> It’s typically more than a month after an arrest before your first meeting with a client. [...] This is why the bond system is a form of blackmail.

The ACLU has a nice FAQ on the evils of "cash bail" here [0].

> [Public Defenders] try to establish trust by being part psychologist, part medic, part cleric.

Now I kind of want to see a TTRPG based on legal practice.

> As a way around the constitutional requirement that they get warrants to search houses, the police were claiming that they were simply walking down the hallway when they looked in the window of our client’s apartment and saw him weighing and packaging cocaine in plain view. They also claimed that he was doing this with his apartment door open, so they hadn’t needed a forced entry.

> [...] We went to the [Chicago Housing Authority] management offices, where they had records of giving Deuce citations for repeatedly covering up windows. We also talked to the maintenance man who had been assigned to repair Deuce’s door after his arrest. The maintenance crew had taken pictures that clearly showed damage to the doorjamb, backing up Deuce’s claim that the door had been kicked in.

It's infuriating that this kind of "are the police total liars" testing is so necessary in the first place.

> [Case where young man violently attacked by gang and chased into his grandmother's house uses a legally-owned gun to scare them away from the door] I begged for the mercy of a misdemeanor instead of a felony. The state flatly refused. [...] As clearly sympathetic as the judge was [...] prosecutors got their pound of flesh in the form of another young Black man with a felony conviction that will follow him for the rest of his life.

> As fate would have it, almost immediately after that case [...] Tank Johnson, who played for the Bears, caught a UUW of his own. [...] Since judges have no authority to control charges being filed or withdrawn, there was nothing to be done from the bench when a deal was reached for a reduction of Johnson’s charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Quite a contrast, and it's a kind of screwy thing that I bet most people instinctively expect should no be happening.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/bail-reform

Everyone Against Us (2023)