I have also previously described a psychological construct that guides me toward "best practices" in the courtroom. I call it Courtroom Classroom Theater Church.
The fact of the matter is a public defender working the crowded, shit-stinking courtrooms of America has a choice: sit on the sidelines and do as little work as possible (a perfectly reasonable decision, given the utterly corrupt dysfunction of the justice system and the freakishly disproportionate expectations of utility the system has of it's public defenders)
OR,
stand in the eye of the storm, fight passionately, rage against injustice and it's whore-sister, corruption, and give people a voice that rises above the inhuman bureaucratic din and ceaseless hypnotic hum of the prison-industrial complex machinery.
History will reveal which path Bloomsday has chosen. But while my years of legal yoga allow me to pat myself on the back (or, perhaps more accurately, lovingly apply salve to my own whip-lash marks)the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of my clients are not innocent lambs to the slaughter: They're guilty.
They may not be guilty in a legal, semantic sense, because everyone is technically presumed innocent until proven guilty so I can just as easily say that the guy standing next to me who did what he's charged with is also, in this sense, innocent. Of course, the distinction is between actual guilt and legal guilt; actual innocence and legal innocence. Lookie here:
If these distinctions never dawned on you, then you are not a fully functioning citizen of society.
When people ask with sanctimony, "How can you defend those people?", I read the psychology behind the question. And you should know, this psychology behind the question isn't pretty. On one level, it's like asking a plumber, "How can you stick your hands in other people's toilets?" The questioner reveals disgust at the task. But there's also moral revulsion, as if the toilets don't deserve the plumber's help. It's that component of the "how can you defend those people?" question that troubles me most.
In court the other day I had the eyes of everyone upon me as I advocated for a particularly despicable soul, and I explained that I defend those charged and found guilty with honor, because I believe every one of us is more than the worst things we've ever done. I asked everyone in the courtroom to hold in their mind for a few moments the worst thing they've ever done, then imagine that they were standing in a courtroom answering for it. In that moment, with all eyes judging you, you'd want someone to remind everyone that you, too, are more than the worst thing you've ever done.
Bloomsday reaches into his breast pocket and retrieves his strange navigational tool. His hunch is correct: he finds himself perfectly balanced between the four points of the Courtroom Classroom Theater Church compass he designed for himself many years ago.
We are
Trapped in Prague without passports
No hope of escape from this cage with no bars
We fend for ourselves, but mostly each other.
Huff to the top of Petrin Tower – Hitler dreamt of imploding it.
The Josevof, pristine, crumbling cemetery
Where the sons and daughters of Moses, piled upon one another, aspire for eternity.
Hitler spared that, too.
White asparagus and white cheese rolled up in cottage ham,
Broken clocks reflected on our plates.
Jazz mystics, puppets tangled by alchemists, crystalline Mozart on folding chairs,
Gun battle church basements, walking ghosts, arm in arm.
Beloved infanta, the clock parade.
Garish, weathered puppets of death and resurrection
Christ and apostles glide by on the gears.
The everlasting covenant will dong each half-past hour.
We are
Trapped in Prague without passports
No hope of escape from this bed without bars
We’re fond of ourselves, but mostly each other.
Bloomsday's gait is different now that each step is tinged with a short, sharp shock of pain, the product of a weekend home improvement injury. How could he have known that, with kitchen cupboards removed for the installation of new hinges, his opening of a waist high drawer would unleash an avalanche of pots and pans, beneath? His big toe, victimized. Such dubious cause and effect, this jostling of things beneath. There are hazards to nesting, too, I suppose, muses Bloomsday as he limps to work in odd syncopation. If there is a lesson it is this: Don't do chores in your bare feet, asshole.
Bloomsday feels the watery vibration of his cell phone against his crucifixion. He pulls the phone out of his breast pocket to see that he is already engaged in a call with his newly-sober friend, Higbee Gaines. "Hey, oops, I must have nipple dialed you..." Bloomsday apologizes.
"No, I called you, but I heard you call someone an asshole just now."
"Oh, yeah, me. I was talking to myself."
"Again? At any rate, I wanted to talk to you about that renegade priest you asked me to talk to. Do you know why he's a renegade?" asks Higbee.
"Well, you definitely need to know this: he blew up The Thinker."
This jostling of things beneath, indeed, Bloomsday muses. "I have know idea what you're talking about, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't be talking about it on my cell phone, sir. Meet me at the Rock Hall. Behind it., where the skate park was."
Bloomsday hates talking on the cell phone about anything important. He is inclined to face to face interactions. Much can be gained from face to face interactions. Much can be lost in a telephone call.
"Listen. It's not like that. They know where he is. They just haven't bothered arresting him. They want him underground. If they arrest him, he'll just be a martyr. So they leave him alone. But they won't let him preside over mass. That's his punishment. Handed down by the Cleveland Police and the Catholic church."
