Latest / The Knife: A True Crime Podcast / Off Record: The ER of Law (with Emily Galvin Almanza)

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Off Record: The ER of Law (with Emily Galvin Almanza) · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

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  Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
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  Speaker 1: The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
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  Speaker 1: the speaker and do not necessarily represent The Knife or
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  Speaker 1: Exactly Right Media. Welcome to The Knife Off Record. I'm
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  Speaker 1: patia Eton, I'm Hannah Smith. We've got an interview for
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  Speaker 1: you today. But first we have an update.
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  Speaker 2: So last you heard from us about Dusty Turner's case.
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  Speaker 2: If you guys remember, we did two episodes on Dusty Turner,
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  Speaker 2: who was convicted of murder and he served over thirty
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  Speaker 2: one years in prison before being released on parole, but
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  Speaker 2: then he was rearrested on an alleged prole violation in April.
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  Speaker 2: We're happy to report that Dusty has been released again
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  Speaker 2: on parole and he's now back in his home state
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  Speaker 2: of Indiana.
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  Speaker 1: It's got to feel good for him to be home finally.
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  Speaker 2: I know, I can only imagine. I saw this video
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  Speaker 2: of him in his childhood bedroom just walking around and
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  Speaker 2: taking it in and I'm like wow. I mean, I
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  Speaker 2: know he was hopeful during his time in prison that
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  Speaker 2: that moment would come, but jeez, to be back in
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  Speaker 2: Indiana after over thirty years, back with his family. Back
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  Speaker 2: with his family in the home he grew up in.
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  Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah, good for him. I hope he's doing well.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. And I'm really excited about the episode
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  Speaker 2: we have today.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a good one. So today we're talking
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  Speaker 1: with Emily Galvin Almanza. She worked as a public defender
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  Speaker 1: inside the La County Public Defender's Office, among other offices.
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  Speaker 1: She's also the co founder and executive director of Partners
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  Speaker 1: for Justice, which is a nonprofit design to empower defenders nationwide.
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  Speaker 2: Emily's book, The Price of Mercy has so many stories
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  Speaker 2: from her time working as a public defender, and in
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  Speaker 2: this episode, we're going to dig into a couple of
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  Speaker 2: those cases, as well as her personal background and how
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  Speaker 2: it informs her work. But most importantly, we're going to
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  Speaker 2: talk about solutions.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes it can feel overwhelming digging into the injustices in
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  Speaker 1: the justice system, and when we talk about public defense,
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  Speaker 1: there are plenty of examples of that, but what really
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  Speaker 1: stands out about Emily's book are the community level solutions
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  Speaker 1: that she offers.
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  Speaker 2: We'll be back at the end of this episode to
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  Speaker 2: discuss it, so stick around and don't forget to follow
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  Speaker 2: us on Instagram and Blue Sky at the Knife podcast.
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  Speaker 2: You can also email us at the Knife at exactlyrightmedia
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  Speaker 2: dot com.
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  Speaker 1: Let's get into the interview.
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  Speaker 2: Hi, Emily, thank you so much for taking the time
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  Speaker 2: to speak with us today.
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  Speaker 3: It's so great to be here. Thank you for having me.
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  Speaker 1: Really looking forward to talking with you. Patia has been
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  Speaker 1: raving about your book, so I am so excited for this.
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  Speaker 3: Coverta thank you.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Price of Mercy and we're going to get
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  Speaker 2: into all of it. So, Emily, you are a former
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  Speaker 2: public defender, which is a role you came into after
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  Speaker 2: your own experience with the criminal justice system, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: I want to sort of start right at the beginning.
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  Speaker 2: Can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little
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  Speaker 2: bit about how you grew up?
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely so. Hi, I'm Emily Galvin Almanza. I had a
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  Speaker 3: really kind of cool upbringing. I grew up between Iowa City, Iowa,
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  Speaker 3: where my parents taught at the Writer's Workshop, and the
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  Speaker 3: Wyoming Colorado border, where my dad grew up and where
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  Speaker 3: he still is out on a ranch half the year.
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  Speaker 3: So I grew up stringing lots of miles of barbed
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  Speaker 3: wire fence and riding and cattle drives. I often tell
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  Speaker 3: people that I have really solid, like eighteen eighties skill set,
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  Speaker 3: So like, if you need someone to like cook on
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  Speaker 3: a woodstove, amazing, now heard cattle through very difficult terrain.
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  Speaker 3: I'm your girl. I've got you.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, Hannah probably is thinking this as you're saying it,
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  Speaker 2: But this is like my dream childhood to spam a
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  Speaker 2: cattle drive like wow.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe like your dream future too. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: It's a way to grow up.
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  Speaker 2: So you had this very cool childhood. When did in
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  Speaker 2: your adolescence and young adulthood, when did things get a
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  Speaker 2: little more complicated for you?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean everybody has rough times. My family hit
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  Speaker 3: some really really rough times. My parents broke up in
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  Speaker 3: a really ugly and kind of protracted way, and a
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  Speaker 3: lot of other bad stuff happened in my life at
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  Speaker 3: the same time, which meant that as a young teenager,
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  Speaker 3: I just took like a hard right towards chaos. And
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  Speaker 3: it turns out that if you're a smart, dedicated kid,
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  Speaker 3: you can be really really good at chaos, just as
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  Speaker 3: good at chaos as you could be at school, coming
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  Speaker 3: up with new forms of chaos and self destruction. So
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  Speaker 3: I had a long period of my life where I
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  Speaker 3: was really, really really extremely not okay, and there were
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  Speaker 3: all sorts of things going on contributing to that substance
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  Speaker 3: use and crime and surviving crime. And I mean it's
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  Speaker 3: hard to say that like, oh, I got arrested and
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  Speaker 3: then I had a good judge and then it was over,
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  Speaker 3: because that's not exactly how it played out. But the
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  Speaker 3: gift that that judge gave me was not the magical
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  Speaker 3: ability to wave a wand and suddenly make me okay.
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  Speaker 3: It was the ability to give me the time I
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  Speaker 3: needed to find my way back to being okay on
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  Speaker 3: my own.
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  Speaker 2: I want to dig into that, but are there any
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  Speaker 2: specifics you're comfortable speaking about related to what brought you
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  Speaker 2: to that initial experience with the court system.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I had a really bad year, my parents
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  Speaker 3: breaking up, our house got destroyed by this weird accidental
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  Speaker 3: flood situation, my dog died, I crashed my car. Things
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  Speaker 3: were things were going bad for me in many many ways.
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  Speaker 3: So I was in this weird juxtaposition where I was traveling,
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  Speaker 3: where my dad was still living in Iowa, where my
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  Speaker 3: mom had gone out east, you know, living a fairly
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  Speaker 3: unsupervised life and often being really really far from home,
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  Speaker 3: and so on one of these trips where I was
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  Speaker 3: actually in Boston and my mom was traveling for work,
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  Speaker 3: so there was like temporarily no grown ups around. I
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  Speaker 3: had a really really bad thing happened to me in
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  Speaker 3: my personal life, and that sort of triggered a very
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  Speaker 3: chaotic weekend which culminated in me getting arrested. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: think of all of your typical forms of fifteen and
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  Speaker 3: sixteen year old girl self destruction. I was there, I
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  Speaker 3: was doing them. But with that arrest, you know, I
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  Speaker 3: think at that point I was sixteen, Was.
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  Speaker 1: This your first time being arrested?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, So I, you know, got shoved into the
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  Speaker 3: back of a cruiser and taken to the precinct and
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  Speaker 3: put in holding and booked and all the rest of it.
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  Speaker 3: But not too long after, you know, I had to
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  Speaker 3: appear in front of a judge at a pretty high
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  Speaker 3: stakes hearing for me, which would determine whether my college
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  Speaker 3: acceptance was withdrawn, whether my liberty could be severely curtailed.
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  Speaker 1: It's a big deal.
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  Speaker 3: It was a really big deal. And I want to
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  Speaker 3: be clear, like this isn't unique. We live in a
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  Speaker 3: country where half of us have had a loved one
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  Speaker 3: locked up like I am one of millions and millions
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  Speaker 3: and millions of people who have gone through exactly this.
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  Speaker 3: And I also go through this with carrying the privilege
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  Speaker 3: of whiteness, of education of very involved parents. When I
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  Speaker 3: talk about the privilege of whiteness, I'm not just like
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  Speaker 3: you know, like woke box checking like I really need.
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  Speaker 3: I was the only white kid in the courthouse. And
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  Speaker 3: also I happened to get unbelievably lucky in that I
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  Speaker 3: was assigned to the court room of Judge Leslie Harris.
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  Speaker 3: He had made this really unique and intense commitment to
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  Speaker 3: look at every child who appeared in his courtroom and
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  Speaker 3: find the potential in all of them. And Judge Harris
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  Speaker 3: called me up to the bench and by myself, and
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  Speaker 3: I went up there, and I remember standing next to
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  Speaker 3: like the really the bench was a lot taller than me,
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  Speaker 3: and I was looking up at this guy and he
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  Speaker 3: asked me, He said, what are you doing here? And
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  Speaker 3: I don't know what I said because I was sixteen
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  Speaker 3: and grumpy, but he looked me in the eye and
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  Speaker 3: he said, look, I'm gonna let you go. I'm going
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  Speaker 3: to give you a chance I'm going to dismiss this case.
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  Speaker 3: I am going to expunge these charges, so your college
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  Speaker 3: acceptance will not be withdrawn and you get to go
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  Speaker 3: on with your life. And I don't ever want to
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  Speaker 3: see you again unless you've done something good with your
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  Speaker 3: life and for some reason, like in a world of
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  Speaker 3: a million again, being so lucky and privileged to having
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  Speaker 3: so many people trying to help me. It was Judge
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  Speaker 3: Harris who created the biggest turning point for me. And
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  Speaker 3: like I said, like I'd love to say, like it.
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  Speaker 3: After that, I was amazing. I was perfect, All of
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  Speaker 3: all of my troubles were gone. That is not true.
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  Speaker 3: It took me a few more years to get my
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  Speaker 3: head screwed on straight and figure out how to live
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  Speaker 3: a life. But he gave me that time, and he
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  Speaker 3: believed that I had the capability to work things out
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  Speaker 3: without the surveillance and the punishment apparatus and all of
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  Speaker 3: the other things that come with the court system trying
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  Speaker 3: to work you out.
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  Speaker 2: How did you then not that your next you know,
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  Speaker 2: five to ten years were just smooth sailing. But how
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  Speaker 2: did you turn things around? What did that mean for you?
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  Speaker 3: So? In college I was an English major, I wrote
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  Speaker 3: my college thesis, for which I received honors. Mind you
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  Speaker 3: as a series of poems based on mathematical formulas, like
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  Speaker 3: super marketable career skill right there. Everybody wants math poetry.
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  Speaker 3: People keep telling it, like presenting the Price of Mercy
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  Speaker 3: as my first book, but like, secretly, my first book
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  Speaker 3: was actually a volume of math poetry that I did publish,
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  Speaker 3: So so that's the career. I was like, I was doing
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  Speaker 3: my math poetry.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure, Oh.
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  Speaker 3: My god, the audience for math poetry, you would not
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  Speaker 3: believe it. I was also acting a lot. I loved theater.
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  Speaker 3: I loved Shakespeare. They moved out to Los Angeles. Eventually
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  Speaker 3: I was out there. I was like, man, I keep
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  Speaker 3: auditioning for like Blonde number three in the show Nip Tuck,
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  Speaker 3: and I really want to play Estragon from Waiting for GOODO.
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  Speaker 3: So that's not going to work. And I moved into
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  Speaker 3: like working in film development and like reading scripts for
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  Speaker 3: a producer, and eventually I was I moved into advertising,
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  Speaker 3: and I was dating this guy who thought he wanted
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  Speaker 3: to go to law school, and I was like, okay,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I'll just like take the l set, like
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  Speaker 3: just in case he wants to go. Then I could
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  Speaker 3: follow him around very feminist ideology here, guys like really
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  Speaker 3: super oh, super independent. But I took the l set
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  Speaker 3: and I got like a really good score, and I
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  Speaker 3: was like, well, that's clearly a fluke. That's not going
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  Speaker 3: to happen again. So I better use the score while
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  Speaker 3: I have it if I want to do anything with it.
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  Speaker 3: So I applied to some law schools. I got into Stanford.
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  Speaker 3: I loaded up my cat, I drove up to Stanford.
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  Speaker 3: I was like, okay, I'm going to give myself permission
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  Speaker 3: to leave after like a couple of months. If I
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  Speaker 3: hate this, I'm just I'm not staying. And on my
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  Speaker 3: first day there was a professor named Professor Lawrence Marshall.
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  Speaker 3: He gave a talk to those of us who had
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  Speaker 3: just arrived, and he said, when you are lawyers, you
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  Speaker 3: will have to be licensed because your minds and your
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  Speaker 3: mouths will be weapons. I was like, okay, I can
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  Speaker 3: do that. I mean, there was so much about criminal
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  Speaker 3: law that lit up my brain. But because I loved
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  Speaker 3: the class so much, I decided that I wanted to
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  Speaker 3: pursue work in that field. And I didn't want to
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  Speaker 3: be a prosecutor because you're if I was really good
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  Speaker 3: at my job, there was always a chance that I
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  Speaker 3: was going to put an innocent person in prison, and
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  Speaker 3: I could never live with that. So I called up
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  Speaker 3: the La County Public Defender and I drove down there
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  Speaker 3: in a rainstorm and got my first summer job at
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  Speaker 3: East Lake Juvenile Time, the busiest juvenile courthouse in LA.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Public Defense is the er of the law. Okay, Like
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  Speaker 3: we are meeting people on their worst day. Sometimes sometimes
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  Speaker 3: it's like their third worst day, but it's like it's
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  Speaker 3: a bad day. We're meeting people on a bad day,
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  Speaker 3: and our only job is to help and to try
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  Speaker 3: to make things better, and sometimes we can make things
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  Speaker 3: all the way better, and sometimes we can't, but we
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  Speaker 3: get the incredible honor of being the one who gets
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  Speaker 3: to try.
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  Speaker 2: In what year was this?
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  Speaker 3: Two thousand and seven, I was walking into rooms with
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  Speaker 3: kids not that much younger than me who had done
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  Speaker 3: stuff that I had literally personally done myself a few
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  Speaker 3: years before, except for they were black and brown in
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  Speaker 3: East LA and I had not been, And so they
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  Speaker 3: were being punished and carrying the weight of life altering
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  Speaker 3: state violence, and I had been given an opportunity to
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  Speaker 3: live this beautiful life and like right now little poems
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  Speaker 3: and go off to law school.
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  Speaker 1: It's really interesting that you were in this position where
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  Speaker 1: you had yourself had an encounter with the criminal justice
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  Speaker 1: system only a few years before, and so had personal
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  Speaker 1: experience with what that's like being on the other side
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  Speaker 1: of it, and you had been given a second chance
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  Speaker 1: at that time. You know, you weren't thrown in prison,
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  Speaker 1: you didn't have you know, multiple years that you had
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to serve time, you were able to leave and go
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  Speaker 1: to school and continue on with your life. And then
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  Speaker 1: now you know you're on the other side of that,
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  Speaker 1: representing these kids in East LA who are facing much
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  Speaker 1: harsher charges. Can you give us a concrete example of
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  Speaker 1: one of your clients, what charges they were facing and
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  Speaker 1: what potential sentencing that came with.
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  Speaker 3: An example I often use from this period in my
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  Speaker 3: life is a little girl who fought a bully, and
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  Speaker 3: again where I grew up, sometimes it's okay to fight
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  Speaker 3: a bully, but in her context and the way our
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  Speaker 3: our policing policy has caused her to be surveilled and treated,
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  Speaker 3: and she's one of the millions of children in this
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  Speaker 3: country going to school in a school that doesn't have
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  Speaker 3: adequate counseling or social work resources or maybe even a
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  Speaker 3: school nurse, but definitely has a lot of cops on campus.
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  Speaker 3: Like that's her context. She doesn't get detention, she gets
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  Speaker 3: a felony charge. By law, if you punch somebody one time,
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  Speaker 3: that's probably a misdemeanor assault unless they are gravely injured.
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  Speaker 3: She was charged with assault with intent to cause great
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: bodily injury, which is a strike felony carrying lifetime felony consequences. Wow,
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  Speaker 3: and also assault with a deadly weapon because she was
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  Speaker 3: wearing a little kids ring, the ring being the deadly weapon.
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  Speaker 3: And so for me it was sort of like I
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  Speaker 3: had known that the system was unfair. I had known
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  Speaker 3: that the system targeted low income people and black and
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  Speaker 3: brown people. I had known that it prioritized punishment over
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: problem solving. But you have to see up close and
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  Speaker 3: personal the level of unhinged that these charging decisions can be.
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  Speaker 3: Charging a kid's ring as a deadly weapon just to
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: get that extra charge on a charge stack, Because people
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: plead guilty at much higher rates when they're facing multiple
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: stack charges of that kind of increases the leverage that
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: the prosecution has to force a guilty plea instead of
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: allowing more cases to go to trial, which of course
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: takes more time and effort from the system.
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  Speaker 2: And so as you were then this new public defender,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: and you're seeing these children being charged with these outrageous
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  Speaker 2: offenses that are really threatening like their future.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this has been a theme throughout the
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: entirety of my practice in public defense. You know, I
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: talked to a man in the book named Malcolm who
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: talks about how one of his first arrests was you know,
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  Speaker 3: that annoying trick boys will do on the playground where
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  Speaker 3: they like sick their finger through their zipper and they're like, hey, look, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: he was arrested and charged with the sexual offense.
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  Speaker 1: For doing that, for doing that, and how old was he?
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  Speaker 3: Like, elementary school guys, elementary school. Wow, he talks about
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  Speaker 3: it in the book. Their difference then becomes, this is
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  Speaker 3: a child who's had a contact with the law enforcement system.
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  Speaker 3: Now we know from the research on this that any
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: contact with law enforcement meaningfully changes a child's behavior, and
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  Speaker 3: it's not like a scared straight situation. What it is
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  Speaker 3: is literally studies have shown children can disengage from school
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  Speaker 3: as rapidly as the next day after police contact, criminalization
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  Speaker 3: and adultification, and the treating children as if they are
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  Speaker 3: bad and need to be surveilled meaningfully impacts how those
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  Speaker 3: children grow up. So many of the kids I represented
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  Speaker 3: when they were fourteen or fifteen had had their first
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  Speaker 3: contact with police when they were seven or eight, just
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  Speaker 3: walking home from school. Stopped, frisked, searched, questioned.
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  Speaker 1: Make so much sense because it would seem to change
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  Speaker 1: the way you view adults and safety and systems, and
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  Speaker 1: like school is another system, so and it would just
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  Speaker 1: be so easy, as in a kid's brain, to think
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  Speaker 1: these systems actually aren't here to help me.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly exactly what do they want for me? It's clearly
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  Speaker 3: nothing good because they don't treat me like I'm good
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  Speaker 3: or I have potential. And when I'm down and I
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  Speaker 3: feel bad about myself, that's what they think of me too.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a stunning thing to hear about having happened.
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  Speaker 2: How did that silly, common joke made by a child,
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  Speaker 2: How did this go on to impact Malcolm having experienced that?
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  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's the fact that the grown
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  Speaker 3: ups around him didn't just say, like, now them, don't
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  Speaker 3: do that. That's gross. Don't do that. They called the police,
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  Speaker 3: or there was already a police officer on campus who
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  Speaker 3: was alerted, and he was treated like an adult criminal,
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  Speaker 3: like he was cuffed, he was questioned, he was you know,
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  Speaker 3: like the whole thing of it, which does exactly as
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  Speaker 3: you describe, like really causes a child to see authority
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: figures differently, to understand their own place in the structure
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: of our schools and institutions really differently. And it also
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: meant that in later years police saw him as someone
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: who already was a known entity. So he was never
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: viewed as a regular community member potentially a victim of crime.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: He was never viewed with neutrality. He was always thereafter
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: viewed as one.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Of them, right from that point on, that moment exactly
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: in childhood, exactly.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: And sometimes it's worse. You know, I've represented children who
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: were assaulted by the police officers in their school I
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: mean brutally assaulted, I mean like horror movie assaulted, left
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: black and blue and broken teeth and broken nosed. And
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I have you know, in my career gone to prosecutors
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: and said, would you please investigate the school police officer,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Will you please investigate what happened.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: At the school? Does that happen?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: They say they're investigating. Have I ever seen a prosecution? No, personally, no,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I have had. I can think of one case in particular,
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: which I don't have my client's permission to get the
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: details of, so I'm going to be a little bit
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: vague about it. But in that case, there was a
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: clear assault by a school police officer, grievous injury to
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: my client who was a child enrolled in that school,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: photographic evidence, and I could not I spent over a
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: year my client participating, testifying, like trying to get the
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: prosecutor to do something, and we saw nothing. We saw
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: no justice.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: How many, like just a ballpark of your clients, would
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you say, are coming from environments where they're in school,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: from a young age, elementary, middle school, where there's like
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: a strong police presence in their school.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Pretty much everybody, Because you know, as a defender, I
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: represented mostly adults. In New York, kids were put into
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: the adult system at the age of sixteen, so a
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: lot of my sixteen year old clients were in adult court.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: And at the time I was practicing, sixteen year olds
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: could be sent to Rikers Island. I was representing teenagers
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: who are confined on Rikers Island, and I have the
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: exact figures in the book, but at this point in America,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: school policing is so prevalent and school caregiving is so
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: limited that there are literally I believe there's an exact
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: figure in the book, but I believe it's over ten
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: million children going to school in this country in schools
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: that not only have police, but do not have a
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: counselor or a social worker or a nurse, the people
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: that we expect when there's conflict or traumas thing bad happens,
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: like the people who take care are gone, not funded,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: but the police are there and funded. All of my
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: clients are low income, which means that pretty much all
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: of them are in schools that are heavily policed and
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: skimpy on care resources. So even the adults I'm representing
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: probably went through a school system like that.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Was there a specific case that you heard about that
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: you could tell us to walk us through that really
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: was like maybe a swift sort of realization or understanding
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: like this is such a layered problem and I want
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: to be a part of trying to fix it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so, my client Janelle worked for the Department
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: of Education. She had a job she loved and was
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: really really good at. She was also financially struggling, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: so when she woke up one morning and her car
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: was gone, she assumed it had been repossessed. So she
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: was calling the bank, she was calling the repot people,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: she was calling insurance, She's calling all the people you're
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: supposed to call when you think your car's been repossessed,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: and they're everybody's trying to find this car, right, And
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: she's even given the name of a towing yard hilariously
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: named Phantom Towing. So she calls Phantom Towing. They tell
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: her they have the car. She's like, Oh, I just
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: want to get my stuff out of it. Can I
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: set a date? They set a time for her Togo.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: She goes to a lot. Guess what, the car's not there.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: So at this point the question becomes, where's the car.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: She's already spent a couple days trying to get all
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: of her paperwork sorted, and it seems clear and clear
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: that none of the people who she thinks are supposed
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: to have the car have the car, and she tries
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: to make a police report, but the police don't show up,
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: they don't really come to the scene, they're not like,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: they're not reacting. But without a police report, she can't
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: file an insurance claims, she can't move forward on any
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: of these other steps. So she's in like you know,
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: bureaucratic phone tree hell, where she's calling all of these
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: different people, and finally, one of the customer service reps
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: she's talking to on the phone is like, you know what,
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: just tell the police that the car was stolen today,
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: because maybe they're not coming because it's been a few
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: days and they don't think there's a high chance they're
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: being be able to find anything. So just tell them
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: it was today and they'll come and you can get
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: your police reports. She's like okay. So she does and
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: it works, and the police come and she makes her report.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Unbeknownst to her, the car actually was found a few
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: days prior in Baltimore.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Where was it found? Was it had it been towed
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: or had it been.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: No, someone drove it to Baltimore and lit it on fire.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, so someone stole the car.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Someone totally stole the car, used it for something who
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: knows what, and then lit it on fire. I know
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: this personally because once I was her public defender. I
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: love a good investigation. I went down to Baltimore and
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I crawled around in the burnout car and found no clues.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So Janelle initially thought that her car had been repossessed
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: because she was laid on payments. Okay, and so she's
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: calling tow yards like, I know my car's and repossessed.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I just need to get my belongings out of it.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, do you have the car?
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Do you have the car? And then finally someone's like,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: just tell the police that it was stolen today, then
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: they'll act. But she doesn't know at that time, which
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: she does do. She follows that advice.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Slow, the advice. She had no idea her car had
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: been found in Baltimore, that had been stolen, that had
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: been burned out. She knows none of this.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Right, So, yeah, unbeknownst to her, separate law enforcement agency
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: has found the car days earlier, burned out, clearly stolen.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, exactly. So when the police in New York
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: find us out, they could have gone two ways with this.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: They could have been like, well, someone stole her car
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: and she did know it, we will continue to make
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: our report. She can deal with the insurance consequences, or
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: they could decide that she was the mastermind of a
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: fraud scheme to have her own car stolen, driven to Baltimore,
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: and lit on fire so that she could collect the
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: insurance money. They go with the latter. So this woman
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: with no criminal record, like she works for the Department
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: of ed is suddenly facing a serious felony charge, which
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: of course results in her immediate suspension from work. And again,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: prosecutors are supposed to be the screening mechanism here, like
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: when police bring weird ideas like this to prosecutors, they're
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: supposed to be like, maybe I'll look at this with
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: a skeptical life. They don't. They just they file.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And she has this immediate suspension from work. And
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: we know from the beginning of the story that she
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: was already struggling because she was late making those car payments.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: So now she's suspended from work.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: She's suspended from work. You know, she's got three kids,
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: and so not only is she not working and not
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: able to go to the job she loves, she's trying
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: to support her kids. And of course she's required to
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: come to court again and again and again and again
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: and again and find transportation and try to make it
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: happen while her kids are at school, and like you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: so she's driven to deeper and deeper states of desperation.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: And she told me, and I share this with her
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: consent and collaboration, that she started drinking. She became suicidal.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: This case dragged on and on and on and on
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: and on. Over a year goes by. She's still fighting
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: this case.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And not able to work, not able to work at
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: her job that whole time.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Out of work the whole time. When I finally got
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: a hold of this case and we were finally able
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: to get the transcript of the recording where the customer
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: service rep tells her just put this date on the
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: on your report to the police. I finally got a
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: prosecutor who's willing to listen and looked at this transcript
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: and was like, oh, okay, we all see what happened here,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: which is that she made like a dumb choice. But
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: it's something anybody could do. It's certainly not like felony
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: fraud mastermind territory. And even then, it's not over because
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: just because the line prosecutor thinks this case is unfounded
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: and should be dismissed. That DA's office has a real
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: policy against dismissing cases. They do not like to do dismissals.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: So she's got to take it up to her boss
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: and her boss's boss and like fight and fight and
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: fight within her own office just to get permission to
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: let Janelle go.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Did it finally get dismissed?
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: It did finally.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And how long did that take from the start until
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the dismissal.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: It was well over a year. I can't remember if
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: it hit two years, but it's close to that.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And then does that come with a little note saying, sorry,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: we totally aft up. Your life are bad?
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: You would think, you would think. So here's what happened next.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: The case was dismissed, Janelle goes back. She's her suspension
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: from work turned into a dismissal from work. So she
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: goes back to the Department of event. She's like, they've
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: cleared my name, the charges were dismissed. Can I have
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: my job back? Your spot's not available. So she starts
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: applying to try to get back into her career. And
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: as she explained it to me when we talked, she's
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: come really close to landing these opportunities, she gets to
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: know the final stages of a job, and then they
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: find out about the arrest, and they don't choose.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Her, even though this was dismissed.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Even though the charges were dismissed, even though her name
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: was cleared. So actually, at the time I was writing
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: the book, I didn't know I had been her defender.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: We got in the case dismissed. I was really happy
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: with the dismissal. We went our separate ways, and then
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: years later I'm writing this book. I call her up.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: I said, he, you know, I think your story is
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: really powerful. Do you want to participate in this, in
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: this effort to tell you your story? And she said yeah.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: So I'm interviewing her and she tells me she still
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: hasn't gotten a job, she still hasn't gotten back into
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: working in education. And she tells me this thing of
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: every time that arrest comes up, they don't pick.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Me because she does go through multiple interview processes. She
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: is a well liked candidate until this is found out.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, I can tell you, first of all, she's
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: like a delightful person. So if I were interviewing her,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: I would completely understand why she would make it to
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: the final round of a hiring process. She's fantastic, and
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: she's got great experience, and she just had this thing
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: happen in her life which was completely, in many ways
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: beyond her control. So I call up the prosecutor on
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: the case, who since moved out of a prosecution and
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: moved into journalism, and I say, hey, do you think
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: there's any way we could get the DA's office to
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: write a letter, as you point out, saying please don't
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: hold this arrest against her. We draw up the charges
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: because we do not believe she did anything wrong or
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: you know something. You know, the case was dismissed as unfounded,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: like something from the DA's office to the Department of
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Education saying please don't hold this answer. So she says, well,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: I don't work there anymore. You're gonna have to go
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: talk to the office. And so I call up one
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: of the best prosecutors I'd ever practiced, opposite you call
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: the person you think can really be a human being
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: in the circumstance. And she took it to her office
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: and tried, and it was just a non starter.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Because they don't want to admit that they did something wrong.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: I don't want to speak for them. Because I don't
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: work for her, and I have never been a prosecutor.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: I cannot speculate, but I would suspect that they probably
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: also don't want to set a precedent of like people,
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: everybody with a dismissal wants a letter from the office
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: about how the office messed up. Maybe someone from the
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: DA's office. We'll hear this podcast and be like, I
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: am the hero who wants to solve this problem finally,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: and have Emily tell everyone forever in interviews that we
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: did the right thing.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they can reach us at our email. And was
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Janelle at any point during her corporate seedings offered a
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: plea deal?
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah throughout Yeah, she could always plead guilty to something.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: An end this process of constant court dates, lack of transportation,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: all of these problems that are this ripple effect of
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: their initial charges. How is this plea deal impacting someone
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: who's even innocent.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like when a person's arrested, everything immediately falls apart, right,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: So if they are sent into jail, if they are
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: detained pre trial, they are separated from their family, they
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: can't go to work, They're going to lose their job.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know how they're going to pay their rent,
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: so they may well lose their housing unless somebody else
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: can cover their rent for a period of time. If
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: you don't have housing, of course, and you have kids,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: you're looking at a potential child services investigation, so you
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: could lose custody of your kids to this. And also,
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: a jail is an environment where eighty percent of people
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: experience or witness violence daily, Like every year of incarceration
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: shaves two years off a person's expected lifespan, Like this
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: is a really really difficult place to be. Every court date,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: you are awakened at like three am, put on a
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: bus in the freezing cold, sent to the courthouse, put
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: in a cage in the basement where you're to wait
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: to see a judge. You might get to talk to
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: your lawyer that day, you might not. You might be
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: brought up to see the judge, you might not. You
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: might find out what's happening in case, you might not.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: So for a lot of people like withstanding, that is
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: incredibly challenging. Even if you're out, though, let's say you're
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: lucky and you're not detained pre trial, you may still
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: be suspended from your job, like Janelle or lose your
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: job just because you have a case. You may also
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: be putting your family in an incredibly difficult position. A
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: lot of folks don't know that if you live in
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: public housing, if your loved one is arrested, the named
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: tenant on the lease may be forced to ass essentially
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: a vict and disavow that person. So let's say you're
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: a mom and you have a teenage son who gets arrested.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: You might have to choose keep the apartment and not
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: have your son live with you anymore, and not see
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: him or ever ever ever let him come over, not
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: even for his birthday or Thanksgiving, or give up your apartment.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: It really pushes on this whole idea. We've been sold
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: that we're innocent until proven guilty in this country.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: And we see that the reason more than ninety percent
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: of cases don't go to trial is not because more
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: than ninety percent of people are guilty. It's because vast
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: fast numbers of people cannot withstand sitting in jail in
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: a horrible, violent environment with their life on hold, losing
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: everything slowly day by day, especially when there's an offer
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: on the table. So it's just plead to the felony
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: and you can go home. Yeah, you'll have a felony
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: on your record, but you can deal with that. You'll
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: be at home. I mean, as defenders, we've all had
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: this conversation with clients where we're begging a person not
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: to plead guilty because we know they have a winnable
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: case for trial if they can just stick it out
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: to trial. And people say like, what, I can't do this.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: I can't do this for six more months. I need
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: to move on with my life, you know.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And we talk a lot on the Knife about
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: the ripple effect of crime, and I think that's something
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: that is really prevalent throughout your book and what you
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: witnessed as a public defender, and you know, I'm sure
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: continue to see now. But is there a case you
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: can talk about. I don't know if you want to
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: talk about Shelby Hoffman's case, but that one was shocking
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: to me. And basically how you witnessed as a public
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: defender people being incarcerated and then their experience with poverty
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: or financial hardship being made exponentially worse by that.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So in this country, American families lose about three
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: hundred billion dollars a year due to prior incarceration. Incarceration
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: cuts of person's expected lifetime earnings in half. And in
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: many states, like in Shelby State of Florida, people can
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: be charged the cost of their own prosecution and incarceration.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: So for her, for example, she was sentenced to a
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: number of years in prison, but she didn't actually serve
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: them because she had the opportunity to do a boot
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: camp program and get out early, and so she did
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: so she didn't actually serve any years, and she got
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: a bill for over one hundred thousand dollars the state,
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: charging her for the incarceration she would have served had
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: she served her sentence that she didn't serve. This is
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: not unique to one state. I mean, there's been litigation
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: in Iowa. There have recently been changes to the law
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: of people being charged the cost of their own confinement
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: and prosecution even when they're found not guilty. So you
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: could be accused of a crime, fight the charges, be
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: found not guilty and then get like a sixty thousand
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: dollars bill for having used these supposed these systems to
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: which you are constitutionally entitled. And it's not even just
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: these big shocking bills, it's often like little insidious bills,
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: like you know, cases that cost one thousand dollars here,
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: two thousand dollars there, five thousand dollars in a country
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: where most people do not have a thousand extra dollars
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: to spare. And then you compound that right with the
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: lack of employability that follows a criminal case involvement. Maybe
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: you have a big gap on your resume because you're
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: fighting a case for a period of time. Maybe you,
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: like Janelle, like have this arrest that's following you around forever.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: It's really backwards that we tie people's economic value to
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: this bloated punishment apparatus that impacts half of us, especially
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: when you consider there's this great survey of managers who
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: employee formally incarcerated people. Eighty six percent of them rate
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: those people as highly or higher than they're non incarcerated employees.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: I tried to highlight in the book. I mean, half
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: of the book is stories of success and solutions and
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: fantastic stuff we can do like tomorrow if we have
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: the political will. But I tried really hard to focus
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: on formally incarcerated folks who've done amazing things, because oftentimes
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: it's tempting when people don't know anyone who's locked up,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: or when you know someone who's locked up who's like
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: your family member, who's kind of a jackass, it's tempting
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: to think that everybody who's locked up has low value somehow,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: when in fact, our prisons are confining volumes of talent
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: and potential and genius. You know Malcolm who I mentioned before,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: who was forced to actually leave California because of the
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: level of surveillance and criminalization that state, has gone on
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: to a PhD program and working really hard to organize
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: his community to create spaces for young people who are
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: being adultified and criminalized. Larry Miller at Nike, who created
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: like the Jordan Brand, is formally incarcerated and it took
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: him forever to speak out about that because there's so
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: much stigma.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, there are so many positive examples that
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: show us that we should not be determining someone's worth
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: based on whether or not they have a quote unquote
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: criminal history. And I want to talk a little bit
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: about what a public defender is up against.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: Across the country, there are thousands of defenders who are
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: not even afforded the most basic of resources. To do
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: their job. There are defenders right now in this country
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: who have over five hundred open felony cases, not as
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: an office, one person trying to help five hundred people
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: facing life altering felonies. Governments are continually trying to insist
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: that defenders are like a special unicorn type of lawyer
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: that can like magically handle way more cases than any
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: other lawyer in the world. Hate to tell you, guys,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: I think I'm really good. I am not a unicorn.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: I am still a human being who needs to have
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: a manageable caseload to do a good job. And when
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: I say do a good job, like what drives me
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: crazy is resourcing defenders is a just advantage. Defenders are
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: your best protection against wrongful conviction. Defenders are often the
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: only people who have the real information about what's going
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: on with a person who's in crisis that could let
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: us address it, that could let us deal with root
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: causes and problem solving, And defenders are often doing better
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: investigation than the police did the first time around. Defenders
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: are often finding opportunities. When we look at the research
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: on safety, if people have housing, income, and access to healthcare,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: they're dramatically less likely to engage in crime. Defenders who
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: are equipped to help people connect with those things are
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: like a stronger piece of the public safety infrastructure than
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: police or prosecutors ever could be. And yet you have
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: jurisdictions kicking and screaming and refusing to fund public defense
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: a constitutional requirement because they don't understand that having a
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: level playing field is the path to justice. A tilted
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: playing field will never get us there.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that makes so much sense.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: This is such a huge, huge problem, and there are
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: so many ways that it is a problem that it
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: feels overwhelming, which maybe on some subconscious level, I think
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: is why people are often willing to accept that someone
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: who has either taken a guiltyply or been convicted of
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: crime must be there because they did it.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: It's easier for them to wrap their minds around you,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: opposed to like trying to think of solutions.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And I really appreciated how in your book
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: you did take this big problem and say, well, here's
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: what we can do about it as just people. You know,
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: you don't have to go to law school. I don't
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: think I would do very well on the elseide myself.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: You never know. Yea, Actually That's the thing that I
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: find is really hopeful for a lot of people is
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: that to enact change in the criminal court system, you
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: don't need to move the federal government. You don't need
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: national activity. Like the vast majority of almost ninety percent
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: of it is local, and it takes like sometimes it
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: takes a hundred votes to change a DA's race or
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: a sheriff's race, or a local board of supervisors or
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: even a local state legislature election. And the changes people
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: want to make can often be made unilaterally by those people.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: So one thing I'm really proud of about the book
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: is that literally half of the book is dedicated to
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: like really doable solutions, not high in the sky stuff
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: that requires off huge reworking of our reality, but like
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: literally stuff you could do tomorrow. Like I think one
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: of the programs I think is the most feasible is
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: the Dad's on Duty program, where a school decided that
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: indeed police officers were arresting too many students at the school,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: and a bunch of dads had t shirts made that
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: said Dads on Duty and they just started patrolling the
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: hallways and like when kids were engaged in knucklehead behavior,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: they would give them like the dad look and the
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: knucklehead stuff would stop and nobody got arrested, and incidents
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: of arrest at the school dropped and incidents of violence dropped,
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: And it was literally just from a group of parents.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: This could be moms, this could be grandma's. I think
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: grandma's on duty would be the most effective version of this, Like,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: anybody could do this at their cool. It's brilliant, and
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: these things have a really massive impact on actual safety.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: This has just been so informative and interesting. You know,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever had a public defender someone
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: who's been a public defender on the show, and I've
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: just loved it. Thank you so much for joining us today.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Truly good to be here, guys, thanks for having me.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: So that was our interview with Emily speaking about her
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: book The Price of Mercy, on fair Trials, a violent system,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and a public defender's search for justice in America. And
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I was excited to speak with Emily because on my
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: prelim call with her, I could just tell she was
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: someone who had a lot to say about a topic
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: that we're both really interested in, which is criminal justice reform.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: But when you at least for me when I'm reading
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: a book about it, I'm like, am I going to
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: find this, you know?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: An easy read?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: It was such a fast moving book that both like
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: broke my heart and raged me, brought hope. I really
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: loved it. I actually listened to it as an audiobook,
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: which for me bonus points for that. But yeah, I
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: would highly recommend it.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to read it. I had not read
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: it before the interview, and I was so impressed with Emily,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: so now I want to check it out. But we
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: talked with her like a couple weeks ago, and one
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: of the things that I found myself thinking about so
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: much from that conversation is when she talked about the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: majority of her clients when she worked at the LA
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Public Defender's office, like almost all of them coming from
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: schools that had a heavy police presence, So like going
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: to an elementary school or a middle school where there
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: were like a lot of police present and not as
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: many adults who were in roles of support like nurses
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: or counselors. And I mean, I had heard about people
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: talking about police and schools before, but I don't think
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: i'd ever heard someone who has such direct experience working
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: with people make that tie like tie that together that
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: this directly actually impacts someone's interaction with the criminal justice
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: system and therefore their life. And it makes sense, but
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: it really blew my mind. And I was like, why
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: do we have police in schools?
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: I know, and I'm sure that there are people out
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: there arguing that it's for safety, right, you have a
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: police officer in an area where people are fighting or
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: maybe people have access to drugs or weapons or whatever
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: it may be. And it's like, okay, I could see that,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: but also if you have children, like actual children who
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: see themselves as needing to be policed, like what are
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: we teaching those kids about their own self worth, their
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: own potential? And okay, well there's a police officer here,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: because that's something we do at the school, we fight
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: or whatever it is. And you know, also, what's a
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: police officer's job, right is to find people doing things
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: they shouldn't be doing and hold them accountable to the law.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: But obviously that gets misused a lot.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't remember if this was in the
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: interview where we cut it, but she talked about even
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a simple thing like police officers that are in schools
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: should have a different standard than police officers out on
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: the street as far as how many arrests they're expected
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: to bring into their precinct on a monthly basis or whatever.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: You know, they have these quotas you hear about that, Well,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: when you're in a school, does it really make sense
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: for you to have an arrest quota when you're working
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: in an elementary school and that's where you're spending the
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: majority of your working time, because who are you going
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: to be arresting. You're going to be arresting elementary school
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: kids if that's the case. And so it's like, maybe
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: it does make sense for a police to be in
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: some schools if they're dangerous, but it really should be
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: looked at in a totally different way way than policing
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that's not in schools. You would hope these would be
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: like supportive and helpful people, but it doesn't play out
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: that way a lot of the time.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to think that a child would be
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: brought into the criminal justice system over a small offense
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: that's going to drastically, as Emily showed us through her
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: own work experience, changed the course of that child's life.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: And that is something that we should be taking really seriously,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: because if that money was invested in counselors or more
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: after school resources or whatever it, maybe that would be
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: money that would be better spent for the entire community.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we took some time in the interview to
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: talk about solutions, but it sounds like from what you've said,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: there are way more solutions in the book, even that
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Emily talks about as different ideas for communities to implement
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: that could help reduce crime arrests of underage people. Even
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: the ones that she mentioned in the interview were really creative.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Like I love the idea of like parents volunteering to
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: go through the halls of schools and keep things calm.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: They're not going to arrest anybody.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Dad's on duty.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Dad's on This is such a good idea.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: That's such a good idea and so achievable. And I
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: love that she broke it down so well and also
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: tied her examples back to data. Like one thing I
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: found fascinating about our conversation with her and in the book,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: and there's so much more in the book. I really
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: recommend it. But she said that domestic violence is lower
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: in areas that have more greenery.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: That's wild.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: It's wild and so like if we plant more trees,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: if we focus on public spaces and making them a
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: warm and welcoming place that people want to be, that
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: we can actually lower crime rates.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense because you think about like
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: going on a walk in a really nice park is
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: call mean, but if you don't have that, you know,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know, It's just like that would be a
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: really nice resource for people to have in communities.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's huge, And it gives kids a place to
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: go where they feel safe and like they can be kids.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: And you know, she talked about how surveillance doesn't create safety,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: it just creates surveillance. And I really loved that example
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: and have thought a lot about that lately. Like one
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: thing we get a lot of in La where I
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: live is package theft. Right, No one's ever not so
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: a package off my porch because of a video camera.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: I just don't think they care. It's more about figuring out, like, Okay,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: what can we do to provide resources for people to
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: get on their feet to earn a living wage even
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: if they have a criminal record, because a lot of times,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: you know, one arrest can lead to a plead deal
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: that leads to something on someone's record that dictates what
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: they're going to be able to earn and do in
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: their life, or at least makes it a lot more
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: challenging for them to maybe achieve the goals they had
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: before that happened to them. And you know, who are
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: we really helping when we pigeonhole people that way?
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I feel like that's something that I
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: think about a lot since working in true crime, is
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: how difficult it is for someone when they have a
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: criminal record, and how life can be so much harder
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: for them. We hear a lot of stories like that,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and you know, criminal records are important. There are good
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: reasons why we keep track of people that cause harm
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: to other people. But also we've seen a lot of
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: instances where people should be able to have a second chance,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: especially young people. Right, Like, if you have a criminal
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: record by the time you're in high school, well, what
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: kind of chance are you getting that life?
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like, if we don't believe children are redeemable,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: then what do we believe?
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I thought it was a fascinating conversation and
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: would highly recommend her book. So yeah, thank you so
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: much to Emily for taking the time to speak with
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: us today. We will talk to you next week. If
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: you have a story for us, we would love to
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia dot com,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: or you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: Podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: by me Hannah Smith and me Paysha Ey.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: Artwork five ASA Lilac.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.