October 15, 2024 • 58 mins
Paulette Pagán, a career criminal defense attorney and current partner at Price Benowitz LLP, shares her passion for justice and a remarkable track record of success. From her early days as a Public Defender in St. Louis County, where she secured a complete dismissal of first degree murder charges for her innocent client during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, to her current practice in Washington, D.C., Paulette’s commitment to her clients is unwavering.
She shares stories from her time serving the indigent community, her experiences as with opposing parties, and how her Puerto Rican heritage influences her bilingual work. Beyond her legal expertise, Paulette’s heart for giving back shines through in her role on the Board of Directors for My Little Patient, Inc., and her volunteer work in rural Kenya. Tune in to hear Paulette’s inspiring journey and insights into the world of criminal defense.
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Guest Info:
Paulette Pagán, Price Benowitz LLP
Partner, Criminal Defense and White Collar Attorney
Website: https://pricebenowitz.com/our-team/paulette-m-pagan/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And
(00:28):
we're back with the advocate next door.
And today we have a special guest.
My name is Kelby Balena.
And today we are here with.
Welcome back everybody.
I'm Margarita Rango.
Today we're here with a special guest, Paulette Bagan.
And Paulette is in the criminal law sector.
(00:51):
And you are a partner at Price Binowitz.
Yes, that's right.
And that's a firm in DC.
Yes.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being here.
It's my pleasure.
I got to meet you initially on TikTok.
I think at some point I had seen you speak at a Hispanic bar event.
So now I'm seeing you on TikTok was great because I got to get to know a little bit
(01:13):
more about you.
And I think that's the power of TikTok.
I had seen you hovering outside a prison to get admitted so that you could meet with
your client.
How did you make it to DC?
Because it sounds like at least from your LinkedIn profile, you were in Florida.
Your background is also Puerto Rican.
Yes, yes, yes.
I'm originally from Florida.
My parents are from Puerto Rico.
(01:33):
They moved to the States a year before I was born.
So I grew up in the central Florida, Orlando region.
Right now I primarily practice in federal court, federal criminal defense.
And my cases range from anything from very high complex drugs and guns to very high complex
white collar bribery, major fraud, government contracting.
(01:55):
So I have the white collar sector of criminal defense, as they call it, as well as the street
crime sectors as what we call it as lawyers, white collar versus street crime.
What do you practice?
So I practice both.
So I have a wide range.
And before I came to DC, I was a public defender in St. Louis for about four years.
(02:16):
So those are the lawyers that are assigned by the government to someone who cannot afford
their own attorney.
And I love that job.
I was able to help so many people and I was thrown into a wide range of different social,
economical, as well as legal issues that were fascinating.
And so from there, I came to DC.
(02:38):
I worked at a firm before arriving at Price Benowitz.
And I've been at Price Benowitz for about two years now.
So that's that's fascinating how you're kind of all over the map and you're getting gaining
experience all over.
But going from Puerto Rico to you said you you mainly studied initially in Florida.
Yes.
(02:58):
So my undergraduate degree is University of Central Florida.
And then I went to Boston for law school at Suffolk University Law School.
But when growing up, my family was split between the island and Florida.
So I would go back and forth.
But I would go to school in the states.
And then I would visit family in Puerto Rico from time to time and stay a couple of weeks
down there and then come back and forth.
(03:19):
So I think my first flight to Puerto Rico was on a six month.
That's amazing.
Yeah, they're like, all right, we're ready to go.
But my sister was born in Puerto Rico.
I was just kind of here in the states and then we would go back and forth.
And from there, then you decided to work in Missouri.
Yeah.
So it was really interesting.
The like, did they poach you or did you end up like it's actually was that a target?
(03:42):
So I went to law school in Boston and I had every intention of being a prosecutor.
I did everything.
Yes, everything that one could do.
I interned at the homicide unit.
I interned with two judges.
I got my license to practice as a third year underneath another attorney.
(04:02):
Since the beginning, you knew that you wanted to be.
I thought I was going to be a prosecutor.
I thought I was going to be a prosecutor.
I wanted to be in the courtroom.
This is amazing.
I wanted to help people.
This was what I was going to do.
But like, no offense.
It seems like a scary profession to get into.
Is there some kind of motivation there?
(04:22):
Before law school, I went to a seminar at the University of Central Florida and there
was two credits.
You go for three days and you get two credits.
You're like, okay, cool.
Awesome.
Checked on, like, let's move on kind of thing.
And they had a lot of speakers from just different government departments and they had a DEA
agent and a USA come in and they just spoke a little bit about the work that they did.
(04:46):
And I was kind of interested in law school.
I was a polysci major.
So, you know, it just made sense.
And I was like, oh, these people are really helping people.
Like, this is really great.
No one in my family was ever a lawyer.
I knew nothing about law school.
I didn't know how to apply.
I didn't know.
So you were a first generation lawyer.
First generation.
Like, I kid you not.
I didn't even know what to expect.
(05:07):
I didn't know what law school looked like.
So how did you get to be a lawyer?
When did you decide that you wanted to be a lawyer?
So it was that seminar where I was like, oh, I can really help people.
And then if I went to law school, then I could have a lawyer in the family that if my family
needed anything or any advice on any kind of realm, right, whether it be whatever it
is, I didn't know.
(05:27):
But we could have someone that could really help my family and help just people in general.
And then the aspect of my community in terms of Spanish speakers came into play, right,
that there's not many Spanish speaking lawyers in general, let alone ones that can really
help at an everyday level.
So I said, OK, let's go to law school.
(05:47):
And so I went to law school and it was definitely coming of age.
It was definitely a growing up moment for me because I was in Florida and in the South
and everybody wants everybody to do well and everyone is sunshine state.
And you know, I'm with my family.
We're all we're all eating all the time.
And it was great.
And you get thrown into Boston of all places.
(06:09):
I'm going to go to a school where I get on a train and I see snow and I'm going to be
in a big city.
Right.
And I get to Boston.
I'm like, whoa, these people are intense.
There are a lot of people.
We're like, oh, OK, all right.
We're in law school now.
This is, you know, this is real life.
Right.
I'm like, whoa.
And so, yes, it was just very much for me, since I didn't know any lawyers, I didn't
(06:30):
know anyone at law school.
I had to find out for myself what it was.
Right.
And I had to go and ask those questions that many people that had parents that were lawyers
had known since they were in middle school.
Right.
I had to go and talk to lawyers.
What does your job look like?
What do you do?
What do you I didn't know.
I didn't know what it was to be a lawyer.
I didn't know what kind of law I wanted to practice.
(06:51):
So I was asking everyone.
And then I got an internship the summer after my first year law school.
He's now your law school year.
You get all the general classes.
So again, you still don't really have an idea of what you want to do.
At least I didn't.
And then I went to this internship at a misdemeanor criminal court judge and he was a former prosecutor.
(07:11):
And I'm in court.
I'm watching all of these lawyers running around in and out and they're making arguments
and they're representing their clients and they're really fighting for this.
And I'm like, wow, like I got sucked in.
This is my jam.
Like I can thrive here.
These are my people.
And talking with the judge, he was a former prosecutor and I really wanted to help people
over.
(07:31):
This is a way that I could help people.
There was one instance where there was a family of Spanish speakers sitting outside of the
courtroom.
They didn't know what was going on.
They didn't know who to talk to.
And so one of the other members of the courthouse asked if I could help.
So I said, okay.
And so they were, I was interpreting for them as to...
(07:52):
Because there's not a lot of interpreters.
There wasn't.
There's like a lack of staff and support and resources.
Correct.
I mean, there was no Spanish speaking lawyers.
There's maybe one interpreter and they're having to cover a whole court, a courthouse.
So I was able to explain where they were looking for a certain courtroom.
That was this issue.
(08:13):
And so I was able to direct them where they needed to be directed.
And you can just see this relief in their face to say, okay, like my questions are answered.
I can relate to someone.
They can understand my issue.
They can direct me to where I need to go.
And that's when I really realized, oh wow, this second language or language that I grew
up with can really help your everyday person in the way that I am in this job.
(08:36):
And so I said, okay, this is what I want to do.
I want to be a prosecutor.
And I kind of went that route throughout all law school.
But you started in public defense.
Right.
And then you're like, I'm going to switch sides and I'm going to be a prosecutor.
And at that point, does that feel like it's a little scary because you're now facing,
you're prosecuting people?
I'm sure you're getting threats here and there or...
(08:58):
So my third year of law school, I was a student lawyer where you can practice underneath another
bar license.
And so I was working with the misdemeanor courthouse in Boston in Dorchester and I prosecuted
aces of some DUI cases that I was able to prosecute, get the experience of trial and
whatnot.
And then after that, I realized I didn't want to stay in Boston.
(09:21):
I went back to Florida, took the bar, kind of just decide what I want to do.
And I was working with the criminal defense attorney at that time remotely.
And because I had the experience with the prosecutor's office, I thought, okay, I'll
still be in the realm of criminal defense.
It'll be more marketable that I have both sides.
I'll get a little bit of a better perspective as to the defense side of these cases to really
(09:44):
help me in my ultimate goal of being a prosecutor.
Right.
So I thought I had it all planned out.
I thought I knew what I knew and I was good to go.
And then I had a case with this criminal defense attorney and it was a case of a 19 year old
kid.
He just happened to be standing on the street at midnight and being black.
(10:07):
And so the officers arrest him.
They claim he was doing some kind of drug deal or whatnot.
He had a neck brace on because he had been in an accident recently.
And so we get footage from the discovery process of the cell and the camera inside the cell.
And he's by himself and he has, he's handcuffed.
(10:27):
He has his neck brace on and six officers come in, male and female, and they uncuff
him, pin him down, arms, legs, put a knee in the neck, rip off his pants, rip off his
underwear, spread him open and then magically find narcotics on him.
Okay.
(10:48):
And it disturbed me beyond words of what I was watching and what I was seeing.
I would be disturbed just to hearing that.
Yes.
No.
That's crazy.
And there was men and women and there's just so many laws about just having women in cells
when you're just robing someone.
I mean, you have to have a warrant to go inside someone.
I mean, there was just, you have to doctor there.
(11:09):
There's just so many things that disturbed me that I go to the prosecutor on this case
because I was working with this other attorney and so we kind of were all corresponding
together.
I was technically a law clerk at the time and I was telling the attorney I was working
with him, like, this is not okay.
We have to get dismissed.
And the prosecutor at that point was saying, well, you know, my supervisor isn't really
letting me make any decisions on this and kind of pushing it back all while Klein is
(11:34):
still incarcerated.
And that's kind of where it was a turning point to me where I said, wow, you know, the
whole point of this job was to really help people.
And what I'm seeing right now is because a supervisor can't really make a decision on
this, that this kid who's wrongfully arrested and really just taken so much advantage of
(11:59):
and had all those things happen to him is still incarcerated right now.
I can't do that job.
I could not get up there and stand there as a prosecutor and say this is okay.
Right.
And that's really what shifted me into the public defense role because immediately I
then go and apply to public defender offices and say, you know what, the whole point is
to help people.
(12:19):
I can help people on a direct basis this way and make sure that the constitution is being
upheld, that their rights are being upheld, that they're not getting taken advantage of.
They're not getting arrested simply because of the color of their skin and they're not
getting overlooked just because of the color of their skin and ignored because of that.
And so I immediately started applying to public defender's offices that did have a record
(12:43):
of a high caseload volume, high crime rates, disproportional arrest rates to that extent.
And so St. Louis came up came on as one of the lists that I was looking into and it happened
very fast.
It was just an interview and a call and then boom, I was like, let's go.
And so that's where I went.
I'm just curious because I've never been to law school.
(13:04):
Do they teach you this kind of stuff about procedure?
Do they show you these kinds of videos?
No, not when I was in law school.
So someone who doesn't have actual experience or doing an internship, clerkship, they might
not have that access.
They might have no idea that they're needed.
Right.
And you can, I mean, you could, you can learn from a book as to this case was overturned
(13:27):
because of these procedural issues in terms of a search and seizure was illegal or a confession
was illegal, right?
But you don't get the actual humanity aspect of it.
You don't, you'll never really understand that unless you're watching it or you're
in front of that client or you're going through it or you're questioning an officer.
You know, I had, I had a hearing where I was cross-examining an officer because he failed
(13:51):
to read the Miranda rights and they wanted to use my client's statement in a trial.
And I was cross-examining him and I said, you asked just this very general question.
He's like, yes.
And I said, you asked that because you didn't want him to get a lawyer.
And he said, yes.
It would have hurt your case if he talks to a lawyer.
Yes.
So it was better for you and it was easier for you to arrest him if he didn't talk to
(14:13):
a lawyer.
Yes.
Those are situations in which unless I'm cross-examining an officer and I'm asking that directly, you're
not going to have that experience.
You're not going to know that's what's actually happening on a day to day basis.
And so that's why it was so important for me when I was in law school to capitalize
on all of the opportunities that were there when it was a networking event or when it
(14:36):
was a internship application or when it was any kind of seminar or whatever the case may
be.
I wanted to see everything and hear everything because I didn't know anything and I didn't
know any lawyers.
I didn't know what it was like.
I remember my first year of law school, like, well, maybe I want to be a business lawyer.
My whole idea is to help people.
It's a nice idea to help somebody start a business and they get to employ people that
(15:00):
sounds like really awesome.
That sounds like I could help people.
And then I talked to a business lawyer and it was just a little too slow pace for me.
I realized I needed a little bit more action.
And I can't help.
I'm just hearing your story.
I can't help to think how many times has someone been illegally searched before and then after
that person that you saw.
And so it just makes you think like, I really need to get in there.
(15:24):
Right.
And you know, and there's, I mean, there's so many other aspects to it in terms of criminal
defense and especially when you're talking about public defenders and their clientele
because those are the ones that are most taken advantage of.
But you see a lot of those instances and especially now, thankfully we have body camera footage
on many law enforcement officers to help assist in preventing from preventing that.
(15:48):
But there's still so many departments that don't have body camera footage.
So Lord knows what's happening other than whatever the law enforcement officer is reporting.
And I think that instant when I was able to see it from the opposite side really opened
my eyes because otherwise I would have been working with this other group and this prosecutor
and with these law enforcement officers really taking that to bat and really holding that
(16:13):
as the truth of the matter as opposed to having the opposite perspective.
How much do stereotypes influence criminal procedure?
Oh, substantial amount.
Substantial amount.
There's a lot of implicit bias in the criminal sector.
I mean, this is why you have such high percentage of people of color incarcerated and yet they're
(16:33):
the minority of the population, right?
You know, the majority of those incarcerated are people of color, but yet they make up
the minority of the United States.
How do you think that we should fight stereotypes?
Is that something that we should be doing?
How can we help?
Yeah, I think how can we help as an everyday person, right?
And this is something that you see a lot.
(16:54):
You see calls in to 911.
Someone is suspicious.
Someone seems suspicious.
They're not suspicious.
They're just a person of color walking with maybe a hood on or there's two people of color
walking together down the street.
Maybe it's a street that one person particularly feels like that person of color shouldn't
be on or why would they have access to the street, right?
(17:18):
It's all of these implicit biases and these are these stereotypes that media has a lot
to do with influencing.
But just because somebody is walking down the street, it doesn't mean that they're
committing a crime, right?
And I think that's really hard is when people start to then call 911, start to bring the
law enforcement officers to these situations in which are not at all anything criminal
(17:43):
or anything dangerous.
Then turns into a situation where you get potential really bad actions.
This doesn't end up being just an issue with people calling the cops.
There are police officers that respond and actually want to take care of something.
They should be able to say to somebody like, no, they're just walking down the street.
There's nothing here.
There's no probable cause.
There's nothing to, but yet they'll still engage, maybe pick at and see what they can
(18:09):
get out of it.
Right, right.
And a lot of it, it's some of these other counties where they're more affluent counties
that don't necessarily have a day to day interaction with officers that then those officers take
a situation and then exaggerate that situation because they don't have an everyday understanding
of what it's like.
(18:30):
It's just a very complex and very different levels to this issue.
The way that I see it and from my experience working with a lot of experts in terms of
doctors, reviewing, assessing my clients and things of that nature.
When it comes to violent crime, the experts that I've talked to, a lot of them have
the opinion that violent crime later on in life, a lot of the common denominator between
(18:54):
those individuals that conduct those kinds of violent crime have some form of neglect
as a child or some form of abuse as a child.
So I'm in the position that's more education, more attention, nutrition, all of those things
at a very, very young age will prevent these things.
And we live in a society where we are reactive instead of proactive.
(19:18):
And that is where we have really dangerous situations and deaths that are so unfortunate
and could have been avoided from the beginning.
I remember when I was a kid and I was in the supermarket with my mother.
And at one point I get pulled, I think I was probably maybe 11 or 12.
(19:39):
I get pulled aside and the manager of the store comes up to me and again, I'm by myself.
My mother's on a different aisle and he asks if he can get my help translate.
And I'm like, oh sure.
And he'll give me free ice cream.
So I was excited.
I was like, he'll give me free ice cream.
I can help him translate.
So he takes me in the back of the room, down these stairs or something like that.
(20:02):
And here are two Latinos.
And he wants me to translate that he believes that they shoplifted.
He never wants to see these guys in the store.
Basically accusing them of shoplifting.
And I'm translating as a kid.
And I realized like now thinking about it, I'm like one, that was not a great opportunity
(20:23):
for me to learn my lesson.
So inappropriate.
Right.
But I guess it was the 90s.
But at the same time, it was only like a week later where I saw these guys and they were
in the pool, the community pool.
And I was a little bit afraid because I didn't know if they were actual shoplifters or anything.
But this was the impression I got from this store, from the treatment of these guys, whether
(20:49):
they had done it or they had not done it or anything like that.
But that was the impression I got.
And I can see now many years later that impressions can last a very, very long time.
What you hear in the news, what you don't know, you don't get to know people and you
don't get to hear their side of the story.
(21:09):
For all I know that store probably didn't care whether they did it or not.
They just wanted them out.
I got my free ice cream funny enough.
My mom was like wondering where the hell did I go?
And it makes me realize that not only do impressions last, but our resources are incredibly limited.
So your ability to speak Spanish, you know a little bit more of the community, the fact
(21:33):
that you've actually wanted to do this most of your life.
How do you, at the end of the day, not have to think about all these stories?
Because I was a little kid and it stayed with me.
If I'm going to see these guys, they're probably going to be mad at me because I helped the
store manager out.
Do you go home and you're just like, do you have a way to just relax, to de-stress, to
(21:56):
not think about these cases?
Because they're hard.
Well, I mean, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that at such a young age because
that's just such an inappropriate position to put a child in to begin with.
And that really does, like you say, affect long term.
And then you are certain certain impressions at such a young age can really define how
(22:17):
you look at situations, how you talk to people, how you interact with others.
And so for me, I think this is, and I'll answer your question in a second, but this is really
where I try to express as much as I can on TikTok and use these social media platforms
to then allow the real everyday life and the things that we've learned to be able to communicate
(22:41):
to the community in ways that I didn't have growing up and ways that a lot of us didn't
have to know, you know, what's the difference, what are our rights, instead of, you know,
just not knowing and then being put in a situation where ultimately could be dangerous for that
person.
But as far as how I go home and decompress, and it's a learning curve, right?
(23:03):
Like any job, I think a lot of us have really demanding jobs and very stressful jobs.
And so you get home and you can't stop thinking about work and then you can't stop thinking
about what you have to do the next day.
But I found a way in this, it came for many years of really allowing myself to say, you're
not going to be able to help these people in a really effective and zealous way if you're
(23:30):
not allowing yourself to really rest and take time for yourself.
Because ultimately I know myself, I need my seven, eight hours.
Otherwise it's not going to be a good day for anyone, right?
So you have to be at your best to do your best.
Because then what's the point, right?
You know, like what's the point of me really wanting to help people if I'm getting in there
(23:52):
and I'm doing, you know, 50% or I'm going in there and I'm not really paying attention
or I'm because I'm so tired or I crank out a memo at 1am knowing that's not my time or
I work best.
And then I look back at it and I have to redo it again.
Right?
So it's just kind of like what for me, it's not it's not beneficial for anyone.
And I've had to learn that.
(24:14):
Trust me, there have been nights, right?
And weekends.
And I had to learn that about myself.
And what I found is if I really give myself rest and I really allow myself to disconnect
for a little bit and I come back refreshed, then I'm able to do really great work.
And so, you know, I'll travel a lot.
That's like one thing that I like to do where I can separate myself from the work itself.
(24:34):
Granted, you know, emails come, phone calls come, but it is important to me to really
understand that if I don't take care of myself and how can I take care of my client?
Where do you travel?
Anywhere and anywhere.
Just to get away.
Yeah, I'm also I'm also on a board of a nonprofit called My Little Patient.
And we do medical services or just needs for underdeveloped communities worldwide.
(24:59):
And so last year we were able to go to Kenya and rural Kenya in about nine hours and car
outside of Nairobi.
And that was just such such a beautiful experience.
And I'm so grateful for it because I was able to disconnect from work and it was nothing
legal.
You know, I let all the medics do the medic thing and I got to be the person in the background
(25:22):
and I got to be the one running around and getting everyone everything while we were
able to help a lot of a lot of people in that community.
So opportunities like that to travel with with organizations that I'm a part of is just
fantastic.
So I really like to take those opportunities and then, you know, see family and things
like that is always nice just to take a week off and just reset everything.
(25:44):
You do get to understand that you need to be 100 percent because you actually end up
witnessing and I see this in big law, but you end up witnessing attorneys working at
50 percent.
You see them tired and exhausted.
And I remember at some point I was pulling dockets for my prosecutor and he didn't see
(26:04):
those dockets until maybe an hour before he went up.
And it's just impressive of just how much work is on their plate on the spot to and
on the spot.
Right.
Yeah.
So really in this area of law, you really have to be like on your game because you end
up seeing that a lot of attorneys, unfortunately, aren't on top of it and mistakes are made.
(26:27):
Yet people's lives are on the line.
Sure.
And granted, no one's perfect, right?
That's human nature.
But it's more so I know that I'm I have a client that I'm working for that that needs
me to be able to really defend them.
Right.
I'm reviewing negotiations.
I'm talking to my client, explaining to my client I have to interpret all of these legal
(26:49):
issues and an everyday basis to a client.
And then I might have to do that in Spanish.
So I have to then figure out what am I going to say?
What would I say in English about these issues and then do that in Spanish and then explain
the legal system of the United States and then explain how this works?
And so I have family members of my clients there that I might have to be able to explain
(27:10):
things to or to really address and and then also the legal aspect of things.
So there's a lot happening at any given point in time that if someone were to come in onto
this job and just say, OK, well, let's see what the day looks like and just go from there,
you know, it's it's a really disadvantage to the clients.
(27:31):
And this is a hard enough experience as it is to be a defendant in a case and scary enough
as it is for the family and for for them to not know what might happen next for for them
to then hire a lawyer who just is going to wing it.
Right.
Like, that's just not that is not acceptable by any means.
And so I I'm very conscious of that.
(27:52):
I'm very, very conscious of the fact that this is this is not an easy process and nobody
plans for one day their brother to get arrested.
Nobody plans to have an extra tens of thousands of dollars in their bank account for when
the police arrive.
You know, no one really plans for that.
And I'm mindful of that.
(28:12):
And that's so true.
Ninety percent of us don't have a criminal defense attorney, a phone book or card in
our in our ronodex or wallet, whatever it is.
Like we would probably just say, who can you recommend?
And who's out there, which is a great reason, I guess, that you're on Tick Tock, you're
on social media.
And that's I guess how they find you.
(28:33):
So it's really great that you're out there and hopefully people do find you.
And I'm sure at this point, I will definitely put you in my phone book.
Anything one day.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Hopefully nothing comes up.
Nothing comes up.
I really do enjoy being able to let people know like these are your constitutional rights.
This isn't just me thinking that this is something I should tell you.
(28:57):
No, these are your constitutional rights.
And whether you're a citizen or not, you have these rights when you're here.
And so it's really important for me to be able to communicate that because I mean, I
remember growing up and you have you had DARE coming in and you had your local police officers
coming in and they but here's the thing.
They do that.
But then you don't have your defense attorneys come in.
(29:20):
You don't have anyone you don't have any lawyers coming in and saying, OK, you have the right
not to talk to anyone.
Right.
You have the right to not open the door for these officers.
You have the right to call a lawyer no matter what they say.
It is legal for officers to lie to you.
(29:40):
That's the biggest thing that I had never I had never known that even at my age.
I had never known that they have the legal right to lie to you in order to get whatever
information they want.
One thousand percent.
I always thought like, oh, no, they're not allowed to lie to you or they're they're not
allowed to say they're not, I guess, a cop or something like everybody's just, oh, well,
you have to admit if you're a cop.
(30:01):
Yeah.
But but no, not true.
Not true.
Not true.
I always tell people not to talk to you because even it like and I've had so many clients
that are in situations in which they didn't do what the officers are knocking on the door
for, they didn't know what was happening.
And so they just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, because they didn't
do anything wrong and hopes to talk the way out of explaining it right.
(30:25):
Because it's like it's your natural reaction.
That's just human nature.
Right.
I didn't do anything.
Let me know.
I know I didn't do that.
Like I didn't do that.
Right.
And you want people to know that.
And so you just start chatting away.
And what happens is, is then they take what you're saying and then they manipulate it
and then they poke holes in it and then they say, well, they were talking a little too
much.
(30:46):
So that's why I always, you know, advise clients to it's you're just protecting yourself
and you're allowed to protect yourself.
But the minute you start talking, the minute they're going to go and investigate what you
say and poke holes in it and say, well, you know, he didn't say he wasn't there or, you
know, he didn't say so and so wasn't there or he left this part out or he wasn't completely
(31:07):
truthful or she didn't say this or she didn't say that.
But she said this.
And I'm like, come on, man, like that doesn't mean anything, but they can turn it into something.
And so that's why it's so important.
You know, I had I had a consult with a client, a high school senior going into college and
it's going to be on his own for the first time.
It's important for him to know his rights.
(31:27):
And so we spent an hour talking about all the things you can say no to.
We spent an hour talking about all the ways to protect yourself, spent an hour talking
about how to be careful at parties, things like that, where they don't know until you
talk to them.
And all they see is the really egregious things.
Well, what if they use force on me was one of his questions.
And it's so sad that an 18 year old first question when we're talking about law enforcement
(31:52):
is, well, they're going to use force on me if I don't talk to them.
That's an insane thing to have to think about as an 18 year old man.
To be fearing the police.
To be fearing the police.
This is why it's so important to be able to have these platforms that we do and that
I take responsibility in the job that I do to be able to tell the community that.
And a lot of our Spanish speaking clients are so terrified of either getting deported
(32:16):
or having to go to court or something along those lines that they think that they have
to talk to the officers and that they have to comply with the things that they're asking
them or to search their house or to search their car because then they might get separated
from their families.
And a cop might lie and tell them that.
And they do that all the time.
They do that all the time.
They lie about that.
(32:36):
They lie about threatening to call CPS, Child Protective Services on a woman who won't tell
her where their husband is.
I mean, or their boyfriend is.
I mean, it can get really nasty.
And the same thing goes with people who may be a witness to a crime.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
We'll charge you if you don't come in and we can charge you for this and we can charge
you for that.
(32:57):
So not just somebody who is charged with a crime or suspicious, but witnesses need to
also be careful.
That's why the system is not set up the way that ultimately people can really have confidence
in being able to call 911, right?
And it's really important for me to say, okay, maybe my client did do the things that happens
(33:21):
all the time.
My job is to make sure my client is represented in the best way possible, that his or her
or her constitutional rights are enforced to the ultimate extent and that we're able
to advise a client on all their rights.
And then from there, the client gets to make the decision on what they want to do.
(33:41):
But with my experience, I can give them advice to say, okay, maybe a trial would look like
this or a plea agreement would look like this or an outcome would look like this.
And these are things to take in consideration when you're making your decision.
But it has nothing to do with my personal beliefs and morals and what not.
And morality is making sure that my clients are being represented to the best ability.
(34:02):
And I think that's kind of where I even had those thoughts too.
I remember asking a lawyer, a defense lawyer in law school, well, how could you defend
a guilty person?
Right?
And I'm sure you get that all the time.
I even get that on TikTok as well.
Yeah, all the time, all the time.
And it has nothing to do with how can I?
I mean, I do it every day.
(34:23):
You know, it's it's more of really understanding that among my clients, people are people,
they're humans.
There's so many layers to people.
You know, there's mental health issues, there's educational issues, there's addiction issues,
there's abuse, there's so many other aspects to things that that make up a person that
(34:45):
it's not simply you're a bad guy, you're a bad girl, go to prison, get zero services
while you're in prison and then come out and you've learned your lesson.
One of the things, the ones that I get all the time is there are people who are born
criminals and they don't understand maybe the sociological aspect.
(35:06):
There are certain laws that sometimes that don't make sense, but also the police may
use tactics that may be unfair.
So there are a lot of times where it's not just that someone is born a criminal.
It has to do far.
It's far more complicated.
It can be sociological, political, economical, especially because you may find police in
(35:30):
certain areas more often than you will in other neighborhoods.
But in that sense, you work with an interdisciplinary team.
Because how do you handle the defense of someone that has psychological issues or something
like that?
For instance, I've had many clients who've been diagnosed with depression, bipolar,
schizophrenia, things of that nature.
(35:52):
The main concern for me is that these individuals get the services they need for their health.
So are we getting you back on medication?
Are we getting you into therapy?
And if those services, if the therapy isn't available, then at least let's get you back
on some medications.
And then I can hire certain doctors to come in as experts and they can come in, they can
(36:15):
evaluate the clients, say this is, you know, medically speaking, these are the services
that they would need.
They would need therapy once a week, twice a week, three times a week, inpatient treatment,
outpatient treatment, these medications, those kinds of things.
And then we really work on from there, how would we get the client to those services?
For instance, if it was a public defender's office, do we have any community-based resources
(36:38):
that would be able to address those concerns?
Or if it's a private client, does your insurance cover it?
Can we get your insurance, call your insurance company, let's see if we can get you into
this meeting or that meeting or this appointment or that appointment.
And then I take that once it's all really addressed and we have a plan in place, and
then that's when we discuss that with the prosecutor and bring that into the criminal
(37:02):
world, right?
That's when we start talking about, here's a resolution to this case.
This person is stealing, this person is stealing because they are high on heroin, because they
are unmedicated, because they have schizophrenia.
Okay, so maybe they won't be stealing, maybe they won't be stealing for their drug addiction
(37:23):
if we address the underlying issue here, which is the schizophrenia.
So let's get them the services that they need there, right?
Or this person had gotten into a car accident completely fine.
I had a client once when I was a public defender where it was one of the saddest cases.
She was a doctor, or she was a nurse, she was a nurse, she was an RN and she had four
(37:47):
children, bachelor's degree, just living her life.
And she was brutally, brutally attacked by four men to the point where she had to be
hospitalized, sexually and violently.
And so she started taking medication, she couldn't deal with the trauma.
She started getting hooked on the medication.
(38:07):
She loses her job, she loses her kids, she's living on the streets.
And then she's taking street drugs.
And I had her because she was on her, maybe her seventh, sixth or seventh felony at that
point.
She went into a sunglasses hut, took a pair of sunglasses off, turned around and walked
out.
Obviously, you know, that's somebody with a problem that's gonna, no one just goes and
(38:30):
takes a pair of sunglasses off and just walks out.
And we are trying to see how can we address this issue of the trauma that she needs treatment
for.
And all the while the prosecutors wanting jail time because of how many prior felonies
she's had.
And not looking at, you know, and she's like, well, your client has these many felonies
(38:51):
without having any understanding of who this person is, right?
Each person that comes into the system is an actual person with that with with a story
behind them and with a family behind them and with with potentially a lot of other other
issues going on.
And so it's just not fair to be able to say you have four felonies, you have four felonies,
go get locked up for 10 years and then come out and you're a new person.
(39:11):
And is it hard to change that speech?
Oh, yeah, we do it all the time.
I mean, we sit down, we have conversations and I'm not saying all prosecutors are not
going to listen to that.
I mean, there's there's there's a lot of prosecutors out there doing their job to really help the
community and really, really be able to work with us to address these issues.
And so, you know, they have a role in the society as well.
(39:34):
And they do work with me to that aspect.
And it's just a hard position for everyone when the system is set up this way to begin
with.
The main idea of a whole criminal system is ressocialization, you know, like to get the
person back into.
Right.
So the word correctional was correct this issue.
Right.
Exactly.
And it seems like systems and and sometimes even the people and they get so immersed in
(39:59):
what they're doing that they forget the main goal.
Once you have you have a stack of cases this high and you have, you know, it's low paying
and you have to figure out, you know, a work life balance.
You're trying to be your own person, too.
And you just have a stack of cases and, you know, you don't you don't have the resources.
It's very difficult.
But the likelihood of someone who was charged with a crime, their percentages of getting
(40:23):
any kind of help or being heard goes down significantly if they're not working with
an attorney.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
I think that's a harder question because maybe I don't know if you get this question a lot
because it seems like almost unfair if I got charged with a crime that I didn't do.
Yet now I have to pay a lot of legal fees, experts, all this stuff.
(40:46):
And I mean, for me, I already see it as if I'm going to get off or I'm facing any kind
of jail time, I need to use the very best.
Maybe put my house up or whatever it takes so that I don't face jail time.
Yeah.
But is that really fair for a lot of people?
Some people don't have that that luxury.
And they don't.
(41:06):
And it's and it's very difficult.
And the way that I see it, when, you know, people are calling me and they want to hire
me and they, you know, like, well, you know, that's a lot of money and I didn't do anything
wrong and all of that, you know.
And I say this is why we fight it, because you didn't do anything wrong up until this
point.
We can try to figure out all the which ways that we could try to get it dismissed, negotiate,
(41:28):
whatever we can do.
We can do that now with taking me on as your lawyer.
I can't change anything that's already happened at this point.
Right.
What I can do is promise you I'm going to I'm going to fight for you as much as I can.
And then those that just, you know, we have the public defender system because of that,
because it's not fair for anybody to have to go through this without a lawyer.
(41:51):
And I think a lot of the resources should be put towards the public defender's offices.
You know, there's a lot of discrepancies with the prosecutor's offices are making way more
money and having a lot more resources than a public defender's office.
And they have a stack of paperwork.
Yeah.
And if they call you, you're more likely to help them out than someone who's helping the
entire public.
(42:12):
Well, it's I mean, I was a public defender myself.
Right.
And so I kind of know the differences between now the private sector and the public sector.
And it's it's a situation which as a public defender, there's just so many cases because
the government funding is not there to provide for more lawyers.
I mean, I was in a community county of one point five million and there was 16, 17 lawyers
(42:37):
for that whole community.
You know, like I have has the case, the maximum case I had one hundred and seventy five felonies
at one time for one person is a lot.
It's a lot.
Right.
So you do the best that you can to provide as the best that you possibly can with the
limited around resources that you have.
But that's why I was so passionate about that job is because I wanted to do that job.
(42:58):
And if you're doing that job, you have to want to do it.
It's just there's just no other way.
It isn't as luxurious as it may sound because in some of the tic tacs I was watching and
you're on a live, you are basically just waiting outside of a jail cell out of prison and you
may be waiting an hour.
(43:19):
I think at some point you were waiting like four hours or something like that.
Now you need to go in.
But at some point then once you're in to wait longer, you have to wait longer.
And that sounds well, first of all, what is the difference between a prison and a jail?
OK, good question for the general audience.
It's a good question.
A jail is where you will go to while you are waiting to have your case resolved.
(43:43):
So if you are waiting for a jury trial, let's say you would be waiting at your local jail
where your county is in to where you would have your court hearings at that kind of thing.
And it's not like Hollywood where you're just waiting a couple of hours.
You could be waiting years, years, years, years.
And the prison is where you would be sentenced to be the Department of Corrections or different
(44:08):
states have different names for it.
But if you were to come to a plea deal and you plead guilty and they sentence you to
two years or three years, you would do that sentence at the prison, not at the jail.
So you would go and they're further out.
And it's not just your county.
There's a few around the state.
Federally, it's the Bureau of Prisons.
(44:28):
You would be sentenced to the Bureau of Prisons.
But that's the major the major difference.
So it's a jail.
You're just you know, I think there's this funny to talk with Kat Williams who he says,
you know, thirty four felonies and I've never been in prison.
I've been to jail, but I've never been in prison.
That's exactly what he means.
Yes, yes.
I remember going in during internships and when I never knew that there were so many
(44:49):
differences between prisons and prison systems.
I would go to one prison that was just your typical like in Baltimore, I think it was
it was just a stone, a very kind of scary looking.
The cells were stacked.
And as I'm walking by, you see hands just coming out with a little mirror to see, I
(45:10):
guess, who's walking by.
And occasionally you get cat calls and things like that.
And then I visited a I guess was a supermax, which was all just glass or some kind of each
one is so different.
They're they're really different.
I really recommend anyone in the audience listening to actually visit a prison and see
what these are like, because this is the kind of person that you're you're meeting your
(45:33):
client at.
And many people have no idea the conditions of these places.
Maybe they get this Hollywood allure of what they look like, but they're actually far worse
than than Hollywood portrays.
Yeah, there's there's tons of research and studies and reports as the conditions of that.
And especially during covid, it was very, very terrifying for those that were incarcerated.
(45:58):
And these are all people.
And we have to keep that in mind.
You know, we have to keep that in mind at the end of the day that these are these are
people these aren't just any these aren't animals that you just throw in and you know,
you can cage them for a little bit and then you can take them back out and they're all
fine and good.
But these are the prisons have a lot of psychological effects on individuals.
(46:18):
It's very difficult.
There are a lot of people who couldn't even deal with the pandemic.
Or it's like going crazy because they couldn't get a haircut.
Right, right, right.
And imagine the imagine a prison.
Each jail is so different.
They have all these different rules for lawyers as to how to come in, what you can wear, what
you can't wear, what you can bring in, what you can bring in.
I can't tell you how many I've been to.
I'm in different prisons, too.
(46:39):
They're all different.
It's fascinating how each one has has their own system.
I love how she says that's fascinating.
It is.
Yeah, no, it's fascinating because I'm like, OK, all right.
What time can I come to this jail versus what time can I go to that jail?
And then can I bring this to that jail?
And then I have to I have to prepare for to leave this here.
(46:59):
I can wear this to this one, but I can't wear that to that one.
She even has a special bag.
Yes, I have.
I have my jail bag.
My jail bag.
Everything in things that you leave in the car.
Yeah, I live in the car.
I live in the car just because I never know.
You know, I do a lot of job visits at night, too.
So like six p.m. or something like that after work.
And so it's just easier to have it in my car and it can get put.
(47:22):
It fits my computer.
It has two pens in it always has business cards in them.
It has an extra license.
My bar card legal pad.
Because when you're visiting a client, you might actually need to give your business
card to someone else who.
Yes.
If I'm like, let's say I'm meeting with one client and I'm talking to them and, you know,
there's a family member visiting another client and they'll say, like, hey, can I get your
car?
(47:42):
It's happened to me so many times.
I'm like, no.
So I have to write down my phone number on a piece of paper and hand it to them.
So I just think it's best to have them there.
And then also, if I'm meeting a client for the first time, I'll give them my business
card because it has my cell phone number on it that they can call me to and they can know
where the firm that I'm from.
So they can contact you directly.
They don't have to go through a service or.
So depends on the jail.
(48:03):
Yeah.
That's the fascinating part about jails.
They have all different rules.
Some jails, they can call me no problem whenever they want.
Some jails, I have to come in and physically see them or I have to get a confidential line,
have it scheduled.
So there's so many different kind of nuances to that, depending on which jail or which
prison I'm going into.
But it's great that you give your clients your cell phone number and they can reach
(48:26):
you.
I mean, I don't even do that for my clients.
Oh, yeah.
All my clients have my cell phone number.
I do a lot of WhatsApp with my clients, with family that are overseas too.
They have my cell phone number.
It's just much easier that way.
And it also allows my client just to text me if they want to text me a question here
or there.
And while you're in the prison, there's this term that you were using, which is a lockdown.
(48:50):
What does that mean when you get locked down and what do you do?
So a lockdown happens internally within the jail to where no visitations are happening.
No one's coming in the jail, coming out of the jail.
Could be for various reasons, mostly safety concerns.
And so I will, I can't even tell you how many times, I would make time on my calendar.
(49:12):
I'm going to see my client on this day at this time, ready to go and I'll get there.
It's on lockdown.
Jail's on lockdown.
You can wait if you want.
Okay, well, it could be locked down for an hour.
It could be locked down for 20 minutes.
It could be locked down for two days.
So I don't, they don't know, we don't know.
So I'll have to reschedule the visit and come back.
(49:33):
There was one time where I was inside the jail and it was different jail in St. Louis
and there's a mental health floor.
So padded walls, that kind of thing.
The lights went out and the elevator went out.
Wow.
And I was by myself.
And so then, and so the way that it works, the doors are locked from the inside and out.
(49:53):
Whenever I'm meeting with clients, like I'm locked in with them.
It's not like I could just like head out.
So without somebody pressing a button from the outside to let me out.
So I, I'm locked in and lights are out and I'm like, any other floor would have been
fine but it's the padded white wall floor that I get, that the lights go out that I'm
(50:16):
locked in.
And I'm trying to find like the door to at least like pull on it so that people can hear
what's going on.
And then you just, I had to wait it out.
I had to wait it out.
Oh my God.
I just had to wait it out.
And then finally they figured it out.
Like that, that jail, the elevator would go out all the time, all the time.
And so you, I mean, you can't bring your cell phones in.
(50:37):
So you're just kind of stuck until someone lets you out.
Can you bring a book or something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so I bring, I bring a book or I'll bring some other cases to work on, you know, while
I wait, I might be waiting a while or I might not wait at all.
And then all the things that I had to do while I waited, I was like, Oh, that's not going
to the, not doing that today right now.
(50:58):
That's pretty interesting.
The things that you have to do.
Kind of scary, but nice.
It's very interesting.
Gives the adrenaline going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you're dedicated.
I mean, this is, this is what you've wanted to do.
Yeah.
I love my job.
I love my job.
I think a lot of people also see the gruesome aspect of it.
Cause I do a lot of violent crime and it's, it's not easy for a lot of people.
You know, some people have experiences in their background that also find this kind
(51:20):
of work triggering, which I completely understand.
It's not for everyone.
So I think it's really important that the people that are doing this work are really
passionate about it and really want to do it because it's such a necessary aspect of
our criminal defense and our legal system in general.
But I get that all the time.
You must be, must be something wrong going on there that you're, you're liking to do
(51:44):
this.
And it's like, I like to help people.
And it's, you know, it's, it's a lot for families too.
So what advice would you give to maybe a law student that would like to go into criminal
law?
I would say, keep an open mind as many internships as possible that you could take as much experience
exposure to both the prosecution and the defense.
I think, you know, we do, there are really great prosecutors out there that really want
(52:06):
to do, really want to do well and help their community.
And I mean, my best friend is a prosecutor.
And to this day, people don't understand our relationship.
I was in her wedding and I'm walking by, you know, all I'm walking down the aisle and all
of her fellow prosecutors are in the audience and they're looking at us like, we do not
understand how this is working.
(52:27):
But it's because we both have a mutual respect for each other's work and we both understand
our roles and what we're trying to accomplish.
And we both really just want the community to be safer and healthier.
Have you ever been in opposite sides, like in a trial or something?
Absolutely.
It was actually quite funny.
Um, we, we had, we met because we had cases against each other.
(52:48):
And there was one instance where I was like, oh, this, we're, we're going to be friends
for a long time.
I had a client, I had a client and it was a domestic violence case.
And we were arguing, I was arguing for the client's release.
She was arguing for him to stay locked up.
Right.
We're in front of the judge.
She does her thing and I start making my arguments.
(53:10):
She tries interrupting me and I say, do not interrupt me.
I'm not finished yet.
Excuse me.
And then I like keep going on and then we turned.
She asked me like, oh, so like, what are you cooking tonight?
I'm like, oh, I'm cooking this and cooking that.
You know, it was like, it was, we were, we were going at it.
Judge makes the decision and we turn around and then we just start chit chatting about
like what our next like meals are going to be.
(53:32):
Cause she likes to cook and I like to cook.
I love that.
Cause you don't make it personal.
We don't make it personal.
We don't.
You're there for business.
You're there for your client.
Exactly.
We do not make it personal.
And ultimately the judge is going to decide what the judge is going to decide.
I fight as hard as I can.
She fights as hard as she can.
And then ultimately the judge is going to do what it's going to do.
But I do not take it personally.
I will, if, if there's some unethical things going on, that's something different.
(53:55):
We'll, we'll have a little chat about that for sure.
But it was like one of those moments where we both can recall it because she can recall
it like line by line.
And then we would just turn and we start talking about it as we walked back and, and I was
like, okay, this is why, you know, all these years later I'm in her wedding now.
Does the day job affect like you watching like a TV or something like that?
And at some point you're like watching law and order or whatever it is and you're like,
(54:17):
would you watch orange or something black or something like that?
So I remember watching, I remember watching how to get away with murder.
Right.
That show.
I kid you not.
I watched maybe the first 10 minutes before I threw the control of the TV and was like,
this, no, no, I'm not, this is not it.
And I like threw it.
I'm like not watching this at all.
(54:38):
And then I, that, that shows suits where that's me with suits.
Like, this is my big law.
And then, and then, and then he, what he like, he got, he passed the bar without going to
law school or something like, I think like that's part of the show.
I was like, I am never watching a show where anyone didn't have to go to law school.
And like I threw the control.
I'm like, no, no, the only, absolutely not.
I'm not going to support this.
The only show that I think is remote, like that is tolerable, that is actually like somewhat
(55:03):
close to your everyday job is the good wife.
Oh, okay.
The good wife actually, but it's the arguments that they make are a little bit more on point
with the actual legal world, but I can't do any of the other ones.
I really can't.
I get really angry.
One myth that is in Hollywood a lot is how quickly some of these trials go.
(55:23):
Like you get charged with a crime and the next day you're like already at trial.
Oh yeah.
That's why I'm like, this is so not true.
You know, and, and what really frustrates me a lot too is these shows make it look like
a public defender is the worst type of lawyer in the world.
And then that's when the protagonist of the show who's this hot shot lawyer comes in and
(55:45):
saves the day.
And that's just not the case at all.
These public defenders work day and night and are really great advocates for their clients
and get really great outcomes.
I remember there was this one day where it was the three of us, public defenders, there
was three women and we were all in trial and we all got not guilty verdicts the same day.
(56:06):
And it was back to back, back to back, back to back on the same day after being in trial
for that week.
And the whole jail was going crazy.
Everyone was, everyone was so happy.
Everyone was like talking about it and all the CEOs were all excited for us and stuff.
So it was really fun because then it was, you know, it was three women and we were all
public defenders and we all got not guilty verdicts.
(56:28):
And I hope he went to drinks after that or something.
Oh, he did.
Oh my goodness.
We did.
And it was crazy.
It was one, one acquittal and we were, Oh, that's amazing.
And then it was the next acquittal.
And they're like, Oh my gosh, if we get three for three, we're going to freak out right
now.
And then mine came in last and my, and that case was, was a really big case.
I mean, he was facing a lifetime imprisonment and the offer was 15 years before trial.
(56:51):
And so you brought it home.
Yes.
He, yeah, he went home after that.
So, so afterwards we're just like drinking and crying.
We were just all so happy.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
And I remember going to my client afterwards and I said, Oh, you want your hot shot private
lawyer now, don't you?
And it was really funny.
And he goes like, no, you got it, you got it, you got it.
(57:12):
It was public.
You got it.
And I was like, yeah, I thought so.
You know, it was funny, but we do.
Yeah.
But what defenders do a lot of great work and it's not just because you're probably
defender means you're going to get an adequate services.
Well, thank you very much for being on the show.
Thank you for having me.
I have like, I could go on for like another hour.
Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
(57:33):
I'm going to go ahead and post the information if they want to contact you.
Hopefully they don't have to contact you.
But if they're in an issue where they need a criminal defense attorney, it sounds like
you not only know what you're doing, but you actually enjoy what you do.
You love it.
You're passionate.
Yes, I do.
You're the advocate to call.
(57:53):
Thank you.
And
(00:28):
we're back with the advocate next door.
And today we have a special guest.
My name is Kelby Balena.
And today we are here with.
Welcome back everybody.
I'm Margarita Rango.
Today we're here with a special guest, Paulette Bagan.
And Paulette is in the criminal law sector.
(00:51):
And you are a partner at Price Binowitz.
Yes, that's right.
And that's a firm in DC.
Yes.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being here.
It's my pleasure.
I got to meet you initially on TikTok.
I think at some point I had seen you speak at a Hispanic bar event.
So now I'm seeing you on TikTok was great because I got to get to know a little bit
(01:13):
more about you.
And I think that's the power of TikTok.
I had seen you hovering outside a prison to get admitted so that you could meet with
your client.
How did you make it to DC?
Because it sounds like at least from your LinkedIn profile, you were in Florida.
Your background is also Puerto Rican.
Yes, yes, yes.
I'm originally from Florida.
My parents are from Puerto Rico.
(01:33):
They moved to the States a year before I was born.
So I grew up in the central Florida, Orlando region.
Right now I primarily practice in federal court, federal criminal defense.
And my cases range from anything from very high complex drugs and guns to very high complex
white collar bribery, major fraud, government contracting.
(01:55):
So I have the white collar sector of criminal defense, as they call it, as well as the street
crime sectors as what we call it as lawyers, white collar versus street crime.
What do you practice?
So I practice both.
So I have a wide range.
And before I came to DC, I was a public defender in St. Louis for about four years.
(02:16):
So those are the lawyers that are assigned by the government to someone who cannot afford
their own attorney.
And I love that job.
I was able to help so many people and I was thrown into a wide range of different social,
economical, as well as legal issues that were fascinating.
And so from there, I came to DC.
(02:38):
I worked at a firm before arriving at Price Benowitz.
And I've been at Price Benowitz for about two years now.
So that's that's fascinating how you're kind of all over the map and you're getting gaining
experience all over.
But going from Puerto Rico to you said you you mainly studied initially in Florida.
Yes.
(02:58):
So my undergraduate degree is University of Central Florida.
And then I went to Boston for law school at Suffolk University Law School.
But when growing up, my family was split between the island and Florida.
So I would go back and forth.
But I would go to school in the states.
And then I would visit family in Puerto Rico from time to time and stay a couple of weeks
down there and then come back and forth.
(03:19):
So I think my first flight to Puerto Rico was on a six month.
That's amazing.
Yeah, they're like, all right, we're ready to go.
But my sister was born in Puerto Rico.
I was just kind of here in the states and then we would go back and forth.
And from there, then you decided to work in Missouri.
Yeah.
So it was really interesting.
The like, did they poach you or did you end up like it's actually was that a target?
(03:42):
So I went to law school in Boston and I had every intention of being a prosecutor.
I did everything.
Yes, everything that one could do.
I interned at the homicide unit.
I interned with two judges.
I got my license to practice as a third year underneath another attorney.
(04:02):
Since the beginning, you knew that you wanted to be.
I thought I was going to be a prosecutor.
I thought I was going to be a prosecutor.
I wanted to be in the courtroom.
This is amazing.
I wanted to help people.
This was what I was going to do.
But like, no offense.
It seems like a scary profession to get into.
Is there some kind of motivation there?
(04:22):
Before law school, I went to a seminar at the University of Central Florida and there
was two credits.
You go for three days and you get two credits.
You're like, okay, cool.
Awesome.
Checked on, like, let's move on kind of thing.
And they had a lot of speakers from just different government departments and they had a DEA
agent and a USA come in and they just spoke a little bit about the work that they did.
(04:46):
And I was kind of interested in law school.
I was a polysci major.
So, you know, it just made sense.
And I was like, oh, these people are really helping people.
Like, this is really great.
No one in my family was ever a lawyer.
I knew nothing about law school.
I didn't know how to apply.
I didn't know.
So you were a first generation lawyer.
First generation.
Like, I kid you not.
I didn't even know what to expect.
(05:07):
I didn't know what law school looked like.
So how did you get to be a lawyer?
When did you decide that you wanted to be a lawyer?
So it was that seminar where I was like, oh, I can really help people.
And then if I went to law school, then I could have a lawyer in the family that if my family
needed anything or any advice on any kind of realm, right, whether it be whatever it
is, I didn't know.
(05:27):
But we could have someone that could really help my family and help just people in general.
And then the aspect of my community in terms of Spanish speakers came into play, right,
that there's not many Spanish speaking lawyers in general, let alone ones that can really
help at an everyday level.
So I said, OK, let's go to law school.
(05:47):
And so I went to law school and it was definitely coming of age.
It was definitely a growing up moment for me because I was in Florida and in the South
and everybody wants everybody to do well and everyone is sunshine state.
And you know, I'm with my family.
We're all we're all eating all the time.
And it was great.
And you get thrown into Boston of all places.
(06:09):
I'm going to go to a school where I get on a train and I see snow and I'm going to be
in a big city.
Right.
And I get to Boston.
I'm like, whoa, these people are intense.
There are a lot of people.
We're like, oh, OK, all right.
We're in law school now.
This is, you know, this is real life.
Right.
I'm like, whoa.
And so, yes, it was just very much for me, since I didn't know any lawyers, I didn't
(06:30):
know anyone at law school.
I had to find out for myself what it was.
Right.
And I had to go and ask those questions that many people that had parents that were lawyers
had known since they were in middle school.
Right.
I had to go and talk to lawyers.
What does your job look like?
What do you do?
What do you I didn't know.
I didn't know what it was to be a lawyer.
I didn't know what kind of law I wanted to practice.
(06:51):
So I was asking everyone.
And then I got an internship the summer after my first year law school.
He's now your law school year.
You get all the general classes.
So again, you still don't really have an idea of what you want to do.
At least I didn't.
And then I went to this internship at a misdemeanor criminal court judge and he was a former prosecutor.
(07:11):
And I'm in court.
I'm watching all of these lawyers running around in and out and they're making arguments
and they're representing their clients and they're really fighting for this.
And I'm like, wow, like I got sucked in.
This is my jam.
Like I can thrive here.
These are my people.
And talking with the judge, he was a former prosecutor and I really wanted to help people
over.
(07:31):
This is a way that I could help people.
There was one instance where there was a family of Spanish speakers sitting outside of the
courtroom.
They didn't know what was going on.
They didn't know who to talk to.
And so one of the other members of the courthouse asked if I could help.
So I said, okay.
And so they were, I was interpreting for them as to...
(07:52):
Because there's not a lot of interpreters.
There wasn't.
There's like a lack of staff and support and resources.
Correct.
I mean, there was no Spanish speaking lawyers.
There's maybe one interpreter and they're having to cover a whole court, a courthouse.
So I was able to explain where they were looking for a certain courtroom.
That was this issue.
(08:13):
And so I was able to direct them where they needed to be directed.
And you can just see this relief in their face to say, okay, like my questions are answered.
I can relate to someone.
They can understand my issue.
They can direct me to where I need to go.
And that's when I really realized, oh wow, this second language or language that I grew
up with can really help your everyday person in the way that I am in this job.
(08:36):
And so I said, okay, this is what I want to do.
I want to be a prosecutor.
And I kind of went that route throughout all law school.
But you started in public defense.
Right.
And then you're like, I'm going to switch sides and I'm going to be a prosecutor.
And at that point, does that feel like it's a little scary because you're now facing,
you're prosecuting people?
I'm sure you're getting threats here and there or...
(08:58):
So my third year of law school, I was a student lawyer where you can practice underneath another
bar license.
And so I was working with the misdemeanor courthouse in Boston in Dorchester and I prosecuted
aces of some DUI cases that I was able to prosecute, get the experience of trial and
whatnot.
And then after that, I realized I didn't want to stay in Boston.
(09:21):
I went back to Florida, took the bar, kind of just decide what I want to do.
And I was working with the criminal defense attorney at that time remotely.
And because I had the experience with the prosecutor's office, I thought, okay, I'll
still be in the realm of criminal defense.
It'll be more marketable that I have both sides.
I'll get a little bit of a better perspective as to the defense side of these cases to really
(09:44):
help me in my ultimate goal of being a prosecutor.
Right.
So I thought I had it all planned out.
I thought I knew what I knew and I was good to go.
And then I had a case with this criminal defense attorney and it was a case of a 19 year old
kid.
He just happened to be standing on the street at midnight and being black.
(10:07):
And so the officers arrest him.
They claim he was doing some kind of drug deal or whatnot.
He had a neck brace on because he had been in an accident recently.
And so we get footage from the discovery process of the cell and the camera inside the cell.
And he's by himself and he has, he's handcuffed.
(10:27):
He has his neck brace on and six officers come in, male and female, and they uncuff
him, pin him down, arms, legs, put a knee in the neck, rip off his pants, rip off his
underwear, spread him open and then magically find narcotics on him.
Okay.
(10:48):
And it disturbed me beyond words of what I was watching and what I was seeing.
I would be disturbed just to hearing that.
Yes.
No.
That's crazy.
And there was men and women and there's just so many laws about just having women in cells
when you're just robing someone.
I mean, you have to have a warrant to go inside someone.
I mean, there was just, you have to doctor there.
(11:09):
There's just so many things that disturbed me that I go to the prosecutor on this case
because I was working with this other attorney and so we kind of were all corresponding
together.
I was technically a law clerk at the time and I was telling the attorney I was working
with him, like, this is not okay.
We have to get dismissed.
And the prosecutor at that point was saying, well, you know, my supervisor isn't really
letting me make any decisions on this and kind of pushing it back all while Klein is
(11:34):
still incarcerated.
And that's kind of where it was a turning point to me where I said, wow, you know, the
whole point of this job was to really help people.
And what I'm seeing right now is because a supervisor can't really make a decision on
this, that this kid who's wrongfully arrested and really just taken so much advantage of
(11:59):
and had all those things happen to him is still incarcerated right now.
I can't do that job.
I could not get up there and stand there as a prosecutor and say this is okay.
Right.
And that's really what shifted me into the public defense role because immediately I
then go and apply to public defender offices and say, you know what, the whole point is
to help people.
(12:19):
I can help people on a direct basis this way and make sure that the constitution is being
upheld, that their rights are being upheld, that they're not getting taken advantage of.
They're not getting arrested simply because of the color of their skin and they're not
getting overlooked just because of the color of their skin and ignored because of that.
And so I immediately started applying to public defender's offices that did have a record
(12:43):
of a high caseload volume, high crime rates, disproportional arrest rates to that extent.
And so St. Louis came up came on as one of the lists that I was looking into and it happened
very fast.
It was just an interview and a call and then boom, I was like, let's go.
And so that's where I went.
I'm just curious because I've never been to law school.
(13:04):
Do they teach you this kind of stuff about procedure?
Do they show you these kinds of videos?
No, not when I was in law school.
So someone who doesn't have actual experience or doing an internship, clerkship, they might
not have that access.
They might have no idea that they're needed.
Right.
And you can, I mean, you could, you can learn from a book as to this case was overturned
(13:27):
because of these procedural issues in terms of a search and seizure was illegal or a confession
was illegal, right?
But you don't get the actual humanity aspect of it.
You don't, you'll never really understand that unless you're watching it or you're
in front of that client or you're going through it or you're questioning an officer.
You know, I had, I had a hearing where I was cross-examining an officer because he failed
(13:51):
to read the Miranda rights and they wanted to use my client's statement in a trial.
And I was cross-examining him and I said, you asked just this very general question.
He's like, yes.
And I said, you asked that because you didn't want him to get a lawyer.
And he said, yes.
It would have hurt your case if he talks to a lawyer.
Yes.
So it was better for you and it was easier for you to arrest him if he didn't talk to
(14:13):
a lawyer.
Yes.
Those are situations in which unless I'm cross-examining an officer and I'm asking that directly, you're
not going to have that experience.
You're not going to know that's what's actually happening on a day to day basis.
And so that's why it was so important for me when I was in law school to capitalize
on all of the opportunities that were there when it was a networking event or when it
(14:36):
was a internship application or when it was any kind of seminar or whatever the case may
be.
I wanted to see everything and hear everything because I didn't know anything and I didn't
know any lawyers.
I didn't know what it was like.
I remember my first year of law school, like, well, maybe I want to be a business lawyer.
My whole idea is to help people.
It's a nice idea to help somebody start a business and they get to employ people that
(15:00):
sounds like really awesome.
That sounds like I could help people.
And then I talked to a business lawyer and it was just a little too slow pace for me.
I realized I needed a little bit more action.
And I can't help.
I'm just hearing your story.
I can't help to think how many times has someone been illegally searched before and then after
that person that you saw.
And so it just makes you think like, I really need to get in there.
(15:24):
Right.
And you know, and there's, I mean, there's so many other aspects to it in terms of criminal
defense and especially when you're talking about public defenders and their clientele
because those are the ones that are most taken advantage of.
But you see a lot of those instances and especially now, thankfully we have body camera footage
on many law enforcement officers to help assist in preventing from preventing that.
(15:48):
But there's still so many departments that don't have body camera footage.
So Lord knows what's happening other than whatever the law enforcement officer is reporting.
And I think that instant when I was able to see it from the opposite side really opened
my eyes because otherwise I would have been working with this other group and this prosecutor
and with these law enforcement officers really taking that to bat and really holding that
(16:13):
as the truth of the matter as opposed to having the opposite perspective.
How much do stereotypes influence criminal procedure?
Oh, substantial amount.
Substantial amount.
There's a lot of implicit bias in the criminal sector.
I mean, this is why you have such high percentage of people of color incarcerated and yet they're
(16:33):
the minority of the population, right?
You know, the majority of those incarcerated are people of color, but yet they make up
the minority of the United States.
How do you think that we should fight stereotypes?
Is that something that we should be doing?
How can we help?
Yeah, I think how can we help as an everyday person, right?
And this is something that you see a lot.
(16:54):
You see calls in to 911.
Someone is suspicious.
Someone seems suspicious.
They're not suspicious.
They're just a person of color walking with maybe a hood on or there's two people of color
walking together down the street.
Maybe it's a street that one person particularly feels like that person of color shouldn't
be on or why would they have access to the street, right?
(17:18):
It's all of these implicit biases and these are these stereotypes that media has a lot
to do with influencing.
But just because somebody is walking down the street, it doesn't mean that they're
committing a crime, right?
And I think that's really hard is when people start to then call 911, start to bring the
law enforcement officers to these situations in which are not at all anything criminal
(17:43):
or anything dangerous.
Then turns into a situation where you get potential really bad actions.
This doesn't end up being just an issue with people calling the cops.
There are police officers that respond and actually want to take care of something.
They should be able to say to somebody like, no, they're just walking down the street.
There's nothing here.
There's no probable cause.
There's nothing to, but yet they'll still engage, maybe pick at and see what they can
(18:09):
get out of it.
Right, right.
And a lot of it, it's some of these other counties where they're more affluent counties
that don't necessarily have a day to day interaction with officers that then those officers take
a situation and then exaggerate that situation because they don't have an everyday understanding
of what it's like.
(18:30):
It's just a very complex and very different levels to this issue.
The way that I see it and from my experience working with a lot of experts in terms of
doctors, reviewing, assessing my clients and things of that nature.
When it comes to violent crime, the experts that I've talked to, a lot of them have
the opinion that violent crime later on in life, a lot of the common denominator between
(18:54):
those individuals that conduct those kinds of violent crime have some form of neglect
as a child or some form of abuse as a child.
So I'm in the position that's more education, more attention, nutrition, all of those things
at a very, very young age will prevent these things.
And we live in a society where we are reactive instead of proactive.
(19:18):
And that is where we have really dangerous situations and deaths that are so unfortunate
and could have been avoided from the beginning.
I remember when I was a kid and I was in the supermarket with my mother.
And at one point I get pulled, I think I was probably maybe 11 or 12.
(19:39):
I get pulled aside and the manager of the store comes up to me and again, I'm by myself.
My mother's on a different aisle and he asks if he can get my help translate.
And I'm like, oh sure.
And he'll give me free ice cream.
So I was excited.
I was like, he'll give me free ice cream.
I can help him translate.
So he takes me in the back of the room, down these stairs or something like that.
(20:02):
And here are two Latinos.
And he wants me to translate that he believes that they shoplifted.
He never wants to see these guys in the store.
Basically accusing them of shoplifting.
And I'm translating as a kid.
And I realized like now thinking about it, I'm like one, that was not a great opportunity
(20:23):
for me to learn my lesson.
So inappropriate.
Right.
But I guess it was the 90s.
But at the same time, it was only like a week later where I saw these guys and they were
in the pool, the community pool.
And I was a little bit afraid because I didn't know if they were actual shoplifters or anything.
But this was the impression I got from this store, from the treatment of these guys, whether
(20:49):
they had done it or they had not done it or anything like that.
But that was the impression I got.
And I can see now many years later that impressions can last a very, very long time.
What you hear in the news, what you don't know, you don't get to know people and you
don't get to hear their side of the story.
(21:09):
For all I know that store probably didn't care whether they did it or not.
They just wanted them out.
I got my free ice cream funny enough.
My mom was like wondering where the hell did I go?
And it makes me realize that not only do impressions last, but our resources are incredibly limited.
So your ability to speak Spanish, you know a little bit more of the community, the fact
(21:33):
that you've actually wanted to do this most of your life.
How do you, at the end of the day, not have to think about all these stories?
Because I was a little kid and it stayed with me.
If I'm going to see these guys, they're probably going to be mad at me because I helped the
store manager out.
Do you go home and you're just like, do you have a way to just relax, to de-stress, to
(21:56):
not think about these cases?
Because they're hard.
Well, I mean, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that at such a young age because
that's just such an inappropriate position to put a child in to begin with.
And that really does, like you say, affect long term.
And then you are certain certain impressions at such a young age can really define how
(22:17):
you look at situations, how you talk to people, how you interact with others.
And so for me, I think this is, and I'll answer your question in a second, but this is really
where I try to express as much as I can on TikTok and use these social media platforms
to then allow the real everyday life and the things that we've learned to be able to communicate
(22:41):
to the community in ways that I didn't have growing up and ways that a lot of us didn't
have to know, you know, what's the difference, what are our rights, instead of, you know,
just not knowing and then being put in a situation where ultimately could be dangerous for that
person.
But as far as how I go home and decompress, and it's a learning curve, right?
(23:03):
Like any job, I think a lot of us have really demanding jobs and very stressful jobs.
And so you get home and you can't stop thinking about work and then you can't stop thinking
about what you have to do the next day.
But I found a way in this, it came for many years of really allowing myself to say, you're
not going to be able to help these people in a really effective and zealous way if you're
(23:30):
not allowing yourself to really rest and take time for yourself.
Because ultimately I know myself, I need my seven, eight hours.
Otherwise it's not going to be a good day for anyone, right?
So you have to be at your best to do your best.
Because then what's the point, right?
You know, like what's the point of me really wanting to help people if I'm getting in there
(23:52):
and I'm doing, you know, 50% or I'm going in there and I'm not really paying attention
or I'm because I'm so tired or I crank out a memo at 1am knowing that's not my time or
I work best.
And then I look back at it and I have to redo it again.
Right?
So it's just kind of like what for me, it's not it's not beneficial for anyone.
And I've had to learn that.
(24:14):
Trust me, there have been nights, right?
And weekends.
And I had to learn that about myself.
And what I found is if I really give myself rest and I really allow myself to disconnect
for a little bit and I come back refreshed, then I'm able to do really great work.
And so, you know, I'll travel a lot.
That's like one thing that I like to do where I can separate myself from the work itself.
(24:34):
Granted, you know, emails come, phone calls come, but it is important to me to really
understand that if I don't take care of myself and how can I take care of my client?
Where do you travel?
Anywhere and anywhere.
Just to get away.
Yeah, I'm also I'm also on a board of a nonprofit called My Little Patient.
And we do medical services or just needs for underdeveloped communities worldwide.
(24:59):
And so last year we were able to go to Kenya and rural Kenya in about nine hours and car
outside of Nairobi.
And that was just such such a beautiful experience.
And I'm so grateful for it because I was able to disconnect from work and it was nothing
legal.
You know, I let all the medics do the medic thing and I got to be the person in the background
(25:22):
and I got to be the one running around and getting everyone everything while we were
able to help a lot of a lot of people in that community.
So opportunities like that to travel with with organizations that I'm a part of is just
fantastic.
So I really like to take those opportunities and then, you know, see family and things
like that is always nice just to take a week off and just reset everything.
(25:44):
You do get to understand that you need to be 100 percent because you actually end up
witnessing and I see this in big law, but you end up witnessing attorneys working at
50 percent.
You see them tired and exhausted.
And I remember at some point I was pulling dockets for my prosecutor and he didn't see
(26:04):
those dockets until maybe an hour before he went up.
And it's just impressive of just how much work is on their plate on the spot to and
on the spot.
Right.
Yeah.
So really in this area of law, you really have to be like on your game because you end
up seeing that a lot of attorneys, unfortunately, aren't on top of it and mistakes are made.
(26:27):
Yet people's lives are on the line.
Sure.
And granted, no one's perfect, right?
That's human nature.
But it's more so I know that I'm I have a client that I'm working for that that needs
me to be able to really defend them.
Right.
I'm reviewing negotiations.
I'm talking to my client, explaining to my client I have to interpret all of these legal
(26:49):
issues and an everyday basis to a client.
And then I might have to do that in Spanish.
So I have to then figure out what am I going to say?
What would I say in English about these issues and then do that in Spanish and then explain
the legal system of the United States and then explain how this works?
And so I have family members of my clients there that I might have to be able to explain
(27:10):
things to or to really address and and then also the legal aspect of things.
So there's a lot happening at any given point in time that if someone were to come in onto
this job and just say, OK, well, let's see what the day looks like and just go from there,
you know, it's it's a really disadvantage to the clients.
(27:31):
And this is a hard enough experience as it is to be a defendant in a case and scary enough
as it is for the family and for for them to not know what might happen next for for them
to then hire a lawyer who just is going to wing it.
Right.
Like, that's just not that is not acceptable by any means.
And so I I'm very conscious of that.
(27:52):
I'm very, very conscious of the fact that this is this is not an easy process and nobody
plans for one day their brother to get arrested.
Nobody plans to have an extra tens of thousands of dollars in their bank account for when
the police arrive.
You know, no one really plans for that.
And I'm mindful of that.
(28:12):
And that's so true.
Ninety percent of us don't have a criminal defense attorney, a phone book or card in
our in our ronodex or wallet, whatever it is.
Like we would probably just say, who can you recommend?
And who's out there, which is a great reason, I guess, that you're on Tick Tock, you're
on social media.
And that's I guess how they find you.
(28:33):
So it's really great that you're out there and hopefully people do find you.
And I'm sure at this point, I will definitely put you in my phone book.
Anything one day.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Hopefully nothing comes up.
Nothing comes up.
I really do enjoy being able to let people know like these are your constitutional rights.
This isn't just me thinking that this is something I should tell you.
(28:57):
No, these are your constitutional rights.
And whether you're a citizen or not, you have these rights when you're here.
And so it's really important for me to be able to communicate that because I mean, I
remember growing up and you have you had DARE coming in and you had your local police officers
coming in and they but here's the thing.
They do that.
But then you don't have your defense attorneys come in.
(29:20):
You don't have anyone you don't have any lawyers coming in and saying, OK, you have the right
not to talk to anyone.
Right.
You have the right to not open the door for these officers.
You have the right to call a lawyer no matter what they say.
It is legal for officers to lie to you.
(29:40):
That's the biggest thing that I had never I had never known that even at my age.
I had never known that they have the legal right to lie to you in order to get whatever
information they want.
One thousand percent.
I always thought like, oh, no, they're not allowed to lie to you or they're they're not
allowed to say they're not, I guess, a cop or something like everybody's just, oh, well,
you have to admit if you're a cop.
(30:01):
Yeah.
But but no, not true.
Not true.
Not true.
I always tell people not to talk to you because even it like and I've had so many clients
that are in situations in which they didn't do what the officers are knocking on the door
for, they didn't know what was happening.
And so they just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, because they didn't
do anything wrong and hopes to talk the way out of explaining it right.
(30:25):
Because it's like it's your natural reaction.
That's just human nature.
Right.
I didn't do anything.
Let me know.
I know I didn't do that.
Like I didn't do that.
Right.
And you want people to know that.
And so you just start chatting away.
And what happens is, is then they take what you're saying and then they manipulate it
and then they poke holes in it and then they say, well, they were talking a little too
much.
(30:46):
So that's why I always, you know, advise clients to it's you're just protecting yourself
and you're allowed to protect yourself.
But the minute you start talking, the minute they're going to go and investigate what you
say and poke holes in it and say, well, you know, he didn't say he wasn't there or, you
know, he didn't say so and so wasn't there or he left this part out or he wasn't completely
(31:07):
truthful or she didn't say this or she didn't say that.
But she said this.
And I'm like, come on, man, like that doesn't mean anything, but they can turn it into something.
And so that's why it's so important.
You know, I had I had a consult with a client, a high school senior going into college and
it's going to be on his own for the first time.
It's important for him to know his rights.
(31:27):
And so we spent an hour talking about all the things you can say no to.
We spent an hour talking about all the ways to protect yourself, spent an hour talking
about how to be careful at parties, things like that, where they don't know until you
talk to them.
And all they see is the really egregious things.
Well, what if they use force on me was one of his questions.
And it's so sad that an 18 year old first question when we're talking about law enforcement
(31:52):
is, well, they're going to use force on me if I don't talk to them.
That's an insane thing to have to think about as an 18 year old man.
To be fearing the police.
To be fearing the police.
This is why it's so important to be able to have these platforms that we do and that
I take responsibility in the job that I do to be able to tell the community that.
And a lot of our Spanish speaking clients are so terrified of either getting deported
(32:16):
or having to go to court or something along those lines that they think that they have
to talk to the officers and that they have to comply with the things that they're asking
them or to search their house or to search their car because then they might get separated
from their families.
And a cop might lie and tell them that.
And they do that all the time.
They do that all the time.
They lie about that.
(32:36):
They lie about threatening to call CPS, Child Protective Services on a woman who won't tell
her where their husband is.
I mean, or their boyfriend is.
I mean, it can get really nasty.
And the same thing goes with people who may be a witness to a crime.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
We'll charge you if you don't come in and we can charge you for this and we can charge
you for that.
(32:57):
So not just somebody who is charged with a crime or suspicious, but witnesses need to
also be careful.
That's why the system is not set up the way that ultimately people can really have confidence
in being able to call 911, right?
And it's really important for me to say, okay, maybe my client did do the things that happens
(33:21):
all the time.
My job is to make sure my client is represented in the best way possible, that his or her
or her constitutional rights are enforced to the ultimate extent and that we're able
to advise a client on all their rights.
And then from there, the client gets to make the decision on what they want to do.
(33:41):
But with my experience, I can give them advice to say, okay, maybe a trial would look like
this or a plea agreement would look like this or an outcome would look like this.
And these are things to take in consideration when you're making your decision.
But it has nothing to do with my personal beliefs and morals and what not.
And morality is making sure that my clients are being represented to the best ability.
(34:02):
And I think that's kind of where I even had those thoughts too.
I remember asking a lawyer, a defense lawyer in law school, well, how could you defend
a guilty person?
Right?
And I'm sure you get that all the time.
I even get that on TikTok as well.
Yeah, all the time, all the time.
And it has nothing to do with how can I?
I mean, I do it every day.
(34:23):
You know, it's it's more of really understanding that among my clients, people are people,
they're humans.
There's so many layers to people.
You know, there's mental health issues, there's educational issues, there's addiction issues,
there's abuse, there's so many other aspects to things that that make up a person that
(34:45):
it's not simply you're a bad guy, you're a bad girl, go to prison, get zero services
while you're in prison and then come out and you've learned your lesson.
One of the things, the ones that I get all the time is there are people who are born
criminals and they don't understand maybe the sociological aspect.
(35:06):
There are certain laws that sometimes that don't make sense, but also the police may
use tactics that may be unfair.
So there are a lot of times where it's not just that someone is born a criminal.
It has to do far.
It's far more complicated.
It can be sociological, political, economical, especially because you may find police in
(35:30):
certain areas more often than you will in other neighborhoods.
But in that sense, you work with an interdisciplinary team.
Because how do you handle the defense of someone that has psychological issues or something
like that?
For instance, I've had many clients who've been diagnosed with depression, bipolar,
schizophrenia, things of that nature.
(35:52):
The main concern for me is that these individuals get the services they need for their health.
So are we getting you back on medication?
Are we getting you into therapy?
And if those services, if the therapy isn't available, then at least let's get you back
on some medications.
And then I can hire certain doctors to come in as experts and they can come in, they can
(36:15):
evaluate the clients, say this is, you know, medically speaking, these are the services
that they would need.
They would need therapy once a week, twice a week, three times a week, inpatient treatment,
outpatient treatment, these medications, those kinds of things.
And then we really work on from there, how would we get the client to those services?
For instance, if it was a public defender's office, do we have any community-based resources
(36:38):
that would be able to address those concerns?
Or if it's a private client, does your insurance cover it?
Can we get your insurance, call your insurance company, let's see if we can get you into
this meeting or that meeting or this appointment or that appointment.
And then I take that once it's all really addressed and we have a plan in place, and
then that's when we discuss that with the prosecutor and bring that into the criminal
(37:02):
world, right?
That's when we start talking about, here's a resolution to this case.
This person is stealing, this person is stealing because they are high on heroin, because they
are unmedicated, because they have schizophrenia.
Okay, so maybe they won't be stealing, maybe they won't be stealing for their drug addiction
(37:23):
if we address the underlying issue here, which is the schizophrenia.
So let's get them the services that they need there, right?
Or this person had gotten into a car accident completely fine.
I had a client once when I was a public defender where it was one of the saddest cases.
She was a doctor, or she was a nurse, she was a nurse, she was an RN and she had four
(37:47):
children, bachelor's degree, just living her life.
And she was brutally, brutally attacked by four men to the point where she had to be
hospitalized, sexually and violently.
And so she started taking medication, she couldn't deal with the trauma.
She started getting hooked on the medication.
(38:07):
She loses her job, she loses her kids, she's living on the streets.
And then she's taking street drugs.
And I had her because she was on her, maybe her seventh, sixth or seventh felony at that
point.
She went into a sunglasses hut, took a pair of sunglasses off, turned around and walked
out.
Obviously, you know, that's somebody with a problem that's gonna, no one just goes and
(38:30):
takes a pair of sunglasses off and just walks out.
And we are trying to see how can we address this issue of the trauma that she needs treatment
for.
And all the while the prosecutors wanting jail time because of how many prior felonies
she's had.
And not looking at, you know, and she's like, well, your client has these many felonies
(38:51):
without having any understanding of who this person is, right?
Each person that comes into the system is an actual person with that with with a story
behind them and with a family behind them and with with potentially a lot of other other
issues going on.
And so it's just not fair to be able to say you have four felonies, you have four felonies,
go get locked up for 10 years and then come out and you're a new person.
(39:11):
And is it hard to change that speech?
Oh, yeah, we do it all the time.
I mean, we sit down, we have conversations and I'm not saying all prosecutors are not
going to listen to that.
I mean, there's there's there's a lot of prosecutors out there doing their job to really help the
community and really, really be able to work with us to address these issues.
And so, you know, they have a role in the society as well.
(39:34):
And they do work with me to that aspect.
And it's just a hard position for everyone when the system is set up this way to begin
with.
The main idea of a whole criminal system is ressocialization, you know, like to get the
person back into.
Right.
So the word correctional was correct this issue.
Right.
Exactly.
And it seems like systems and and sometimes even the people and they get so immersed in
(39:59):
what they're doing that they forget the main goal.
Once you have you have a stack of cases this high and you have, you know, it's low paying
and you have to figure out, you know, a work life balance.
You're trying to be your own person, too.
And you just have a stack of cases and, you know, you don't you don't have the resources.
It's very difficult.
But the likelihood of someone who was charged with a crime, their percentages of getting
(40:23):
any kind of help or being heard goes down significantly if they're not working with
an attorney.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
I think that's a harder question because maybe I don't know if you get this question a lot
because it seems like almost unfair if I got charged with a crime that I didn't do.
Yet now I have to pay a lot of legal fees, experts, all this stuff.
(40:46):
And I mean, for me, I already see it as if I'm going to get off or I'm facing any kind
of jail time, I need to use the very best.
Maybe put my house up or whatever it takes so that I don't face jail time.
Yeah.
But is that really fair for a lot of people?
Some people don't have that that luxury.
And they don't.
(41:06):
And it's and it's very difficult.
And the way that I see it, when, you know, people are calling me and they want to hire
me and they, you know, like, well, you know, that's a lot of money and I didn't do anything
wrong and all of that, you know.
And I say this is why we fight it, because you didn't do anything wrong up until this
point.
We can try to figure out all the which ways that we could try to get it dismissed, negotiate,
(41:28):
whatever we can do.
We can do that now with taking me on as your lawyer.
I can't change anything that's already happened at this point.
Right.
What I can do is promise you I'm going to I'm going to fight for you as much as I can.
And then those that just, you know, we have the public defender system because of that,
because it's not fair for anybody to have to go through this without a lawyer.
(41:51):
And I think a lot of the resources should be put towards the public defender's offices.
You know, there's a lot of discrepancies with the prosecutor's offices are making way more
money and having a lot more resources than a public defender's office.
And they have a stack of paperwork.
Yeah.
And if they call you, you're more likely to help them out than someone who's helping the
entire public.
(42:12):
Well, it's I mean, I was a public defender myself.
Right.
And so I kind of know the differences between now the private sector and the public sector.
And it's it's a situation which as a public defender, there's just so many cases because
the government funding is not there to provide for more lawyers.
I mean, I was in a community county of one point five million and there was 16, 17 lawyers
(42:37):
for that whole community.
You know, like I have has the case, the maximum case I had one hundred and seventy five felonies
at one time for one person is a lot.
It's a lot.
Right.
So you do the best that you can to provide as the best that you possibly can with the
limited around resources that you have.
But that's why I was so passionate about that job is because I wanted to do that job.
(42:58):
And if you're doing that job, you have to want to do it.
It's just there's just no other way.
It isn't as luxurious as it may sound because in some of the tic tacs I was watching and
you're on a live, you are basically just waiting outside of a jail cell out of prison and you
may be waiting an hour.
(43:19):
I think at some point you were waiting like four hours or something like that.
Now you need to go in.
But at some point then once you're in to wait longer, you have to wait longer.
And that sounds well, first of all, what is the difference between a prison and a jail?
OK, good question for the general audience.
It's a good question.
A jail is where you will go to while you are waiting to have your case resolved.
(43:43):
So if you are waiting for a jury trial, let's say you would be waiting at your local jail
where your county is in to where you would have your court hearings at that kind of thing.
And it's not like Hollywood where you're just waiting a couple of hours.
You could be waiting years, years, years, years.
And the prison is where you would be sentenced to be the Department of Corrections or different
(44:08):
states have different names for it.
But if you were to come to a plea deal and you plead guilty and they sentence you to
two years or three years, you would do that sentence at the prison, not at the jail.
So you would go and they're further out.
And it's not just your county.
There's a few around the state.
Federally, it's the Bureau of Prisons.
(44:28):
You would be sentenced to the Bureau of Prisons.
But that's the major the major difference.
So it's a jail.
You're just you know, I think there's this funny to talk with Kat Williams who he says,
you know, thirty four felonies and I've never been in prison.
I've been to jail, but I've never been in prison.
That's exactly what he means.
Yes, yes.
I remember going in during internships and when I never knew that there were so many
(44:49):
differences between prisons and prison systems.
I would go to one prison that was just your typical like in Baltimore, I think it was
it was just a stone, a very kind of scary looking.
The cells were stacked.
And as I'm walking by, you see hands just coming out with a little mirror to see, I
(45:10):
guess, who's walking by.
And occasionally you get cat calls and things like that.
And then I visited a I guess was a supermax, which was all just glass or some kind of each
one is so different.
They're they're really different.
I really recommend anyone in the audience listening to actually visit a prison and see
what these are like, because this is the kind of person that you're you're meeting your
(45:33):
client at.
And many people have no idea the conditions of these places.
Maybe they get this Hollywood allure of what they look like, but they're actually far worse
than than Hollywood portrays.
Yeah, there's there's tons of research and studies and reports as the conditions of that.
And especially during covid, it was very, very terrifying for those that were incarcerated.
(45:58):
And these are all people.
And we have to keep that in mind.
You know, we have to keep that in mind at the end of the day that these are these are
people these aren't just any these aren't animals that you just throw in and you know,
you can cage them for a little bit and then you can take them back out and they're all
fine and good.
But these are the prisons have a lot of psychological effects on individuals.
(46:18):
It's very difficult.
There are a lot of people who couldn't even deal with the pandemic.
Or it's like going crazy because they couldn't get a haircut.
Right, right, right.
And imagine the imagine a prison.
Each jail is so different.
They have all these different rules for lawyers as to how to come in, what you can wear, what
you can't wear, what you can bring in, what you can bring in.
I can't tell you how many I've been to.
I'm in different prisons, too.
(46:39):
They're all different.
It's fascinating how each one has has their own system.
I love how she says that's fascinating.
It is.
Yeah, no, it's fascinating because I'm like, OK, all right.
What time can I come to this jail versus what time can I go to that jail?
And then can I bring this to that jail?
And then I have to I have to prepare for to leave this here.
(46:59):
I can wear this to this one, but I can't wear that to that one.
She even has a special bag.
Yes, I have.
I have my jail bag.
My jail bag.
Everything in things that you leave in the car.
Yeah, I live in the car.
I live in the car just because I never know.
You know, I do a lot of job visits at night, too.
So like six p.m. or something like that after work.
And so it's just easier to have it in my car and it can get put.
(47:22):
It fits my computer.
It has two pens in it always has business cards in them.
It has an extra license.
My bar card legal pad.
Because when you're visiting a client, you might actually need to give your business
card to someone else who.
Yes.
If I'm like, let's say I'm meeting with one client and I'm talking to them and, you know,
there's a family member visiting another client and they'll say, like, hey, can I get your
car?
(47:42):
It's happened to me so many times.
I'm like, no.
So I have to write down my phone number on a piece of paper and hand it to them.
So I just think it's best to have them there.
And then also, if I'm meeting a client for the first time, I'll give them my business
card because it has my cell phone number on it that they can call me to and they can know
where the firm that I'm from.
So they can contact you directly.
They don't have to go through a service or.
So depends on the jail.
(48:03):
Yeah.
That's the fascinating part about jails.
They have all different rules.
Some jails, they can call me no problem whenever they want.
Some jails, I have to come in and physically see them or I have to get a confidential line,
have it scheduled.
So there's so many different kind of nuances to that, depending on which jail or which
prison I'm going into.
But it's great that you give your clients your cell phone number and they can reach
(48:26):
you.
I mean, I don't even do that for my clients.
Oh, yeah.
All my clients have my cell phone number.
I do a lot of WhatsApp with my clients, with family that are overseas too.
They have my cell phone number.
It's just much easier that way.
And it also allows my client just to text me if they want to text me a question here
or there.
And while you're in the prison, there's this term that you were using, which is a lockdown.
(48:50):
What does that mean when you get locked down and what do you do?
So a lockdown happens internally within the jail to where no visitations are happening.
No one's coming in the jail, coming out of the jail.
Could be for various reasons, mostly safety concerns.
And so I will, I can't even tell you how many times, I would make time on my calendar.
(49:12):
I'm going to see my client on this day at this time, ready to go and I'll get there.
It's on lockdown.
Jail's on lockdown.
You can wait if you want.
Okay, well, it could be locked down for an hour.
It could be locked down for 20 minutes.
It could be locked down for two days.
So I don't, they don't know, we don't know.
So I'll have to reschedule the visit and come back.
(49:33):
There was one time where I was inside the jail and it was different jail in St. Louis
and there's a mental health floor.
So padded walls, that kind of thing.
The lights went out and the elevator went out.
Wow.
And I was by myself.
And so then, and so the way that it works, the doors are locked from the inside and out.
(49:53):
Whenever I'm meeting with clients, like I'm locked in with them.
It's not like I could just like head out.
So without somebody pressing a button from the outside to let me out.
So I, I'm locked in and lights are out and I'm like, any other floor would have been
fine but it's the padded white wall floor that I get, that the lights go out that I'm
(50:16):
locked in.
And I'm trying to find like the door to at least like pull on it so that people can hear
what's going on.
And then you just, I had to wait it out.
I had to wait it out.
Oh my God.
I just had to wait it out.
And then finally they figured it out.
Like that, that jail, the elevator would go out all the time, all the time.
And so you, I mean, you can't bring your cell phones in.
(50:37):
So you're just kind of stuck until someone lets you out.
Can you bring a book or something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, so I bring, I bring a book or I'll bring some other cases to work on, you know, while
I wait, I might be waiting a while or I might not wait at all.
And then all the things that I had to do while I waited, I was like, Oh, that's not going
to the, not doing that today right now.
(50:58):
That's pretty interesting.
The things that you have to do.
Kind of scary, but nice.
It's very interesting.
Gives the adrenaline going.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you're dedicated.
I mean, this is, this is what you've wanted to do.
Yeah.
I love my job.
I love my job.
I think a lot of people also see the gruesome aspect of it.
Cause I do a lot of violent crime and it's, it's not easy for a lot of people.
You know, some people have experiences in their background that also find this kind
(51:20):
of work triggering, which I completely understand.
It's not for everyone.
So I think it's really important that the people that are doing this work are really
passionate about it and really want to do it because it's such a necessary aspect of
our criminal defense and our legal system in general.
But I get that all the time.
You must be, must be something wrong going on there that you're, you're liking to do
(51:44):
this.
And it's like, I like to help people.
And it's, you know, it's, it's a lot for families too.
So what advice would you give to maybe a law student that would like to go into criminal
law?
I would say, keep an open mind as many internships as possible that you could take as much experience
exposure to both the prosecution and the defense.
I think, you know, we do, there are really great prosecutors out there that really want
(52:06):
to do, really want to do well and help their community.
And I mean, my best friend is a prosecutor.
And to this day, people don't understand our relationship.
I was in her wedding and I'm walking by, you know, all I'm walking down the aisle and all
of her fellow prosecutors are in the audience and they're looking at us like, we do not
understand how this is working.
(52:27):
But it's because we both have a mutual respect for each other's work and we both understand
our roles and what we're trying to accomplish.
And we both really just want the community to be safer and healthier.
Have you ever been in opposite sides, like in a trial or something?
Absolutely.
It was actually quite funny.
Um, we, we had, we met because we had cases against each other.
(52:48):
And there was one instance where I was like, oh, this, we're, we're going to be friends
for a long time.
I had a client, I had a client and it was a domestic violence case.
And we were arguing, I was arguing for the client's release.
She was arguing for him to stay locked up.
Right.
We're in front of the judge.
She does her thing and I start making my arguments.
(53:10):
She tries interrupting me and I say, do not interrupt me.
I'm not finished yet.
Excuse me.
And then I like keep going on and then we turned.
She asked me like, oh, so like, what are you cooking tonight?
I'm like, oh, I'm cooking this and cooking that.
You know, it was like, it was, we were, we were going at it.
Judge makes the decision and we turn around and then we just start chit chatting about
like what our next like meals are going to be.
(53:32):
Cause she likes to cook and I like to cook.
I love that.
Cause you don't make it personal.
We don't make it personal.
We don't.
You're there for business.
You're there for your client.
Exactly.
We do not make it personal.
And ultimately the judge is going to decide what the judge is going to decide.
I fight as hard as I can.
She fights as hard as she can.
And then ultimately the judge is going to do what it's going to do.
But I do not take it personally.
I will, if, if there's some unethical things going on, that's something different.
(53:55):
We'll, we'll have a little chat about that for sure.
But it was like one of those moments where we both can recall it because she can recall
it like line by line.
And then we would just turn and we start talking about it as we walked back and, and I was
like, okay, this is why, you know, all these years later I'm in her wedding now.
Does the day job affect like you watching like a TV or something like that?
And at some point you're like watching law and order or whatever it is and you're like,
(54:17):
would you watch orange or something black or something like that?
So I remember watching, I remember watching how to get away with murder.
Right.
That show.
I kid you not.
I watched maybe the first 10 minutes before I threw the control of the TV and was like,
this, no, no, I'm not, this is not it.
And I like threw it.
I'm like not watching this at all.
(54:38):
And then I, that, that shows suits where that's me with suits.
Like, this is my big law.
And then, and then, and then he, what he like, he got, he passed the bar without going to
law school or something like, I think like that's part of the show.
I was like, I am never watching a show where anyone didn't have to go to law school.
And like I threw the control.
I'm like, no, no, the only, absolutely not.
I'm not going to support this.
The only show that I think is remote, like that is tolerable, that is actually like somewhat
(55:03):
close to your everyday job is the good wife.
Oh, okay.
The good wife actually, but it's the arguments that they make are a little bit more on point
with the actual legal world, but I can't do any of the other ones.
I really can't.
I get really angry.
One myth that is in Hollywood a lot is how quickly some of these trials go.
(55:23):
Like you get charged with a crime and the next day you're like already at trial.
Oh yeah.
That's why I'm like, this is so not true.
You know, and, and what really frustrates me a lot too is these shows make it look like
a public defender is the worst type of lawyer in the world.
And then that's when the protagonist of the show who's this hot shot lawyer comes in and
(55:45):
saves the day.
And that's just not the case at all.
These public defenders work day and night and are really great advocates for their clients
and get really great outcomes.
I remember there was this one day where it was the three of us, public defenders, there
was three women and we were all in trial and we all got not guilty verdicts the same day.
(56:06):
And it was back to back, back to back, back to back on the same day after being in trial
for that week.
And the whole jail was going crazy.
Everyone was, everyone was so happy.
Everyone was like talking about it and all the CEOs were all excited for us and stuff.
So it was really fun because then it was, you know, it was three women and we were all
public defenders and we all got not guilty verdicts.
(56:28):
And I hope he went to drinks after that or something.
Oh, he did.
Oh my goodness.
We did.
And it was crazy.
It was one, one acquittal and we were, Oh, that's amazing.
And then it was the next acquittal.
And they're like, Oh my gosh, if we get three for three, we're going to freak out right
now.
And then mine came in last and my, and that case was, was a really big case.
I mean, he was facing a lifetime imprisonment and the offer was 15 years before trial.
(56:51):
And so you brought it home.
Yes.
He, yeah, he went home after that.
So, so afterwards we're just like drinking and crying.
We were just all so happy.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
And I remember going to my client afterwards and I said, Oh, you want your hot shot private
lawyer now, don't you?
And it was really funny.
And he goes like, no, you got it, you got it, you got it.
(57:12):
It was public.
You got it.
And I was like, yeah, I thought so.
You know, it was funny, but we do.
Yeah.
But what defenders do a lot of great work and it's not just because you're probably
defender means you're going to get an adequate services.
Well, thank you very much for being on the show.
Thank you for having me.
I have like, I could go on for like another hour.
Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's such a pleasure.
(57:33):
I'm going to go ahead and post the information if they want to contact you.
Hopefully they don't have to contact you.
But if they're in an issue where they need a criminal defense attorney, it sounds like
you not only know what you're doing, but you actually enjoy what you do.
You love it.
You're passionate.
Yes, I do.
You're the advocate to call.
(57:53):
Thank you.
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