Free INDEFENSIBLE: One Lawyer's Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice by David Feige Page B

to the office, pondering Bemo and Soundview and today’s murder cases, I glide past boarded-up buildings and carefully tended community gardens: a world of cracks in the wall.
     
           There used to be plenty of street parking on the block around our office, but as we’ve grown, parking has become more and more scarce. The real problem is that there is only one marginally safe block to park on if you want to have any assurance that your windows will be intact when it’s time to go home. Our building sits on Courtlandt Avenue between 160th and 161st Street, and while our block of Courtlandt is well traveled, the rear of the building --the one that abuts 160th --is a strip of vacant lots, burned-out buildings, and community gardening projects. It’s not often used and, as a result, is an invitation to the crackheads who often wander down it looking for cans to recycle or, not infrequently, an easy radio to poach.
     
           As usual, I’m late, so I’ll have to trust my car to the gods or demons of 160th Street. With a bad parking spot, I figure my chances of being broken into are about one in forty. Over the years, I’ve had my windows smashed, my radio stolen, and my side-view mirrors swiped. For a while, Robin Steinberg, my boss and friend, had the turn signals from her Volvo stolen almost weekly. (It turns out that you can just pop the blinkers out of a Volvo and resell them to a parts place for $30 each. They’re $170 new, and the places that buy them hot resell them for $50 or $60, often to the victims of the theft.)
     
           I finally make it through the door and into our cheery reception area at about three minutes after ten. When clients walked into my old office at the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn they were greeted by a thick grease-smeared sheet of bulletproof Plexiglas --and if they were lucky, a frustrated receptionist behind it. The clients, of course, are used to this; everywhere they go --welfare, housing, parole, SSI --they get crappy injection-molded chairs, bulletproof Plexi, and the kind of service that wouldn’t be tolerated at a ghetto McDonald’s. At the Bronx Defenders, by contrast, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. clients are greeted by our receptionists Lorraine and Jennifer --and, consistent with the philosophy of the office, not from behind Plexiglas. Instead, one of them is sitting at a curved modern desk in a cool waiting room strewn with children’s toys and comfortable couches. Both women are bilingual and unceasingly chipper, professional, and cool.
     
           Unlike the Legal Aid Society, the Bronx Defenders is a relatively small public defender office. With about thirty-five lawyers and a few dozen social workers, investigators, support staff, and interns, the office is responsible for handling about 12,500 criminal cases a year. Most of the staff are divided into interdisciplinary teams presided over by a senior lawyer known as a “team leader.” Other than Robin, the founder and executive director, there are only two lawyers who aren’t officially on a specific team --the legal director and the trial chief. Florian Miedel, a former appeals lawyer whose Teutonic good looks often prompt “golden boy” jokes, is the legal director. Miedel is responsible for the technical, legal side of the work --motions, legal briefs, and legal arguments. I’m the trial chief, providing guidance on handling complex cases and help with trial tactics and techniques. I’m about the facts; Florian is about the law. Florian helps the lawyers win before judges; I help them win before juries.
     
           Heading past the reception area and through the lunchroom on the way to my office, I run into Branford.
     
           “Wassup, Feige?” he says, giving me a street handshake and a warm hug. He’s decked out in shiny black shoes, a perfectly pressed white shirt, and nicely tailored slacks. The only hint of his past is the thick gold chain around his finely