God Bless Justice Stevens

I have a friend in here – “Cali” (from Los Angeles) who I’ve been working with the past few months. Cali is three years into a twenty-six year sentence. You would expect that to receive that many years Cali must have murdered someone in cold blood or abused and violated children. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. Cali received that extremely harsh sentence for (1) intent to distribute marijuana, and (2) conspiracy to distribute.



He and a co-defendant were staying at a hotel near Virginia Beach in two rooms reserved by a local friend. The rooms were at opposite ends of the hall. In one room (the co-defendant’s) twelve pounds of weed were found. In Cali’s room $200,000 in cash.


I could write a legal brief on the problems with Cali’s prosecution (in fact, I did): the prosecution’s star witness was the hotel manager, a woman who was an admitted drug user and was paid a percentage of the cash taken from Cali’s room (under drug forfeiture statutes); the false statements contained in the police request for issuance of a search warrant, or the fact that no evidence was introduced that the cash in Cali’s possession came from drug sales (in fact, there was no evidence of any drug sales). For my purposes here, I’ll assume everything the police did was “by the book”.


But, was justice served? Cali’s co-defendant took a plea and got, hold on, three years. He’s already out. Cali on the other hand, has twenty-three more years to go for the exact same charges.


My experience in meeting guys like Cali in here has awakened me to a stark reality. For a country that professes to believe “in justice for all”, we fall terribly short of the mark. That’s where Justice John Paul Stevens comes in.


The 92 year old Stevens recently retired from service as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court ending a tenure as the third longest serving Justice in history. Justice Stevens, a moderate Republican appointed by President Ford soon found himself relegated to being a leading dissenter as the court swung even more to the right.


Stevens believed in “justice for all”. His life was built around that concept and for good reason. Stevens was raised in a prosperous Chicago family. His father built the largest hotel in the city. When Stevens was twelve, his father was arrested and convicted of embezzlement. Eventually his father’s conviction was overturned on appeal.


“I knew my father was a good man. I also knew, even at that age that the system could be wrong.” It was at that point Stevens decided he wanted to be a judge to guarantee justice was done.


Stevens has taken some very unpopular positions in cases involving the accused, especially in post 9/11 America where the general consensus in society has become that security from terrorists is more important than the rule of the law.


In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, he argued that terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay were held in U.S. custody on U.S. soil and, therefore, guaranteed minimal constitutional protection. In Padilla v. U.S., he argued that Padilla – a United States citizen arrested on terrorism allegations and detained in a military brig for four years without access to courts or lawyers and without formal charges being brought, had his fundamental 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th amendment rights violated.


Even for those accused of being terrorists, without the guarantee of constitutional protection, he argued, this nation could too easily slip into “rule by tyrants”. That is a very powerful, and courageous, and lonely stand for anyone in this age of fear.


I’ve lost my freedom. I’ve seen the power of the state used personally. Conspiracy theories run rampant in prisons. If you want to understand why, just look honestly at the criminal justice system. The government has a virtually unlimited budget to prosecute. In its quest to close crime investigations (notice I didn’t say “solve crimes and bring justice”); the government will make deals, use false evidence, lie, cheat, or steal its way to a conviction. Don’t believe me? Look at the number of convictions that are set aside each year for police or prosecutorial misconduct.


The system is overwhelmed. And, because the system has a human face, it is subject to the prejudices and personality ups and downs of the judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. Fact is, most defendants don’t create a favorable impression. They’re paraded on TV or in the paper when arrested and the general perception is “they must be guilty or the police wouldn’t be after them”.


But, that perception is exactly opposite what our system is founded on. The founding fathers knew the dangers inherent in a government able to convict on a whim. They understood that the most fundamental, God given right of all, was the right to be free. Depriving someone of their personal freedom was recognized as tyranny. The safeguards to shield an individual from the power of the state were deep and significant.


Yet, somehow middle America has forgotten that. Somehow “law abiding” citizens believe those “technicalities” are just there to protect the criminals. They couldn’t be further from the truth.


Guys like Cali come into this soul breaking, meat grinder each and every day. Some are innocent, others guilty yet the punishment way too severe. For the vast majority of “good citizens” it doesn’t matter. Thank God for the courageous few, like Justice Stevens, who understand justice and freedom are too precious to be pushed aside by a society convinced that safety and security are just one prison, one conviction, from reality, those lone voices who remind us over and over there is no safe haven, no perfectly secure place without justice and freedom.


Thank you Justice Stevens for your courage, your compassion, your sense of justice.