The Cartel Lawyer E-Book

Jonathan D. Rosen

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Dr. Jason White and Ricky Gold, a former professor and defense attorney in New York City, find themselves blacklisted from their professions after Jason is denied tenure and Ricky is disbarred from the legal profession.

Desperation leads the two to start working as consultants for a new Mexican cartel. Soon, their academic prowess helps the cartel make millions of dollars, and the criminal organization expands its operations and revolutionizes the way business is conducted in the criminal underworld through data science.

Meanwhile, DEA agent Pedro Gómez is seeking to bring the cartel and its associates down. After he learns that White and Gold might have something to do with the criminals, he begins to dig deeper into their affairs. As the net tightens around them, how far are the two willing to go to survive?

Leseprobe

THE CARTEL LAWYER

JONATHAN D. ROSEN

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Acknowledgments

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Jonathan D. Rosen

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

1

I heard the gates of the prison slam shut as the Department of Corrections van entered New Jersey’s maximum-security federal prison. This place looked like the gates to hell. The prison had a stained wall that separated a world of predators from freedom. At all four corners of the prison, guards with rifles looked down on the compound. A sign had the following statement in bold letters: “No warnings in this yard.” The new warden had given the officers permission to fire if someone tried to escape or if a fight broke out.

The prison van passed through the gates and the driver yelled, “Shut up and be quiet.” I stepped down in my orange jumpsuit. The handcuffs began to tighten and the shackles around my waist made noise as I took my first step down from the van. How the heck did I end up here as an inmate? I thought. Unfortunately, this was not my first time in this hellish prison. In my past life, I had visited many clients here who were incarcerated on federal drug charges.

Two overweight corrections officers shuffled out to greet the new arrivals.

“Alright boys, welcome to the big house,” proclaimed one guard.

This was not a white-collar prison where Wall Street bankers played tennis and served their time at “club fed.” This was a maximum-security prison.

The other guard shouted over our heads, “Listen up inmates! As Officer Smith said, we don’t take any nonsense. We’ll refer to you as inmate and whatever your last name is. You will answer yes sir or yes ma’am. It isn’t rocket science.”

The new inmates from the van moved through the intake process.

One officer yelled, “Gentlemen, take off your jumpsuits. We will check you for contraband. If anyone of you is stupid enough to smuggle drugs or weapons into this prison, we will find out. After you shower, put on your jumpsuits. We run this joint, so don’t try anything stupid.”

The warden of the prison, Mr. Humphrey Brown, had been running the Texas prison system for three decades. Before becoming a warden, he had been a sheriff in Amarillo, Texas. Mr. Brown, a five-foot six-inch man with a pot belly, believed that prisons should be designed to punish, not rehabilitate, offenders. Warden Brown, along with his cowboy hats, spurs, and belt buckle, had left the comforts of west Texas and moved to New Jersey’s Brick City. This job came with a large pay raise as few people wanted to be the warden of Newark’s toughest prison. The governor needed someone to come into this nightmare of a prison system and shake it upside down. In the past fifteen months, the prison had experienced three riots and ten stabbings, including one involving an officer. The media outcry led the governor to fire the warden and fifteen officers, as they had been involved in a litany of scandals from smuggling drugs into the prison to letting rival gang members enter the same cells to duke it out over turf battles on the streets.

As I removed my clothes, showered, and put on my new jumpsuit, one intake officer asked me if I had thoughts of harming myself: “Do you want to hurt yourself? Have you been sad lately?”

I wanted to respond, “I’m going to serve twenty-five to life in federal prison. Yeah, I’m depressed, you moron.”

Another veteran officer recognized me and said, “Ricky Gold. Hey, brother. Funny seeing you on this side of the law. I guess representing scumbags and drug dealers for all those years finally caught up with you.”

“Nice to see you too, officer,” I replied.

The officer responded, “Officer Joseph, you nitwit, you don’t read the papers. Pretty Ricky Gold here got caught up with some Mexican cartel and worked for some gang members. He used to be one bad boy in that courtroom.”

“Welcome to hell, pretty Ricky. This isn’t a white-collar prison, son. We aren’t babysitting Wall Street bankers here,” responded Officer Joseph.

I was assigned a cell in the east bloc. The officer threw me a bedsheet and pillow.

“Inmate Gold! Shut up and follow me. I will take you to your cell.”

If you have never been inside a prison before—good for you—there is the constant smell of Clorox, as the inmates are always mopping. Prisons are full of noise from the time you walk in and hear the heavy metal doors slamming shut behind you. The noise can be overwhelming. The thought of putting up with this for years made me nervous.

My years as a criminal defense attorney taught me that the prison system in the United States has evolved over time. Richard Nixon launched the US “war on drugs” in 1971, and Ronald Reagan implemented the “modern phase” of the drug war during the 1980s. President Bill Clinton passed the 1994 Crime Bill with his famous “three strikes and you are out” speech. People who committed three felony charges would receive a mandatory minimum of twenty-five years to life. The war on drugs has resulted in the prison population spiking. Today, there are more than two million people in jail or prison. The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world. We lock more people up than China, Russia, and even South Africa at the height of apartheid. Low-level drug addicts crowd the prison system, which costs taxpayers around eighty billion dollars per year.

The federal prison in Newark, however, was not a prison where people served time for crimes for drug possession or writing bad checks. This was a maximum-security prison housing dozens of top cartel leaders who had been extradited from Mexico to the United States. The most famous inmate, the son of Joaquín Cabrera, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was convicted for trafficking more than three million dollars in drugs between Mexico and the United States. The prosecutors could never get him on the scores of murder charges that he committed as no one wanted to talk. However, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the federal agency in charge of combating drug trafficking, cooperated with the Mexican government and helped prosecutors build a slam-dunk case against one of the sons of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.

This is the world I entered. A world that I became familiar with as a former criminal defense attorney. As I walked down the long corridor, inmates banged on the bars and yelled at me, “Welcome to hell, pretty boy. I’m going to be your worst nightmare.”

Another inmate whistled and screamed, “You better watch it here, son. I can’t wait to see you on the yard. Better start doing some pushups. Be careful when you lift weights, son. I’ll get you, pretty boy.”

I did not look at them or respond. Prisons are a predator’s playground. The weak are fed to the wolves, and inmates smell fear. Friends, wives, and other family members can send inmates money for the canteen store. Tougher inmates extort the weaker ones for the money as they can buy candy, noodles, and other snacks at the prison store. The money also can be used for buying drugs.

People on the outside may believe that prisons serve as a place where inmates can be rehabilitated. One may think that inmates detoxing from drugs will have several years where they will be able to overcome their addiction through counseling and substance abuse classes. This prison, like many others in the United States, was known an epicenter for drugs and crime. You can get any drug that you want if you are willing to pay the price. Inmates have an abundance of one thing on their hands: time. Endless amounts of time.

Newark’s maximum-security prison brought in the feds to clean things up after several violent riots that left four inmates dead and dozens wounded. The authorities started to shake up the cells and found a seemingly endless pile of home-made knives, known as shanks. Inmates can make a shank out of anything from toothbrushes to metal rods in the air vents.

As I walked along the prison corridors, I tried not to show fear, but my heart sank deep into my stomach. I thought, How’d I end up in this place? Why couldn’t I have been smarter?

We kept walking until we reached my new home. The guard yelled, “Stop. Here it is, inmate. Enjoy.”

The gates of the cell opened, and the officer started walking away. A large man lurking in the shadows smiled. He was around five feet nine inches and one hundred and eighty-five pounds of pure muscle. He did not have his shirt on. He had the phrase “El Payaso,” which means clown in Spanish, tattooed above his belly button in large green letters. He had the letters M and S tattooed on each of his pecks.

“What’s up Ricky? Funny seeing you in here,” said “El Payaso,” whose real name is Juan Cruz.

“Hey man. Great to see you. Well, it’s not great to see you in this hellhole. Luckily, the guards and prison authorities are too dumb to realize that we know each other.”

I had represented Juan Cruz on various charges in my past life as a lawyer. Cruz came from a rough background and was a major player on the streets for the gang known as Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. The authorities could never get him on any serious charges because witnesses did not want to upset the clown, who had killed several people and become an expert in extortion. The Drug Enforcement Administration got involved and helped local authorities build a case against him. Three previous cases did not move forward because the clown threatened to kill every witness and their families if they testified against him. He moved cocaine, crystal meth, and marijuana between different neighborhoods in New Jersey and New York. Federal prosecutors finally nabbed him on drug trafficking and racketeering. The judge sentenced him to five years in federal prison.

“We dodged bullets for many years, my friend,” I told Juan. “Funny that we ended up in the same cell together. It never ceases to amaze me how dumb the authorities are. It would never have occurred to them that you and some old gringo like me knew each other on the outside.”

Juan laughed. “Yeah man. All the officers do here is serve their eight hours and hit the gate. They’re so lazy, it is unbelievable. Don’t expect them to help you.”

“How’s the family?”

“You know. It’s been rough.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. We’ve got a lot of time here to catch up. I’m not going anywhere quickly.”

“I hear you, brother. Listen, I will take care of you in this dump. Obviously, we can’t associate outside the cell.”

Juan could not associate with me behind bars because of the unwritten racial code. Racism is much worse on the inside than on the outside of the prison system. Prisons in the United States are divided along racial lines. African Americans hang out with African Americans, whites with whites, and Hispanic or Latinos with their own kind. Prisoners are allowed out on the yard, an open space with basketball courts, a track, and weights. Inmates self-segregate on the yard, which becomes a battleground for prison gangs.

Even if prisoners themselves are not racist, they follow the unwritten code about what inmates should do and who they should talk to. Since prisons are full of predators, one mistake, even a tiny one like accepting food from an inmate of the opposite skin color, could result in a fight or even death.

“Follow the code,” Juan told me. “Don’t ever break the code.”

Prison is the only place in the world where you will see men in their forties or fifties joining a gang for protection. Countless studies by academics show that there is a relationship between age and crime. Gangs are a youth phenomenon on the outside. In the United States, most people “age out” of the gang life and leave it behind as a young adult. Yet in prison, there is power in numbers, forcing people, even middle-aged men, to link up for protection.

“You know how many jailhouse lawyers are here? You will be the only real lawyer here. Ya sabes lo que la gente dice: ‘En tierra de ciegos, el tuerto es rey.’” Juan laughed. (You know what people say. In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king).

“Glad to know that the three years in law school was not a total waste of time. You know sometimes I wonder,” I said, laughing. “I do need to pay off my fines.”

In prison, everyone hustles to make some extra cash. If you want drugs, you need to trade either goods or services for them. While tattoo guns are illegal behind bars, every jail has its own tattoo artist. Some are better than others. Given how many people are appealing their cases, there is always one inmate who can serve as an “advisor” and charge fees for “legal representation.” A jailhouse lawyer can help inmates who do not have lawyers on the outside file appeals and write letters to different foundations asking for legal advice.

People on the outside often forget that someone sentenced to prison must pay restitution and other court fines. I got involved in the crimes that I committed because I needed money. Now I’m supposed to pay six hundred thousand dollars to the state. “How do you expect me to do that while I’m incarcerated for possibly the remainder of my life?” It, therefore, is no surprise that people revert to the “skills” they acquired on the streets to hustle and make money while behind bars.

Time to settle in, I thought.

This is going to be a long hall. I started to put my stuff away in my new “home,” which had a toilet and two beds stacked on top of the other. Welcome to hell is right.

2

I grew up in Carle Place, New York, which is about forty minutes from New York City on the Long Island Railroad. My father used to tell me that it was a quick forty-one-minute train ride from “the City,” when he wanted me to come visit. New Yorkers call it “the City” as if there is only one city in the entire country. Any New Yorker will tell you that NYC is the best city on the planet. Their pride can rub people from different parts of the country the wrong way.

My father, Peter, grew up in Brooklyn. His parents moved from Poland and arrived in New York to escape World War II. My old man worked hard and tried to provide the best he could for his family. He worked as a business manager for a group of neurosurgeons. When my father was a kid, his mother got sick and he left college to work in the family business. His mother died of cancer in her early fifties, leading him to fall into a depression and start drinking.

My father eventually got help and stopped drinking after a stint in rehab. He continued to work in the family business and finished his degree in finance taking classes at night at Long Island University. After nearly a decade, he earned his bachelor’s degree in finance and completed an executive MBA designed for working professionals.

My father’s therapist told him that maybe it would be healthy to leave the family business as he had a toxic relationship with his own father. My dad always told me, “My old man was tough. And you are lucky that I’m much softer.”

My grandfather grew up in the Great Depression and always feared that he would lose it all. He would never spend a penny on anything. In fact, he lived in the same home for nearly six decades and saved every dollar he had.

My father started to manage a doctor’s office and things were looking up for him until my mom got sick. My mother had a stroke and required around-the-clock care. Although my father had decent insurance, the homecare nearly bankrupted him. He could not deal with the stress and became depressed after seeing my mom suffer so much. He started drinking again. We tried to urge him to go back to rehab, but he said that he could not afford it.

My father got into a car one Sunday afternoon after drinking a few too many beers at the local bar while watching the New York Giants play. A police officer arrested my dad for driving under the influence. He spent the night in jail since we did not have the funds to bail him out.

My father lost his job after his DUI arrest. My dad told me the story repeatedly and urged me to never drink and drive.

“My boss told me he had to let me go because my actions reflected poorly on the office. Luckily, I didn’t kill anyone, but I lost everything. One mistake, son.” It crushed him. “One mistake, he repeated. One mistake and I lost it all. Who will hire me now that I have a criminal record? I’m a middle-aged man with an MBA and a pretty mugshot.”

After looking unsuccessfully for a job for weeks, my father fell into a deep depression and would not leave the house. He finally found a job as a manager for a local restaurant. The pay was lousy, and the stress of the job caused him to put on an extra twenty pounds.

When it came time for me to go to college, my father looked to me to take care of the family. As a student I had dreams of going to college in California. I had never been out west and wanted to experience something different. Given my family’s circumstances, I stayed closer to home and went to Hofstra University, a private college only a few miles down the road from where I grew up. I also went to Hofstra because it gave me a seventy-five percent scholarship.

I wanted to study English literature. In the summertime, I would read four to five books a week as a kid. Literature provided me with a way to escape the realities of my life. When drinking, my father could become abusive. He hit me on several occasions, even giving me a black eye. He would later apologize, saying, “I’m sorry, son. I can’t control my temper when I drink.” As bad as things were, I could always run away and escape to another country or universe through my books.

I thought that maybe I would become a writer. My father quickly derailed my plans.

“Hey kid, you’re not going to become the next great novelist. Get your head out of the clouds. It’s like saying that you are going to play in the NBA. Look where we live. Look at our life.”

“But an English degree will teach me how to write. Every employer needs to have someone who can think, read, and write.”

“Don’t be a wise guy, son. Reading and writing books are a hobby. We aren’t royalty. You can’t sit around and live off the family’s trust fund. Why? Because you don’t have one,” he yelled.

“Okay Dad,” I groaned. “What do you want me to study?”

“Look kid, become a doctor or some sort of professional. Something where you can make a living and support our family. We’re struggling, and I can’t pay for you to be a starving writer. You will end up working at a local coffee shop.”

I never excelled in science classes. I hated taking chemistry and physics in high school. I

I rationalized what my father told me, and I decided to major in business and minor in English. I thought that a business degree would teach me skills that would help me land a job. It is very difficult to become a writer. Reading and writing would just be a hobby.

While at Hofstra I enrolled in a business law course. I will never forget my teacher, Professor Mark Burns. He had a thick New York accent and would tell stories about his days working as a corporate lawyer in New York City. Mr. Burns got sick of working as a corporate lawyer and became a professor. He became jaded over the years and hated large corporations.

“You know what my fancy law degree and my corporate job gave me? High blood pressure and sleepless nights. Oh, and a heart attack.”

Mr. Burns was a brilliant guy who loved teaching. He traded in his three-piece suits for blue jeans and a button-down t-shirt. He would rub his hair, which would then stick straight up.

I loved every minute of his class. He taught me about fighting against corporate fraud and greed. As a kid from a working-class neighborhood on Long Island, I wanted to stand up and fight for the little guy. I would think of my dad’s problems and his run-ins with the law. Mr. Burns, with his coffee stained t-shirt and crazy hair, got me excited about fighting large corporations and motivated me much more than my accounting classes, which made me want to poke my eyes out.

When I was not studying, I worked twenty-five hours a week at various odd jobs to pay the bills. I mowed lawns during the fall. I even drove for Uber. I had a perfect five-star rating since I spoke to every customer with the utmost respect. I even had bottled waters, candy, and mints available.

By the time my senior year rolled around, I decided to take the LSAT, which is the entrance exam for law school. This test is a bear, and I had never been a great standardized test taker. Unfortunately, law schools weigh the test a great deal. A 3.7 GPA and one hundred and seventy-four meant that you could go to Yale, while a 3.7 and one hundred and sixty-two would land you at a terrific school, but outside the Ivy League. I took the test twice and applied to ten law schools all in the area. Columbia and NYU rejected me, but I received an offer at three of my top five choices. I started looking at the price. Law school is insanely expensive. Brooklyn Law gave me a half scholarship, making my decision easier as I would have been out nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars if I attended Fordham Law School.

I went to law school because I thought that I could use my degree to help people and at the same time support my family. The administration at Brooklyn Law surveyed my class at the beginning of the year and then again two years after graduation. The law school discovered that forty percent of the incoming class was interested in human rights and non-profit law. Two years after graduating from law school, eighty percent of the class worked in corporate law, complex litigation, or criminal defense. Crushing student loan debt forces people to “sell out” and chase money. Working as a non-profit lawyer making thirty thousand dollars per year is unrealistic for most young lawyers, unless you are independently wealthy.

I moved to Brooklyn to be closer to the university and to get away from my parents. My mom’s condition kept getting worse. My father remained clean for several months, but he would start drinking again. Watching my mom’s body wither away only worsened my father’s depression and drinking habits.

My father found his job not only stressful but lacking intellectual rigor. Before his DUI, he used the skills he had learned during his MBA program to help find ways to make the doctor’s office more efficient. My dad would spend days and nights coming up with different projections and ideas for how to improve the practice. As a restaurant manager, he spent his time yelling at the cooks, some of whom did not take the job seriously. He also had to deal with irate customers. This was Long Island, and people were not afraid to tell my father what they thought of the food and service.

On top of all that, my father started going into more debt as my mother’s care became more expensive. He would spend his days off from work fighting with insurance companies and the disability offices. He would berate the poor insurance representatives, yelling: “What’s the point of having insurance and disability coverage if all you do is deny me. Isn’t there anything that you do cover?”

My new apartment in Brooklyn was a fifteen-minute train-ride away from the university. Even though the university gave me a big chunk of change to help me pay for my law school education, it was not enough to survive. I looked for jobs that could help me pay my rent and put protein in my diet.

I started out waiting tables at night, but I later saw a job packing and unpacking meat at a butcher’s shop in the meat-packing district, not too far from Mansion, a nightclub where young peopled raged at until 4 a.m. This was tough work. The shop where I worked had high turnover, given not only the hours but also the nature of the job. The store realized that they could only keep people if they increased the pay to seventeen dollars an hour. Thus, I started working in the spring of my first semester at Morty’s Butcher Shop.

My white coat, which looked like a lab coat, would be covered in sweat and blood from moving the large chunks of meat from the back room to the truck. The staff teased me and called me college boy or Harvard.

Morty, the owner, was notoriously cheap. He was only five feet four inches and bald, but he was tough as nails. He was an old school boss who did not want anyone to waste a single penny on packaging. Once I used too much tape on a box, and Morty let me have it. “Hey college boy, you are killing me. This isn’t Yale. We don’t have money to use that much tape. Put the meat on the truck and box the sauces. Don’t spend my tape. You are killing me,” he screamed in his thick New York accent, spraying me with an endless flow of saliva.

I knew how to respond to Morty: respect and kindness.

“Yes sir! It won’t happen again.”

“Excellent, college boy,” exclaimed Morty. He patted me on the back with his hand, which was the size of a baseball glove. He lifted his cigar in his other hand and took a puff.

“That a boy, college kid. You’re learning sonny boy.”

Morty had a big heart, but he had to be tough to make it in this business. He had many bad experiences of people trying to steal from him or rip him off. He was even robbed at gunpoint on three separate occasions in the 1980s.

Other employees had not always been so kind and had run-ins with Morty. The famous story is that Morty, with his pot belly and all, got into an altercation with one of the employees who had enough of Morty and started to curse him out. Morty pressed his large stomach up against the employee and screamed, “Do you know why the doors to this place are so big? It’s so people like you who have big egos can fit through them. YOU’RE FIRED.”

My odd jobs over the years helped me hone my people skills. This benefited me more than I would ever know, as I had worked with some very tough clients over the years.

My job at the butcher’s shop paid well, but it made having a social life very difficult. Between studying and working I would sleep about four hours a night.

I started out as a very diligent law student, but this faded over time. There is a saying in law school that the first year the professors try to scare you to death. The second year they insist on working you to death. During the third year they bore you to death, and you cannot wait to get out.

Law professors used the infamous Socratic method. They did not lecture with power points and graphs, but instead would tell you to read a case and ask you endless questions designed to help improve your analytical skills. The challenge in law school is that you never know when you are going to be in the hot seat. While there are different types of law professors, some of the old school professors cold-called students based on their seating chart. They loved making a first-year student look stupid in front of the entire section.

I remember the first day of class when Professor Smith, an eighty-five-year-old law professor who had been at the university for fifty-five years, called on a student and asked him to answer questions about a case. Most people on the first day of class are looking at the syllabus and trying to get a feel for things. None of us had even bought the book, which cost a whopping four hundred dollars. Professor Smith, who looked like the prototypical law professor with a bow tie and suspenders, berated the student: “You must always be prepared. Lawyers are never supposed to be caught off guard. We are clerks of the court and you must uphold the honor of this distinguished profession.”

The professor’s statement led to a major eye roll by the students who sat sweating in their seats because they feared being called on. The professor’s assertion could not be further from the truth. Most legal cases take years and drag on. I thought, Buckle up. This is going to be a long three years of many sleepless nights and seeing how much nonsense I can tolerate.

3

During law school, I realized a few things. I hated tax law. While many accountants go onto law school and then get a Master of Law degree (LLM) in tax law in order to make millions of dollars helping large corporations take advantage of the seemingly endless tax loopholes to save money, this was not for me. I hated tax law with a passion. I literally would rather watch paint dry then listen to my sixty-five-year-old professor read to me the changes in the tax codes and how this would help save money for big corporations.

My dad, whose life kept spinning out of control because of the stress of his job, kept pushing me toward corporate law.

“What about corporate law, son? You can be closing major deals. Mergers and Acquisitions. Now that’s where the money is at. You’ll become a partner and will be making millions.”

“Okay, dad! I’ll check it out.”

I decided that it would be worth going to some career events and reaching out to the alumni network at Brooklyn Law.

I called a guy named Chet who worked at a big corporate law firm in midtown Manhattan. We arranged to grab a cup of coffee, and he offered to tell me about his life in the corporate world.

Chet was a six-foot five-inch former water polo player at Yale with blond hair and a strong jawline. He spilled the beans: “I’m not going to lie, there are many perks. The money can be great. However, the billable hours kill you. I work seven days a week. I took one Saturday off and my boss called me back into the office. I’d already been at the firm for a year.”

“Wow! Sounds intense,” I replied.

“Every minute of your life must be boiled down into fifteen-minute increments. What happens if you’re even thinking about a case? Bill it. I sometimes wake up with nightmares at 3a.m., thinking that I need to increase my billable hours.”

“What do you see as your future there?”

“Well…hmmm. I guess that I’ll keep working and hope to make partner in another five years. If I make partner, then my hours will slow down, and I’ll have a bunch of first years and associates doing the dirty work for me.”

I realized that this was not the life that I wanted to live. I found much of the work of corporate law mind numbing. Revising memos and contracts sounded insanely boring. And, by the way, five people in Chet’s firm of two hundred lawyers went to court. The rest of the lawyers spent their days doing tedious legal research.

In the summer of my second year, I interviewed at six criminal law firms and the public defender’s office. I had mediocre grades, which placed me at the dead center of the class. The hours working at the butcher shop killed me. I also started dating a girl, which took up some time. The relationship fizzled out after four months. She wanted to get married and have kids right away. I was just trying to figure out how to read a law school textbook and get the blood stains out of my clothes after working a ten-hour nightshift at Morty’s shop.

I had offers to intern at the public defender’s office and some small-time criminal defense attorney who handled DUI cases. I decided to intern with the public defender as you see everything and can gain great experience.

I showed up at 7 a.m. the first day at the Brooklyn Public Defender’s office. I opened the doors and was surprised by the lack of space. I walked by a row of tiny cubicles, one on top of another. Each cubicle had a computer and a desk with hundreds of files on it.

I kept walking and saw a group of young attorneys sitting on the couch. They worked on the couch because one’s back started to hurt after sitting on the old wooden chairs for hours. They look liked they had not slept in a week or two.

I ran into Dan Stockton, the intern coordinator.

“Welcome, Richard. Can I call you Dick?”

“Please call me Ricky. Everyone calls me Ricky.”

“Sounds good, Ricky. Are you ready for a wild summer?”

“I’m here to learn, sir.”

Dan received his law degree at New York University. He could have done anything, but he believed in public service. This was his fifth year working as a public defender. He moved up the ranks a made a whopping fifty thousand dollars per year.

“Ricky, there are two types of people who work here: The first type is a recent graduate who knows absolutely nothing about criminal law and wants to learn the ropes prior to going into private practice. They get in and out as quickly as they can. One and done, Ricky. One and done.”

“And the second type?”

“The second type are the true believers, like me. I could be doing many other things. I was the editor-and-chief of the law review at Columbia Law. However, I feel like I’m in the battle of my life to defend my clients and prevent them from going to prison. I represent kids who have been charged as adults and are facing twenty-five years to life in prison. The state must go through me to get to my clients. I’m going to fight with all I have. They’ve got to go through me Ricky.

“Wow! That must be very stressful.”

“It is. But I love it. I currently have ninety felony cases on my desk. The system is screwed up. We don’t have the resources to fight the cases. Heck, we don’t even know who many of our clients are. But we’re making a difference. We really are.”

“That is great to hear. Your clients are lucky to have such a dedicated person on their side.”

“Do you want coffee?”

“No thanks. I’m good.”

“Let’s get ready for court. You need to use the restroom? You smoke? Smoke break?”

“No, I’m fine. No. I don’t smoke.”

“Let’s get going, Ricky. Don’t let me forget my cart.”

We went near his cubicle and in front of it was a pushcart that had at least fifty files in it. We started to walk to the courthouse. Danny talked a mile a minute, but I loved his passion for the job. He really saw himself as David fighting Goliath.

“Today, we’re going to start off in felony court. Get ready to learn, my boy. Watch and learn. We’re going to try to negotiate with the prosecutors and take the best deal possible for our clients. I have three big cases that are felony drug cases. Two kids who are sixteen and being tried as adults and facing decades in prison. It’s insane.”

We walked in the front door and passed through the metal detector. Danny pushed the squeaky cart into the elevator. We got out of the elevator and walked down the long corridor into courtroom number three. The courtroom was packed, and we still had forty-five minutes until the judge would ascend from his chambers.

“Billy,” Danny yelled over to the prosecutor.

“Billy, this is Ricky Gold. He’s my intern.”

“Hey, Billy. Great to meet you.”

“Where are you in law school?”

“Brooklyn Law,” I replied.

“No way. I went there too. Too bad you’re working for the wrong team here. We put away the bad guys on this side and carry out real justice.”

I chuckled. “Great to meet you, Billy. I look forward to seeing you around.”

“Don’t let his smile and southern charm fool you, Ricky. Billy boy here is a good old chap from South Carolina lost in the big city, but he is tough as nails.”

Billy laughed. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Enough of the pleasantries, boys. Time to get down to business,” Danny said. “I wanted to talk to you about the Jones case. I want to plea it down to a misdemeanor. He’ll plead guilty and serve three months in jail. It’s a win for you and will help him avoid a lengthy stint in prison.”

“Fine! I’ll give it to you,” Billy responded. “But don’t think I’m going easy on the Pendleton case. That kid robbed an old lady a knife point.”

“Billy! Come on now. The key word here is kid. He’s a young and dumb kid. Do we really need to charge him as an adult? Don’t you remember being young and stupid? Can you go back to the charging office and ask them to reconsider?”

“No sir. This is not his first offense. If you want, we can plea it down to three to five years. He’ll be transferred to the adult prison once he turns eighteen. If you go to trial on this case, you are going to lose. We have him on camera, and there are three witnesses. He could face ten to fifteen years if he loses.”

“Billy boy! You’re as tough as they come. I think I’ll take it to trial.”

“You’re nuts, Danny. Are you sleeping enough? This is a slam dunk. I’ll give you three years in prison with required counseling, restitution, and drug rehabilitation programs.”

“Drug rehab? He had one minor possession charge for marijuana.”

“Drug rehab.”

“Deal. Three years. No more, no less.”

“What about the Simpson case?”

“You mean the idiot who stole a cop car? Come on man. I’d love to see this go to trial. The genius hit “record” and, I kid you not, recorded his own high-speed chase for forty minutes. If you get tired of this job you can be a criminal consultant. Teach some of these guys some common sense.”

“One year in county jail.”

“No way. He caused forty thousand dollars in damages. He hit three parked cars. Tell him to get his eyes checked.”

“Two years.”

“Fine.”

This banter went back and forth for another ten minutes as they negotiated the outcome for a slew of felony cases.

Contrary to what you see on TV, around ninety five percent of all criminal cases plea out as prosecutors are overwhelmed and need to clear their dockets. The defense and the prosecutor reach a plea bargain. The prosecutor can chalk this up as a win, and the defense attorney obtains the best deal possible for the client. Trial by jury is a scary thing, and the pressure of the government forces many people to plea.

“Ricky, are you overwhelmed yet? Listen, the system is messed up. I have ten minutes with my clients and need to give them a few options. We try to plea out and get the best deal possible for most of our cases. We must prioritize. I need to focus my energy on the serious felony cases where people are facing life in prison. I told you to buckle up. You either love this or you don’t. We’ve got to fight the system. Rage against the machine. It’s you and me against the world.”

“All rise. The honorable Judge Steinbeck is here,” announced the bailiff.

“Good morning. Please be seated. I’m Judge Steinbeck. We are here today for first appearance. Please remember that you have three options: plead guilty, no contest, or not guilty and go to trial. This is first appearance, not your trial. Please don’t tell me about your case.”

The first row of the bench had people who did not make bail. They sat quietly in their orange jumpsuits, handcuffs, and waste shackles.

“First up on the docket is Mr. Curtis Brown.”

Mr. Brown shuffled over in front of the microphone.

“Mr. Brown, do you have legal counsel?”

Mr. Brown was not new to the criminal justice system. He had been living on the streets off and on for decades. He suffered from schizophrenia and had difficulty maintaining a job when off his medication. Jails in the United States are flooded with people like Mr. Brown who are mentally ill and need treatment and rehabilitation. Many of these individuals fall through the cracks and are arrested for all sorts of petty violations. Police have even arrested people for sitting on crates.

“Mr. Brown, do you have a lawyer here with you? If you can’t afford a lawyer, a public defender will be appointed to you.”