, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to intern at a criminal justice law firm the year before I go off to college. This opportunity allowed me to insert myself into the reality that lawyers face day-to-day.
My life calling is to fix the injustices in society so one day my children my live in a less ugly world. Whether you are involved in the system, have a loved one in the system, or aren’t involved in the system personally, the criminal justice system affects everyone’s lives. We pay taxes to the state which can be used to fund the prisons in which people are caged, innocent or guilty. You contribute to the system. Why not fix the broken system? As Americans, we have a voice and duty to speak for those that aren’t heard. I want to be a voice for the voiceless.
What I Know or Assume:
Before I began my research, I didn’t know much on the topic of our criminal justice system. What I did know came from shows like Law and Order: SVU and criminal minds. Obviously, I couldn’t trust these shows depictions of the system due to the producers need to draw in viewers. As interesting as watching these shows was, I knew in my heart that I wanted to be in the system and be an advocate for those who need a voice.
My parents are law graduates. As a young girl, I was unaware of the sacrifices they made to pursue law from high school to college and even after with their families. Due to the consuming nature of the job, my mother ending up quitting her job to raise my brothers and I. My father continued to be engulfed in his career. I look up to my mother for her strength in quitting her job to be more involved in our lives. Law tends to consume you and lawyers tend to struggle balancing a social life with work (we will discuss further in my interview with my boss, Peter Zeliff). I also look up to my father for continuing in his career, even when it took away time from my brothers and me. After moving in with my father, I developed even more respect for the man who works tireless hours to provide a comfortable life for my family. That is what I wish to provide for my family in the future.
My calling in life is to be a leader. As Gandhi once said “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” This quote I apply to my everyday life.
I may have had little background knowledge into the field of law but I walked into my internship with a desire to learn.
The Search:
I was gifted a book from my mentor, Peter Zeliff, shortly after I began working for him. I began reading the novel and became engulfed in the text. William J. Stuntz’s novel The Collapse of the American Criminal Justice proposes ways to fix America’s justice system. Stuntz was a longtime professor at Harvard Law School and one of America’s leading criminal law and criminal procedure professors. This novel is the history of America’s Criminal Justice System from the point of view of a criminal lawyer and procedure professor. Stuntz explains three things throughout his novel: why we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, why mass incarceration has had little effect on crime, and how our Criminal Justice System might be fixed.
The origins of the issues in the justice system have been traced back to the liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren Supreme Court’s emphasis on procedures, not equity, joined hands with conservative insistence on severe punishment which created a system that is both harsh and ineffective.
Allowing for states to dictate counsel to those in need and don’t have money, Warren allowed for more discrimination to be integrated into the system even though that was the opposite of his objective. This book educated me on where we can trace the origins of the issues I seek to solve.
My interview with Peter Zeliff, my mentor:
Kelly: Do your clients share similar characteristics? What are they?
Peter: Every case is different. You have to pay attention to the unique aspects of a case to understand your client and the best way to come up with a solution to their problem. Dealing with criminal law, clients tend to be anxious, they don’t know what to expect. My colleagues and I try to reduce that anxiety so they can think about their case more intelligently.
How I feel: I assumed this would be the answer I would receive if I asked any attorney. Each case is different has different circumstances and different issues to deal with. In law you have to be very flexible.
K: Do your morals ever come into play when representing potential guilty citizens?
P: No, this question gets asked all the time. The best answer I can give is innocent people do get arrested however much percent of the time. In order for me to be exceptional, effective, thoughtful in court I have to be immersed into the language of criminal justice and law. I’m always sharpening my skills. I practice on the guilty and so I’m sharp for the innocent. The state has a lot of resources but someone needs to stick up for the underdog. Often the defendant has only one person, their attorney. It means that the system doesn’t work well as it should and everyone deserves an advocate.
How I feel: This is a common thought I share with my boss. I, too, believe everyone deserves an advocate. I have witnessed court in action and the state does inquire a ton of help. I enjoy seeing my attorney in action and aiding him in any way he needs.
K: Do you believe in the death penalty?
P: Against it for a couple different reasons. 1) I’m a criminal defense lawyer, in that sense I’m biased 2) sadly, it has been used against the innocent, the mentally challenged, and against African Americans so historically it has not been even handily used. It contributes to an erosion of the principle that each person has a certain amount of dignity and should be treated like that. We should have something called life penalty and that is what we have. I’m also opposed to life without the possibility of parole. It destroys the ability for hope and that is agreeable. Pope franchise delivered a speech in prison discussing the topic of hope. It is definitely one to watch in your free time.
How I feel: This is how I feel about this topic as well. Hope is a powerful thing and without it life can seem meaningless. Life without parole leaves room for discrimination in sentencing for different races. No matter the crime, those criminals or non-guilty parties are treated as less than equal. In the constitution it states “All men are created equal.” Allowing the death penalty to exist allows the government to dictate how much a life is worth.
K: Do you believe there are any problems with our criminal justice system? If so, what are they?
P: One of them is the fear of the jury trial in the 21st century will disappear due to lawyers being cowards and an abundance of ignorance. This will be a great loss to our system. Criminal attorneys don’t try cases. When I became a lawyer, I was shocked to see the majority of them don’t go to trial.
How I feel: This is one of the reasons that I want to go into law. To me, what is the point of becoming an attorney if you won’t do the one thing attorneys should do? My voice will be heard for the future generations.
K: How do you determine how you are going too approach a trial?
P: Stay open-minded. I learned when I was brand new that I had everything written out and I was terrible. You need to go into a courtroom openminded and go off the cuff.
How I feel: This is a system in which I struggle. I know the phrase ‘life doesn’t go as planned” however I still like to plan everything I can out as much as possible. Heading off to college, it warms my heart to be able to plan out the next few months of 2018. This gives me peace.
Entering the law field, I know improving is a skill I will need to utilize. For this reason, I am taking theatre classes to increase my abilities.
K: What is three strikes law and does it apply in Georgia/ have you seen it be applied?
P: No doesn’t apply to Georgia. It’s a terrible law in all. As a criminal justice attorney, this law is just terrible. It puts people in jail for minuscule crimes due to their past with crime. I dislike when the prosecution tries to make it known to the court that the first important detail is that my client may have committed an offense in the past. It’s ridiculous to me because we are in court that day for a separate issue so let’s discuss that instead of a person past.
How I feel: I personally agree. This law allows for the system to be broken. A person can go to jail for a miniscule crime if they have committed two felonies in the past.
K: Are you familiar with the OJ Simpson case? Can we discuss your thoughts on it?
P: You can’t talk about OJ without talking about race so anyone wishing to be in the system has to be aware of that. I am not against the verdict. The cop was proven to be a racist. This is where the system is failing.
How I feel: Race isn’t just a minor note, it is actually a huge issue with the criminal justice system. This case is a popular one that many citizens are aware of. It’s intriguing to hear how others feel about this case.
K: Have you turned away clients? Why?
P: I’m built for battle. I think I only turn away a client if their case doesn’t call for a criminal lawyer. People often freak-out when dealing with breaking the law and they assume the worst.
Follow-up question: This is an area I struggle with wanting to become a criminal justice lawyer. I am not sure how I would feel morally backing a criminal. Now, I do believe everyone deserves an advocate. This is why we need to fix the weak attorneys states may put with prisoners that cannot afford an attorney on their own.
K: What if the person is crazy, for a lack of a better term, in their demeanor?
P: A person who is crazy needs me even more. Everyone deserves an advocate and I get to be one.
How I feel: This answer doesn’t shock me. My attorney tends to fight the good fight if his clients want him to. This is another view point that I share with him.
K: How do you deal with being talked about in your community?
P: If a person I respect criticizes me, it makes me stop and think about what they said. However, 99% of the criticism I get is because when I fight, I fight hard and I win. You have to stick to your guns if you want to become an attorney. Being strong and confident in your abilities is a hug aspect of the job.
How I feel: This is a question I will have to face going into law. A lot of people can’t handle criticism however that is an aspect of law, getting criticism from the community.
K: How do you lead a normal life outside of law?
P: I don’t know if I handle the balance well. It’s something every lawyer has to be conscience of and work on. An attorney’s personal life may suffer because they may go home and focus solely on the case to where they can’t relax and just be with the people they surround themselves with.
Practically, the best thing you can do is go to bed early before a trial. You have to fire all guns when you are on trial, if you wish to be effective and win a case. The best thing to do is to be rested heading into court.
How I feel: it’s a huge aspect of being an attorney. You have to be able to separate law and your personal life to make sure you stay happy. I think this is an issue even my parents bring home.
Rearing the end of the year, I was seeking the solutions that may be plausible to implement during my generation. In Andrew D. Leipold’s article, he invites other scholars to share ideas in the article that will “propose a reform of the criminal system that would both attack a specific problem and could be implemented without huge cost, without spending an unrealistic amount of political capital, and without changing the composition of the entire Supreme Court” (Leipold 2).
During my research, the most prominent issue I could find in almost every case is wrongful convictions and I’m not the only one who agrees, Professors George Thomas and Sandra Thompson at the University of Illinois state that “What we know for certain is that the results in an individual case of wrongful conviction are catastrophic, and the result of many such convictions for society as a whole is worse. The criminal system as currently constructed simply cannot endure with a huge number of innocent people sitting behind prison walls” (Leipold 3). This has become a bright, neon sign in front of my face that one of the biggest issues the United States faces with criminal justice is wrongfully convicted prisoners. Now that the problem is pinpointed, their solution entails “that these difficulties endure, not because we lack workable alternatives to current eyewitness practices, but because we lack the will to implement them. Current practice permits the police to conduct the eyewitness identification without any real oversight, a process, Thomas argues, that is fraught with unnecessary risk. Among other things, he proposes that the identification procedures be carried out under judicial oversight, a move that in a single step could alleviate a huge number of concerns about the reliability of the process” (Leipold 3-4). “Improving the mechanics of eyewitness identification is one of Thomas’s two ‘windows into innocence.’ A second reform, he says—one that would also help weed out unreliable identifications—is to broaden the “shamefully narrow” discovery that is permitted to criminal defendants. Giving a defendant greater access to the prosecutor’s case, beginning with the right simply to learn the names of the government’s witnesses, would go a long way to uncovering biased and mistaken witnesses” (Leipold 4).
I can implement their ideas into my future career as a lawyer during my search for equality for all in our justice system.
What I Discovered:
I didn’t go into this internship knowing much about our criminal justice system but I left with a plethora of knowledge. Being educated is the first step to implementing any change you wish to see. I now know in what time era these issues surfaced and can use that information to study these time periods in order to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. During my time at the law firm, I learned that people often manipulate a system in which the door was open for abuse. With any program in the United States that has significant amount of money flowing into, we tend to see more misuse of power from those in authority. Keeping this in mind, change won't come easy and may take dozens of years. We need to lower incarceration rates by allowing programs to be implemented that rehabilitates prisoners and gets them back into society where they can work and have an actual meaningful life. We need to re-evaluate how due process is conducted to maintain equal protection for every persons in the United States.
I see a sense of change festering in my generation. We are seeing more young minds speaking up for what they believe is right.
I hope my generation sets a precedent for the future generations to not be afraid to speak for those without a voice and to seek after solutions to problems, no matter how complex or deep the issue runs.
You cannot spark change simply by speaking out, you must take action for what you believe is important and for me that is our criminal justice system.