Indefensible

I attended a CLE today (continuing legal education) on Issues in Juvenile Law. (Deliquency, Child Abuse, and Child Neglect). In my state, all attorneys must take 24 hours of continuing legal education every two years in order to continue to practice. Some courts require that attorneys have specific CLE credits in order to continue to practice in that particular court, and the Juvenile Court in my county is one of those courts.

I haven't done much work in this area, but, I decided to take the CLE just in case I wanted to take any cases in the coming year. (Last year, I had to turn down two cases because I hadn't had the CLE that would allow me to practice in Juvenile Court). (And also because I don't want to be stuck trying to get a bunch of hours come December, because, well, that just sucks.)

Anyway, much of the CLE was a review of case law and some discussion of how to use expert witnesses effectively, which was all well and good, and the speakers were actually funny and animated, which is nice.

But, one session just ripped my heart out.

The medical examiner for my part of the state (she serves 21 counties) came to speak about child abuse and neglect cases that, tragically, end on the autopsy tables in her lab. Her lecture was riveting and utterly, completely, and totally horrifying.

Horrifying.

The things that she showed us that human beings are capable of doing to their own children, or allowing others to do to their own children*, are...inhuman. All through her presentation, I just felt a volcano of rage exploding inside me. I think if you had put some of the parents of those children in the front of that room full of 75 attorneys, by the end of her presentation, I think we would have torn them limb from limb with our bare hands.

And we were mostly speechless. (Imagine that, rendering a room of 75 attorneys speechless.) Finally, one person raised their hand (it was the Q&A portion) and said, "how do you do this? How do you do this without losing your mind?"

And the medical examiner said, "Funny you should ask that because one of my residents asked me that this morning. She's thinking of changing to a different medical speciality. And I do take these cases home with me, these cases, they haunt me. But, when it's all said and done, I'm the last person who can speak for these babies. I'm the only person who can tell the end of their story to a jury. Someone needs to be their voice."

She's right - these children - their stories deserve to be heard.

There have been few times when I have felt *incapable* of handling a task in the practice of law. I have felt inexperienced, overwhelmed, and in need of assistance and direction, but, if you threw a case at me and said, "Lawmommy, you need to take on this negligence, or medical malpractice or adverse possession or replevin or [insert obscure lawsuit here] action" - I would probably run around like crazy and be stressed out and ask a million questions of other attorneys more experienced than I - but, I have rarely thought, "I just couldn't do that." Even when it comes to criminal defense - (I generally limit my criminal practice to housing code violations) - but, if a judge assigned a crimal defense matter to me, if the case didn't involve a child, I would do it -because I believe in our system of justice, and the importance of defense counsel.

But, as I sat in the lecture hall today, looking at the slides of tiny battered bodies, it occured to me, that I do not think I could defend these parents. And I do not think I have it in me to take assignments from juvenile court in which in would be my job to argue, on behalf of a parent, that a child should be returned to a parent who has abused or neglected them. Regardless of how strongly I believe in system, I just don't have it in me.

LM

*In many of the cases presented to us today, the perpetrator of the violence against the child was the boyfriend of the mother, who was not the child's father, and, in many cases, the abuse had been documented over a long period of time, but, the parent avoided detection by never going to the same ER twice.