second job, also working as a cashier, at a second grocery store. She enrolled us in a preschool at our church. She was able to dress us in secondhand clothes that looked firsthand, and she drilled into us that the system, the system of opportunity in America, and everywhere in the world, was rigged against us. We would have to work twice as hard to get half as much. We were poor and black and we lived in a ghetto. The schools we were supposed to attend were not going to educate us in a way that would prepare us for success. No doors would open for us because of the color of our skin or because of our last name. We would have to behave twice as well, work twice as hard, achieve twice as much. And if we could do those things, we had a chance. If we could not, we would end up like her, and almost all of the women in our neighborhood, working eighteen hours a day to support her family in a single-parent home, or like our father, and a large number of the fathers of children in our neighborhood, in prison for taking the only job available to him.
Though I do have happy memories, it was not a happy childhood. I studied most of the time. I was mocked and beaten by the other boys in my neighborhood, boys destined to follow my father’s path. I started working part-time when I was fourteen in anticipation of college. The job was at one of the grocery stores where my mother worked. I took a weekend job picking up garbage in Central Park. I graduated third in my class in high school and got a partial academic scholarship to a large state school. I worked in the school cafeteria to cover what the scholarship didn’t. I went straight into law school, which I did in New York, also on a partial academic scholarship. I worked in the school library at night and went back to my weekend job picking up garbage in the park. As soon as I finished law school, I became a public defender. And while I am not always successful in helping people like my father, or women who might have been my mother or my sisters, who both became doctors by working as I worked, I fight like a motherfucker to do what I can. I scream. I yell. I try every trick in the book, because I know the government is going to use everything they’ve got. I spend most of my free time studying areas of the law that I believe might apply to my work. I seek out experts in other fields who might have applicable knowledge to share with me. I don’t bother speaking to young men to warn them of the evils of the drug trade, or of crime. They know the evils, and they know the potential consequences. They know the system has been rigged against them since the moment they were born. They know the world is rigged against them. If you aren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, regardless of your race, religion, or sexual orientation, you might as well have been born in shackles. I’m not bitter about it. I accept it as it is. But I fight like a motherfucker against it.
As I said, I met Ben at the Queens County Criminal Courthouse, where I go to work every day. After an individual has been arrested, he or she goes to a precinct holding cell. From there, a prosecutor in the intake bureau of the DA’s office looks at the case and files charges. The offender is booked and fingerprinted and sent to central booking. A criminal history, also known as a rap sheet, is brought up, and the Criminal Justice Agency looks at both the charges and the criminal history and makes a bail recommendation. All three are then put together in a case file. The case files are put in a basket when the individual is brought to court for their arraignment hearing. We, the public defenders, draw the files out of the basket, and the individual whose file I draw becomes my client. I meet them in an interview booth behind the courtroom. The interview booth is basically a Plexiglas box, where I communicate with my client through a partition. After briefly reviewing their file, I talk to them about their potential bail options. In the best-case scenario, there is a chance I will be able to get them out. In the worst, I can do nothing.
Looking at Ben’s file, I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. He had been charged with the attempted murder of his brother. The prosecutor claimed that he had also burned down a church and had charged him with arson. He had jumped bail on a long list of federal charges. I remembered reading about the federal case in the newspapers. Some kind of heavily armed apocalyptic cult in the subway tunnels. A large number of arrests. The leader of the cult had been killed in prison while awaiting trial, after supposedly attacking a guard. There were a number of questions surrounding the death, including whether he had actually attacked anyone, and even if he had, whether the force used in subduing him, which killed him, had been justified. Ben was facing life sentences in both the state and federal cases. He was considered violent, and an obvious flight risk. There was mention in the file of potential mental instability. He had been booked in Queens, but transferred for three days of treatment to a local hospital that had a secure wing. He had been taken into custody with severe facial swelling, multiple facial lacerations, nine broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a broken arm. Normally I would have assumed that the police had administered the beating. The file, however, said that he had been taken into custody in that condition, and that he had been injured by witnesses trying to subdue him after his alleged offenses. I saw him as I was walking to the interview. Needless to say, his appearance was startling. He was sitting in a hospital robe, chained to a chair. He was absolutely still, motionless. And he looked like he was in bad shape. Stitched gashes across one of his cheeks. Black eyes. A nose that had clearly been broken. One arm in a cast. And if he hadn’t had his ass beaten recently, he would still have been startling. He had jet black hair and marble white skin. He was covered with the most severe scars I had ever seen, and I had seen plenty of them. He was extremely thin, though he did not look unhealthy. Actually, despite his wounds, quite the opposite. He looked like he was glowing in the way people sometimes describe pregnant women as glowing. He was staring straight ahead. Did not acknowledge anyone or anything around him. As I got closer, he started following me with his eyes, though he did not move in any other way. It was unnerving. Like I was being stared down by a statue. I sat down across from him. I set the open file down on my lap.
I spoke.
Hello.
He smiled.
I’ve been assigned to be your public defender.
You’ve been charged with attempted murder, assault and battery, and five counts of arson. Do you understand these charges?
Do you want to tell me what happened?
If you want to try to stay out of prison it does.
You’re facing a life sentence. I’d like to try to help you avoid it.
I don’t know anything except what’s in this file, which is very basic information, and lays out some very serious charges.
It has absolutely everything to do with why you’re in court today.
Unfortunately, you’re going to have to.
I need you to work with me on this, Mr. Avrohom. He didn’t respond. He just sat there, staring straight ahead. It isn’t unusual to have a client who won’t speak. Or a client who has no respect for the legal system. There are times, quite often, that I too don’t have any respect for the system, which is one of the reasons I do the job. Unlike other offenders I’d encountered who didn’t speak, or seemed potentially belligerent, though, he didn’t have a perp stare. A perp stare is an offender’s attempt to appear strong, intimidating, and fearless in the face of their charges, in the face of the system aligned against them, a system that often destroys them. There is always fear in a perp
