Quan Yin
Quan Yin (Kuan Yin or Guan Yin) is the bodhisattva of great compassion. A bodhisattva is a human being that has made a vow to dedicate all of their lifetimes to the enlightenment of all humankind. Bodhisattvas continue to reincarnate and return to the world to help guide others to enlightenment.
During law school, it was drilled into our heads by what sometimes are called “legal monks” - law school professors, who never or only somewhat had practiced law, and spent a great deal of time studying and teaching law students the law - that a lawyer’s duty is to do all allowed by the law to help his client.
Note the pronoun.
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I told the only young woman student during my three years in law school that she should be doing something more ladylike than preparing to be a lawyer.
She went on to open a civil rights law practice with a fellow in Birmingham, and she married another of my law school classmates, who went on to become a respected trial lawyer for a prominent law firm in Birmingham.
His wife did very well as a civil rights attorney. She eventually reminded me of what a jerk I was in law school, and I agreed, apologized, and congratulated her civil rights legal career.
I got around to entering the practice of law in Birmingham six years after I graduated from law school. I signed up to represent indigent criminal defendants at a much reduced fee.
Birmingham did didn’t have a Public Defender and new lawyers, mainly, filled that void in the way described, even though we had no trial experience and probably didn't know all that much about criminal law, either.
The first criminal case I was apoointed involved a man accused of rape. He was locked up in the county jail, waiting on his trial. I walked to the jail from my law office and met him and asked him to tell me his side of the story. He said he didn’t rape her. She was his girlfriend for quite a while. She had been lots of men’s girlfriends in his rural community. She had a terrible reputation.
It did not occur to me to ask him if he had a terrible reputation in his community? Hold that thought.
The trial was set.
Since I had never tried a case, my senior law partner, who had defended many criminal cases, said he would help me defend the case.
Some years prior, he had observed a man snatch a woman’s purse and run down an alley with it, and he chased the man down and apprehended him, which got fairly sensational coverage in the local news media. My senior partner spent a lot of time in the nearby YMCA working out and playing pick-up basketball, and was in good shape, and the fleeing thief didn’t have a chance to escape.
The District Attorney's office must have expected me to try the case alone, as the young black male assistant district attorney seeme surprised when I didn't show up alone.
After opening arguments, which sometimes do and sometimes don't have much to do with the facts, the assistant district attorney put my white male client’s white girlfriend on the witness stand and had her tell the white judge and the white jury what my client had done to her.
Then, it was my turn to examine her.
Not having cross-examined a witness outside of one moot court case in law school, which did not go well for my practice client, I didn’t have a clue how to go about cross-examining the victim.
After I stumbled around a while, my senior law partner started telling me what to ask the victim.
My questions and answers then went something like:
Did you and my client ever live together?
Yes.
How long?
About a year.
Did you live in that community now?
No.
Where do you live now?
She gave the location.
Do you live alone?
No.
Who do you live with?
A man.
Now, did I forget to say here that the judge had only recently been elected to the bench and this was his first case? He had been an elected member of the Alabama Legislature, and he had been an attorney in a government office. He also was the half brother of the famous surreal novelist Kurt Vonnegut.
Now did I also forget to say that in rape cases, the defendant has to deny having sex with the victim, or he has to claim sex with the victim was consensual, and neither the judge nor the prosecutor required me and my client to make that choice?
And did I also forget to say that my senior partner examined my client’s sister, and asked her if her brother and the victim had been an item?
Yes, they were seen all over the community together.
My senior partner asked my client's sister if she knew the victim's general reputation in her community?
Yes.
Was that general reputation good or bad?
Bad.
Did I forget to say that such character evidence is not admissible in a rape case, and neither the judge nor the assistant prosecutor objected?
Did I also forget to say the assistant prosecutor cross-examined my client’s sister and asked her if she knew my client's general reputation in his community?
Yes.
Was that general reputation good or bad?
Bad.
My seasoned senior partner asked the law enforcement officer in that community if he knew the reputation of the victim in her community? (After my seasoned senior partner had during a recess asked the local law enforcement if he had had sex with the victim? the law enforcement officer suddenly became very cooperative).
The law enforcement office said, yes.
My seasoned senior partner asked the law enforcement officer if the victim's general reputation was good or bad?
Bad.
The assistant prosecutor asked the law enforcement officer if he had dated the victim? The law enforcement officer walked back his earlier testimony.
I didn't put my client on the witness stand.
After the assistant prosecutor made his closing argument, I rose from my chair at the defense table and walked before the jury. Feeling a bit shaky, I rested my fanny on a table and told the jury this was the first case I ever tried and please don't hold against my client anything I did wrong. I told them they had heard all the witnesses and, given all the evidence, and unless they believed beyond a reasonable doubt that my client was guilty of rape, they should bring back a not guilty verdict.
The judge instructed the jury on the law and the jury retired to deliberate.
All the while, the victim had stood just inside the door to the courtroom, observing, or she was just outside. I felt she might not have done that, if she was lying.
I walked back to my law office to close a real estate deal I stupidly had scheduled after 5 p.m. to generate a fee and carry my share of the law firm expenses.
After the closing, I walked back to the courthouse and punched the button for the elevator. When the door opened, about half the jury was on it. I asked what was their verdict? A male juror said, not guilty. I took the elevator upstairs and met with my client and my senior law partner. Then, I walked back to my car and drove home feeling on top of the world.
Members of my client's community began using me for their lawyer.
My client’s mother started calling me from time to time, just to talk.
My client called me one day from the county jail, where he was again, this time for theft.
I walked down to the jail to see him. He saId, as he was running away, he was apprehended by two sheriff deputies, who had him lie facedown on the ground. One deputy’s .357 magnum went off and the bullet hit my client in the right rear cheek.
I walked back to my law office and called the sheriff, whom I knew somewhat. Back in those ays, sheriffs answered calls from lawyers.
I told the sheriff that I didn’t like making the call. I related what my client had told me. The sheriff sighed, said he would have someone call me.
In a little while, I received a call from an assistant district attorney, who had never lost a criminal prosecution. He had skinned me alive in a preliminary hearing involving my second appointed criminal defendant.
He had skinned me alive in a racketball court at the YMCA. I was a pretty good 4-wall handball player and had stupidly ass-u-me-d that would translate to racketball.
The assistant district attorney, who had never lost a case, said here's the deal. My client will do a little more time in the county jail and then be on probation for a while.
I said, here’s the deal. Drop the burglary charges and my client won't sue our friend the sheriff for his deputy shooting my client in the butt with a .357 after he had surrendered and lay face down on the ground.
Silence.
I waited.
Expletive!
I waited.
I’ll draw up something for your client to sigh, the assistant district attorney said.
My client’s mother loved me all the more.
She kept calling me, just to talk.
Then one day she called to say her son was visiting a woman at her home while her husband was away at work. The husband came home just as my client was leaving. The husband got his shotgun and shot and killed her son.
I said I was so sorry for her.
In Alabama, it is legal for a husband, or a wife, to shoot and kill someone they caught having sex with their spouse. It was legal to kill the spouse, too. In the heat of passion, it was called.
I think that still is the law in Alabama.
I’m reminded of the saying, “Three strikes and you’re out.”
God certainly gave my client plenty of opportunity to mend his ways.
His mother kept calling me from time to time, just to talk.
God would give me lots more opportunities to mend my ways.
Along the way, the assistant district attorney, who never lost a criminal prosecution, went into private practice and became a well-known, successful trial lawyer. We became good friends and for a couple of short spells, I worked in his law firm. That’s another story, which might be told, or not.
Would I have accepted the rape case today? Probably not.
If I did accept it, I first would do a lot of soul searching for the spiritual messages mirrored back to me, about me.
After roasting in those flames a while, I would have some prayer meetings with my client, and if I was not satisfied with how that went, I would ask the judge to let me out of the case and appoint a different lawyer to represent the accused.
This chapter is about the inward approach to legal conflict for beginners. Including lawyers, who are beginners to that approach.
The girlfriend who charged my client with rape did not get a fair shake from the black assistant prosecutor, the novice judge, and the jury.
I can’t imagine the not so nice karma I unwittingly created for myself, which came home to roost later in my life and I had no clue it had anything to do with that case.
I bet if I had told the female civil rights lawyer from my law school class about that rape prosecution and how the trial went, she would have skinned me alive and boiled my remains, and the assistant prosecutor and the novice judge, too.
Although justice is supposed to be blind, the operating human factors have their sway.
Once upon a time, I read that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was asked when she thought there would be enough women on the Supreme Court? She said something like, "When there are nine. For a long time there were nine men, and nobody said anything about that.”
I imagine Justice Bader would have skinned me alive and boiled my remains, and the assistant prosecutor and the novice judge, too, for how the rape case my senior law partner and I defended went.
If someone asks me today what I think is wrong with the law, or with politics, or with America, or with humanity, I say, destruction of the feminine - way too much yang, not nearly enough yin, and I am pretty sure we have religion to thank for that.
