» Defense attorneys join Floyd protests.
Lawyers, public defenders call for end to police brutality
A Harris County public defender polled the 40-plus defense attorneys standing in front of him: How many of you have heard a client complain of abuse by the police?
Eric Davis guessed what the answer would be, and he was right. Almost every person raised a hand.
Time and again, the lawyers had seen videos of incustody deaths such as George Floyd’s, they said. They had heard their defendants talk of being mistreated during arrests, and they had seen many of those people filter through the criminal justice system because of the color of their skin.
On Monday, the attorneys joined defense lawyers around the country in protest, calling for an end to police brutality and urging their colleagues to keep up the struggle.
“We are on the front lines, and sometimes we are the only hope, the only person our clients can look to,” said Davis, chief of the Harris County Public Defender’s Office felony trial division. “If we don’t come together and fight this, it will continue.”
The rally began when
about 30 private defense attorneys and public defenders gathered outside the Harris County Criminal Justice Center downtown. As they passed around a megaphone, other lawyers and even passersby joined the group in solidarity.
Their signs varied. One read, “I went to law school to fight injustice!” and another said, “Public defenders love you.” Some demanded police transparency: “HPD we’ve seen your body cams and we’re watching you.”
While Houston residents readied for a public viewing of Floyd’s body later in the day, the public defender’s office marveled at the turnout for their hastily planned protest. They got the word out quickly on Sunday after hearing that Monday would be a day across the nation where defense attorneys would gather in support of Floyd and the Black Lives
Matter movement.
Mark Thiessen, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, brought his two young children. Public defender Jackie Carpenter read the Declaration of Independence. The attorneys shouted in unison, “no justice, no peace” and “say his name.”
A lawyer read the names of the six people who had been killed by Houston police in six weeks. The group then knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck until he died. Some of them wobbled on their knees or shifted positions, and others braced themselves with a hand on the concrete.
Te’iva Bell, senior litigator in the public defender’s felony trial division, described Floyd’s death as well as the 1977 death of Jose Campos Torres, who was beaten by police and found in Buffalo Bayou.
Those killings didn’t lead to protests until the public saw videos, or in Torres’ case, his body — and they otherwise might have been described as “resisting arrest” cases, Bell said.
Now more than ever, people have to be proactive in stopping racism and calling it out when they see it, she said.
“Our juries are listening. Our courts are listening,” Bell said. “This movement requires something different.”
Federal public defender Marjorie Meyers proposed that she and others try harder to share stories about their clients, who are real people with lives, families and interests.
“The narrative until this week or the week before is that our clients are criminals,” Meyers said. “That’s not true. We have to bring to the judges and to the public that these are human beings.”
Defense attorney Robert Fickman noted the irony that they stood in front of a building called the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, part of a system that he said has oppressed people for decades.
“It is a criminal, justice system,” he said. “It abuses the poor, it abuses black people and it abuses brown people. And it does show privilege to people that have money and who are white.”
Sierra Sinisterra, 21, joined the protest as she was entering that same skyscraper, where her boyfriend is fighting a case.
“Do not treat this like Black History Month,” she told the lawyers. “It’s not only one month where I see white cops killing black people. It’s every single week. This stuff does not stop.”