by Bruce Han­ify

The sin­ful­ness of crime might be described as an unjust appli­ca­tion of power, and the “cry of dis­tress” that fol­lows. A crime is a crime because it leaps the fence of per­sonal space and takes what hasn’t been earned.  This is true not just of those indi­vid­u­als soci­ety labels as “crim­i­nal”, but also of most politi­cians, quite a few mar­riages, and per­haps all employ­ment rela­tion­ships.  A per­sis­tent flaw in human nature is to try to scalp what hasn’t been earned, which is why we say that those who have evolved beyond such things have “char­ac­ter.”  They have mas­tered the arts of self-control.  It’s not until we are chal­lenged by pow­er­ful events — or per­haps even a pow­er­ful per­son — that we are forced to mea­sure our per­sonal use of power and begin to reckon whether our char­ac­ter is in proper work­ing order.

Peo­ple like to tell me, “You just see the world that way because of the work you do!” This is whistling past the grave­yard, a tal­is­man that keeps the bogey away, I’m sure, but it’s also a touch dehu­man­iz­ing. Think of it this way: peo­ple inside the med­ical field observe what folks do to their bod­ies. We inside the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem observe what folks do to their souls. The rea­son peo­ple can’t address that is sim­ple: they don’t want to. We lawyers remind peo­ple of the moral and spir­i­tual real­i­ties they don’t want to face. The more some­one hates lawyers, the less they want to talk about what’s real. It’s the law.

High Priests? A freshly minted lawyer, talk­ing to me my last sum­mer before law school, passed on some­thing I never for­got: “If noth­ing else, law school teaches you how to think.” Of course that is not true in many cases — I have known my share of dun­der­headed lawyers — but there is cer­tainly truth to it. The law school process, if prop­erly con­ducted, forces you to divorce your ego from from the facts, from prior assump­tions, from your cher­ished opin­ions. An unan­swered legal ques­tion doesn’t care if you’re Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, Bap­tist or Catholic. You learn to tan­gle with the mer­its of an idea, not hold your expec­ta­tions hostage to one out­come or another. The best lawyers are often iso­lated from the com­mon run of human­ity, because the com­mon run of human­ity asso­ciates truth with pas­sion.  Lawyers learn how to dis­man­tle pas­sion and exam­ine the mer­its of the idea.  Bill Clin­ton called it ‘com­part­men­tal­iz­ing.’  Bril­liant.  And very true.

I don’t know how many peo­ple truly appre­ci­ate what lawyers do. The truth is, our func­tions as lawyers are priestly.  Lawyers are con­di­tioned to keep con­fi­dences; forced to per­form duties in areas of fear and degra­da­tion that other peo­ple would flee; develop skills of problem-solving that defy ordi­nary under­stand­ing. My early years as a deputy pros­e­cu­tor were a hot house that forced me to grow in ways I would have oth­er­wise never under­stood. You learn to keep your cool under the most demand­ing cir­cum­stances.  Just the facts, ma’am.

One of the ear­li­est things you must accept as a pros­e­cu­tor is that there’s nobody to talk to. Lawyers talk to other lawyers about their cases; they talk to cops; they talk to peo­ple inside the sys­tem. But your friends and the peo­ple in your fam­ily have no idea what trial attor­neys actu­ally do — the stress, the uncer­tainty, the con­stant push­ing of self past the last default posi­tion you thought was the extreme — even if they think they do from watch­ing tv. And attor­neys tend to talk about their cases, not yours. Most of us don’t — actu­ally, can’t — talk about the mis­treat­ment we daily receive from mem­bers of the pub­lic.  We learn to joke about it.  We very sel­dom receive praise; and the crit­i­cisms are, by and large, cliches that are mocked behind closed doors.  The mock­ing masks a lot of pain, and that pain, over the long run, is what builds skill.

To be a lawyer means to be out­cast, more often than not.  The sum­mer before I went to law school I made an appoint­ment with a doctor’s office for a phys­i­cal, to com­ply with uni­ver­sity require­ments. In response to the nurse’s ques­tions, I inno­cently men­tioned that I was going to law school. She frowned, made a note, and left the exam­i­na­tion room. Next thing I know, I’m get­ting a cat scan. That was the start of my edu­ca­tion: the mere whis­per of the word lawyer changes the weather in a doctor’s office, and that was 30 years ago.

When you say “There are too many lawyers in this coun­try” you are describ­ing a symp­tom, not a cause.  The cor­rect diag­no­sis is, “There are too many peo­ple in this coun­try who are unwill­ing to hon­estly take respon­si­bil­ity for them­selves.”  Lawyers are forced to step into that space where peo­ple abdi­cate per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity.  That’s what lawyers do.

Many peo­ple dis­agree with this state­ment, but think it through: the more self-sufficient you are in your deci­sions, in your actions, the less exter­nal author­ity is required.

Reg­u­lar peo­ple have never spent a rest­less, sleep­less night, roil­ing in the sweat of their anx­i­ety, the night before a trial.  They do not know about the fever­ish dreams, the doubt, the mani­a­cal rep­e­ti­tions of ques­tions, and answers, that roll through the night.  I have walked into court know­ing that I owed money, or know­ing that a girl­friend was break­ing things off with me, or know­ing that some­one was angry with me, and had to give that case all that I had.  Do peo­ple really know what goes into try­ing a case?  A lot of really great artists would give up their dreams at that point, but the indomitable trial lawyer con­tin­ues to slog his way through enemy ter­ri­tory.  Win, lose or draw, he or she is among the tough­est breed of human being ever made.

And then there is the dam­age done to the fab­ric of one’s soul .… .

My first two weeks at the prosecutor’s office, I learned a les­son I never for­got. Uncer­tain what to do with myself one after­noon, I wan­dered into an office and casu­ally picked up a hand­ful of pho­tos, turned them over and dis­cov­ered they were autopsy pho­tos of a six-week old baby, burned with cig­a­rettes, and beaten, method­i­cally, by his mother and her boyfriend over the course of his short, nasty, brutish life. There were other pic­tures, other reports, as the weeks went by. There were busted eyes, swollen vagi­nas, pro­trud­ing bones, carrion-riddled bod­ies. Drugs. Insan­ity. Death. The lit­tle dead boy, bat­tered and burned, remains in my mind to this day. Note to self: don’t look at pic­tures.  To this day I expertly fil­ter out infor­ma­tion that doesn’t con­cern me.  I don’t watch law shows.

I had a tal­ent for crim­i­nal stuff. Can’t tell you why, exactly. I just did. The cops loved me. “Han­ify smiles when he gigs ‘em”, they joked. I was just a grunt, but I was a grunt with style. My abil­ity to inflict pain became razor sharp. I made it per­sonal. Like col­lect­ing scalps.

It didn’t occur to me that I might be get­ting sick. Sick? The whole world was sick, chump. Don’t tell me what’s sick. Sick is hav­ing some idea of the suf­fer­ing that goes on in this world and shov­ing it from your mind so that you don’t have to deal with it. That’s sick. Sick is know­ing your teen is fill­ing his mind with garbage and call­ing it “cul­ture.”  That’s sick.

Inside the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, those anom­alous shapes and dif­fi­cul­ties get worked through a mas­sive fac­tory press that pro­duces still fur­ther anom­alies.  Uni­for­mity of result is never a part of the process, but wis­dom, even­tu­ally, is.

Books by Bruce Han­ify at Smash­words
Bruce Han­ify 2010 All Rights Reserved