MEET SAJID KHAN
Sajid Khan is a public defender in Santa Clara County, co-host of the Aider and Abettor Podcast, and blogger (check out his blog – Closing Arguments).
Sajid Khan is also one of the latest victims of prosecutorial overreaching. No, he didn’t commit a crime. Instead, he spoke truth to power. He called out prosecutors for “actively, affirmatively, and proudly dehumanizing black people by perpetuating and feeding the mass incarceration monster that is fueled and filled by black bodies.” He also called for tearing down the racist and oppressive system of criminal law that is responsible for (insert statistic about Blacks rate of incarceration and etc). Read Khan’s post here.
Khan called for people protesting law enforcement’s relentless attacks on people of color to not forget to include prosecutor’s offices on their list of places to hold rallies and loudly chant “Black Lives Matter!” He called for ending a government backed system of racial oppression. And the Santa Clara County District Attorney, Jeff Rosen, filed a whistle-blower complaint against Attorney Khan.
So, you are waiting for it. You are waiting to hear me tell you what Sajid Khan did. What was it that gave District Attorney Rosen grounds to file a whistleblower complaint? You can wait all day, but that’s it. A person of color called out prosecutors’ role in the oppression of people of color, and the District Attorney went on the offensive. Nice.
District Attorney Rosen came to his senses and withdrew the complaint. Regardless, what happened here cannot be forgotten.
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity and privilege to speak with Sajid Khan about his recent experience and further flesh out the connection between law enforcement’s oppression of people of color and prosecutors.
SAJID, CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF?
I am a Muslim, Bay Area born and bred son of immigrants from India. I went to UC Berkeley (aka Cal- Go Bears!) for college and UC Hastings College of the Law for law school.
I became a lawyer in December 2007 and started my career in public defense at the Contra Costa County Public Defender. I have been a Santa Clara County Deputy Public Defender in my hometown of San Jose since June 2008. Over the years, I have represented people in various assignments including misdemeanors, general felonies, juvenile court and now homicides and have tried approximately 70 adult and juvenile trials to verdict.
I am a father of two young sons – Sulaiman and Shakur – love to coach, play and watch basketball, football and baseball, am a huge fan of the A’s & Warriors and love to watch re-runs of Seinfeld, Parks & Rec and The Office.
ASIDE FROM WEALTH AND PRESTIGE, WHAT LED YOU TO BECOME A PUBLIC DEFENDER?
First and foremost, my choice to be a public defender is rooted in my faith, the Islam that I was taught by my parents, at my Muslim elementary school and at my home mosque in Santa Clara, CA. Through these forums, cornerstone values and tenets of our faith were embedded in me: enjoining good and forbidding evil, standing up for justice, working and speaking out against oppression, removing hardships for and from people, maintaining a compassionate, merciful view of people and their sins/weaknesses, serving God by serving others.
Growing up with these faith principles and in a service-oriented family, I aspired to be a lawyer for social change, ironically inspired by U.C. Hastings when I enrolled in my Criminal Procedure class taught by a former U.S. Attorney named Rory Little, a class that changed my life. In it, I found my calling and fell in love with public defense.
The class centered on the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments of the United States Constitution that form the foundation and crux of our nation’s criminal justice system. The 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the 5th Amendment safeguards against double jeopardy, self-incrimination, and assurance of due process of law, the 6th Amendment assurances of jury trials, confrontation of accusatory witnesses, and the effective assistance of counsel.
The lectures, reading and discussion on the 4th Amendment were particularly striking, compelling, and ultimately life-altering, opening my eyes to the scary realities of our “freedoms,” or lack thereof, in this country. I realized that we’re not as free as we think. I learned that in this nation that other countries supposedly hate for our “freedoms,” our people, particularly people of color, are subject to police harassment and misbehavior daily that the Supreme Court has continuously justified and sanctioned. Teeth grinding, heart rate rising, body tense as I would read the litany of Supreme Court decisions stripping us of our dignity and most basic rights.
I then asked myself as the semester wore on, “Who on the ground fights and litigates to protect these most basic civil and human rights, stands up for racial minorities against overzealous police searches and seizures?” The answer became abundantly clear: Public Defenders.
It clicked. I turned that anger, surprise, shock, frustration and emotion into a resolve to struggle to protect the fundamental rights we all deserve and expect to be free in our homes, to walk and drive our streets without fear of arbitrary police contact. I had found my calling, my way of manifesting Federal Public Defender in San Jose and at the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s office and then as a lawyer in the Contra Costa County Office of the Public Defender after law school. I was honored and privileged to be hired as a lawyer back with the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office in 2008 and have fallen deeper in love with the layers of the work ever since, especially honoring the humanity of the people I represent, breathing life into the constitution, and attempting to promote communal values of mercy, compassion, empathy and redemption.
Public defense isn’t just my 9-5, it’s become my identity.
A LOT OF OUR FOLLOWERS ARE ASPIRING LAW STUDENTS. WHAT ADVICE DOES SAJID KHAN HAVE FOR THEM AS THEY PURSUE THEIR DREAM OF BECOMING A PUBLIC DEFENDER?
In our courthouses, we are witnesses and parties to the people we represent locked up, ripped from their families and loved ones, jettisoned to prisons and jails for months, years or even lifetimes. We plead, argue and fight for our people, committing every fiber of our beings, only to often have juries or judges step on our souls, telling us that our efforts aren’t enough to save the men and women we serve from convictions and/or incarceration.
So it’s critically important that young public defenders work to develop the skill of rebounding. The mental fortitude to deal and cope with losses. The willingness and ability to get up off the mat. The resilience to sustain in this work through the inevitable heartbreak and daggers to the soul.
To that end, self-care is so critically important. Starting early and building the dynamic, diverse tool kit to sustain and maintain in this work: meditation, yoga, exercise, therapy, vacations, mindfulness, walking, prayer, travel, boundaries, mental health days.
Great advice! Anything else?
Celebrate and enjoy your victories, even if they’re small.
Remember that “wins” are relative and that every case is different. Redefine your definition of success because sometimes times a “win” might be an acquittal after trial, other times it might be a non-life, determinate term prison deal, and other times it might just be giving of yourself wholly and completely to the person you’ve been trusted to represent, honoring their humanity, effectuating their rights, standing up for and with them even as they ultimately get convicted and sentenced to a life prison term.
It’s not only ok to cry, it’s healthy.
Accept that there is so much about our work that is out of our control.
Embrace your own style and voice. Not all public defenders are the same.
Watch colleagues in trial. Pick and choose from them what might work for you but find and maintain your own voice.
Gladly cover for your colleagues when they’re sick, overwhelmed or on vacation; what goes around comes around.
Manifest love for the people we serve: visit them at the jail, answer their phone calls, write them letters, meet with their families, stand besides them in court, shake their hands.
Never talk shit about the people we represent.
Avoid dehumanizing, system reinforcing language and attempt to restore the humanity of the people we represent: say their names, learn their stories and social histories, provide context to their conduct, show that they often were once victims too, highlight their unique capacities for rehabilitation.
Any Advice About Representing “The Guilty”?
It’s one thing to stand with and work to exonerate the innocent. Surely, that’s a special privilege. But it’s another, deeper, unique gift to stand aside and hold the hands of the guilty.
Be thankful for the honor to humanize and touch the people that we as a society forget, neglect, ostracize, demonize, condemn. To call them by their names rather than bodies, defendant, monster, molester, sex offender. To not define them by their worst moments. To understand and unearth the roots of their crimes, to tell their stories, to hope for, believe in and highlight their, and in turn our collective, capacity for rehabilitation.
Proudly stand and walk with these fellow human beings we’ve been entrusted to represent, the most publicly flawed, complicated, traumatized.
(Here’s a PD manifesto that I wrote years back that probably needs some updating)
LET’S GET DOWN TO BRASS TAX SAJID, HOW HAS THE PAST WEEK AND HALF BEEN FOR YOU?
I am thankful and humbled that so many people and organizations rallied to support me, my free speech freedoms, our collective First Amendment Rights, and this cause to manifest Black Lives Matter and to hold DAs offices to task for their complicity in the belittling of Black lives.
I am deeply disappointed, hurt and sad that Mr. Rosen and members of his office read my editorial words calling for District Attorney’s offices to be held to task by the public for their role in perpetuating police violence and dehumanizing black lives as a call for violent protest or for protests that could result in violence against members of this union.
I’m glad Mr. Rosen withdrew his complaint but I and we are not satisfied because this isn’t and was never about me.
This is about tearing down and revolutionizing systems rooted in slavery, lynchings and the subjugation of black people, constructs that perpetuate police violence and that pervasively belittle and devalue black lives. This is about holding DA’s offices like Rosen’s to task for their continued practices and policies of mass incarceration that result in the systemic policing, caging, decimation and dehumanization of black lives and communities.
Se we will not be satisfied until Mr. Rosen and DA’s across the Bay Area, state and country adopt real, meaningful, tangible reforms to ensure that the value of black lives are no longer cheapened and to remedy the hideously disproportionate number of black lives languishing in our jails and prisons and impacted by our mass incarceration monster.
Ultimately, I’m inspired and fired up for the movement to continue.
DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE TARGETED BY DISTRICT ATTORNEY JEFF ROSEN BECAUSE YOU WERE A PUBLIC DEFENDER?
I don’t think I was targeted because I’m a public defender, but because I am a public defender that drew upon years of experience and accrued expertise to shine a spotlight on the realities of Mr. Rosen’s office and to call for the public to hold him and other DA’s to task for their complicity in perpetuating police violence and the dehumanization of black lives in our criminal legal system.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE REAL ISSUE AT HAND: SOME CALL IT WHY DID YOU FEEL IT WAS IMPORTANT TO WRITE ABOUT THIS ON YOUR BLOG?
I believe that storytelling, speaking truth to power, holding institutions accountable and engaging in dialogue and spirited debate are fundamental to our democracy and to the upliftment and betterment of our community.
Surely in these forums, I have been and will continue to be critical of systems and of people that I believe can be and do better in effectuating justice and promoting humanity within our criminal legal system. In that vein, I have a track record of being critical of all players in this system including myself, fellow public defenders, judges and yes, prosecutors.
In this particular moment after the killing of George Floyd and the resulting uprising in our country, I felt it was critical that the community turn their attention and direct their calls for systemic reform to the seat of power that I believe is most responsible for perpetuating police violence and the dehumanization of black lives through the pervasive reliance upon our system of mass incarceration: district attorneys.
IT STRIKES ME THAT DISTRICT ATTORNEY ROSEN LIKES TO PROMOTE HIMSELF AS A PROGRESSIVE PROSECUTOR, STRIVING TOWARDS INCLUSION AND EQUALITY. HIS REACTION TO YOUR BLOG POSTS SEEMS TO DISCREDIT THOSE CLAIMS. WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON “PROGRESSIVE PROSECUTORS?”
It’s a high bar and most self proclaimed or publicly anointed “progressive prosecutors” don’t merit the designation.
To earn and deserve the title “progressive prosecutor,” a district attorney must do much more than not prosecute marijuana crimes or permit diversion on non-violent misdemeanor offenses and select mental health cases.
True progressive prosecution requires wholesale, bold, dramatic reform in how prosecutors view the criminally accused, how they adjudicate and punish violent crime and the manner in which they pursue convictions at trial.
True progressive prosecution requires reimagining our criminal legal system, recognizing the humanity of those who commit crimes, understanding and addressing the root causes of criminal behaviors, true belief in and commitment to redemption, manifesting values of compassion and mercy, and not relying upon our current means of incarceration as our primary response to crime.
True progressive prosecution, at a minimum, requires the end of the death penalty, racist gang enhancements, prosecuting young people as adults and life in prison without the possibility of parole sentences.
A LOT OF YOUNG DEFENDERS THAT I KNOW HAVE STRUGGLED WITH THE DEGREE TO WHICH THEY SHOULD SPEAK OUT. ONE THE ONE HAND, THEY HAVE A MORAL DUTY, BUT ON THE OTHER, ARE CONCERNED ABOUT BACKLASH FOR THEIR CLIENTS, OR EVEN THEIR COUNTY OR STATE EMPLOYER. WHAT ADVICE CAN YOU GIVE THEM?
For decades, the story of the criminal legal system and the criminally accused and convicted has been told by prosecutors and police and largely without input from the public defense community. Public defenders, traditionally, have tended to speak loudly inside the courtrooms on behalf of the people we represent but not beyond the courthouse and in the courts of public opinion.
But we’re uniquely situated, given our experiences every day in this criminal legal system and our unique proximity to the people we represent, to provide insight into how this inhumane, often unjust system operates, to ensure seats of power like DAs are held to account and to advocate for meaningful policy change.
We’re also uniquely situated to humanize and tell the stories of the people we represent, an essential part of providing them effective assistance of counsel and pushing back against our machine of mass incarceration which is rooted in and thrives upon the dehumanization of our people. When we see people as subhuman or less than, it’s that much easier to lock them up or kill them. When we humanize the people we represent through social media and storytelling, they are more likely to be treated as human beings inside our courthouses by judges, juries and prosecutors.
That said, we remain client centered and must engage in the greater movement mindfully and cautiously to ensure we do not compromise our duties of loyalty, confidentiality, and zealous advocacy to and for the people we’ve been entrusted to represent.
Here’s a helpful toolkit designed by Defender Initiative Impact:
