Unreasonable Doubts

by Reyna Marder Gentin

  Liana, in contrast, was a fish out of water. She aced her assignments—outperforming the other summer associates, even Jakob—but she was a mess. That one summer convinced her that she didn’t have the stomach for the work, the lifestyle, and virtually all the attorneys who chose that path. She was reduced to tears on more than one occasion when suddenly called into the office of a partner late in the day to be given an assignment on which she was expected to work into the night. The lack of control wreaked havoc on Liana’s body and soul, leaving her feeling agitated and empty. And the necessity of pretending to enjoy the company of the hyper-driven attorneys, during the workday and after hours, was just too much for her. So Liana was sure she would get a polite kiss-off when she was called into the hiring partner’s office at the end of the summer.

  “Ah, come in, Liana, please sit down,” he said. She sat in the big leather chair across the desk from him, feeling small and fully expecting him to tell her that the firm had decided not to extend an offer to her. It would be a black mark on her otherwise pristine law school record. Instead, he handed her an envelope.

  “Liana, this letter is an offer of employment with Wilcox & Finney upon your successful completion of law school and contingent on your passing the bar exam.”

  The astonishment must have registered on her face, because the partner laughed.

  “Liana, you did excellent work here, and if you’d like to come back as a permanent associate, the door is open. You’re intelligent and diligent and well-liked. But may I offer you some words of wisdom from an old goat?”

  “Of course,” Liana said.

  “Find a job you’re passionate about—a job that when you get up every morning, you say to yourself, ‘Damn, I can’t believe they pay me to do this!’ I’m not certain that this kind of firm will be that for you.”

  Liana had taken his advice and accepted an offer from the appeals bureau of the Public Defender’s Office, fully believing that representing indigent defendants was her passion. His “bait and switch” joke aside, Jakob said he was proud of her decision, and she believed him.

  Did I make a mistake?

  Liana was pulled out of her reverie by Tameka attempting, as a good summer associate should, to keep the conversation going. “What exactly do you do as an appellate public defender?”

  “I’m appointed as the attorney for people who can’t afford counsel to represent them on appeal. What that means is that these men—and women, but mostly men—have already lost at trial. Every defendant is entitled under New York law to one appeal—to have the legal issues of his case reviewed by a panel of judges.” Jakob grinned, satisfied that bringing Liana to the event had relieved him of the need to be entertaining.

  “What kinds of crimes have these people committed?” Max asked.

  “Felonies. Everything from drug selling to burglary to robbery to assault to rape to murder,” Liana rattled off.

  “Oh my God!” shrieked Tiffany. “And you have to hang out with these guys?” For a split second, Liana saw the situation through sweet Tiffany’s eyes.

  Does she really think I sit around on a couch with convicts, maybe share some Chinese food, talk about their plans for the weekend?

  “No, Tiffany. These defendants are in prison, usually way upstate near the Canadian border, many of them for twenty years or more. We communicate by mail; sometimes we talk on the telephone. But I almost never meet any of my clients. Everything I need to know for the appeal is in the transcript from the trial. It would just be a waste of time and money, although certainly most of the guys do ask me to visit.”

  “Well, I’m sure they do,” piped in Frank, the partner for whom Jakob did most of his work, a big smirk on his face. Frank—in his late forties, twice divorced, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair—had a reputation as a bit of a letch. But he was on the money with this one. Although Liana was scrupulously careful to keep all her contacts with her clients professional and never to reveal even the smallest personal detail about herself, the guys with half a brain could figure out from her name that she was a woman. And, in the context of being locked up without any contact with the opposite sex, that was really all they needed to know to have quite a flourishing fantasy life about their assigned counsel. Liana frequently received frilly cards and letters from her clients, mostly very polite, replete with their protestations of love. She tended to ignore these missives entirely, and 99 percent of the time, the client gave up and resumed a normal exchange.

  Slightly annoyed but not wanting to appear without a sense of humor, Liana retorted, “Frank, these men are not my type.”

  “Whoa,” Frank said, in pretend shock, his palms out as if fending off a truly offensive parry. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Liana. I know you are hooked on young Jakob here. Certainly no criminal could hold a candle to him!” Everyone laughed, Jakob perhaps the loudest—laughing at your boss’s jokes was key to law firm success.

  Then Brian, a third-year associate and a friend of Jakob’s, asked the question that Liana constantly fielded at cocktail parties but which irritated her when asked by an attorney who should know better.

  “Don’t you ever feel bad about representing these guys who you know are guilty, trying to get them off on some technicality?” Normally, Liana would have just sighed and given her canned response about the Constitution entitling everyone to a defense. But with Gerry’s warning still fresh in her mind, and in the presence of the summer associates, she suddenly felt defensive and obligated to give a more substantive answer. Jakob put his arm around Liana’s waist and pulled her close, speaking quietly but firmly in her ear.

  “Hold your fire, Tammy; these people are not the enemy.” In private, Jakob called her his “little hot tamale,” or sometimes just “Tammy” for short. Liana’s temper had gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion, and she had, at Jakob’s urging, been making a concerted, albeit sometimes unsuccessful effort of late to hold herself in check.

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” Liana whispered back. But she figured this was as good a time as any to try out Deb’s advice. No selling the defendant down the river, but no fabricated devotion either. She would play it straight.

  “Well, I take issue with your premise. As the defense attorney, I don’t actually know whether my client is guilty or innocent. I wasn’t on the street corner when the drug exchange was made or in the bar when the gun was brandished. And no client admits to his attorney that he’s guilty; every person I’ve ever represented claimed to be ‘falsely accused.’”

  This sort of “true crime” shoptalk always enthralled people; she had them in the palm of her hand. Liana continued, “But it’s completely irrelevant if I think my client is guilty or innocent. My job is to look damn hard for something that went wrong—whether it’s a technicality or something that goes to the fundamental fairness of the trial—so that my client can get a do-over and due process of law. My feelings don’t have anything to do with it.” Liana glanced at Jakob, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod of approval.

  Brian took a long swig of his beer without taking his eyes off Liana. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he held the standard corporate law firm attorney view of criminal defense attorneys—thinly veiled disgust.

  “I get all that, Liana. I respect that defense attorneys are a big part of what keeps the system honest, and that certainly justifies doing this sort of work. I guess what I’m really asking is more personal, about what keeps you—Liana Cohen—going, day after day, because it has to be tough representing these people. I mean, a lot of them are just scum, aren’t they? Is it just about doing your job, or do you hold on to a belief that the next guy who walks through your door might be someone who really deserves you?”

  It was a version of the question Liana had been asking herself subconsciously for some time now and that Gerry had posed so starkly after the office meeting—did she still have the proverbial fire in the belly for this work? She had no good answer. Liana momentarily envisioned Jeremiah
Clark firing the gun, and she watched as someone’s grandmother fell to the ground, the city bus continuing along its route, unaware of the tragedy unfolding.

  Liana accepted that she wasn’t the eternally optimistic poster child for the Public Defender’s Office she’d once been, but she resented that her inability to answer Brian’s question had revealed her as a fraud. She was suddenly overwhelmingly exhausted and wished she had let the cute bartender buy her a second Scotch. When she caught Jakob’s eye, she pointed to her stomach and looked longingly at the door.

  Get me out of here, she pleaded silently.

  “Well, this has been fun, but I have a hot date with my feisty public defender for some chicken tikka masala and naan. See you folks tomorrow,” Jakob said, steering Liana toward the exit, one hand protectively on her back.

  They stepped outside into the warm night, and Liana turned to Jakob. “Sometimes I think your corporate buddies are onto something,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “Maybe representing these guys is just so vile that there’s no way to rationalize it.”

  Jakob stopped and took her hands in his. “Hey, don’t say that and don’t put yourself down. These big firm lawyers are smart and capable, but they wouldn’t last five minutes in your job. You’re fighting for justice for the underdog; they’re fighting only for themselves and the next paycheck.”

  Jakob pulled her into a big hug and then hailed a cab. “Come on,” he said. “Our Indian food is calling.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Liana came into work early the next day, ready to do battle. Although the conversation with Brian at the Wilcox event had cost her a good night’s sleep, she felt liberated. She was all business from now on.

  She cleared the surface of her desk and took the folder Deb had given her out of the file cabinet, placing a pristine blank legal pad in front of her. Liana was one of the few attorneys who still took notes by hand; everyone else worked directly on the computer. But she was old school, and she felt that the act of handwriting somehow allowed the information to go from the transcript into her brain.

  It was this moment that Liana still found inspiring, when the file was before her and she was poised to open it and see what awaited her, despite the unsavory clientele, the low pay, and the lack of respect in the larger legal world. If her faith in the underlying decency of her clients was flagging, there was still the possibility of a great story, a winning legal issue, or, if not a winning issue, an argument she could throw herself into with total abandon.

  Liana scanned the front of the file, which the paralegal had filled in with the basic information about the case. She knew the client’s name—Daniel Shea. His date of birth was noted as October 18, 1986, making him almost twenty-four years old at the time of the crime two years earlier on July 4, 2010, five years younger than Liana was now. She always calculated the client’s age first. Liana hated when the clients were really young, sixteen or seventeen—old enough to be held accountable as an adult for their criminal actions but too young to have impulse control or any idea of the consequences of their stupid behavior.

  This guy was a reasonable age—a person should have his head on straight by twenty-four. And his name intrigued her. Daniel Shea—could he be Irish? Liana had never had an Irish client as far as she knew.

  Then she looked to see what Shea stood convicted of, how much time he was doing, and where he was serving it: rape in the first degree, fifteen years, Dannemora Correctional Facility. Shea had faced twenty-five years for the crime, which was classified as a class B violent felony. The judge had given him fifteen.

  Probably a first offender. Nothing like starting big.

  Liana had handled a couple of sex offense cases before, and she found them difficult. She wondered again whether Deb had intentionally unloaded Shea on her, but it seemed petty to give him back. It was hard to dredge up much compassion for rapists, and she found herself overly relating to the victims. But, Liana reminded herself, this was no longer of concern to her—she needed no empathy for Shea; she needed only the law on her side.

  Liana flipped through the papers clipped in on the right-hand side, which were copies of the official court documents: the indictment, various ministerial and scheduling orders, and the sentencing papers. She would go through all these materials later, more carefully, to see if there were any errors lurking there. In the indictment she learned the complainant’s name and age, eighteen-year-old Jennifer Nash.

  Well, at least she’s over the age of consent.

  There would be no issue of statutory rape here, which was almost impossible to defend against once it was established that the victim was underage. She read through the barebones allegations listed in the different counts—“vaginal penetration by forcible compulsion”—and noted that there was no weapon involved. Not that you needed a gun or a knife to rape someone, but use of a weapon upped the ante and made her job even harder.

  Then Liana looked at the left-hand side of the folder, where correspondence from the client would be attached. The case had come out of Brooklyn Supreme Court, and the conviction was dated December 3, 2011. Deb was right; soon the defendant would be getting antsy about the delay. Some of the clients were downright nasty, taking the attitude that “you get what you pay for,” and therefore their assigned counsel—who, they usually believed, worked for free—must be totally incompetent. Occasionally, Liana came awfully close to screaming into the telephone at a client who challenged her abilities, “I went to Yale Law School!” But she knew it would fall on deaf ears and likely only make things worse.

  In the file there was only one letter, and it had just arrived. It was written out by hand in black ink in exceptionally neat block letters. Shea had been told of the change in his counsel, and he had written to Liana directly.

  July 2, 2012

  Dear Ms. Cohen,

  I’ve been informed by your paralegal that you are now assigned to handle my appeal. I’ve done a little research on you in the law library. I’m impressed by your qualifications, and I see that you have won reversals on a number of very serious felony convictions. I’m pleased to have you on board.

  Ms. Cohen, we don’t know each other personally. I don’t know why you chose this particular career path in the law. I can imagine that, coming out of a top school, you had your pick of well-paying positions where you didn’t have to dirty your hands, so to speak.

  If I were a betting man, and I’m not, I would wager that you became a public defender because you believe that every person deserves a fair shot under the law. I have complete confidence that, as my assigned counsel on appeal, you’ll fight for my legal rights.

  That being said, I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment while I explain something important about my background that you won’t learn from reading the transcripts of my trial.

  I didn’t have the privilege of a lot of parental attention growing up, for a number of reasons that I won’t trouble you with right now. But I did have a grandmother who lived with us intermittently during my formative years. She was an Irish immigrant, and she was hardworking, stern, and demanded the best from me and my siblings. She was also a source of great warmth and kindness. My grandmother taught me many things, but one value she instilled with great ferocity was respect for women. My grandmother made sure that I grew up to be a gentleman.

  Ms. Cohen, I’m no angel. Life has been too complicated for that. But I didn’t rape Jennifer Nash. Hurting a woman goes against everything I was taught. I’m quite sure that every client you represent protests his innocence, and you must view this with a huge dose of skepticism. However, in this case, I’m telling you the truth. I swear it on my grandmother’s life.

  I understand that there may be fruitful avenues of appeal that have nothing to do with my guilt or innocence in this matter. However, as my attorney, it’s very important for me to have you understand and believe in your heart that I didn’t commit this crime. You will, of course, glean my defense from my testimony at trial. I just wanted to give you a head
s-up.

  I pray that you will have the courage to stand by me.

  And then it was signed, “Sincerely, Danny Shea.”

  “Who is this guy?” Liana said. She’d never received a letter remotely like this one—the vocabulary, the pointed articulation, the subtlety of the legal understanding, and the seeming sincerity. She had the unsettling thought that this defendant might be better off representing himself. Liana read the letter to Deb.

  “Maybe he’s the one,” Deb said, chewing noisily on a wad of grape-flavored bubble gum.

  “Excuse me?” Liana looked up from the letter, which had drawn her in for a third read.

  “Your innocent guy. The one you were meant to represent who restores your hope. You never know,” Deb said, casually throwing the thought out as she checked her manicure to see if she needed a fresh coat.

  “I do know,” Liana said, peeved. “First of all, you were supposed to represent him, not me. So he’s really your guy, not mine. Don’t go giving me any of that ‘meant to be’ crap. And just because he has a crossword-worthy vocabulary and dredges up Grandma doesn’t make him innocent. Remember, I’m not playing that game anymore.”

  “Okay, whatever you say,” Deb said. “Still, that letter is intriguing. Look for his picture.” Sometimes the file included the Prisoner Movement Sheet, which was just that—a piece of paper with the defendant’s photograph on it that allowed the security personnel to relocate the prisoner, either within the facility or from one facility to another, and keep track of who they were moving. It took her a few minutes, but Liana came up with the document.

  Although the photo was in black and white, there was no mistaking it—Mr. Shea was strikingly handsome, even in his mug shot, with long wavy hair falling over his eyes, high cheek bones, and a strong jaw. Not in a fake, movie-star way either, although he bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Brad Pitt—before Jen and Angelina and all those kids took a toll on him. Liana passed the photo to Deb.