How Can You Represent Those People? Criminal Defense Stories

How Can You Represent Those People? is the first-ever collection of essays offering a response to the "Cocktail Party Question" asked of every criminal lawyer: how do you represent guilty criminals?

The contributors are a diverse group of prominent lawyers and rising stars, each offering a different—and often very personal— perspective on "the Question." Many share stories—comic and tragic, stirring and heartbreaking—about how it feels to defend people accused of crimes ranging from the "ordinary" to the horrific. This fascinating collection is a must-read for anyone interested in crime, punishment, race, poverty, and the motivations of criminal lawyers.

Abbe Smith is Professor of Law, Director of the Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic, and Co-Director of the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program at Georgetown Law School. She began her career as public defender in Philadelphia and continues to be actively engaged in criminal law practice.

Monroe H. Freedman is Professor of Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. For 30 years he lectured on lawyers' ethics at Harvard Law School, and from 2007-2012 he was a visiting professor at Georgetown Law. He has practiced criminal law throughout his career.

Introduction; Abbe Smith and Monroe Freedman
1. There But for the Grace of God Go I; Angela Davis
2. Defending Civil Rights; Vida Johnson
3. Defending Sex Offenders; David Singleton
4. How Can You Defend Those People?; W. Tucker Carrington
5. Wrecking Life: When the State Seeks to Kill; William Montross and Meghan Shapiro
6. Career Defender; Randolph Stone
7. A Former Prosecutor's View; Paul Butler
8. Ruminations on Us and Them; Joseph Margulies
9. Defending the Guilty: Reprise; Barbara Babcock
10. Why I Defend The Guilty and Innocent Alike; Alan Dershowitz
11. How to Keep Defending; Charles Ogletree
12. Defending – Reprise; Michael Tigar
13. Not Only in America: The Necessity and Virtue of Representing Those People for a Free and Democratic Society; Alice Wooley
14. How Can You Not Defend Those People?; Abbe Smith
15. Why It's Essential to Represent 'Those People'; Monroe Freedman