The American criminal justice system is inherently complex and inaccessible to those without the effective resources to navigate it. This reality is at fundamental odds with the principles we believe govern our system of justice, yet most Americans don’t consider the consequences of an unjust legal system. Why? For most, it’s easier to think about criminal justice as a black-and-white matter. We prosecute bad people for the bad things they do, and we, as a society, impose consequences for their illegal actions. However, I’ve found that real cases involving real people are never so clean-cut. Interning with the New Hampshire public defender this summer has shown me firsthand how the majority of criminal cases happen in the gray.
Take, for example, a client accused and indicted on charges of stabbing someone else. As a result of the stab wounds, the alleged victim had his organs hanging outside his body and required life-saving medical treatment. We can all agree that a stabbing of this severity is criminal and should be treated as such. But what if I told you that our client, accused of stabbing the alleged victim, turned eighteen just a few weeks before the incident? What if I told you the client had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had been off his meds for weeks before the incident? What if I told you the alleged victim is our client’s father and has a long history of domestic violence and child abuse? What if I told you that right before the incident, the client’s eleven-year-old sibling had disclosed being choked by the alleged victim to our client, and the physical altercation resulting in the stabbing ensued after the client confronted the alleged victim about the abuse? The law gives us guide rails to make sense of these situations, but more often than not, the quality of a client’s representation determines how cases like these resolve.
Resultingly, wealthy people are more likely to receive more favorable resolutions in our criminal justice system. A twenty-year-old trust fund kid is far more likely to get out of his DUI than a peer who cannot hire adequate representation. This reality is far from just. But luckily, Clarence Gideon petitioned the Supreme Court resulting in a constitutional right to counsel for indigent defendants facing serious criminal charges. As a result, offices like the one I interned in this summer continue to ensure our legal system is more just by representing indigent clients. This summer, I have been fortunate to see just how essential this kind of work is to create a just legal system. I thank Professor Scott Himsel and the Coons Family Fund for making this internship possible.
