Attorneys Susan Church and Renate Lunn Represent the Most Vulnerable

This week, Alec speaks with two powerful women working tirelessly to help those most in need of assistance navigating the complicated – and very often expensive – criminal justice system: Attorneys Susan Church and Renate Lunn. Susan Church is a trial and appellate attorney focusing on immigration law and criminal defense with her firm Demissie & Church. She successfully sued President Trump for his travel ban on Muslim immigrants and successfully defended the Occupy Boston protesters. Church is currently a pro bono lawyer for immigrants involved in the Martha’s Vineyard migrant case, where two planeloads of Venezuelan asylum-seekers were flown from Texas to the Massachusetts island under false pretenses. A graduate of Columbia law, Renate Lunn represented people accused of crimes in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx at The Legal Aid Society for over 10 years and clerked for Hon. Robert P. Patterson of the Southern District of New York. She is currently the Director of Training at New York County Defender Services, training and supervising public defenders that serve the city’s most vulnerable communities in Manhattan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. The United States criminal justice
system can be a challenging and often deliriously expensive labyrinth
of court filings and trial dates. My guests today are
two women representing those most in need of assistance navigating

(00:25):
that system. Attorneys were not a lun and Susan Church,
We're not a lund. Trains and supervisors public defenders for
New York County, defender services and organizations serving the city's
most vulnerable communities. But first, I'm talking to immigration attorney
and advocate Susan Church. Church successfully represented the Occupy Boston

(00:51):
protesters and sued the Trump administration over its so called
Muslim Band With her Massachusetts law firm Dimissy and Church.
She now represents individuals involved in the Martha's Vineyard immigration
case pro bono. This past September, Florida Governor Rhonda Santis

(01:11):
commissioned two planes to transport migrants seeking asylum in the
United States. They were flown under false pretenses from San Antonio, Texas,
to the wealthy vacation island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The
move was an attempt by de Santis and Texas Governor
Greg Abbott to draw attention to illegal immigration at the border.

(01:35):
The stunt made headlines as a cruel and heartless ploy,
and as Santis was criticized for playing political theater with
people's lives. Before we got into the specifics of the
Martha's Vineyard case, I wanted to know how Susan Church
found her way to progressive politics. So this is a

(01:56):
really interesting issue. I'm adopted, and I grew up in
a very conservative Republican household. I grew up all around
the country, so Idaho, North Carolina. We moved around a lot.
But they were kind of like what we call welld Republicans.
So they're kind of like the Mitt Romney Republicans. They
were not, you know, blatantly like today's Republican Party. They're
the old Republican Party. But I found my biological mother

(02:18):
when I was much older, when my children, I had
some problems getting pregnant, and so I found my biological
mother as my children were being born. She's a left
wing Democrat, Like she's Angela Davis. Your real mother was
Angela Davis. It's very funny, it's very interesting. So I
always talk about that because sometimes I think empathy is
genetic in some ways, because I certainly did not get

(02:40):
it from my growing up. Now in your career, you've
been working in this kind of law for how long?
An immigration related law? So I started immigration law in
My husband is actually from Ethiopia and he was switching
law firms and he said, just take this one asylum case.
You'll love it. Because I was a criminal defense attorney,
and that's what I really loved. How long did you
do the criminal offense to defense works? So that was sorry,

(03:03):
I met so three years. I was a public defender
and that's all I ever wanted to do. New Hampshire
that was fun. And when a place that, I mean,
I don't know New Hampshire that well, but I have
friends who are from there and have homes there. What
was the typical criminal defendant who needed public defending a
lot of drug cases or what, yes, lots of drugs,

(03:24):
less of heroin even back then. Lots of domestic violence
and lots of sexual assaults. That was kind of the
big crime that was going on there, especially the indecent
as solemn batteries on child and things like that. So
that was unpleasant. And so your husband says, take this
one case. What was the case. It wasn't my husband's
from Ethiopia. So it was a political asylum case from Ethiopia. Yes, yeah,

(03:47):
and he had a great asylum claim, but he had
gotten into some immigration related problems with this case. It
wasn't filed correctly. You know, his lawyer has screwed everything up,
and so he was in deportation proceedings. So I represented
him and that and I in love with immigration law
from that point in time. One thing I'm also wondering,
just in terms of the background of this thing, were
the people you work with in this issue and beyond

(04:08):
how are you paid? I mean, do they go and
get money they raise from wealthy benefactors, do packs that
you work with or not for profit groups? I mean,
where do they find the money? I mean, you're not
doing this for free. You've got to be paid something, correct.
I really don't believe in taking money, as much as
possible for tragedies Like I did all this work on Afghanistan.
I didn't take any money to travel band work that

(04:29):
I did. I didn't take any money. I feel like
it really is exploitation to try to get these individuals
to pay me. But I work with a lot of
nonprofits and the way they operate is they get grants,
they get individual fundraising. They're always on shoestring budgets. Agree
a groups I've worked with that are very well known
groups will all kick in money. Well, they'll they'll say,

(04:50):
we need money for legal fees. Oh, we gotta raise
a million dollars, like in a month. Send us you know,
we want you know, twenty people to send us fifty
grand now, and so they can get the legal these
going because their budget wasn't just allowing that. They just
need a team of lawyers on the ground for election
protection or whatever. It is, so absolutely and they need it,
like you know, I worked a lot with South Coast
Legal Services on this case, and they're just a tiny

(05:12):
little nonprofit that does legal services just I mean, very
shoestring budget. And they had lawyers at the site day
after day after day, all day and night at the base.
Once the migrants from martad In your removed to the base.
So tell us what happened in this case. What are
the facts of what happened? Okay, So these forty nine

(05:33):
individuals are almost all of Venezuelan immigrants, why. That is
a really good question. We know that the Venezuelan economy
has been deteriorating for quite some time, so was there
an expanded concentration of Venezuelans trying to come into this country. No,
I think this is what I think, and I think
your question is really smart because normally in Boston we
have El Salvador and Guatemalan Central Americans, and they all

(05:57):
have family that they go to normally, so you don't
see them hanging around at shelters. They don't necessarily need
money to get a bus ticket because people are sending
the money to make the trip. But Venezuelans are in
probably one of the most dire situations right now, and
so they're just leaving, often with no money, often with
no resources, often with no contacts in the United States,

(06:17):
and they are therefore much more easily preyed upon by
the likes of De Santis. And I believe that's what's
been happening here well, aside from being preyed upon by DeSantis,
because that's a huge net that's been cast of people
paid upon by Dessantis. The Venezuelans is Texas the normal
destination for them as Texas Texas or Arizona, Arizona for

(06:38):
that's normal from immigrants from any part of Latin America. Okay,
so these people come to Texas, they've been there for
how long? It was just days? So they've been there
for days, just days, not long at all. And where
were they? Where were they? So what happens when you
come into the borders. You get into one of the
federal processing holding centers and the border patrol officers take

(06:59):
your photograph, take your name, try to figure out if
you have any family in the United States, do a
background check, and then after a couple of days they
if you Usually you pass what's called a credible fear interview.
But that didn't happen here, which is also a little
suspicious to us. We don't know why. Instead, all of
these individuals were parolled in, which is different. It's a
weird legal status that we don't see much up here

(07:21):
in Massachusetts. It could be more common on the board,
and I've been asking my border friend attorneys around. It's
not that common, but it's not out of the ordinary either,
So no one's suggesting. I take it that anybody behind
this was deliberately casting criminal elements to come in just
to embarrass the Biden administration. None of these people were

(07:42):
people who proved criminals and many of them absolutely not.
And so you know, I have one particular client who
had been out of Venezuela for years. So I know
there was a right wing media story going around that
that Maduro had opened the jails and sent these people here.
But based on our reviews, that's absolutely false. Because people
had been out of the out of Venezuela for some

(08:02):
people a year. So I met one guy seven years
he'd been gone. So they just finally made it to
the US border after years of trying. Now where was this?
All forty nine of them were in the same facility. No,
this is what's so interesting, and this is something the
media is not picking up on, and nobody seems to
be investigating. All forty nine of them, in various forms,

(08:23):
made their way to this shelter in Texas, in San
Antonio that had just been opened in July, just in July,
and Perla, the woman who was lying to them to
get them onto the plane, waited outside that shelter. Now
why I'm suspicious of that shelter is it has a
three day rule. You can only stay there for three days.
I don't know about you, but I don't know many

(08:45):
shelters that have a three day rule. What's the point
of a shelter that says you get to stay three days?
It doesn't happen up here, and it just opened in July.
When you have the three day well, what are they assuming?
In your mind? What are they assuming? Where are you
gonna go home? Exactly? How did anybody find a house
in three days or an apartment in three days? It
doesn't make sense, right, It doesn't serve the purpose of

(09:07):
a quote unquote shelter except for Parla to stand outside
and recruit people who were suddenly found themselves homeless again
after three days. Of course, because this is slightly more
complex than people might imagine. These are people who were
in a state. Is it a Texas state or a
federal facility that they go to. It's a federal facility.

(09:27):
So they're going to a federal facility in the state
of Texas. And where does de Santis, the governor of
Florida come in. Why is the Santis deciding that Texas
immigration problem is under his jurisdiction. So that's the craziness
of this story. Also, they were picked up from Texas
and flown to Florida after stopping in North Carolina. First reason,
and to Santis's argument, is that they would have eventually

(09:50):
ended up in Florida. So we're going to bring them
to Florida to them fly them to Massachusetts. All of
it is just part of his stunt to get credit
for quote unquote removing individ Jules. So you're calling Abbot
and saying, could you lend me some illegal immigrants because
I really want to embarrass the Biden administration. It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous. And the crazy part is it's part of

(10:11):
this twelve million dollars that I don't know if you
saw this, but the Treasury Department is now investigating to
Santis for this nonsense because the money that they use
is part of the interest on the American Recovery with
Act funds that they were given for COVID, So they
took that money and put it towards these flights. So
a plane flies them. How many planes were involved in

(10:35):
this caper? Two planes? Two planes? Who would who owned
the planes? The state of Florida? Well, no, it's a
private aviation with connections to mac Gates another interesting fact.
So matc Ate choosed to be the attorney for these
private company that charted the flights. But what I'm curious
about is, I mean, it's not that complex to follow.

(10:55):
It just it's it's mystifying to understand why. So the
governor of Lurida, who is presumed to be the likely
nominee if Trump gets more black and blue than he
already is right now, he gets a private aviation company
to fly to Texas to pick up forty nine Thenezuelan

(11:17):
immigrants in multiple low federal locations there bring them to
North Carolina. You don't know why in North Carolina. We
think it was for a pilot change. But I still
don't understand why there would be a pilot change, because
like it's not that far of a flight. It might
be a refueling one that some of the clients guess
that that's what it was about. And some of the
clients said it was a pilot change. We don't really

(11:38):
know for sure. And we're in Florida. Do they land
the Panhandle up in the north, right up near where
the capital is right? How long are they in Florida before?
Or is everything already nice and greased and everything is
ready to go. I mean, they land in Florida, and
do they go right to the vineyard. I think they
were there just a long long enough for De Santis
to hold a five minute press conference about it, and

(12:00):
then they left. They didn't seem like they had been
there for very long. They were totally sure what was
going on. To be honest with you, well, De Santis
is someone who it's assumed he's going to use every
single facet of the State of Florida's regulatory apparatus to
benefit his supporters and to punish his opponents and to

(12:23):
humiliate the Democratic administration. And I wonder is De Santis,
at least through the prism of this case, is he
viewed as someone who he was the architect of this
himself or other aids of him, who authored this program,
who came up with this idea. That's a great question.
I mean, I feel like it is him. He's I

(12:45):
feel like what you've brought up is probably one of
the most important things that's going on. The Democratic Party.
But that everybody's missing. Everyone's focusing on Trump. Trump is
at least wounded. Maybe he's not dead yet, but he's
certainly wounded, and he would have a much harder time
I'm getting the presidency than De Santis would in my opinion,
if De Santis were the nominee. He does enough nonsense

(13:06):
like Trump is, but he's much smarter, much much smarter,
and much more capable than Trump ever can imagine being,
and he could do real damage. So my question had been,
was De Santis or someone underneath him the architect of
this and the planes themselves? If you take two planes.

(13:27):
When I've flown on private planes and they didn't cost
me anywhere near twelve million dollars to fly privately on
a plane that can handle you know people, that's more
like eight five thousand dollars round trip cross cross country.
They spent twelve million dollars on these planes of COVID funds, no,
so what they spent with six hundred thousand dollars on

(13:49):
the first on the first two flights, and then after
the first two flights there was a second payment for
nine hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, so it was about
a little more than well, it's one point five million.
So with two flights going from from Texas to Florida,
stopping in Carolina and the flights that went to Martha's venued.
How many planes were involved there too, again too, but

(14:09):
before the flights, each of the and I don't think
this is up to one point five millions based on
what you're telling me. The cost is for private flights.
But before the flights, there were McDonald gift certificates that
were given out as bribes to individual to sign the
waiver form the quote unquote weavers that weren't even in
fully in Spanish. There were hotel rooms for anywhere from
one night to a week for each of the forty

(14:30):
nine people. I don't know what that works out too.
And they had two other handlers besides Pearla, So there
was Pearla and then two other people. Well, I want
you to stop for a second and give us a
kind of a thumbnail on who is Pearla. This is
another super interesting thing which has de Santis's name written
all over. She is a counter intelligence individual from the

(14:51):
army who also was a medic who had just left
been discharged from the Army in August. I don't think
it's been clear last name Pearla who to h U
E R t A. And The New York Times did
a story on her. I think it was this past
weekend where they've identified her. So I gave the New
York Times at least three different photographs of Perla that

(15:12):
my clients or other clients at the base had taken,
and then the New York Times did some investigation and
verified that this is the person. So Perla, has anybody
come forward? I mean, I don't assume that all these people,
regardless of what effort they make, can operate exclusively in
the shadows. Did you find that anything about her, who
she is and what she involved another? I mean, a

(15:34):
woman named per La Huerta. I don't want to be
too generalizing. Here is an emissary of one of the
great anti immigration efforts in this country in the last
twenty five years. Who is she? I mean, what was
her role in immigration? What was her role in the
Santi's administration. She doesn't seem to have any role because
she just got out of the army. She's counter intelligence,

(15:55):
that's really what she's working for De Santas. She certainly
counter inte that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important
to note that she's kind of intelligence, right, because this
is a good example of what you're talking about. Earlier.
If Trump had hired this person, just imagine the buffoon
they would have hired, right, It would have been some
fool who probably didn't speak Spanish and tried to use
interpreters or whatever. Instead, they've hired this woman who appears

(16:17):
to be native Spanish speaking. My clients told me that
she was Mexican, Colombian, or Venezuelan, depending on which client
you talked to, So you don't even know based on her.
That's and that's a big thing to pull off, right,
not to be able to fool these immigrants into thinking
which countries she's originally from. And she's paid to lie
as a counterintelligence officer. So when I heard that, I

(16:39):
really thought, this is much bigger than a buffoonery Trump stuff.
This is the type of thing that they do when
they're competent, and that's what scares me about him becoming president.
Attorney Susan Church. If you enjoy conversations with women fighting
for justice, check out my episode with Attorney Becca Heller,

(17:03):
who fought back against Trump's Muslim ban. Heller is the
founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. The thing that
was amazing about Airport Weekend is that, like We organized
the lawyers, but nobody organized the protesters. Totally spontaneous. Thousands
of Americans went out in freezing shitty January weather to

(17:23):
just be like, this is not cool. The executive order
was rescinded before the lawsuit. The lawsuit we once said
that they can't hold people. But the one that we
won right away wasn't about sort of the legality of
the order on its face. It was the public pressure
that got the administration to rescind the executive order and
the so called chaos at the airports, which I will

(17:45):
forever be proud of. To hear more of my conversation
with Becca Heller, go to Here's the Thing dot org.
After the break, Susan Church weighs in on the laws
against human trafficking and whether the Martha Vineyard debacle qualifies.

(18:14):
I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Attorney Susan Church is fighting for the immigrants involved in
the Martha's Vineyard case and arguing for bringing charges against
the Descantis administration. I wanted to know how she first
got involved with the case. So the story is that

(18:35):
the clients were dropped off of the vineyard. They were
dropped off in front of what they call a house,
which apparently is the Martha's Svineord Community Association, and then
you know, the police were called, the media was called,
the story got out. Had the media been tipped up
by the descentis people in advance? We believe there was
a Fox News reporter on the island that day. Yes,
we believe they wanted them there for the landing, right exactly,

(18:59):
roll stage right, all, stage all, a stunt, all at
the expense of these people's lives. So when you have
immigrants in the media, often they make statements that are
detrimental to them. You don't want them doing that. Were
you aware what was going on while that was happening.
You didn't know about until it landed on the vineyard. No,
not until that. I didn't even know. I didn't read
the news that and I didn't know about till the
morning I got the call. So when they when they're

(19:20):
playing lands in the vineyard, who calls you? Who tips
you off? Where you saw it on the news? I
got called by the Lawyer's Community for Civil Rights Van
Magical ESPINAG and he said get on a zoom right now,
and then so everyone said, Okay, who's going to go
to the vineyard, because somebody needs to go right away
to protect the clients, get statements from them about what
happened so that we can later use that in the lawsuit,

(19:40):
which of course is what we did. You want to
get facts down right away in situations like this, and
that's what lawyers are quite good at. So my law
student went on Thursday. I went on Friday, and Vane
had a couple of his lawyers there, Rachel's self was there,
and then we were I was at the base every
single day for the next ten days. Almost p will
often assume, because the word human trafficking has been injected

(20:04):
into this event, is this human trafficking as far as
the laws concerned, or you don't know. I don't think
it qualifies. I've spoken to probably one of the best
human trafficking experts for immigration. Others like people who are
sexually exploited. These people were lied to as to what
the circumces were correct, So that's the argument. They were
told they were getting on a plane for what reason. Oh,

(20:25):
every lie under the book. They were going to get
a job, they were going to get permanent housing, they
were going to Washington State, they were going to California.
They were they were given a false, a patently false
inducement to get on that plane for political gain. So
you are right in the sense that if there is
any human trafficking argument, the political game portion of that
would be. But human trafficking is moving people for a

(20:46):
financial gain usually, so you have to try to monetize
political gain. Why Martha's Vineyard meaning in my mind, I mean,
I've had a home on eastern Long Island among you know,
a fairly a thick stripe of well to do seasonal people,
many of whom are the captains of media and titans

(21:07):
of media. Martha's Vineyard is the same. There's a lot
of media giants there. I could name a few, but
not all of them are liberal Democrats. I mean, some
of the most conservative ones live up there. Why Martha's Vineond,
Why do you think that was it because of Obama?
I'm guessing it was because of Obama. I also think
they wanted to torture them by holding them captive in
that way, by putting them on island. One of my

(21:30):
clients told me that when he realized it was a hoax,
after they rang the doorbell for the Martha's Vineor Community Association.
They all started feeling that they were going to get
in trouble for being on the island, so they tried
to run around the island and get off, looking for
a bridge off the island. Of course there is none,
so I think that added to the drama of it.
I also think it was because they wanted to stick

(21:51):
it to Obama. Also, Martha's Vineyard is a super diverse
island and and a very community oriented oriented island. I
keep saying that they picked the wrong island. There was
a tweet that somebody else said, if you're going to
send a bunch of people who are impoverished and not powerful,
don't send them to Lawyer Island next time. So I
really feel like they made a mistake in doing it

(22:12):
because they picked the wrong island. It's it's a great
community of great people, and they really rallied around these individuals.
I don't know if you know this, but they all
are going to get green cards now because of this trick.
The U card, the visa, Yes, what is a you visa?
You visa is something that Congress needs to fix. It's
not a great option, but ultimately is a victims of

(22:33):
crime visa that leads to a green card. There are
ten thousand given out in any year. There's a huge backlock,
but at some point in time it's an application that
will lead to both a work authorization and a green
card for these individuals. I mean, obviously, I'm someone who
has a very bitter perspective about the Supreme Court. You've

(22:53):
got three people. You've got Gorsetch, You've got Barrett, and
you've got Kavanaugh, who to the American people who bald
face lied and said that abortion was codified law. Did
you see this coming in your work with immigration, did
you see something or something like this coming these kinds
of stunts. Were you surprised? Absolutely surprised. I mean, I

(23:15):
just I don't know why I continue to believe in
the decency of humanity. I mean, I was well aware
of the bus sing that was going on to the
Northern States. But to be honest, as long as people
were told honestly, yeah, you know, I want to go
to New York and here's a bus to get I
don't have a problem with that. I think they're much
better often in blue states that they have more access
to better judges, better green card capabilities and everything. But

(23:36):
I can't believe it. I still can't believe they would
sink this low. And I must be naive, but I
still don't believe that they demonize and deshumanize our clients
this way. I just I've never gotten over it. Well,
state income taxes in New York are obscene, and they
are obscene, but we're using them to pay for things

(23:57):
to improve people's lives. To exes in Florida, which I
think there's zero taxes down, there's no state income tax,
and other states have every low income taxes. The way
they achieve that is they don't take care of anybody.
You don't have any medical care if that's worth ship,
you don't have any education that's worth shit. They cut
and cut and cut services, and the way they can.

(24:19):
And if you come to this state and you've got
a retirement account, your your retiree, which is Florida's right
now for your retiree, and you've got an insurance thing
that works for you, and you know you're you're covered,
you're taken care of, and you come down here, this
is the land of where you come where you don't
give a shit about your neighbors and what happens to them.
Everybody's on their own, every man for himself. Florida is
the state of every man for himself. Now do you

(24:42):
fear that cases involved in this are going to get
to the Supreme Court. It's a really good question. So
there's a bunch of lawsuits that have been engendered because
of this. But one is the one that Lawyers Committee
Civil Rights filed, and that is a compensatory meaning font
monetary damages and for a restraining order against against A
Santists for doing this again because there was I don't

(25:04):
know if you know, there was an attempt to do
it to Delaware that we believe we scared off with
all the criminal investigation. There's talk of there was a
Nantucket false alarm this weekend. They were going to send
it in Nantucket so to stop them from doing this again.
And I do fear that that lawsuit would make it
to the Supreme Court, and that would be really problematic
because here's why. There is a two thousand and twelve

(25:25):
case called Arizona the US where Arizona tried to enact
a misdemeanor criminal charge for being undocumented in Arizona. A
misdemeanor charge for working without an authorization in Arizona, things
like that, And the Supreme Court said no, immigration was
federal and it's pre emptied by the federal government, which
would make what de Santists did clearly and unequivocally illegal.

(25:47):
When did immigration become the devil term? But it is
now what period of your life do we call or
even in your studies and your work, was it Goldwater
and the John Birch days? Was it Reagan? When did
immigration become something that was a negative in our lives?
To Santa's great grandparents came here from Italy, and now

(26:08):
he's done all this to immigrants. He's wounded all these
immigrants this way. The reason I'm an immigration lawyer is
the law signed into law by Bill Clinton, and that
was we call it EDBA and ira Ira, And that
was the law that said that it used to be
that immigrants would go back and forth across the border.
They come here, they'd work for two years, they go home,
right because people no one wants to leave their country.

(26:30):
And EDPA and ira Ira, along with the militarization of
the border, trapped people into the United States. So that's
why our undocumented immigration population blossomed is because people if
they go home now, they are subject to lifetime bars
on re entering and they get expelled at the border.
And if you stay, you may have a chance to

(26:50):
regularize your status at some point in time in the future.
Reagan actually did amnesty. I don't know why people don't
talk about that, but I have many clients who got
their green cards through Ronald Reagan's Amnesty for program. So
I really think it was Clinton's law. That law then
trapped people in the United States, forced them not to go,
and then that caused this growing population of undocumented immigrants.

(27:11):
What's next now in terms of your activities in the courts?
Where whereas everything headed in the immediate sense, So we
will probably start hearing in the lawsuit filed by a
Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights. I know that all of
my lawyers right now who volunteered, we had every pro
bonent representation arranged for every single immigrant that arrived in
Martha's vineyards. They're all drafting their U VISA applications in

(27:32):
sending them to the government right now as we speak.
So and and the last thing we really need for
these individuals as work authorizations who we're working with the
Biden administration and calling on them to reissue paroles for
these individuals so they can all apply for work authorization.
My thanks to you, Susan Church for all of your
good work, and I'm always happy to meet these heroes

(27:52):
helping the desperate people who are getting deceived by the
pearl la Awertes of the world. I mean, this goes
on and on the sanity of this, but thank you
so much, and best of luck to you with the
rest of your endeavors here. Thank you, thank you so much,
thank you for having me immigration attorney Susan Church. My

(28:12):
next guest attorney were not A. Lun Is the director
of training for New York County Defender Services, a firm
that offers public defenders to those who cannot afford their
own council. Lund Is a graduate of Columbia Law, has
clerked for the Southern District of New York and worked
at the Legal Aid Society for over a decade before

(28:35):
her work at nyc d S. I first spoke with
Lund in June of one, at a time when COVID
had drastically changed the justice system. I wanted to know
why she chose and admittedly difficult line of work. I
like people. I love that they're complicated and full of contradictions,

(28:56):
that I believe that no one is all good or
all bad. It just made sense to me to be
an advocate for people in a system where they're reduced
to just one act, one thing. So the prosecutor tells
a story and their criminal complaint or an indictment. It
might not even be a true story, and it just
captures one moment in a person's life. And as a
public defender, I get to work with investigators, I get

(29:19):
to know my client. I get to work with social
workers and find the nuances and complexity and context of
that story and then tell that story to prosecutors, two
juries to judges. And so that was the calling. And
there's a second piece of that too, and that's the
racial justice piece. The United States incarcerates more black people
now than we're enslaved under slavery. That civil rights battles

(29:41):
of our generation are being fought in criminal court. I'd
like to think if I was born fifty years earlier,
i'd be a freedom writer in Mississippi. I don't know
if I'd really have the courage for that, but I
do know that I have the courage to be a
public defender in the twenty one century. Now, the New
York County Defender Services, it says that it in the
research we did that was formed. What changed? What was

(30:05):
the prior office of public defenders in New York and
what was what? Why was there a change? Sure in
New York City up until the mid nineties, there was
just the only game in town with Legal Aid Society.
They had offices and all five boroughs they do have
offices in all five private enterprise yes, that contracted with
the city to provide public defender services. And Legal Aid
Society was unionized at the time, and the union went

(30:26):
on strike, and in order to break the strike, Giuliani,
who is the mayor at the time, put out a
call for other public defender agencies to be formed. And
so at that time Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, Queen's
Law Associates which is now Queen's Defenders, and your County
Defender Services were born. And this is completely government funded.
There's or do you avail yourself as from some private

(30:48):
funding as well. We would be delighted to accept private funding.
If anybody's listening and wants to make a donation, you
can do so on our website. But most of our
funding is from the City of New York as a
contract provider and all so from we got some state
funding as well. And how many people in the staff
over a hundred. We have sevent dy attorneys, but we
also have investigators, social workers, paralegals, admin staff, civil attorney,

(31:10):
immigration attorneys, data specialists. Now, I mean, I have many
questions for you, but the first one that comes leaping
to mind is the virtual court room. We've had a
year and a half or so of virtual everything, and
I'm wondering what was the described for me? Because as
a layman, the first question that comes to mind is,
how can courts turn around and say you got to

(31:32):
go into our room with a computer and have you
What if you don't have an internet, you don't have
a computer. What if you don't want to go into
your lawyer's office who has a computer because of the
COVID itself? How did the exactly Oh, just picture the
worst zoom call you were on with your family or
friends or work associates, and now imagine that your liberty
is at stake. I mean, imagine that zoom call where
Grandma you only see her forehead and then the wall

(31:55):
and ceiling because she can't figure out how to, you know,
use the visual. Someone logging out and back in because
their WiFi is bad. Someone sounding like a sad robot,
like all those technical issues. You have a judge calling
in virtually, you have a court reporter calling in virtually,
and so our clients we try to guide them through
using Microsoft Teams. That's the app of the courts recommend

(32:17):
using frequently it doesn't work, so our clients will then
call in via telephone. Sometimes we will be the public
defender or the attorney will face time with their client
and then hold their iPhone up to their laptops that
the judge can see the face on FaceTime on someone's
phone through the laptop, and we would try to conduct
court that way. It really to humanize our clients. But

(32:39):
I'm also assuming that the legal community, not just n
y CDs, your organization, but lawyers in general. The Bar
Association National or New York had some significant protests about
how fair this was or I mean, what if somebody
didn't couldn't afford a phone, what if they didn't have
a computer, What was for two people that was safe,

(33:01):
that was COVID safe for them to appear quote unquote
in court. So for many people, their cases were just
put on pause in a sense. So the course of
people without those technological resources, they were punted. Usually if
you don't show up to court, a warrant is issued
for your arrest. It's called a bench warrant at the
judge issues And for many months during COVID, they just
didn't issue warrants. And so I think there there's probably

(33:24):
many New york Is still out now who forgot about
a case or thought, Okay, I haven't had to go
back to court for a year, or it's COVID. I
don't know what's going on. But who still have these
these open warrants? And our attorney has made every effort
they could to contact clients, to write letters to homeless shelters,
to we sent investigators knocking on the doors of last
known addresses, and we did offer the opportunity for clients

(33:45):
to come into our office and use the computers. Some
clients would meet at a counselor's office if they were
already in some sort of program, or try to use
a public phone to call into court. But yeah, there's
a lot of people. I think I might have gotten
lost in the system. I'm assuming that there are different
types of cas where you're entitled to a jury trial
if you want one. In New York, you're not entitled
to a jury trial if the maximum sentence you could

(34:07):
get is ninety days or less. That's for expediency sake. Yeah,
So a minor crime like attempted pettit larceny, attempted drug possession,
steal a woman's pocketbook in the park, not even it's
stealing a woman's pocketbook in the park. If it's on
her shoulder, that would be a grand larceny. That would
be a felony. If you steal a woman's pocketbook in
the park and it's maybe just sitting on a park
bench while she's checking her phone, that could be pettit

(34:30):
larceny depending on what's in the pocketbook. If it's worth
lessan a thousand dollars. If you tried to take it
and she said, oh no, you and grabs the pocketbook back,
that would be the attempted petit larceny. So for that,
you don't have a right to a jury trial unless
you're not a US citizen and then the Court of
Appeals held, Look, the immigration consequences, the consequences of being
deported are graver than ninety days in jail, and so

(34:51):
if you're facing serious immigration consequences, you have the right
to a jury trial. Is it safe to assume that
people showing up with the public defender that stigmatizes them
in front of a jury and a yes. Unfortunately, because
we have I think some of the best attorneys in
the country working in our office, and public and defenders
are I think on the whole, some of the best
attorneys in general that you will find. But unfortunately, there

(35:11):
is still this this stigma. So juries we don't usually
notify a jury there's uh, that's a public defender representing them.
I don't have not allowed to tell them. I could.
It could be. It can be a strategic call, right,
Like if I'm representing someone who's charged with being involved
in some sort of drug dealing scheme and the jury
is going to see that they're represented by a public defender,
they might say, well, yeah, this guy, and I'm arguing

(35:32):
that you know, my client wasn't involved, or he was
just a drug user who is being taken advantage of
by the real drug dealers, then I might exactly that
all lawyered up here exactly. So it's a strategic decision
if you want to look like your client could afford
h fancy private lawyer, or if you want to let
the jury know this is an indigent person with a
public defender. I have found in the few cases where

(35:56):
I've ended up in court in my life. There's been
a couple of times I ended up in court for
different things, but you realize that they really don't want
people to go to trial. Yes and no. I mean
there is a lot of pressure to take please and
that pressure doesn't just come from the court. It often
comes from the extenuating circumstances in our client's lives. For example,
you know, maybe they're involved in a custom dispute with

(36:16):
their partner, and if they go to trial and lose,
it would look a lot worse than if they just
played guilty to harassment and did a batter's intervention program
or something like that. Or often people are suspended from
work while there's an open case. There's security licenses might
be suspended. TLC licenses are suspended if you have an
open case, So there's a lot of incentive for people

(36:38):
to take any kind of get it over with that
they can return to work. And of course immigration consequences
to play a big role in people's decision making. When
you come into a courtroom, you see some pretty intense
circumstances that people live under, and I would imagine there's
a constant flow of people where homelessness, joblessness, and drug
addiction is a big part of um. Do people in

(37:01):
your office, even though they're not called upon to h
to comment about this publicly, do they develop opinions about
what they think is our social programs that might be
adjusted to lower crime social services? Well, you're not allowed
to comment. No, Actually I am allowed to comment. And
it's funny that you should say that, because I think
the notion of a public defender has expanded in the

(37:23):
last ten or twenty years. Where it used to be
we just put our heads down into individual cases. Now
we're looking more systemically and thinking about systemic project I
thought right, And so as far as what we would
like to see as far as social services, a big
one is just mental health services, mental health including substance use,
because so often the response is, oh, there's someone who's

(37:45):
talking to themselves on the subway platform, let's call the police.
And we've all seen the worst case scenarios of what
happens when then the police end up killing someone for
that person pushes somebody exactly exactly, and and things just
get elevated quickly. And so there's not a lot of
options for people who have mental illness to get treatment,
to have the support, to have housing. So mental illness

(38:06):
comes to mind, drug treatment, making sure that's available, and
just getting police out of schools. New York recently raised
the age we used to have one of the lowest
ages when someone could be charged with a crime. And
so as an adult, yeah, so I would represent like
sixteen year olds who got into fights in high school.
I mean just fist fights. I'm not talking about anything

(38:27):
that I didn't see in my all white high school
where the principles of the school used to take care
of exactly exactly, or parents or communities. And then the
police would come and then they've got and with two
people are assaulting one person, more than one persons of
all to becomes a felony. It's a violent felony. All
this stuff. So just getting police out of schools, having
letting schools focus on education, I think there would be

(38:48):
my two big things. But I find it interesting is
this idea that we've increased criminal penalties in order to
monetize a system and for people to make money, you know,
mandatory sentences. I mean I am a huge opponent of
mandatory sentences. You elect judges, they're appointed by people were
supposed to accept these appointments and these election results for

(39:11):
people who have tremendous power, and then we say you
can't use your judgment. Here's your mandatory sentencing guideline. What
is your opinion of mandatory I think they're horrible. They
handcuffed judges, and like you said, each case is unique,
in each individual is unique. And to say that this
idea that somehow someone is going to learn a lesson
after seven years that they won't learn after five years,
and certainly wouldn't learn after three years, like, it's absurd

(39:35):
to me and it just doesn't make any sense. I
think we've gotten more draconian in terms of the idea
of rehabilitation and what we do with these people once
they put away has become like a distant second. It's
not even on them the charts rer abilitation. Do you agree? Yeah? Absolutely,
And I think you know, funds are being cut for that.
There used to be pell grants so that people in
prison could go to college and take college courses well

(39:56):
in prison, and that was found to reduce recidivism, but
that was cut. One of my pet peeves is what
we call the capaganda police shows right the law and
order and c s I and all those spinoffs that
just show crime as being done by a very bad
scheming person who can't be rehabilitated and doesn't again doesn't
tell the complexity of a of a story. And also

(40:19):
the majority of people we represent, the majority of cases
are misdemeanors. There's non violent felonies. There's even cases that
sound like violent crimes. The man who was taking the
hats off of people, you know, on the Coney Island
subways fifty years ago, that could have been maybe charged
even as a robbery in the second degree if he

(40:39):
was doing that with friends. Again, sounds like a violent
cry in these marauding youth. But when you take a
step back and hear the stories and get the context,
it's never that sort of CSI villain. It's never so contrary.
So you've been at this for a while, you've been
at this sphere over fifteen years. What's the new crop
of lawyers? Like, how are they different from you? Are they? Yes?

(40:59):
What's wonder full about them is again, I, you know,
keep coming back to these racial justice issues. But I
read the New Gym Crow after I was a public defender.
Then we started interviewing people who read The New Gym
Crow in law school. Then we started interviewing people who
read the New Gym Crow in college and were inspired
by it. Now we're interviewing people who read the New
Gym Crow in high school, were inspired by that, knew

(41:19):
they wanted to be a public defender. So they took
whatever classes in college and interviews and or internships in
college that could get them on a path to doing
criminal law. Went to law school knowing they wanted to
be a public defender. Like these are people who are
supremely dedicated to the job and have thought about it
for many years. So already they are coming with this

(41:39):
this understanding of the systemic problems of the criminal legal system.
They're not just motivated by you know, upholding the Constitution
and the right to counsel and the six Amendment, but
by a very deep drive for justice, not just for
our clients, but in the entire system. And so it's
become incredibly competitive to be a public defender. Like we

(42:00):
thousands of resumes. We are turned down people who go
to top law schools because they don't have what we're
looking for. That drive to try creases the ability to
relate to clients. It is one of the most competitive
jobs you can get after law school. It's amazing to me.
And yeah, I wish I wanted to get that message
out there because like Columbia, I went to Columbia, so

(42:21):
their their office will often reach out to me and say, hey,
we've got a great crop of five people who want
to be public defenders this year. You know, they'll interview
with my office. Um, they stay connected with you, they
stay connected, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, it doesn't
guarantee a job in my office. And as I told
my stunt applicants, oh yeah, and and you know, the

(42:41):
the year that we interviewed several people from Columbia, I
think there was just one that we hired and the
others they've landed in other places around the country. But yeah,
it's it's very difficult. As I say to my my boss,
whenever we do the hiring process, I feel like it's
like drowning puppies. You know, we can't keep all the
puppies in the litter. So but they're incredibly smart, bright, talented,
dedicated people. When you speak about your career and the

(43:04):
work you do, and you're obviously so heartfelt and you're
so dedicated this work, and I'm so impressed that there's
people like you in this world of public defending who
really care on this level. I have this silly image
of you sitting there having lunch with a friend of
yours who went to Columbia and she's had a big
litigating firm, and she's got, you know, the thirty thou

(43:24):
dollar wristwatch and the hand Like there's a whole world
you could have had that you have forsaken in order
to do this kind of work. Do you ever have
any regrets? No, not, not for a second. You talked
about New York and challenges of working in New York City,
and one is that you are next to so much wealth, right,
You're a proximate to so much wealth. A lot of

(43:44):
our new attorneys have roommates. If they started a big
law firm, you know, they could practically buy a house
with their summer bonus. But the work is meaningful, it's rewarding,
it's fun, and at the end of the day, one
of the beautiful things of being a public defender is
you have a lot of autonomy and sting of your
own schedule as far as you know, you have to
be incorded at a certain time, and you have to
make sure you make time to meet with clients. But

(44:06):
then that your time is your own. You don't answer
to a partner in a law firm who calls you
on Friday night and says, okay, cancel your money. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And so my husband loves to cook, and you know,
I've said I would love to be able to buy
you a huge house with a huge kitchen, but your lawyer,
but then we'd never be able to eat in it, right,
And then I'd never get to eat your cooking. So

(44:27):
I'd rather eat your cooking in our humble kitchen. Attorney,
We're not a lun If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow here's the thing
on the I Heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you
get your podcasts. When we come back, We're not a
Lune gives her take on rising crime rates in New

(44:48):
York and how those statistics are misleading. I'm Alec Baldwin,
and you're listening to Here's the thing. I originally spoke
with Renato Lun of New York County Defender Services in

(45:12):
June of two thousand twenty one, when COVID held a
strong grip on the court system. I decided to have
Lun back to get an update on her work since
the city's reopening. Another development since we last spoke was
the swearing in of Mayor Eric Adams on January one,
two thousand twenty two. Adams has inherited an increasingly problematic

(45:36):
Riker's Island Correctional facility. It's a constant storm of violence, disorder,
and staff absenteeism, with inmates going without food or medical care,
and where seventeen people have died this year. While candidate
Adams campaigned to close the facility, Mayor Adams wants to

(45:56):
transition to Plan B and find an alternative to shuttering
the jail. I wanted to know Lung's take on New
York City's new mayor and the moves he's made since
entering office. Disappointing. It's disappointing to hear someone say that
he wants to bring back solitary. It was disappointing that
he did not keep on Vince Giraldi, who was really

(46:18):
trying his best as Commissioner of Corrections. You know, Rikers
is still in crisis, and it's not getting towards that.
It is a virtually intractable problem. You know, I I've
been thinking about this how Rikers is just there are
no adjectives right, inhumane, tortuous, city owned for those who

(46:40):
don't know New York. Yeah, and since around the time
of COVID, since we last spoke, a lot of Corrections
officers call out sick. They have unlimited sick time. There's
sort of no consequences for calling out sick, which is
awful for our clients because if there's not enough staff
and Rikers, they aren't protected. But they also don't filled

(47:00):
by the inmates right, right, So we have clients answering
the phones, escorting each other to places, often locked in
because they can't be escorted to a council visit, can't
be escorted to medical can't be escorted to get their
medic medications or for a checkup or two for visits
to see family. So they're locked in because there just
aren't enough officers to escort them. So it's awful from

(47:21):
our client's perspective, Also from a lawyer's perspective, because it's
difficult for us to communicate with our clients. Our clients
are often not even produced a court. But also from
the CEO's perspective, if you know, going to work on
a Friday morning means that there's a good chance the
person is supposed to relieve you isn't going to show
up because they're going to call out sick. And you
know there's a good chance you're gonna be asked to
work a double or maybe a triple. Well, then maybe

(47:42):
you call out sick because you don't have the child
care for Friday aftern't But why does I mean again,
I don't assume you know the answer questions. No, But
when you when you look at rikers and you hear
the stories, I think most people, including myself, who I
can have this jauntest view of that system as anybody,
But I look and I think that the stories I hear,
I think to myself, that can't be true. Yeah, that

(48:03):
can't be true that you have a facility right off
the coast of It's not like this place is up
in upstate New York in the middle of the farm
country out of view. Who is responsible for the fact
that Rikers is this like Hall of Mirrors, It's something
out of a Ryan Murphy streaming series, Like how did
it be? Who's responsible for the maintenance of Rikers and
its staff? Yeah? And why has it been allowed to

(48:24):
deteriorate to this degree? And I think you say that
it's not in the middle of nowhere upstate, but like
I went upstate apple picking last weekend. There's more people.
It's easier to get up state and go apple picking
or whatever for for most people than to cross that bridge,
go through all the levels of security and see the
conditions on that island. Do they have very strict rules
about the media coming to examine that place? You know,
I don't know what the media rules are. I know

(48:45):
that elected officials have done some visits, but even you know,
when they're trying to pretty it up for elected officials,
I'm sure you read the reports like people were attempting
suicide in front of the city council members who were
touring Rikers last fall. All I know is that we
need to see a proposal which shuts down Rikers and
those people are moved somewhere. And to the extent you
can accommodate the access to council and the access to family,

(49:06):
thing you do. But in words, I don't think access
to council and access to family demands that they stay
somewhere where they're going to die now, and so I
think the plan and the guards are useless. I'm not
a hundred percent up to date on the plan during
the de Blasi administration, but there was a plan to
close Rikers and revamp some of the borough based facilities.
Like there already is the Manhattan Correctional Center MCC, there's

(49:30):
one in Brooklyn, Brooklyn House of Detention, there's one in Queens.
Like to make sure that there are facilities that are
state of the art near all the all the courthouses,
one in each borough, so that families can visit, attorneys
can visit. So COVID has at least what you read
in the paper has receded significantly. I still look at
my app and see that there's forty four thousand deaths

(49:52):
so far this year. We've crossed over to I think
it's one point zero six one million, six hundred thousand
people dead nationally, but COVID it is less of an
issue than it is and people are back to normal
life comparatively speaking pretty well. Do you find that in
your work that that's that's impacting your work as well
as the recession of the receding of COVID beneficial Yes,
trials are back up and happening. Our office just completed

(50:15):
one yesterday, gotten a full acquittal. And what kind of
case can you say, um, assault, misdemeanor assault. Even this spring,
people were wearing shields or witnesses were wearing shields when
they testified. Jurors were socially distance. But now jurors are
sitting back in the jury box, witnesses aren't wearing masks.
So that's good. That feels back to normal. There's still
the backlog, and like I said, there's still the crisis

(50:37):
at Wrikers, which and you know, sixteen deaths this year
that ways. And then in addition to that, you know,
I think public defender offices around the country sort of
reckoned with the great resignation I have here. It says,
it says that The Times reported that hundreds of staff
worst have left NYCPD organizations over low pay. In the

(50:58):
last year. The Legal Aids is A lost ten percent
of its staff, or about two people over the past
twelve months. Brooklyn Defenders Services has lost forty attorneys or
percent of its staff, and the New York County Defenders
Services has lost thirty attorneys or of its staff. And
what I'm wondering is the ones that are staying and

(51:19):
they're all pretty much underpaid. The ones who stay, why
do they stay? Why don't they quit? It is still
the best job in the world. Like it's intellectually engaging,
like law and criminal law. You get to make arguments
as intellectually stimulating, you get to be and then you
get to be creative. You get to be creative in
your reason and logic and making creative arguments. You get

(51:39):
to be creative. And how you present information, whether it's
mitigating information to a prosecutor. You know, we write pre
pleading memos. Sometimes we even record videos or show pictures
to the prosecutors or to the judges to try to
get better plea deals. And of course you know trial
is you know, like a theater show, right you're telling
a story, you're presenting information for suasively, you're thinking about

(52:01):
how you're coming across to a jury and all that,
and you get to help people to like what more
could you ask for? Every once in a while, I'll
peruse you know, I wanted ads thinking am I ready
for a career change? And I just can't find anything
that's that's as good and as meaningful and it's fun.
Now crime rates are up according to the NYPD, shootings

(52:21):
are down, but overall crime is up from just a
year ago, and the media has titled us to bail
reform and lenient sentencing and policies. What are your thoughts
about that. I mean, we're still the safest big city
in the country statewide. I think crime levels are down
to pre pandemic levels. And one of the biggest drivers
of crime is police arrests. So if police make a

(52:43):
lot of arrest it looks like crime is up. And
so if they're stopping and arresting people for smoking K
two or giving out lots of summons is for that
or summons is for driving the suspended license, they can
say that arrests are up. It doesn't necessarily mean that
that crime is up. So it's been really disappointing to
see the media get behind and not question the police

(53:04):
and the police unions, and unfortunately the mayor getting behind
it to whenever they say that reform and criminal legal
in our criminal legal system, in our criminal justice policy
is causing crime rates, because if you look nationwide, you
know there was a spike and crime post COVID in
cities with conservative district attorneys and in cities with reform
district attorneys, and that was just sort of universal. And

(53:27):
they're making bail a punching bag in a way that
I don't think it's accurate or fair. So, in the
city instituted its bail reform and you had about a
year of data before the pandemic hit, what did you
see in terms of how bail reform worked differently. Actually,
the bail laws were passed in tween, they didn't go

(53:50):
into effect until January one, the pandemic hits. I think
everything started the course started closing down March, so we
only had two and a half months of bail reform,
and what we saw was that people were reunited with
their families, that people could fight their cases, that we
didn't have so many people taking jail sentences, people getting
the help they needed, or people being able to get

(54:11):
acquittals or lesser. Please let me actually give an example
to to clarify that. So when I was practicing as
aligned public defender, I do training now. So when I
had my own full caseload ten years ago, you would
have people who are arrested for jumping a turnstile and
this demeanor, possession of drugs, whatever, bill would be set
because maybe they were a repeat offender, they were homeless,

(54:33):
they didn't have a job, they didn't show up to
their last courtate bill would be said at five hundred dollars.
They couldn't pay five hundred dollars. The case would be
a journ for five days. Five days later, a judge
would say, look, i'll give him time served. I'll give
him a ten day sentence, and then the client, you know,
regardless of the merits of fighting the case, would say, look,
I'd like to get out today. So we'd have a
lot of people taking these ten day sentences, fifteen day

(54:53):
sentences just to get out. With bail reform, those people
are now released and we can get them into a
rug treatment program. We can help our social workers in
our office can help get them jobs. There's a lot
of city money and city agencies that are also working
to provide alternatives incarceration. So instead on that next court date,
we're saying, okay, we'll reduce the charge of something non

(55:14):
criminal and the client is now doing, you know, a
drug treatment program. So with bail reform, we're seeing fewer
criminal convictions, fewer people in jail, and as we talked about,
in jail is a pretty rotten place right now, tortuous place,
and more people reunited with their families. Now obviously in
a city that has a significant perception of people and

(55:36):
many of them voters who are swayed by you know,
questionable sources of media, and they see the demonization of
the bail reform thing. What do you think is the
public relations key that has to be turned for people
to understand why bail reform is in their interests, the
interest of the general public. The lawyer brain and me

(55:56):
wants to say, well, maybe we can just provide some
more data. Maybe we can just show people that, you know,
we're saving money by not putting people, were not incarcerating people.
Maybe we can show people that the vast, vast majority
of people are not re arrested, like over of the
people who are released under bail reform and not re
arrested a huge factor, right, But I know that data,
it's not how we make decision, right. I mean, I

(56:18):
know we have calorie charts on our menus now in
New York City, But my stomach says exactly right. So
I think, you know, it's up to us public defenders
to do the work of telling our clients stories and
talking about the individual people and the individual lives that
are that are changed because of bail reform and trying

(56:39):
to get people to to latch onto that. Just as
we see Maryland Wanda laws being thrown out the window,
just being completely vacated, which is which is fine, That
doesn't bother me on any level. But other what other
laws would you like to see reformed that you think
would make a real impact on the work you do.
What are laws that you think or just need to
be we visited and changed. I think there's been an

(57:02):
emphasis on decriminalization of a lot of petty crimes like drugs,
So I would say drug possession for personal use, just
all of that should be decriminalized, um completely. Yeah, And
I think there has been like against marijuana completely almost
completely in New York now almost when you're training people
for the work you're doing, what's the one thing you

(57:23):
want to make sure they understand about the job. What
do you hope they really really understand that it's not
about you, it's about your client. That it's really I
say that, and we we started off by talking about
what makes people stay. And one thing I wanted to
address is that, you know, what makes people stay is
also creating, hopefully an atmosphere where people feel supported and

(57:43):
people feel like they can take care of themselves. There's
a lot of discussion about wellness around our country, and
definitely public defender offices to you know, our office, we
don't send emails after five. We encourage people to take
their vacation time, like actively say, don't check email on vacation.
We will be you know. So I say all that,
but then I also say, it's about your client, right,
It's not about your ego, It's about what's right for

(58:05):
your client. And I balancing that with that doesn't mean
you lose yourself entirely, but whatever happens, it's your client's
decision and understanding where our clients are coming from having
empathy with them and knowing that when you work hard
it is there's a real human life at stake, and
so it really deserves your best effort. Thank you so

(58:25):
much for doing this, Oh thank you. My thanks to
Attorneys Are Not a lun and Susan Church for their
tireless efforts helping the less fortunate every day. This episode
was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're
produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our

(58:49):
engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
I'm at like Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to
you by my Heart Radio five Think All of the Game.
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