This week, Alec speaks with two powerful women working tirelessly to help those most in need of assistance navigating the complicated – and very often expensive – criminal justice system: Attorneys Susan Church and Renate Lunn. Susan Church is a trial and appellate attorney focusing on immigration law and criminal defense with her firm Demissie & Church. She successfully sued President Trump for his travel ban on Muslim immigrants and successfully defended the Occupy Boston protesters. Church is currently a pro bono lawyer for immigrants involved in the Martha’s Vineyard migrant case, where two planeloads of Venezuelan asylum-seekers were flown from Texas to the Massachusetts island under false pretenses. A graduate of Columbia law, Renate Lunn represented people accused of crimes in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx at The Legal Aid Society for over 10 years and clerked for Hon. Robert P. Patterson of the Southern District of New York. She is currently the Director of Training at New York County Defender Services, training and supervising public defenders that serve the city’s most vulnerable communities in Manhattan.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from my Heart Radio. The United States criminal justice system can be a challenging and often deliriously expensive labyrinth of court filings and trial dates. My guests today are two women representing those most in need of assistance navigating that system. Attorneys were not a lun and Susan Church, We're not a lund. Trains and supervisors public defenders for New York County, defender services and organizations serving the city's most vulnerable communities. But first, I'm talking to immigration attorney and advocate Susan Church. Church successfully represented the Occupy Boston protesters and sued the Trump administration over its so called Muslim Band With her Massachusetts law firm Dimissy and Church. She now represents individuals involved in the Martha's Vineyard immigration case pro bono. This past September, Florida Governor Rhonda Santis commissioned two planes to transport migrants seeking asylum in the United States. They were flown under false pretenses from San Antonio, Texas, to the wealthy vacation island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The move was an attempt by de Santis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott to draw attention to illegal immigration at the border. The stunt made headlines as a cruel and heartless ploy, and as Santis was criticized for playing political theater with people's lives. Before we got into the specifics of the Martha's Vineyard case, I wanted to know how Susan Church found her way to progressive politics. So this is a really interesting issue. I'm adopted, and I grew up in a very conservative Republican household. I grew up all around the country, so Idaho, North Carolina. We moved around a lot. But they were kind of like what we call welld Republicans. So they're kind of like the Mitt Romney Republicans. They were not, you know, blatantly like today's Republican Party. They're the old Republican Party. But I found my biological mother when I was much older, when my children, I had some problems getting pregnant, and so I found my biological mother as my children were being born. She's a left wing Democrat, Like she's Angela Davis. Your real mother was Angela Davis. It's very funny, it's very interesting. So I always talk about that because sometimes I think empathy is genetic in some ways, because I certainly did not get it from my growing up. Now in your career, you've been working in this kind of law for how long? An immigration related law? So I started immigration law in My husband is actually from Ethiopia and he was switching law firms and he said, just take this one asylum case. You'll love it. Because I was a criminal defense attorney, and that's what I really loved. How long did you do the criminal offense to defense works? So that was sorry, I met so three years. I was a public defender and that's all I ever wanted to do. New Hampshire that was fun. And when a place that, I mean, I don't know New Hampshire that well, but I have friends who are from there and have homes there. What was the typical criminal defendant who needed public defending a lot of drug cases or what, yes, lots of drugs, less of heroin even back then. Lots of domestic violence and lots of sexual assaults. That was kind of the big crime that was going on there, especially the indecent as solemn batteries on child and things like that. So that was unpleasant. And so your husband says, take this one case. What was the case. It wasn't my husband's from Ethiopia. So it was a political asylum case from Ethiopia. Yes, yeah, and he had a great asylum claim, but he had gotten into some immigration related problems with this case. It wasn't filed correctly. You know, his lawyer has screwed everything up, and so he was in deportation proceedings. So I represented him and that and I in love with immigration law from that point in time. One thing I'm also wondering, just in terms of the background of this thing, were the people you work with in this issue and beyond how are you paid? I mean, do they go and get money they raise from wealthy benefactors, do packs that you work with or not for profit groups? I mean, where do they find the money? I mean, you're not doing this for free. You've got to be paid something, correct. I really don't believe in taking money, as much as possible for tragedies Like I did all this work on Afghanistan. I didn't take any money to travel band work that I did. I didn't take any money. I feel like it really is exploitation to try to get these individuals to pay me. But I work with a lot of nonprofits and the way they operate is they get grants, they get individual fundraising. They're always on shoestring budgets. Agree a groups I've worked with that are very well known groups will all kick in money. Well, they'll they'll say, we need money for legal fees. Oh, we gotta raise a million dollars, like in a month. Send us you know, we want you know, twenty people to send us fifty grand now, and so they can get the legal these going because their budget wasn't just allowing that. They just need a team of lawyers on the ground for election protection or whatever. It is, so absolutely and they need it, like you know, I worked a lot with South Coast Legal Services on this case, and they're just a tiny little nonprofit that does legal services just I mean, very shoestring budget. And they had lawyers at the site day after day after day, all day and night at the base. Once the migrants from martad In your removed to the base. So tell us what happened in this case. What are the facts of what happened? Okay, So these forty nine individuals are almost all of Venezuelan immigrants, why. That is a really good question. We know that the Venezuelan economy has been deteriorating for quite some time, so was there an expanded concentration of Venezuelans trying to come into this country. No, I think this is what I think, and I think your question is really smart because normally in Boston we have El Salvador and Guatemalan Central Americans, and they all have family that they go to normally, so you don't see them hanging around at shelters. They don't necessarily need money to get a bus ticket because people are sending the money to make the trip. But Venezuelans are in probably one of the most dire situations right now, and so they're just leaving, often with no money, often with no resources, often with no contacts in the United States, and they are therefore much more easily preyed upon by the likes of De Santis. And I believe that's what's been happening here well, aside from being preyed upon by DeSantis, because that's a huge net that's been cast of people paid upon by Dessantis. The Venezuelans is Texas the normal destination for them as Texas Texas or Arizona, Arizona for that's normal from immigrants from any part of Latin America. Okay, so these people come to Texas, they've been there for how long? It was just days? So they've been there for days, just days, not long at all. And where were they? Where were they? So what happens when you come into the borders. You get into one of the federal processing holding centers and the border patrol officers take your photograph, take your name, try to figure out if you have any family in the United States, do a background check, and then after a couple of days they if you Usually you pass what's called a credible fear interview. But that didn't happen here, which is also a little suspicious to us. We don't know why. Instead, all of these individuals were parolled in, which is different. It's a weird legal status that we don't see much up here in Massachusetts. It could be more common on the board, and I've been asking my border friend attorneys around. It's not that common, but it's not out of the ordinary either, So no one's suggesting. I take it that anybody behind this was deliberately casting criminal elements to come in just to embarrass the Biden administration. None of these people were people who proved criminals and many of them absolutely not. And so you know, I have one particular client who had been out of Venezuela for years. So I know there was a right wing media story going around that that Maduro had opened the jails and sent these people here. But based on our reviews, that's absolutely false. Because people had been out of the out of Venezuela for some people a year. So I met one guy seven years he'd been gone. So they just finally made it to the US border after years of trying. Now where was this? All forty nine of them were in the same facility. No, this is what's so interesting, and this is something the media is not picking up on, and nobody seems to be investigating. All forty nine of them, in various forms, made their way to this shelter in Texas, in San Antonio that had just been opened in July, just in July, and Perla, the woman who was lying to them to get them onto the plane, waited outside that shelter. Now why I'm suspicious of that shelter is it has a three day rule. You can only stay there for three days. I don't know about you, but I don't know many shelters that have a three day rule. What's the point of a shelter that says you get to stay three days? It doesn't happen up here, and it just opened in July. When you have the three day well, what are they assuming? In your mind? What are they assuming? Where are you gonna go home? Exactly? How did anybody find a house in three days or an apartment in three days? It doesn't make sense, right, It doesn't serve the purpose of a quote unquote shelter except for Parla to stand outside and recruit people who were suddenly found themselves homeless again after three days. Of course, because this is slightly more complex than people might imagine. These are people who were in a state. Is it a Texas state or a federal facility that they go to. It's a federal facility. So they're going to a federal facility in the state of Texas. And where does de Santis, the governor of Florida come in. Why is the Santis deciding that Texas immigration problem is under his jurisdiction. So that's the craziness of this story. Also, they were picked up from Texas and flown to Florida after stopping in North Carolina. First reason, and to Santis's argument, is that they would have eventually ended up in Florida. So we're going to bring them to Florida to them fly them to Massachusetts. All of it is just part of his stunt to get credit for quote unquote removing individ Jules. So you're calling Abbot and saying, could you lend me some illegal immigrants because I really want to embarrass the Biden administration. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And the crazy part is it's part of this twelve million dollars that I don't know if you saw this, but the Treasury Department is now investigating to Santis for this nonsense because the money that they use is part of the interest on the American Recovery with Act funds that they were given for COVID, So they took that money and put it towards these flights. So a plane flies them. How many planes were involved in this caper? Two planes? Two planes? Who would who owned the planes? The state of Florida? Well, no, it's a private aviation with connections to mac Gates another interesting fact. So matc Ate choosed to be the attorney for these private company that charted the flights. But what I'm curious about is, I mean, it's not that complex to follow. It just it's it's mystifying to understand why. So the governor of Lurida, who is presumed to be the likely nominee if Trump gets more black and blue than he already is right now, he gets a private aviation company to fly to Texas to pick up forty nine Thenezuelan immigrants in multiple low federal locations there bring them to North Carolina. You don't know why in North Carolina. We think it was for a pilot change. But I still don't understand why there would be a pilot change, because like it's not that far of a flight. It might be a refueling one that some of the clients guess that that's what it was about. And some of the clients said it was a pilot change. We don't really know for sure. And we're in Florida. Do they land the Panhandle up in the north, right up near where the capital is right? How long are they in Florida before? Or is everything already nice and greased and everything is ready to go. I mean, they land in Florida, and do they go right to the vineyard. I think they were there just a long long enough for De Santis to hold a five minute press conference about it, and then they left. They didn't seem like they had been there for very long. They were totally sure what was going on. To be honest with you, well, De Santis is someone who it's assumed he's going to use every single facet of the State of Florida's regulatory apparatus to benefit his supporters and to punish his opponents and to humiliate the Democratic administration. And I wonder is De Santis, at least through the prism of this case, is he viewed as someone who he was the architect of this himself or other aids of him, who authored this program, who came up with this idea. That's a great question. I mean, I feel like it is him. He's I feel like what you've brought up is probably one of the most important things that's going on. The Democratic Party. But that everybody's missing. Everyone's focusing on Trump. Trump is at least wounded. Maybe he's not dead yet, but he's certainly wounded, and he would have a much harder time I'm getting the presidency than De Santis would in my opinion, if De Santis were the nominee. He does enough nonsense like Trump is, but he's much smarter, much much smarter, and much more capable than Trump ever can imagine being, and he could do real damage. So my question had been, was De Santis or someone underneath him the architect of this and the planes themselves? If you take two planes. When I've flown on private planes and they didn't cost me anywhere near twelve million dollars to fly privately on a plane that can handle you know people, that's more like eight five thousand dollars round trip cross cross country. They spent twelve million dollars on these planes of COVID funds, no, so what they spent with six hundred thousand dollars on the first on the first two flights, and then after the first two flights there was a second payment for nine hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, so it was about a little more than well, it's one point five million. So with two flights going from from Texas to Florida, stopping in Carolina and the flights that went to Martha's venued. How many planes were involved there too, again too, but before the flights, each of the and I don't think this is up to one point five millions based on what you're telling me. The cost is for private flights. But before the flights, there were McDonald gift certificates that were given out as bribes to individual to sign the waiver form the quote unquote weavers that weren't even in fully in Spanish. There were hotel rooms for anywhere from one night to a week for each of the forty nine people. I don't know what that works out too. And they had two other handlers besides Pearla, So there was Pearla and then two other people. Well, I want you to stop for a second and give us a kind of a thumbnail on who is Pearla. This is another super interesting thing which has de Santis's name written all over. She is a counter intelligence individual from the army who also was a medic who had just left been discharged from the Army in August. I don't think it's been clear last name Pearla who to h U E R t A. And The New York Times did a story on her. I think it was this past weekend where they've identified her. So I gave the New York Times at least three different photographs of Perla that my clients or other clients at the base had taken, and then the New York Times did some investigation and verified that this is the person. So Perla, has anybody come forward? I mean, I don't assume that all these people, regardless of what effort they make, can operate exclusively in the shadows. Did you find that anything about her, who she is and what she involved another? I mean, a woman named per La Huerta. I don't want to be too generalizing. Here is an emissary of one of the great anti immigration efforts in this country in the last twenty five years. Who is she? I mean, what was her role in immigration? What was her role in the Santi's administration. She doesn't seem to have any role because she just got out of the army. She's counter intelligence, that's really what she's working for De Santas. She certainly counter inte that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to note that she's kind of intelligence, right, because this is a good example of what you're talking about. Earlier. If Trump had hired this person, just imagine the buffoon they would have hired, right, It would have been some fool who probably didn't speak Spanish and tried to use interpreters or whatever. Instead, they've hired this woman who appears to be native Spanish speaking. My clients told me that she was Mexican, Colombian, or Venezuelan, depending on which client you talked to, So you don't even know based on her. That's and that's a big thing to pull off, right, not to be able to fool these immigrants into thinking which countries she's originally from. And she's paid to lie as a counterintelligence officer. So when I heard that, I really thought, this is much bigger than a buffoonery Trump stuff. This is the type of thing that they do when they're competent, and that's what scares me about him becoming president. Attorney Susan Church. If you enjoy conversations with women fighting for justice, check out my episode with Attorney Becca Heller, who fought back against Trump's Muslim ban. Heller is the founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. The thing that was amazing about Airport Weekend is that, like We organized the lawyers, but nobody organized the protesters. Totally spontaneous. Thousands of Americans went out in freezing shitty January weather to just be like, this is not cool. The executive order was rescinded before the lawsuit. The lawsuit we once said that they can't hold people. But the one that we won right away wasn't about sort of the legality of the order on its face. It was the public pressure that got the administration to rescind the executive order and the so called chaos at the airports, which I will forever be proud of. To hear more of my conversation with Becca Heller, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Susan Church weighs in on the laws against human trafficking and whether the Martha Vineyard debacle qualifies. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing. Attorney Susan Church is fighting for the immigrants involved in the Martha's Vineyard case and arguing for bringing charges against the Descantis administration. I wanted to know how she first got involved with the case. So the story is that the clients were dropped off of the vineyard. They were dropped off in front of what they call a house, which apparently is the Martha's Svineord Community Association, and then you know, the police were called, the media was called, the story got out. Had the media been tipped up by the descentis people in advance? We believe there was a Fox News reporter on the island that day. Yes, we believe they wanted them there for the landing, right exactly, roll stage right, all, stage all, a stunt, all at the expense of these people's lives. So when you have immigrants in the media, often they make statements that are detrimental to them. You don't want them doing that. Were you aware what was going on while that was happening. You didn't know about until it landed on the vineyard. No, not until that. I didn't even know. I didn't read the news that and I didn't know about till the morning I got the call. So when they when they're playing lands in the vineyard, who calls you? Who tips you off? Where you saw it on the news? I got called by the Lawyer's Community for Civil Rights Van Magical ESPINAG and he said get on a zoom right now, and then so everyone said, Okay, who's going to go to the vineyard, because somebody needs to go right away to protect the clients, get statements from them about what happened so that we can later use that in the lawsuit, which of course is what we did. You want to get facts down right away in situations like this, and that's what lawyers are quite good at. So my law student went on Thursday. I went on Friday, and Vane had a couple of his lawyers there, Rachel's self was there, and then we were I was at the base every single day for the next ten days. Almost p will often assume, because the word human trafficking has been injected into this event, is this human trafficking as far as the laws concerned, or you don't know. I don't think it qualifies. I've spoken to probably one of the best human trafficking experts for immigration. Others like people who are sexually exploited. These people were lied to as to what the circumces were correct, So that's the argument. They were told they were getting on a plane for what reason. Oh, every lie under the book. They were going to get a job, they were going to get permanent housing, they were going to Washington State, they were going to California. They were they were given a false, a patently false inducement to get on that plane for political gain. So you are right in the sense that if there is any human trafficking argument, the political game portion of that would be. But human trafficking is moving people for a financial gain usually, so you have to try to monetize political gain. Why Martha's Vineyard meaning in my mind, I mean, I've had a home on eastern Long Island among you know, a fairly a thick stripe of well to do seasonal people, many of whom are the captains of media and titans of media. Martha's Vineyard is the same. There's a lot of media giants there. I could name a few, but not all of them are liberal Democrats. I mean, some of the most conservative ones live up there. Why Martha's Vineond, Why do you think that was it because of Obama? I'm guessing it was because of Obama. I also think they wanted to torture them by holding them captive in that way, by putting them on island. One of my clients told me that when he realized it was a hoax, after they rang the doorbell for the Martha's Vineor Community Association. They all started feeling that they were going to get in trouble for being on the island, so they tried to run around the island and get off, looking for a bridge off the island. Of course there is none, so I think that added to the drama of it. I also think it was because they wanted to stick it to Obama. Also, Martha's Vineyard is a super diverse island and and a very community oriented oriented island. I keep saying that they picked the wrong island. There was a tweet that somebody else said, if you're going to send a bunch of people who are impoverished and not powerful, don't send them to Lawyer Island next time. So I really feel like they made a mistake in doing it because they picked the wrong island. It's it's a great community of great people, and they really rallied around these individuals. I don't know if you know this, but they all are going to get green cards now because of this trick. The U card, the visa, Yes, what is a you visa? You visa is something that Congress needs to fix. It's not a great option, but ultimately is a victims of crime visa that leads to a green card. There are ten thousand given out in any year. There's a huge backlock, but at some point in time it's an application that will lead to both a work authorization and a green card for these individuals. I mean, obviously, I'm someone who has a very bitter perspective about the Supreme Court. You've got three people. You've got Gorsetch, You've got Barrett, and you've got Kavanaugh, who to the American people who bald face lied and said that abortion was codified law. Did you see this coming in your work with immigration, did you see something or something like this coming these kinds of stunts. Were you surprised? Absolutely surprised. I mean, I just I don't know why I continue to believe in the decency of humanity. I mean, I was well aware of the bus sing that was going on to the Northern States. But to be honest, as long as people were told honestly, yeah, you know, I want to go to New York and here's a bus to get I don't have a problem with that. I think they're much better often in blue states that they have more access to better judges, better green card capabilities and everything. But I can't believe it. I still can't believe they would sink this low. And I must be naive, but I still don't believe that they demonize and deshumanize our clients this way. I just I've never gotten over it. Well, state income taxes in New York are obscene, and they are obscene, but we're using them to pay for things to improve people's lives. To exes in Florida, which I think there's zero taxes down, there's no state income tax, and other states have every low income taxes. The way they achieve that is they don't take care of anybody. You don't have any medical care if that's worth ship, you don't have any education that's worth shit. They cut and cut and cut services, and the way they can. And if you come to this state and you've got a retirement account, your your retiree, which is Florida's right now for your retiree, and you've got an insurance thing that works for you, and you know you're you're covered, you're taken care of, and you come down here, this is the land of where you come where you don't give a shit about your neighbors and what happens to them. Everybody's on their own, every man for himself. Florida is the state of every man for himself. Now do you fear that cases involved in this are going to get to the Supreme Court. It's a really good question. So there's a bunch of lawsuits that have been engendered because of this. But one is the one that Lawyers Committee Civil Rights filed, and that is a compensatory meaning font monetary damages and for a restraining order against against A Santists for doing this again because there was I don't know if you know, there was an attempt to do it to Delaware that we believe we scared off with all the criminal investigation. There's talk of there was a Nantucket false alarm this weekend. They were going to send it in Nantucket so to stop them from doing this again. And I do fear that that lawsuit would make it to the Supreme Court, and that would be really problematic because here's why. There is a two thousand and twelve case called Arizona the US where Arizona tried to enact a misdemeanor criminal charge for being undocumented in Arizona. A misdemeanor charge for working without an authorization in Arizona, things like that, And the Supreme Court said no, immigration was federal and it's pre emptied by the federal government, which would make what de Santists did clearly and unequivocally illegal. When did immigration become the devil term? But it is now what period of your life do we call or even in your studies and your work, was it Goldwater and the John Birch days? Was it Reagan? When did immigration become something that was a negative in our lives? To Santa's great grandparents came here from Italy, and now he's done all this to immigrants. He's wounded all these immigrants this way. The reason I'm an immigration lawyer is the law signed into law by Bill Clinton, and that was we call it EDBA and ira Ira, And that was the law that said that it used to be that immigrants would go back and forth across the border. They come here, they'd work for two years, they go home, right because people no one wants to leave their country. And EDPA and ira Ira, along with the militarization of the border, trapped people into the United States. So that's why our undocumented immigration population blossomed is because people if they go home now, they are subject to lifetime bars on re entering and they get expelled at the border. And if you stay, you may have a chance to regularize your status at some point in time in the future. Reagan actually did amnesty. I don't know why people don't talk about that, but I have many clients who got their green cards through Ronald Reagan's Amnesty for program. So I really think it was Clinton's law. That law then trapped people in the United States, forced them not to go, and then that caused this growing population of undocumented immigrants. What's next now in terms of your activities in the courts? Where whereas everything headed in the immediate sense, So we will probably start hearing in the lawsuit filed by a Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights. I know that all of my lawyers right now who volunteered, we had every pro bonent representation arranged for every single immigrant that arrived in Martha's vineyards. They're all drafting their U VISA applications in sending them to the government right now as we speak. So and and the last thing we really need for these individuals as work authorizations who we're working with the Biden administration and calling on them to reissue paroles for these individuals so they can all apply for work authorization. My thanks to you, Susan Church for all of your good work, and I'm always happy to meet these heroes helping the desperate people who are getting deceived by the pearl la Awertes of the world. I mean, this goes on and on the sanity of this, but thank you so much, and best of luck to you with the rest of your endeavors here. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you for having me immigration attorney Susan Church. My next guest attorney were not A. Lun Is the director of training for New York County Defender Services, a firm that offers public defenders to those who cannot afford their own council. Lund Is a graduate of Columbia Law, has clerked for the Southern District of New York and worked at the Legal Aid Society for over a decade before her work at nyc d S. I first spoke with Lund in June of one, at a time when COVID had drastically changed the justice system. I wanted to know why she chose and admittedly difficult line of work. I like people. I love that they're complicated and full of contradictions, that I believe that no one is all good or all bad. It just made sense to me to be an advocate for people in a system where they're reduced to just one act, one thing. So the prosecutor tells a story and their criminal complaint or an indictment. It might not even be a true story, and it just captures one moment in a person's life. And as a public defender, I get to work with investigators, I get to know my client. I get to work with social workers and find the nuances and complexity and context of that story and then tell that story to prosecutors, two juries to judges. And so that was the calling. And there's a second piece of that too, and that's the racial justice piece. The United States incarcerates more black people now than we're enslaved under slavery. That civil rights battles of our generation are being fought in criminal court. I'd like to think if I was born fifty years earlier, i'd be a freedom writer in Mississippi. I don't know if I'd really have the courage for that, but I do know that I have the courage to be a public defender in the twenty one century. Now, the New York County Defender Services, it says that it in the research we did that was formed. What changed? What was the prior office of public defenders in New York and what was what? Why was there a change? Sure in New York City up until the mid nineties, there was just the only game in town with Legal Aid Society. They had offices and all five boroughs they do have offices in all five private enterprise yes, that contracted with the city to provide public defender services. And Legal Aid Society was unionized at the time, and the union went on strike, and in order to break the strike, Giuliani, who is the mayor at the time, put out a call for other public defender agencies to be formed. And so at that time Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, Queen's Law Associates which is now Queen's Defenders, and your County Defender Services were born. And this is completely government funded. There's or do you avail yourself as from some private funding as well. We would be delighted to accept private funding. If anybody's listening and wants to make a donation, you can do so on our website. But most of our funding is from the City of New York as a contract provider and all so from we got some state funding as well. And how many people in the staff over a hundred. We have sevent dy attorneys, but we also have investigators, social workers, paralegals, admin staff, civil attorney, immigration attorneys, data specialists. Now, I mean, I have many questions for you, but the first one that comes leaping to mind is the virtual court room. We've had a year and a half or so of virtual everything, and I'm wondering what was the described for me? Because as a layman, the first question that comes to mind is, how can courts turn around and say you got to go into our room with a computer and have you What if you don't have an internet, you don't have a computer. What if you don't want to go into your lawyer's office who has a computer because of the COVID itself? How did the exactly Oh, just picture the worst zoom call you were on with your family or friends or work associates, and now imagine that your liberty is at stake. I mean, imagine that zoom call where Grandma you only see her forehead and then the wall and ceiling because she can't figure out how to, you know, use the visual. Someone logging out and back in because their WiFi is bad. Someone sounding like a sad robot, like all those technical issues. You have a judge calling in virtually, you have a court reporter calling in virtually, and so our clients we try to guide them through using Microsoft Teams. That's the app of the courts recommend using frequently it doesn't work, so our clients will then call in via telephone. Sometimes we will be the public defender or the attorney will face time with their client and then hold their iPhone up to their laptops that the judge can see the face on FaceTime on someone's phone through the laptop, and we would try to conduct court that way. It really to humanize our clients. But I'm also assuming that the legal community, not just n y CDs, your organization, but lawyers in general. The Bar Association National or New York had some significant protests about how fair this was or I mean, what if somebody didn't couldn't afford a phone, what if they didn't have a computer, What was for two people that was safe, that was COVID safe for them to appear quote unquote in court. So for many people, their cases were just put on pause in a sense. So the course of people without those technological resources, they were punted. Usually if you don't show up to court, a warrant is issued for your arrest. It's called a bench warrant at the judge issues And for many months during COVID, they just didn't issue warrants. And so I think there there's probably many New york Is still out now who forgot about a case or thought, Okay, I haven't had to go back to court for a year, or it's COVID. I don't know what's going on. But who still have these these open warrants? And our attorney has made every effort they could to contact clients, to write letters to homeless shelters, to we sent investigators knocking on the doors of last known addresses, and we did offer the opportunity for clients to come into our office and use the computers. Some clients would meet at a counselor's office if they were already in some sort of program, or try to use a public phone to call into court. But yeah, there's a lot of people. I think I might have gotten lost in the system. I'm assuming that there are different types of cas where you're entitled to a jury trial if you want one. In New York, you're not entitled to a jury trial if the maximum sentence you could get is ninety days or less. That's for expediency sake. Yeah, So a minor crime like attempted pettit larceny, attempted drug possession, steal a woman's pocketbook in the park, not even it's stealing a woman's pocketbook in the park. If it's on her shoulder, that would be a grand larceny. That would be a felony. If you steal a woman's pocketbook in the park and it's maybe just sitting on a park bench while she's checking her phone, that could be pettit larceny depending on what's in the pocketbook. If it's worth lessan a thousand dollars. If you tried to take it and she said, oh no, you and grabs the pocketbook back, that would be the attempted petit larceny. So for that, you don't have a right to a jury trial unless you're not a US citizen and then the Court of Appeals held, Look, the immigration consequences, the consequences of being deported are graver than ninety days in jail, and so if you're facing serious immigration consequences, you have the right to a jury trial. Is it safe to assume that people showing up with the public defender that stigmatizes them in front of a jury and a yes. Unfortunately, because we have I think some of the best attorneys in the country working in our office, and public and defenders are I think on the whole, some of the best attorneys in general that you will find. But unfortunately, there is still this this stigma. So juries we don't usually notify a jury there's uh, that's a public defender representing them. I don't have not allowed to tell them. I could. It could be. It can be a strategic call, right, Like if I'm representing someone who's charged with being involved in some sort of drug dealing scheme and the jury is going to see that they're represented by a public defender, they might say, well, yeah, this guy, and I'm arguing that you know, my client wasn't involved, or he was just a drug user who is being taken advantage of by the real drug dealers, then I might exactly that all lawyered up here exactly. So it's a strategic decision if you want to look like your client could afford h fancy private lawyer, or if you want to let the jury know this is an indigent person with a public defender. I have found in the few cases where I've ended up in court in my life. There's been a couple of times I ended up in court for different things, but you realize that they really don't want people to go to trial. Yes and no. I mean there is a lot of pressure to take please and that pressure doesn't just come from the court. It often comes from the extenuating circumstances in our client's lives. For example, you know, maybe they're involved in a custom dispute with their partner, and if they go to trial and lose, it would look a lot worse than if they just played guilty to harassment and did a batter's intervention program or something like that. Or often people are suspended from work while there's an open case. There's security licenses might be suspended. TLC licenses are suspended if you have an open case, So there's a lot of incentive for people to take any kind of get it over with that they can return to work. And of course immigration consequences to play a big role in people's decision making. When you come into a courtroom, you see some pretty intense circumstances that people live under, and I would imagine there's a constant flow of people where homelessness, joblessness, and drug addiction is a big part of um. Do people in your office, even though they're not called upon to h to comment about this publicly, do they develop opinions about what they think is our social programs that might be adjusted to lower crime social services? Well, you're not allowed to comment. No, Actually I am allowed to comment. And it's funny that you should say that, because I think the notion of a public defender has expanded in the last ten or twenty years. Where it used to be we just put our heads down into individual cases. Now we're looking more systemically and thinking about systemic project I thought right, And so as far as what we would like to see as far as social services, a big one is just mental health services, mental health including substance use, because so often the response is, oh, there's someone who's talking to themselves on the subway platform, let's call the police. And we've all seen the worst case scenarios of what happens when then the police end up killing someone for that person pushes somebody exactly exactly, and and things just get elevated quickly. And so there's not a lot of options for people who have mental illness to get treatment, to have the support, to have housing. So mental illness comes to mind, drug treatment, making sure that's available, and just getting police out of schools. New York recently raised the age we used to have one of the lowest ages when someone could be charged with a crime. And so as an adult, yeah, so I would represent like sixteen year olds who got into fights in high school. I mean just fist fights. I'm not talking about anything that I didn't see in my all white high school where the principles of the school used to take care of exactly exactly, or parents or communities. And then the police would come and then they've got and with two people are assaulting one person, more than one persons of all to becomes a felony. It's a violent felony. All this stuff. So just getting police out of schools, having letting schools focus on education, I think there would be my two big things. But I find it interesting is this idea that we've increased criminal penalties in order to monetize a system and for people to make money, you know, mandatory sentences. I mean I am a huge opponent of mandatory sentences. You elect judges, they're appointed by people were supposed to accept these appointments and these election results for people who have tremendous power, and then we say you can't use your judgment. Here's your mandatory sentencing guideline. What is your opinion of mandatory I think they're horrible. They handcuffed judges, and like you said, each case is unique, in each individual is unique. And to say that this idea that somehow someone is going to learn a lesson after seven years that they won't learn after five years, and certainly wouldn't learn after three years, like, it's absurd to me and it just doesn't make any sense. I think we've gotten more draconian in terms of the idea of rehabilitation and what we do with these people once they put away has become like a distant second. It's not even on them the charts rer abilitation. Do you agree? Yeah? Absolutely, And I think you know, funds are being cut for that. There used to be pell grants so that people in prison could go to college and take college courses well in prison, and that was found to reduce recidivism, but that was cut. One of my pet peeves is what we call the capaganda police shows right the law and order and c s I and all those spinoffs that just show crime as being done by a very bad scheming person who can't be rehabilitated and doesn't again doesn't tell the complexity of a of a story. And also the majority of people we represent, the majority of cases are misdemeanors. There's non violent felonies. There's even cases that sound like violent crimes. The man who was taking the hats off of people, you know, on the Coney Island subways fifty years ago, that could have been maybe charged even as a robbery in the second degree if he was doing that with friends. Again, sounds like a violent cry in these marauding youth. But when you take a step back and hear the stories and get the context, it's never that sort of CSI villain. It's never so contrary. So you've been at this for a while, you've been at this sphere over fifteen years. What's the new crop of lawyers? Like, how are they different from you? Are they? Yes? What's wonder full about them is again, I, you know, keep coming back to these racial justice issues. But I read the New Gym Crow after I was a public defender. Then we started interviewing people who read The New Gym Crow in law school. Then we started interviewing people who read the New Gym Crow in college and were inspired by it. Now we're interviewing people who read the New Gym Crow in high school, were inspired by that, knew they wanted to be a public defender. So they took whatever classes in college and interviews and or internships in college that could get them on a path to doing criminal law. Went to law school knowing they wanted to be a public defender. Like these are people who are supremely dedicated to the job and have thought about it for many years. So already they are coming with this this understanding of the systemic problems of the criminal legal system. They're not just motivated by you know, upholding the Constitution and the right to counsel and the six Amendment, but by a very deep drive for justice, not just for our clients, but in the entire system. And so it's become incredibly competitive to be a public defender. Like we thousands of resumes. We are turned down people who go to top law schools because they don't have what we're looking for. That drive to try creases the ability to relate to clients. It is one of the most competitive jobs you can get after law school. It's amazing to me. And yeah, I wish I wanted to get that message out there because like Columbia, I went to Columbia, so their their office will often reach out to me and say, hey, we've got a great crop of five people who want to be public defenders this year. You know, they'll interview with my office. Um, they stay connected with you, they stay connected, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, it doesn't guarantee a job in my office. And as I told my stunt applicants, oh yeah, and and you know, the the year that we interviewed several people from Columbia, I think there was just one that we hired and the others they've landed in other places around the country. But yeah, it's it's very difficult. As I say to my my boss, whenever we do the hiring process, I feel like it's like drowning puppies. You know, we can't keep all the puppies in the litter. So but they're incredibly smart, bright, talented, dedicated people. When you speak about your career and the work you do, and you're obviously so heartfelt and you're so dedicated this work, and I'm so impressed that there's people like you in this world of public defending who really care on this level. I have this silly image of you sitting there having lunch with a friend of yours who went to Columbia and she's had a big litigating firm, and she's got, you know, the thirty thou dollar wristwatch and the hand Like there's a whole world you could have had that you have forsaken in order to do this kind of work. Do you ever have any regrets? No, not, not for a second. You talked about New York and challenges of working in New York City, and one is that you are next to so much wealth, right, You're a proximate to so much wealth. A lot of our new attorneys have roommates. If they started a big law firm, you know, they could practically buy a house with their summer bonus. But the work is meaningful, it's rewarding, it's fun, and at the end of the day, one of the beautiful things of being a public defender is you have a lot of autonomy and sting of your own schedule as far as you know, you have to be incorded at a certain time, and you have to make sure you make time to meet with clients. But then that your time is your own. You don't answer to a partner in a law firm who calls you on Friday night and says, okay, cancel your money. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so my husband loves to cook, and you know, I've said I would love to be able to buy you a huge house with a huge kitchen, but your lawyer, but then we'd never be able to eat in it, right, And then I'd never get to eat your cooking. So I'd rather eat your cooking in our humble kitchen. Attorney, We're not a lun If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow here's the thing on the I Heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, We're not a Lune gives her take on rising crime rates in New York and how those statistics are misleading. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing. I originally spoke with Renato Lun of New York County Defender Services in June of two thousand twenty one, when COVID held a strong grip on the court system. I decided to have Lun back to get an update on her work since the city's reopening. Another development since we last spoke was the swearing in of Mayor Eric Adams on January one, two thousand twenty two. Adams has inherited an increasingly problematic Riker's Island Correctional facility. It's a constant storm of violence, disorder, and staff absenteeism, with inmates going without food or medical care, and where seventeen people have died this year. While candidate Adams campaigned to close the facility, Mayor Adams wants to transition to Plan B and find an alternative to shuttering the jail. I wanted to know Lung's take on New York City's new mayor and the moves he's made since entering office. Disappointing. It's disappointing to hear someone say that he wants to bring back solitary. It was disappointing that he did not keep on Vince Giraldi, who was really trying his best as Commissioner of Corrections. You know, Rikers is still in crisis, and it's not getting towards that. It is a virtually intractable problem. You know, I I've been thinking about this how Rikers is just there are no adjectives right, inhumane, tortuous, city owned for those who don't know New York. Yeah, and since around the time of COVID, since we last spoke, a lot of Corrections officers call out sick. They have unlimited sick time. There's sort of no consequences for calling out sick, which is awful for our clients because if there's not enough staff and Rikers, they aren't protected. But they also don't filled by the inmates right, right, So we have clients answering the phones, escorting each other to places, often locked in because they can't be escorted to a council visit, can't be escorted to medical can't be escorted to get their medic medications or for a checkup or two for visits to see family. So they're locked in because there just aren't enough officers to escort them. So it's awful from our client's perspective, Also from a lawyer's perspective, because it's difficult for us to communicate with our clients. Our clients are often not even produced a court. But also from the CEO's perspective, if you know, going to work on a Friday morning means that there's a good chance the person is supposed to relieve you isn't going to show up because they're going to call out sick. And you know there's a good chance you're gonna be asked to work a double or maybe a triple. Well, then maybe you call out sick because you don't have the child care for Friday aftern't But why does I mean again, I don't assume you know the answer questions. No, But when you when you look at rikers and you hear the stories, I think most people, including myself, who I can have this jauntest view of that system as anybody, But I look and I think that the stories I hear, I think to myself, that can't be true. Yeah, that can't be true that you have a facility right off the coast of It's not like this place is up in upstate New York in the middle of the farm country out of view. Who is responsible for the fact that Rikers is this like Hall of Mirrors, It's something out of a Ryan Murphy streaming series, Like how did it be? Who's responsible for the maintenance of Rikers and its staff? Yeah? And why has it been allowed to deteriorate to this degree? And I think you say that it's not in the middle of nowhere upstate, but like I went upstate apple picking last weekend. There's more people. It's easier to get up state and go apple picking or whatever for for most people than to cross that bridge, go through all the levels of security and see the conditions on that island. Do they have very strict rules about the media coming to examine that place? You know, I don't know what the media rules are. I know that elected officials have done some visits, but even you know, when they're trying to pretty it up for elected officials, I'm sure you read the reports like people were attempting suicide in front of the city council members who were touring Rikers last fall. All I know is that we need to see a proposal which shuts down Rikers and those people are moved somewhere. And to the extent you can accommodate the access to council and the access to family, thing you do. But in words, I don't think access to council and access to family demands that they stay somewhere where they're going to die now, and so I think the plan and the guards are useless. I'm not a hundred percent up to date on the plan during the de Blasi administration, but there was a plan to close Rikers and revamp some of the borough based facilities. Like there already is the Manhattan Correctional Center MCC, there's one in Brooklyn, Brooklyn House of Detention, there's one in Queens. Like to make sure that there are facilities that are state of the art near all the all the courthouses, one in each borough, so that families can visit, attorneys can visit. So COVID has at least what you read in the paper has receded significantly. I still look at my app and see that there's forty four thousand deaths so far this year. We've crossed over to I think it's one point zero six one million, six hundred thousand people dead nationally, but COVID it is less of an issue than it is and people are back to normal life comparatively speaking pretty well. Do you find that in your work that that's that's impacting your work as well as the recession of the receding of COVID beneficial Yes, trials are back up and happening. Our office just completed one yesterday, gotten a full acquittal. And what kind of case can you say, um, assault, misdemeanor assault. Even this spring, people were wearing shields or witnesses were wearing shields when they testified. Jurors were socially distance. But now jurors are sitting back in the jury box, witnesses aren't wearing masks. So that's good. That feels back to normal. There's still the backlog, and like I said, there's still the crisis at Wrikers, which and you know, sixteen deaths this year that ways. And then in addition to that, you know, I think public defender offices around the country sort of reckoned with the great resignation I have here. It says, it says that The Times reported that hundreds of staff worst have left NYCPD organizations over low pay. In the last year. The Legal Aids is A lost ten percent of its staff, or about two people over the past twelve months. Brooklyn Defenders Services has lost forty attorneys or percent of its staff, and the New York County Defenders Services has lost thirty attorneys or of its staff. And what I'm wondering is the ones that are staying and they're all pretty much underpaid. The ones who stay, why do they stay? Why don't they quit? It is still the best job in the world. Like it's intellectually engaging, like law and criminal law. You get to make arguments as intellectually stimulating, you get to be and then you get to be creative. You get to be creative in your reason and logic and making creative arguments. You get to be creative. And how you present information, whether it's mitigating information to a prosecutor. You know, we write pre pleading memos. Sometimes we even record videos or show pictures to the prosecutors or to the judges to try to get better plea deals. And of course you know trial is you know, like a theater show, right you're telling a story, you're presenting information for suasively, you're thinking about how you're coming across to a jury and all that, and you get to help people to like what more could you ask for? Every once in a while, I'll peruse you know, I wanted ads thinking am I ready for a career change? And I just can't find anything that's that's as good and as meaningful and it's fun. Now crime rates are up according to the NYPD, shootings are down, but overall crime is up from just a year ago, and the media has titled us to bail reform and lenient sentencing and policies. What are your thoughts about that. I mean, we're still the safest big city in the country statewide. I think crime levels are down to pre pandemic levels. And one of the biggest drivers of crime is police arrests. So if police make a lot of arrest it looks like crime is up. And so if they're stopping and arresting people for smoking K two or giving out lots of summons is for that or summons is for driving the suspended license, they can say that arrests are up. It doesn't necessarily mean that that crime is up. So it's been really disappointing to see the media get behind and not question the police and the police unions, and unfortunately the mayor getting behind it to whenever they say that reform and criminal legal in our criminal legal system, in our criminal justice policy is causing crime rates, because if you look nationwide, you know there was a spike and crime post COVID in cities with conservative district attorneys and in cities with reform district attorneys, and that was just sort of universal. And they're making bail a punching bag in a way that I don't think it's accurate or fair. So, in the city instituted its bail reform and you had about a year of data before the pandemic hit, what did you see in terms of how bail reform worked differently. Actually, the bail laws were passed in tween, they didn't go into effect until January one, the pandemic hits. I think everything started the course started closing down March, so we only had two and a half months of bail reform, and what we saw was that people were reunited with their families, that people could fight their cases, that we didn't have so many people taking jail sentences, people getting the help they needed, or people being able to get acquittals or lesser. Please let me actually give an example to to clarify that. So when I was practicing as aligned public defender, I do training now. So when I had my own full caseload ten years ago, you would have people who are arrested for jumping a turnstile and this demeanor, possession of drugs, whatever, bill would be set because maybe they were a repeat offender, they were homeless, they didn't have a job, they didn't show up to their last courtate bill would be said at five hundred dollars. They couldn't pay five hundred dollars. The case would be a journ for five days. Five days later, a judge would say, look, i'll give him time served. I'll give him a ten day sentence, and then the client, you know, regardless of the merits of fighting the case, would say, look, I'd like to get out today. So we'd have a lot of people taking these ten day sentences, fifteen day sentences just to get out. With bail reform, those people are now released and we can get them into a rug treatment program. We can help our social workers in our office can help get them jobs. There's a lot of city money and city agencies that are also working to provide alternatives incarceration. So instead on that next court date, we're saying, okay, we'll reduce the charge of something non criminal and the client is now doing, you know, a drug treatment program. So with bail reform, we're seeing fewer criminal convictions, fewer people in jail, and as we talked about, in jail is a pretty rotten place right now, tortuous place, and more people reunited with their families. Now obviously in a city that has a significant perception of people and many of them voters who are swayed by you know, questionable sources of media, and they see the demonization of the bail reform thing. What do you think is the public relations key that has to be turned for people to understand why bail reform is in their interests, the interest of the general public. The lawyer brain and me wants to say, well, maybe we can just provide some more data. Maybe we can just show people that, you know, we're saving money by not putting people, were not incarcerating people. Maybe we can show people that the vast, vast majority of people are not re arrested, like over of the people who are released under bail reform and not re arrested a huge factor, right, But I know that data, it's not how we make decision, right. I mean, I know we have calorie charts on our menus now in New York City, But my stomach says exactly right. So I think, you know, it's up to us public defenders to do the work of telling our clients stories and talking about the individual people and the individual lives that are that are changed because of bail reform and trying to get people to to latch onto that. Just as we see Maryland Wanda laws being thrown out the window, just being completely vacated, which is which is fine, That doesn't bother me on any level. But other what other laws would you like to see reformed that you think would make a real impact on the work you do. What are laws that you think or just need to be we visited and changed. I think there's been an emphasis on decriminalization of a lot of petty crimes like drugs, So I would say drug possession for personal use, just all of that should be decriminalized, um completely. Yeah, And I think there has been like against marijuana completely almost completely in New York now almost when you're training people for the work you're doing, what's the one thing you want to make sure they understand about the job. What do you hope they really really understand that it's not about you, it's about your client. That it's really I say that, and we we started off by talking about what makes people stay. And one thing I wanted to address is that, you know, what makes people stay is also creating, hopefully an atmosphere where people feel supported and people feel like they can take care of themselves. There's a lot of discussion about wellness around our country, and definitely public defender offices to you know, our office, we don't send emails after five. We encourage people to take their vacation time, like actively say, don't check email on vacation. We will be you know. So I say all that, but then I also say, it's about your client, right, It's not about your ego, It's about what's right for your client. And I balancing that with that doesn't mean you lose yourself entirely, but whatever happens, it's your client's decision and understanding where our clients are coming from having empathy with them and knowing that when you work hard it is there's a real human life at stake, and so it really deserves your best effort. Thank you so much for doing this, Oh thank you. My thanks to Attorneys Are Not a lun and Susan Church for their tireless efforts helping the less fortunate every day. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm at like Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by my Heart Radio five Think All of the Game. Const