Look Closer

by David Ellis

But on just the tiniest of suspicions, the government was able to destroy my life. And when they realized that they had no case against me? When they realized I couldn’t have done it—did they say so publicly? No. They didn’t give out a clean bill of health. They just dropped a bomb on my life and left me to pick up the pieces. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. When I realized, from experience, the importance of our constitutional protections. We read about them in books, debate them in classrooms, but I saw up close and personal their importance. I’ve devoted myself to that scholarship ever since. I’ve watched as our Fourth Amendment doctrines have become eroded, in my opinion, by the courts. I’ve argued for changes, wholesale changes in how we understand the privacy rights of our citizens. And I will never stop trying. I will never stop challenging and pushing and prodding. I’ll never stop writing about it. I will never stop teaching it. It’s all I’ll ever want to do.” I didn’t rehearse this speech. I didn’t need to. This is what I think, what I feel. I didn’t, couldn’t tell them the truth about what I did in St. Louis. That’s the only part that bothers me. A lie sprinkled into an otherwise heartfelt statement. But I’ve chosen to live with that lie. And now, after Lauren, with two lies. The brilliance of the law is that it’s not concerned with one person but with a system applicable to all. It protects the guilty so it can protect the innocent. It protected me,...