To Snitch or not to Snitch

I enjoyed working as an investigator at the Allen County Public Defender's Office. I worked there as a paid intern. I worked under two great individuals with little supervision. As an investigator I worked on behalf of individuals who could not afford a private attorney. Side note here, a public defender is still an attorney. It was not my duty to determine the guilt of the individual. Nor was it my duty to stand in judgment of those who were arrested or those who were charged with a crime. That job for judgment was for the judge or the jurors, my jobs was simply to get the facts for our clients.

Sometimes facts, from people you would not normally share the same space with, like a child molester. For me to get the facts, I had to ask questions and listen to details that I never would have tolerated. It was not for me to determine guilt. Which was so easy to do, if you just relied on arrest records. It was part of my job to interview those who were arrested and get their version of what happened beyond the arrest report. Was there something forgiveable in your trangression, that you could be rehabilitated? Because that's what the jurors and judge will need to know that is not going to be jumping off the page of the arrest report.

One day I had a raced white male who was beaten by a police officers. As the guy told what happened to him and showed me pictures of his injury, he was surprised that I was not outraged. He expressed that fact and wondered why I did not believe him? This type of incident happened all the time to the African-American community, he assured me,so where was my outrage?

I explained that I needed to get his version of what happened and I could not influence his version of what happened with my outrage. After I finished with the interview, I told him to keep the original pictures in a safe place and to bring back copies. And suggested he shared what happened to him immediately with the NAACP. He had to believe what happened to him was police abuse. I was not indifference, I needed folks to report the wrongdoingsthey had experienced. I needed them to be outraged.

Then it was my clients who I had to interview in jail.

Working for the public defender's office did not necessarily make the trip to the jail a pleasant trip. And the fact that I was a female entering a male domain,provided plenty of opportunity to put me in my submissive place.Sometimes I found myself stuck on the floors of the jail waiting until the operator of the elevator would send up the elevator for me to get off the floor. Or the jailors failure to tell me that they had an outbreak of lices in a section of the jail, I was visiting on that day. Or someone challenging my authority to get on the floor in the first place. I was banned from the jail for being sassy, as an African-American woman you better know how to speak to law enforcement. I had to become humble to keep my job. Humble is easy.

Humble is what I felt each time I took over a plea bargain to a defendant to sign. With each one that I took over, I read the whole thing, outloud and I informed the defendant that he had a right to an attorney. I was not an attorney, the defendant needed to demand to see his attorney. I informed the defendant they could write to their attorney, and I could come over an pick up that letter, but they had a right to see and talk with their attorney before signing anything. It was also good to communicate with their attorneys before appearing in court. My goal was to return each one of my plea agreements unsigned, I believed a client had the right to talk to his attorney.

But, only one client would sign a plea agreement under my watch without first talking to their attorney. I could not talk him into waiting to talk to his attorney. His mother had told him to sign whatever. I told him his mother was not going to serve his time. He decided to listen to his mom. I was just a part of the system, was how he saw me. But there is another client I was to bring back a signed plea agreement. What I thought was my little secret was noticed by those who ran the department. If I was being asked to bring back a plea agreement, it must have been important case. I was curious, but don't remember the case.


But I do remember one client. I spent four hours in a small holding area with a man who was going to sign a plea agreement that was going to give him a long time in some prison. I was in no hurry to get back, my punishment to other interns who did not work as hard as I did. It would become apparent as the work piled up from my absence. My four hours were spent with a thirty something male. This male had dated a former police officer's girlfriend. The defendant was in the wrong place at the wrong time during the wrong thing, dealing drugs. But, he had a bigger secret, he also was a secret user. The deal was he was to play a snitch because they wanted him to set up that girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, the police officer. The defendant was to give testimony against the police officer; the defendant was to lie about a drug deal. To reduce his time in prison, all he had to do was lie on a police officer. Did I fail to mention the police officer was an African-American and the girlfriend was raced white? It's the little things.

He just wanted to tell somebody, I was that somebody. His heart was heavy, he knew he was going to spend a long time behind bars in prison. Because he was not going to lie. He decided not to take the plea. He asked me to call his mother who lived in another state. Let her know where he was and for me to ask her to write him. He cried. I was angry. They needed a snitch and he refused. He got thirty years, that was 12 years ago. Should he had snitched?