Steven Hirsch is a photographer in New York City. He’s got a blog called Courthouse Confessions where he interviews defendants leaving the courthouse, along with a (really nice, incidentally) photo portrait. It’s a pretty remarkable project for a few reasons, but my favorite thing about it is that it imposes no judgment – he doesn’t inject his own viewpoint or statistics or any of the stuff that you’ll often see with projects like this. The subjects speak for themselves.

I think what I really like about that approach is that it doesn’t treat people like anything other than individual human beings who are fully capable of assessing their own circumstances, and drawing their own conclusions. We talk at Sumpter & Gonzalez often about allowing a client’s integrity to come through, and how we want to represent the good in people. Sometimes it’s the state that doesn’t want to see the client as human, or that wants to deny that they’re all normal people with their own sense of integrity, but that also gets stripped away when you reduce a person to the statistics about incarceration, or a horror story about the conditions in a given facility, or even the way that the state shafted someone. The person becomes incidental, and the system becomes the focus. There’s a place for that, for sure, but it’s good to see a project like Hirsch’s give people the opportunity to stand up for themselves.

Here’s Steven, one of my favorites:

They're definitely a status symbol. Not that that's what I'm going for but they definitely give you the idea that the person was in fact in jail, the person was in fact incarcerated. Definitely. Definitely. As well as the shoes and my lack of a belt also; all of it gives you you know. Someone would see me and it gives you off the jump that I came from jail.

[…]

These are actually jail issued sneakers that you get because when you enter the jail your property is taken and your sneakers are taken. People argue about who has the better sneakers and people are getting hurt and even killed over the issue of sneakers they come in jail with. I might have a $145 pair and you might have a $20 pair and might decide you might want my $145 pair and I might need to fight. The sad thing is as that as time go on I don't want to say it became a fad, it became a style. It became kind of like automatic you might have to fight for your sneakers, which is usually the first thing another inmate might try to take from you. They might ask you nicely first, "let me get those. Let me give you a couple of soups, which only cost 35 cents." Let me give you some of my commissary for your sneakers, you know.Me personally I'm actually happy that you don't have to come in with your own sneakers, that you can have jail issued. It's kind of like a uniform in a way. That's one less thing to argue about. I think it was a good idea.

Labels: public perception, standing up for people

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

I’m reading Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory, which is sort of a dual biography of Pat Tillman and history of Afghanistan. (Do I know how to party, or what?) Tillman was the Arizona Cardinals safety who left the NFL after September 11th to enlist in the Army. He was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire while serving as an Army Ranger. Fascinating dude, totally worth reading about.

One thing that you may not know about Tillman is that he was charged with felony assault when he was seventeen. It was a dumb mistake – he was out with some friends, and one of them left the group to try to start a fight with another group of boys. He succeeded, and being a shrimpy fella, proceeded to get a pretty decent beatdown. After a minute, Tillman and his friends returned, and the other boys took off.

Tillman misread the situation, and pounced on the largest of the boys who was running. And he beat the heck out of him, giving him a concussion and shattering his teeth. A few weeks later, he was charged.

He was also offered a scholarship from Arizona State University, which would be retracted if he were to be convicted of a felony. The judge, over the objections of the prosecutor, apparently reduced the charges to a misdemeanor, to which Tillman pled guilty. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 250 hours of community service, and he was allowed to keep his scholarship.

The boy that he beat up – one of his friends talked about that in the book. At the time, she had been furious. But when Krakauer found her, she was more reflective, and I thought it summarized very nicely what we believe, and what we do, here at Sumpter & Gonzalez:

She lamented that her only personal knowledge of Tillman revolved around one of the most regrettable incidents in his life. “What I take from Pat Tillman is that you are not who you are at your worst moment. After what Pat did to Darin, it seems like he really turned his life around and became quite an honorable person.”

When dealing with juveniles, this is especially true. But it’s really the case for everyone we deal with. When people ask me if I feel weird working for a firm that represents a lot of people who are guilty, that’s what I remember: They’re not what they’ve been charged with. Even if they did it – there’s more to a person than the worst thing they did in their life. If you reduce them that way, you have fewer opportunities for heroes like Tillman.

Labels: football, holistic advocacy, juveniles, pat tillman, public perception, second chances, standing up for people

posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

Continuing with the football theme, Michael Vick took the field last week for the first time since he was suspended in 2007 for his involvement in a dogfighting ring. I tip my hat to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie for giving him the second chance that, apparently, some think he does not deserve. As the New York Times set out, the decision to bring Vick to the Eagles was not easy for Lurie on the most personal level.

The Philadelphia Eagles’ owner, Jeffrey Lurie, said he wanted to see self-hatred in Michael Vick, wanted to know that the player his head coach and quarterback both wanted for the Eagles could grasp the “cruelty, the torture, the complete disregard for any definition of human decency” that disgusted Lurie. This week, in a one-on-one meeting, Lurie, who called himself an “extreme dog lover” who thinks every day about two family pets who have died in the last two years, said he came away convinced that Vick could do more than just provide a dynamic element to his offense. Vick, Lurie said, had so completely transformed his life that he could complete what has become his new mission: to help save more animals than he had harmed.

[...]Lurie spoke of Vick’s crimes in often-harsh language and said Vick had “disgraced” the league. Lurie indulged in considerable soul searching, and sought to learn all the details of Vick’s troubles, before giving the go-ahead to sign Vick, who will make $1.6 million this season. Lurie said he would measure Vick’s success not in yardage but in whether he can create social change and diminish the level of animal cruelty, particularly in the inner city.

He also had to worry about animal-rights groups and, heck, just plain-old dog lovers, and how they would take to anyone allowing Michael Vick a second chance at football- and all the wealth, fame, and power that can come with it when you've got star potential like Michael Vick has. Apparently, these same folks generated a considerable amount of media against Vick when he was under investigation and may have played a part in the fact that he prosecuted and the time he spent in jail for his crime.

But despite Lurie's own deeply held beliefs and reservations, and the potential hit the Eagles might take from dog-loving fans, Lurie is giving him a second chance. But let's be clear: At the most fundamental level, hiring Vick was not about saving Vick. It was a business decision the Eagles made to upgrade their roster.

Still, I can't help but be impressed with Lurie. Standing up for someone who's done something criminal and, even worse, cruel, isn't easy. We do it every day in our practice. And we all believe that there is something to be proud of in standing up for people in trouble.
Even more, in our practice we try to take the Jeffrey Lurie position and pull something good from something that's pretty bad. When it's appropriate, we work hard to convince prosecutors that giving someone a second chance is often a lot smarter in the bigger picture than locking them up and throwing away the key.

Lurie is going to be sure that Michael Vick uses his position to educate children about animal cruelty. Vick would never be able to do that as an ex-football star. But as a current football star? Well, that's a whole 'nother story.

Labels: dogs, football, second chances, standing up for people

posted by Raman Gill   permalink   0 Comments