Criminalized survivors routinely encounter defense lawyers who are dismissive at best and abusive at worst.
These issues aren’t unique to Kwaneta Harris’s case. Defense lawyers have told women incarcerated with Harris that their drug use or their “promiscuity” makes them not credible, and asked why they have additional children with the partners who abused them. A Texas woman described to Harris how her defense lawyer lectured her about dating and marrying white men.
One of Goodmark’s clients, a woman incarcerated in Maryland, was shocked when her trial lawyer simply failed to appear for a hearing on her motion to modify her sentence, though maybe she shouldn’t have been; his earlier work was riddled with errors and he failed to explain key concepts to her. She says, “If I had understood that an Alford plea would mean that people saw me as guilty, I would never have taken the plea.
Criminalized survivors routinely encounter defense lawyers who don’t explain their options, who urge clients to take pleas they don’t understand , who don’t meet with their clients before trial, who are skeptical of survivors who are not “perfect victims,” who belittle and disbelieve their clients, who are dismissive at best and abusive at worst.
The anti-violence movement has long recognized the harm caused by defense attorneys’ failure to understand gender-based violence and the impact that ignorance has on the cases of criminalized survivors. In 1997, the American Bar Association published “When Will They Ever Learn? Educating to End Domestic Violence: A Law School Report,” which argued that domestic violence should be taught throughout the law school curriculum, a recommendation that few, if any, schools took up.
After Harris learned that her co-defendant’s brother was making threats toward her family, she told her attorneys that she wanted to take a plea. The second chair lawyer asked as she signed the plea deal, “What could you have done differently?”Not everyone can pay for the news. But if you can, we need your support.is widely read among people with lower incomes and among young people who are mired in debt.
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