My client, a young Puerto Rican male, buckled when the clerk announced that the judge had sentenced him to one year in prison. His lower lip quivered as court officer secured the handcuffs. As I made a motion to suspend execution of the sentence pending appeal, my client began to shake, almost violently. The judge denied the motion.
It was my second trial as a defense lawyer. The moment is permanently seared into my mind. I recall few things so vividly. Eduardo (not his real name) and I had waited for the verdict out in the corridor only moments earlier. He was nervous and had been telling me jokes. He was a funny kid. When the clerk read the verdict, Eduardo lowered his head and looked down at the floor. And then the State handcuffed him and put him in lock-up. Through the bars, Eduardo handed me his necklace and his wallet. I looked at the bars, really for the first time; there was no way out. The State took away his liberty for a year – all of it. Once Eduardo had exhausted his constitutional rights, the State had acted, swiftly consigning him into a cell. Bang! It was efficient. There was no remedy available. The appeal would take at least a year. Eduardo would serve the entire sentence before the Appeals Court even heard his appeal. There were only bars. It was my worst moment as a lawyer.
It was only years later that I began to appreciate that only a few words, crafted with a quill pen and a bottle of ink two hundred years ago, restrains the State’s full fury – like that of a raging Doberman Pincher straining against a worn leash – to get at the accused. Only someone accused of a serious crime could truly appreciate the accuracy of the analogy. Without those words, the Doberman could attack indiscriminately, its basest instincts, limited only by its appetite. Only when I learned the value of the constitutional protections afforded the accused did I understand the power I had once held.
