Hating On The Phrase ‘All Lawyered Up’
You’ve heard it in police procedurals on the television and the big screen. I know I heard it in The Killing and The Wire. A couple of weary beat cops or detectives, battling crime on the streets, fighting the noble War on Drugs perhaps, keeping us law-abiding citizens safe from the depredations of the big, bad, mostly black criminals out there, grimly acknowledge that they cannot make a move against a suspect because he is ‘all lawyered up.’ (The Wire threw in the offensive stereotype of the sleazy Jewish lawyer defending criminals for good measure; as noted elsewhere briefly, that show overreaches at some points.) He has legal counsel; he won’t talk; he won’t confess; he cannot be interrogated in the way the cops would like; he has withdrawn into a safe space, protected by a mere ‘technicality’ called ‘due process.’ A collective groan goes up from the audience: goddamn criminals and their lawyers, artful dodgers both, have slipped loose once again of the restraining strong arm of the law. If only those weasel lawyers would get out of the way, the police, prosecutors, and judges and juries could get on with the business of sending the most decidedly guilty to jail. The ends justify the means, right?
In a nation suffering from a mass incarceration crisis, which arrests twelve million of its citizens every year (defended by fifteen thousand public defenders), where police-induced false and coerced confessions are among the leading cases of wrongful convictions (including homicide cases), whose Supreme Court has systematically eviscerated the rights of criminal defendants in every domain of criminal procedure ranging from initial arrest to admissible evidence to jury instructions, where plea bargains result in innocents serving jail time for crimes they did not commit, the phrase ‘all lawyered up’ must rank as one of its most bizarre cultural productions.
It contributes to, and is part of, a cultural and political state of affairs whereby most Americans imagine that the law is too easy on crime and criminals; that the rich, powerful crook capable of hiring a $500-an-hour defense lawyer is the average arrestee; that the law’s protection of those detained or arrested by the police is a cumbersome obstacle to be bypassed or evaded. It contributes to the buildup of a groundswell of anger and frustration that all too often results in an urge to ‘throw the book’ at defendants, to harsher sentencing regimes, to a vindictive and retributive philosophy of punishment. Many folks possessed by such attitudes do not just serve on juries; they also serve as judges.
The American mass incarceration crisis has many components to it; it is enabled by many systems and agents. Among them is a cultural industry that specializes in keeping us scared and angry and hostile to the rights of our fellow citizens; the police are the thin blue line, restrained and helpless, unable to protect us because the forces of obfuscation and bureaucracy, law and lawyers, waving antiquated scrolls marked ‘Constitution’ and ‘Criminal Procedure’ will only hinder and obstruct the work of angels.
What a crock.
