INDEFENSIBLE: One Lawyer's Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice by David Feige

Fairway grocery store --plums and grapes and nectarines and strawberries shimmering red and purple, a world of fancy produce just a block away. My car is wedged into a spot on Seventy-fifth Street --a “must be out by 11:00 a.m.” spot. Those of us who can’t afford the several hundred dollars a month it costs to garage a car in Manhattan study the intricacies of New York City street-parking regulations like the Talmud. During my career I’ve been late for court, late to dinner, late to the movies, and late to parties, but I’ve never risked missing a parking spot deadline.
     
           Heading toward the car, coffee in hand, I think hard about Cassandra. There are people you meet in my job who are so helpless, so hopeless, and so sad that it slices your heart up, people whose stories are so dire and desperate that they stay with you --a wound that never heals. Cassandra is one of them.
     
           Cassandra is big and round and overweight, with a puffy, moon-pie face. Her eyes are set deep, and they betray no expression at all --ever. She speaks in a halting, childish monotone with the kind of bluntness that suggests she has long since given up trying to hide anything. Cassandra has just about all the problems a person can have --she’s drug dependent, deeply depressed, homeless, suicidal, and mentally ill. To look at her is to see someone utterly lost.
     
           I first met Cassandra in 1997, when she was arrested for an attempted arson that was as much a suicide attempt as anything else. It took all of two minutes to figure out that like many people, Cassandra had needs well beyond what the criminal justice system could handle. So while she sat in jail, I started the long and complicated process of trying to get her into a residential mental health program.
     
           Things went well at first. With the help of a social worker in the office, I found a suitable program. Cassandra pled guilty to reckless endangerment (arson convictions usually disqualify someone from residential mental health programs) and was released. More than six months went by without a hitch. But then, as they so often do with Cassandra, things began to unravel.
     
           Cassandra got herself thrown out of the program. We got them to give her another chance. She got ejected again. We tried a different program. She didn’t last there either. This cycle continued for more than a year as we went through program after program, finally finding a place that she liked and that could deal with her. For a few years, everything was stable.
     
           Until I got the call.
     
           “Hello . . . , David?”
     
           I knew her voice immediately.
     
           “Cassandra. Hi,” I said. “How are you?”
     
           “I’m fine.”
     
           “Where are ya, darling?”
     
           “Uh . . . I’m at the precinct.” She delivered this news with her usual lack of inflection.
     
           “Sweetie, why are you at the precinct?”
     
           “I robbed a taxi,” she said plainly.
     
           “Okay, okay, Cassandra, I want you to listen really carefully.
     
           You know the police are going to arrest you, right?”
     
           “Yes, David. I know.”
     
           “Okay, I understand what you did, but I don’t want you talking about it right now. Do you understand?”
     
           “Yes, David.”
     
           “Okay, now I’m gonna come right down there, and then I’ll be there again for you when you get to court, okay?”
     
           “Yes, David.”
     
           “I want to talk to the policeman now. Can you put him on the phone?”
     
           “Okay.”
     
           I learned from the detective that Cassandra was charged with using her index finger to try to rob a livery cab driver. I told the detective that I’d be her lawyer and that he should not question her, and to call me