INTRODUCTION

From an idea to a final product....

In May 2020, I came across an article in a New York publication. At that point, New York and the rest of the country had been on lockdown for two months in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Court practice in New York City transitioned from in-person proceedings to online operations. The state “speedy trial” statute and other laws governing time limitations for criminal cases were tolled indefinitely, and no cases were being tried. Public defenders across the five boroughs were fighting to get as many detained clients as they could out of city jails, where the pandemic was endangering lives at a rate greater than anywhere else in the city.

The article focused on one public defender at a nonprofit law office in New York City. The headline read: “From Her Kids’ Playroom, This NYC Public Defender Has Helped Set Hundreds of Prisoners Free.” The piece detailed how this public defender led the way in getting scores of medically vulnerable detainees released from Rikers Island. The subject of the article was a white woman. Having arrived in 2019, she was the head of a specialized unit within the law firm for about a year at that point. And she was one of my colleagues.

At the time the article was published, I was in my fifth year at this public defense law firm, having joined the organization as a staff attorney in October 2015. I worked in the criminal trial office in the Bronx for a little over four years, representing accused persons charged with misdemeanors and felonies. The law firm was a unionized organization and remains so to date; but for the first year and a half, I was uninvolved in union activities. Then in 2017, I cofounded a caucus for Black attorneys, and once it was officially recognized by the union, I served in its leadership for as long as I was an attorney at that firm. In November 2019, approximately six months before that article was published, I transitioned to a different legal unit in Brooklyn. As a result, I missed the implementation of the pretrial reforms the state enacted in 2019 and the craziness that became criminal practice after COVID-19 hit New York.

When I was practicing, I took note of the times when things related to public defense appeared in the media, whether it was about a particular case, about something specific to the work, or about the profession generally. I noticed that the attorneys who were involved, the attorneys who were quoted, the attorneys whose names were featured and whose photographs were displayed, were almost always white. This was not just a trend with public defenders from the law firm I where worked; I saw articles featuring defenders from other organizations in the city, and those defenders were also predominantly white. For some of those public defenders, the attention came by happenstance; other public defenders sought the limelight. Either way, the image was consistent: it was white attorneys saving poor nonwhite people from the mighty clutches of the criminal judicial system.

What made these observations even more disturbing was that some of the white defenders who centered themselves were not the most conscientious of attorneys. I knew some of them to harbor bigoted opinions about their client population. Some of them dis-served many of their clients and only cared about cases that would go to the press. I personally witnessed at least one of them routinely disrespect some of their Black and Brown clients in court. Moreover, some of them had racist run-ins with their nonwhite colleagues. One such public defender, who was my colleague in the Bronx trial office, had a Karen-esque reputation amongst the Black attorneys in the office. She was a great trial attorney—and a terror otherwise.¹

It was in early 2020 that I first conceived the idea of compiling a public defense narrative told by Black attorneys. Black public defenders are uniquely qualified to represent poor Black persons in the criminal judicial system; and in New York City, the average accused person in the system is poor and Black. Black lawyers are far more likely to understand and relate to the average client than lawyers of other races because of a collective history of anti-Black oppression in America. Many Black public defenders came from the same neighborhoods and endured the same kinds of hardships as the people they represent, such as substandard housing, communities broken by the War on Drugs and the flooding of their neighborhoods with crack cocaine in the 1980s, and abusive policing. This is not to suggest that African Americans are a monolith or that every single Black person has lived the exact same experience in this country or in New York City. This is to say, however, that America’s history of anti-Blackness has created a particular racial experience common enough to warrant generalization about that particular group of people.

Reading the article in May 2020 did not inspire this idea; I thought of it before that point, earlier in the year. If anything, however, it cemented my desire to pursue the idea. To be fair, I don’t know the circumstances that led to the article being drafted. Moreover, while I knew that the subject of the article was a colleague, I didn’t know her personally. Yes, she was my colleague—one of over a thousand lawyers at the organization. She did give her colleagues credit in the article for the successes the firm has had in getting people released from city jails. Thus, I can’t speak to whether she sought glory or whether it merely came to her. I can only speak to the image that had become so familiar to me: another white person cast as the face of public defense, saving poor Black people in New York City from the dungeons of hell.

This project is my attempt to broaden the lens and give a fuller picture—to shatter the prevailing, yet distorted, image. It is my endeavor to give voice to Black men and women in New York City that do and have done this work with the diligence and grace that the work requires, without the fanfare and the celebration that their white colleagues can take for granted. It is an opportunity for Black lawyers to tell their stories, to explain what led them to pursue public defense, and to give their perspectives on all aspects of the work they do and the system within which they operate. It is a task that has never been done before; and I think it has the potential to contribute greatly to the study of public defense, discourse regarding the criminal judicial system, and contemporary racial justice efforts.

The final project evolved rapidly from how I first envisioned it. I first reached out to several Black public defenders I knew and either trusted or had trusted colleagues vouch for. As the head of the Black attorney caucus within my firm, I was blessed to know a lot of African American lawyers beyond those in my area of operation. I sought public defenders from all five boroughs, envisioning that I could compare how the practice was from borough to borough. I started off intending only to interview current NYC public defenders; and I planned to cap the total number of interviewees at twenty-five. I wanted to interview public defenders who had been practicing for at least one full year, excluding pandemic practice, and I preferred those who had practiced for at least five years. I drafted what I thought was a comprehensive interview outline, with questions about all manner of issues and areas related to the work and the judicial system. This was in February 2020.

Of course, 2020 was not a momentous year solely because of the pandemic. In fact, just a few weeks after the aforementioned article came out, George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police was caught on cell phone video that subsequently went viral. What followed was a summer of sustained national and global protests and urban rebellions reminiscent of the 1960s; the violent U.S. police repression of those protests resembled the sixties as well. Calls to abolish prisons and “defund police” spread across the country; and for the first time since the 1960s, the police looked fallible in the eyes of much of the general public. There was an unprecedented level of discourse about combatting anti-Blackness. Corporations hopped on the wave, “blackening” their websites and proclaiming, “Black Lives Matter.” Many celebrities, a great portion of whom never had a political bone in their bodies, condemned the murder of George Floyd. In New York, a law that protected police disciplinary records from disclosure finally got repealed after years of legislative activism. To put it mildly, the summer of 2020 was a historic period in America and the world. With all hell breaking loose, I had to revise my interview outline and add more policing questions, including questions about calls to abolish and defund the police.

Not long after, I revised the requirements for participation and the number of attorneys I’d interview. At the suggestion of some of my interviewees, I included attorneys who had at one time practiced public defense in New York City, but who had since moved on to other legal careers. I extended the number of attorneys I’d interview to thirty, then to thirty-five, then to forty, then to forty-five, and then finally settled on fifty. Again, I either sought Defenders I knew or trusted or attorneys that were recommended to me by Defenders I trusted. I made an effort to diversify; I sought to get a relatively balanced number of Defenders from all five boroughs. Black public defenders in Staten Island were the hardest to find; but I was able to bring on a number of Defenders who practiced there. In May 2021, I completed my fiftieth (and what I thought would be my final) interview.

All the interviews were done on Zoom; and all fifty interviews were audio-recorded. Interviewing these Black public defenders (hereinafter, “Defenders”) was the most enjoyable part of this project. For one thing, as an experienced public defender myself, it was easy to understand the “lingo” of criminal law practitioners in New York. Aside from that, I enjoyed hearing the varying perspectives and stories of my fellow attorneys. The Defenders came from all walks of life. Most Defenders were born in the United States, but some were born abroad and emigrated to the U.S. None of the Defenders came from well-to-do families. A few Defenders came from somewhat privileged backgrounds; others, from extreme poverty. Most Defenders came from humble working-class backgrounds. Some Defenders were moved to do this work early in their lives; others found their public defense calling while in law school. Fifty public defenders had fifty unique paths to public defense.

Of the first fifty interviews, the interviews averaged three hours. The shortest interviews lasted a little more than two hours; the longest interview lasted over six hours. Some Defenders were brief in their responses; others were especially detailed. My interview approach was minimalist, doing as little talking as possible; I posed each question, and then generally kept quiet unless the interviewee asked for clarification. Often, I told the interviewee to handle the question however that interviewee thought it appropriate. It was important to let each interviewee feel free to say whatever came to mind. The tones of the interviews ran the gamut from serious to funny to outrageous to emotional. Many Defenders were, for the first time, putting into words the experiences they had gone through, the thoughts they had, and unresolved feelings they had buried. Several Defenders told me during and after their interviews how they thought the interview process felt therapeutic.

One thing I was particularly struck by was how wide-ranging answers were with certain questions and how uniform the responses were in others. For example, when asked about the criminal judicial system, Defenders were in almost uniform agreement that the system is unfair, unjust, and racist. Yet, Defenders’ responses diverged on the question of abolition. Many Defenders were firmly in favor of abolition, but many were also opposed, and a few Defenders gave somewhat balanced answers. On the one hand, this project establishes a truth I noted before: Black people are not a monolith. On the other hand, it also indicates the existence not just of a general public defender experience, but a general Black public defender experience. Black public defenders thought similarly about enough related issues to warrant speaking generally.

One challenge in presenting the finished work was attribution of the answers given to the questions. At first, I figured I’d include everyone’s name for every response that made it into the book. As I did more interviews, however, I started rethinking that. I wanted my interviewees to be as candid as possible, and they were candid; some of the answers interviewees gave were bold and promise to step on toes. There is always the potential for retribution against people who publicly say the “wrong” things aloud. To be clear, I omitted the names of almost all individual actors in the criminal judicial system; so almost no actor will get called out by name. Nonetheless, I then settled on making the majority of answers anonymous so as to protect the interviewees. I also decided early on that I would refrain from mentioning the names of any of the public defender offices in New York City. With very little exception, the bios I compiled of the Defenders omitted the name of the specific defender offices they worked for.

After completing the interviews, I then had to go through each interview and select the answers I wanted to include in the final product. This was the hardest and most time-consuming part of the project. One thing that made this task difficult was that I needed to have the interviews accurately transcribed. The first option I tried did not work; the transcripts came out terrible. I spent an inordinate amount of time correcting the transcript and repeatedly listening to the audio to fix the many mistakes it contained, making for an extremely inefficient process. One Defender suggested a second option, which I tried. It was better than my first option, but it was still grossly inadequate. Eventually, I paid for a transcription service and had the interviews transcribed with enough accuracy to be able to efficiently work off them. Even so, I still had to frequently consult the audio recording because, even though the words spoken might have been accurately transcribed, punctuation was sometimes off the mark; further, elements like tone and reactions (sighs, laughter, etc.) get lost in a transcript.

The most difficult part of this task was weighing answers against each other because of how informative, thoughtful, and sometimes entertaining all the responses I received were; there were space constraints. Responses from certain Defenders stood out to me long after their interviews were completed; those answers were included. I also wanted to have every Defender sufficiently featured in the book and include a minimum number of answers from each Defender in the final product. Finally, because I wanted to give an honest narrative of the Black public defender experience in New York City, I made a sincere effort to include perspectives I didn’t agree with. The goal of this project was not to validate my personal views; it was to give voice to Black public defenders, both past and present, in New York City.

It took me a couple of years to work through all fifty interviews and compile a collection of answers from all fifty Defenders in a “master document.” The lapse in time created further complications. Many Defenders left New York City public defense sometime after they were interviewed and found employment elsewhere. Some of their new positions were in places where they needed to be sensitive about their public images and mindful about what statements they make on public record. For that reason, a few Defenders requested to be quoted anonymously in the book. That soon led me to think about to whether or not I should make everyone anonymous as a result. Initially, I was opposed to making the entire book anonymous; my rationale was that I thought the individual stories of Defenders, in terms of their backgrounds and how they got to doing public defense, were fascinating and potentially inspiring. However, I did intend to make those participants who requested to be anonymous fully anonymous, and I wanted to make sure that, for the remaining Defenders, that they were pleased with how their bios and non-anonymous comments read.

I put the chapters of the book together in 2023. Each section of each chapter begins with an interview question. Generally, the question is then followed by two portions. The first is a “summary portion.” It summarizes the parts of Defenders’ responses that are similar. There are shorter quotes from different Defenders to bolster the introductory sentences of each paragraph; longer quotes and anecdotes illustrate certain points. Some sections have longer summaries than others. In the second, an “other responses” portion, there are fuller anecdotes, responses that don’t quite fit within the summarized portion of the section, or longer comments that I thought should be left intact. In that portion, responses follow either the Defender’s name or under the moniker, “Defender,” for anonymity. Easier readability was the soul that dictated chapter organization, given the size of the project.

In November 2023, one Defender whom I had tried to bring on a couple years earlier became available and was interested in participating. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Because fifty-one seemed like an odd place to stop, I then sought a fifty-second attorney to interview. After searching for a bit, I found and interviewed my fifty-second Defender in January 2024. Between January and June 2024, I conducted four more interviews of Black public defenders I either knew beforehand or that I had met in 2024. I did this to add fresh perspectives, since most of the interviews at that point were three to four years old. There was now a total of fifty-six Black public defenders interviewed.

In the fall of 2024, I finally completed the manuscript. I put together a proposal and sent both the proposal and samples of my book to numerous publishers and publishing agents, hoping to get someone or some outfit to pick up the book. I sent it to academic publishers as well as trade publishers. No one would bite. Few publishing outfits even responded to me, and the few that did declined my proposal. Of those that declined, those that gave a reason why gave the same reason: the book was too long. In order to have conformed the book to the length that publishers wanted, I would have to discard over two-thirds of the book. There was no way I could do that without severely altering the essence of the project.

After weighing and exploring all the options available to me, I decided to self-publish my book online. In the summer of 2025, I told a trusted person what I wanted to do and how I envisioned this project looking, and I asked if he could make it happen with his technical expertise. It took some time and effort on his part, but he eventually used the website “GitBook” to construct my project. The project is best experienced in full-screen, with the sidebar hidden. This way, one can see the parts and chapters of the book on the left-hand side, and they can see and peruse the different sections in each chapter on the right-hand side. Readers and users can jump around to different chapters and sections with the click of a mouse, and scholars and academics can make use of the answers and information provided.

Having made the decision to publish the book online, I once again considered whether or not to make the project fully anonymous. This project has a lot of serious, powerful, and potentially explosive information about the judicial systems and its various players. The fear of professional reprisal was always present, but the contemporary political climate has intensified that fear. After thinking through it again, I decided to make the book's responses entirely anonymous. I became surer in my decision after two participants I had fully interviewed subsequently informed me within the week before publication that they no longer wished to be a part of the project, bringing my total down to fifty-four. Aside from the acknowledgement of a few participants at their request, the participants have gone unnamed in this volume.

This project is divided into four parts and twelve chapters. Following the introduction is the Cast of Defenders, which provides brief biographies for each of the interviewees. Part I of this book is called “Entering and Living PD Life.” Part I first focuses on the Defenders’ personal journeys into the world of public defense. That comprises the first chapter, “The Path to Becoming an Attorney.” They dish on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), the test all persons must take to get into law school, and the bar exam, the assessment all law graduates must take to acquire their law license. They talk about their law school experiences and share the reactions their families had upon learning about the specialty profession they chose. The second and last chapter in Part I, “The Work,” examines the life of a public defender on the job. Defenders discuss what the job is like day-to-day. They talk about other important parts of the job, like plea bargaining, case investigations, and trials; and their responses are replete with fascinating stories and sometimes unbelievable accounts. After this chapter, readers will begin to have a practical understanding of the New York public defender experience.

Part II is entitled “The System and Its Players.” It is the most extensive Part of the book by far. The first chapter in this part (the third chapter overall) is called “The Criminal Judicial System.” This chapter serves as a general introduction to the Black public defender view of the system. Defenders first give their briefest impressions about the system. In the remaining chapters, Defenders expound on all the relevant players in the judicial system, including judges, prosecutors, colleagues, clients, and police officers. They talk about the practice and unmasked issues of race, class, and gender. Defenders share a myriad of experiences and an abundance of anecdotes, providing a richly detailed survey of the criminal law landscape in New York City.

Part III is called “Collateral Consequences.” This Part has two chapters. The first focuses on the remuneration of public defenders. The common adage about public defenders is that they are “overworked and underpaid.” Defenders shed light on the financial status of public defenders in New York City, particularly Black attorneys. The second chapter is about “burnout.” Public defense, if performed with care and competence, is a taxing job. Public defenders see a lot of injustices and deal with secondary trauma. Coupled with the ruthlessness of the judicial system, many public defenders experience varying degrees of hopelessness that threatens to adversely affect their ability to do the job well. In other words, they “burn out.” Sometimes burnout is temporary; other times it is longer-lasting. Defenders give their takes on burnout and how they deal with the stresses of the job.

The final Part is titled, “The Wrap-Up.” This part consists of only one chapter, called “The Final Question.” This chapter has only one question: “What is your proudest moment as a public defender?” For this question only, every Defender’s response is featured. Given the disturbing, infuriating, and depressing moments in this book, I wanted to close out on a positive note. This chapter showcases the diversity amongst the Defenders. Responses varied: some share individual incidents; others talk about a particular case they had tried or a client they had successfully helped; still others share epiphanic moments and situations, like the moments they’re able to connect with a client. Almost all the Defenders struggled to answer the question, and at least one Defender ultimately couldn’t relate his/her proudest moment. Nonetheless, I thought that this Part—and this chapter and question—was a fitting ending for the book.

In sum, this is a book about the practice of criminal law in New York City as told by fifty-four Black present and former defense attorneys. They talk about the public defender experience, and a lot of their insights will no doubt resonate with public defenders of all backgrounds and, to a significant degree, with public defenders in other jurisdictions as well. However, because race colors everything in America—whether people choose to acknowledge it or not—these attorneys also bring a unique lens as Black people in America and give an account of New York City public defense hitherto untold. If nothing else, it is my hope that this book will expose the reality of being a Black public defender in a country that despises Blackness and doesn’t particularly care about public defenders either. If this book generates additional positive action, so be it.

Let me conclude with a simple but fitting quote from the preface of Michelle Alexander’s magnus opus The New Jim Crow: “This book is not for everyone.”² We live in a day where a powerful segment of American society denies the existence of anti-Black racism and works to shape the law to mandate this denial. Many people refuse to even consider the possibility that the United States is not the egalitarian society that conventional American education portrays it to be. This book is not for that crowd; they would see no value in it. This book is for those willing to at least consider the miserable reality that the United States is a country afflicted by racism, classism, and other oppressive systems to an appreciable degree.

FN 1: Trials are infrequent in New York City; thus, very little of a public defender’s job consists of trying cases.

FN 2: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow Preface (2010).

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