Vox Populi:

The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

When I was a new lawyer almost 10 years ago, I was at the jail in Montgomery, Ala., one night with a client to prepare for court the next morning. As we discussed what would happen in his case, one of us made a joke, and we both laughed for a few seconds. Then, under his breath, he said, “I don’t think anyone has smiled at me in a couple weeks.”

I have been thinking a lot recently about what his words say about our society.

In the six years before my organization, Civil Rights Corps, filed a constitutional civil rights lawsuit challenging the money bail system in Harris County, Texas, 55 human beings died in the local jail in downtown Houston because they were too poor to buy their release before trial. The American punishment system inflicts unspeakable cruelty every day, both in ways that make it into newspapers and viral videos and in ways that are only whispered about in jail cells late at night.

I have long been interested in the chasm between how the law is written and how the law is lived. An enduring theme of my short career representing directly impacted people is the difference between how we advertise the law with beautiful inscriptions on our public monuments or lofty words in judicial opinions taught in law schools, and how we use the law to crush the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color in our streets, our prisons, and our courtrooms.

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