Gideon’s Promise: The Organization
Most of my readers know all about Gideon’s Promise. But, if you don’t, let’s take a few seconds to talk about who they are.
“Gideon’s Promise is a nonprofit public defender organization whose mission is to transform the criminal justice system by building a movement of public defenders who provide equal justice to marginalized communities.” To achieve this end, Gideon’s Promise provides training, mentorship, and leadership development for public defenders.
Gideon’s Promise is one of the most important civil rights organizations in our country today. While this book is about how this wonderful organization came to be, it is also a story about public defenders, their role in dismantling our country’s racist system of mass incarceration, and the path forward to reaching that goal. Whether you are a new public defender or a supervising attorney, this book is a must read.
Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement To Transform Criminal Justice
“Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice” is authored by the founder and president of Gideon’s Promise, Jonathan Rapping.
“Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice” tells the story of how one of the most important civil rights organizations of this generation came to be. In telling this story, Rapping educates us about public defender systems, namely in the South, that have been corrupted by a racist criminal system ruled by judges and prosecutors with little regard for the Constitutional rights of those before it, let alone their humanity.
Rapping teaches us how to be better public defenders. It is very much a manual for public defenders, at all levels, who want to end mass incarceration. But this is not just a book for public defenders. If you have any interest in the civil rights movement of our time, this book is for you.
Addressing Racism
There is no escaping racism when discussing the American criminal system. As my good friend Christian recently pointed out, race infects every single criminal case. Rapping tackles this head on and makes clear the importance of understanding how this system came to be.
“It is no secret that the founding fathers did not create our system of justice to apply to black people. A completely separate set of laws, known as slave codes, governed the treatment of most black people at the time the Constitution was drafted. White supremacy was part of the accepted fabric of America’s legal system.“
Slave codes transformed into lynch mobs and Jim Crow. Jim Crow transformed into “tough on crime” criminal systems. It’s all the same racist system the founding fathers created, just under different names.
Rapping goes on to explain that racism, embedded in our culture, infects all of us and simple policy reforms are not the cure.
“As a nation, we have embraced a narrative that sees African Americans as less human, and as more dangerous. It shapes every aspect of our lives, none more than our approach to criminal justice. This narrative is at the heart of a criminal legal culture that has seduced us into accepting a system that looks nothing like the one designed by our democratic forefathers.
Implicit bias is subconscious. Structural changes will not change the assumptions that drive us to engineer disparate racial outcomes. The solution won’t lie in policy fixes. Addressing implicit bias requires that we raise consciousness, rewrite narratives and change values.”
Addressing Client-Centered Representation
One of the most valuable parts of Gideon’s Promise are the lessons in client-centered representation. Rapping constantly reminds us that at the end of the day, if nothing else, we must give our clients a voice. This is not simply the act of speaking on their behalf, an easy feat to accomplish. It is about empowerment.
Young lawyers often walk into the profession with a mindset that the lawyer, based on their training and experience, knows what is best for the client. When public defenders with hundreds of cases have limited time to spend with their clients, they find themselves spending that precious time convincing clients what is best. This is not client centered representation.
“Rather than decide the right course based on the lawyer’s values, the lawyer must help the client understand the decision in front of them.”
This is difficult. I have had many clients with strong defenses at trial abandon those defenses for strategies that I believed increased the risk of conviction. Why did they choose these paths?
Some clients did not want to acknowledge being involved with the incident in question. Others did not want to blame their spouse or friend for the offense. And some did not want to reveal private aspects of their lives, such as an affair or their sexuality. At the end of the day, it was always difficult to abandon what I believed was a winning defense, but I did.
Trials are not about the attorney. Trials are about another person’s life. Where our clients are poor and do not have the ability to choose who represents them, are they not, at the very least, entitled to the dignity of determining the best course of action? In Gideon’s Promise, Rapping answers “yes” and I couldn’t agree with him more.
Addressing The Systemic and Cultural Problems In Public Defense
Whether or not we realize it, routine injustice becomes normalized. And we, as public defenders, can lose sight of this. Defenders all across this country wake up one morning to find that they are nothing more than cogs in a violent machine that processes their clients like cattle in a meat packing plant.
They find themselves resenting their clients when they want to fight the system. This is the product of working in a system that punishes litigators and the stress that comes with being a fighter. And before you know it, you are badmouthing your client to colleagues. Then friends. And at your worst moments, prosecutors and judges.
Don’t think its true? Do you think you’re immune? Think again. Public defender systems, corrupted by a culture of oppression, are filled with once idealistic attorneys who have some found themselves in this position.
Rapping puts it better than anyone else: “Culture is like the current of a mighty stream. The force of the current determines where the water will go. If a person wants to swim against the current, they may be able to for a while . . . Over time, the pull of the current will wear them down. The person will either get out of the water or be carried by its flow.”
Gideon’s Promise, the organization, is helping transform broken public defender systems across the country. By recruiting young lawyers, providing them with training and continued support, Gideon’s Promise is helping to change the culture one public defender at a time.
Addressing The Systemic and Cultural Problems In Prosecution
Rapping also addresses prosecutors. It’s easy to swear off the profession as a group, but, Rapping digs a bit deeper.
“The prosecutor’s obligation to ensure justice is done trumps his interest in winning a case. The prosecutor is required to pursue a just outcome, even where doing so might jeopardize his chance of winning. He must never intentionally engage in conduct that undermines those tenets at the heart of our democracy. Yet culture drives prosecutors all across the country to do this. Every day prosecutors help perpetuate a system that over prosecutes and over incarcerates. They do so in a way that disproportionately targets the most vulnerable. Yet most truly believe they are acting consistent with justice.“
Buried with extremely high caseloads and indoctrinated to believe that people are the worst thing they have ever done, justice is an afterthought, if a thought at all. Revoking plea offers upon the filing of substantive motions or demanding discovery become the norm. The goal becomes a conviction at the expense of exercising one’s constitutional rights.
It Comes Down To Culture
By exposing the corrupted culture of public defender systems, prosecutors, and judges through individual stories and statistics, Rapping makes an important point. These players “are the products of systems shaped by corrupted values. They are systems that corrupt some more than others. But everyone who participates in the criminal justice system is capable of being molded by it.”
And changing the system will produce very little results until we change the culture of the system.
“Of course we should decriminalize more behavior. Yes, we should reform sentencing law to give judges more discretion. We absolutely should end wealth-based pretrial detention. But if these are not done without transforming culture, the impact will not be transformative. Police . . . will still find ways to monitor and arrest targeted populations. Judges . . . will continue to find ways under the new regime to overuse pretrial detention and sentence harshly upon conviction.”
Changing the culture of a system as expansive and powerful as the American criminal system is not easy feat, but thanks Gideon’s Promise, we can see a path to victory.
If you care about justice and are looking for an organization to support, Gideon’s Promise is just the place for you to make a donation!
