The Hero Cops a Plea

A lot of people will condemn my client. And they’ll condemn my sympathy for him.

He was an Army recruiter. He picked up a 17-year-old would-be recruit, drove her to a parking lot, and cajoled her into giving him oral sex in his car. Security guards caught them. He fully confessed.  It's against the law to get oral sex from a 17-year-old.

It’s very bad what he did. No doubt about it. But while everyone else in the criminal-justice system looks at the crime, I look at the person behind the crime.

A little bit about him: He did three tours in Iraq. Each time, he did dangerous convoy duty. He has many awards and commendations from the Army.

He’s a young man: 25 at the time of the crime. Until now, he has led a blameless life. He has been very responsible. This responsibility shows in the fact that he took on a career in which he did not know from year to year if he would live or die. He did this for our freedom.

Part of his personal sacrifice has been his serial overseas deployments. Deployments disrupt relationships. He has spent much of his adult life in combat zones. It’s hard to make and keep relationships state-side under those circumstances.

That’s why soldiers can be lonely between deployments. And he committed his crime after his relationship with his closest relative suffered a setback. He was lonely and upset.

So he did something uncharacteristic of him. And because of that error in judgment, he’ll lose everything he built for himself in the Army. He'll receive a less-than-honorable discharge. All his Army benefits are gone – no paid-for school, no other benefits.

At the moment he was discovered, he knew he did wrong. He showed deep shame for his behavior. Deep shame.

I’ll admit: I’m sentimental about military people. So I wanted to do right by this guy. Even more than most cases.  I wanted a misdemeanor plea. That would punish him. He would have to do time. But it would not destroy his life.

But the DA would not go below a felony plea, to be reduced to a misdemeanor after 18 months if he does alright on probation. 180 days jail on weekends. Also, he pleaded guilty to a crime that did not cause him to have to register as a sex-offender. The original charge required sex-offender registration.

The deal was decent. The case against him was air-tight. But I wish I could have done better. What made the deal acceptable was that he didn’t have to register as a sex offender and he will earn a misdemeanor by good behavior on probation. That made the deal just good enough not to risk losing it by proceeding further with the case.

I know that some will have no sympathy. That’s not me. And I don’t apologize for that. To me, my clients are flesh-and-bone human beings. Flawed, yes. But aren’t we all.

So we do our best for our clients. It’s our job to be on their side. Nobody else in the criminal justice system is. If we’re not on their side, nobody is.

Sometimes that means taking to trial a case after the judge says it’s a dead-bang winner for the DA. (We have won such cases.) And sometimes it means spending hours doing research to find the law that gives our client a chance at vindication. (We have found such law.) And with no other avenue, it means making an impassioned appeal to the humanity of to the judge, or of the DA.

Sometimes you get what you want, and sometimes you don’t. A wise old public defender once told me that one important requirement for this job is the ability to bear pain.