Pardoned felon starts law firm to improve futures of ex-cons

PITTSBURGH (AP) — On Sept. 21, 1994, Duquesne University junior Casey Mullen scaled the stairs to the school’s law school library.

The 19-year-old Lawrenceville man’s backpack held nine 1-ounce plastic bags filled with powdered cocaine — a delivery he was making to a woman he barely knew, part of his daily effort to sell enough narcotics to feed his own addiction.

She was an undercover narcotics detective. It was his first and only arrest.

“It’s a constant hustle. It’s being consumed by a quest. Prior to getting arrested, my focus was on getting high. But then I got arrested and thought that my life was over,” Mullen told the Tribune-Review. “So it all became about oblivion — feeling nothing. That was my daily quest. Heroin was a really good numbing agent.”

Less than 18 later, Allegheny Judge Raymond slammed Mullen months County Novak with a mandatory minimum sentence: three to 10 years at the former State Correctional Institution Waynesburg.

Mullen did his minimum three years and then embarked on a very different quest back up the 17 steps of the law school library. He became a stellar student and, later, an increasingly prominent criminal defense attorney.

Very few judges, lawyers, cops or even his clients know about Mullen’s past. He’s breaking his selfimposed silence for three reasons: 1) Criminals, especially those who are struggling with addiction, must see that it’s possible to become a respected professional; 2) society must see the need to start taking more chances to reintegrate convicted felons; 3) policymakers should rethink what a prison can be — less punishment, more rehabilitation, job training and programs designed to ensure that every inmate leaves jail with “the belief that they can move beyond this” and contribute again to society.

“For those of us who collectively have done well, we need to quit hiding this. That only perpetuates the stigma of ‘once a drug addict, always a drug addict; once a criminal, always a criminal.’ That’s not the case,” said Mullen, 41, of Aspinwall.

At SCI Waynesburg, Mullen became Department of Corrections Number CY 5333, one of 450 inmates in the general population. For the next 26 months, he played pinochle in the yard, toiled in the kitchen, and at night listened in his bed rack to cassettes from the prison library.

“It’s the dumbest thing ever, but I heard a quote that changed my life . ... It’s simple: ‘Got to kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight.’ It’s a Bruce Cockburn line, but I heard it first in a U2 song,” Mullen said. “I thought to myself, ‘Yeah. I’m gonna kick the darkness until it bleeds daylight. I’m not coming back here. I’ll do whatever I have to do.’ “

His first goal: Finish an undergraduate degree at the school where he got arrested.