This does not mean it is the right thing to do in every case.
But the real question is about equity… about who gets to play. And the answer, more often than not, is whoever can afford the entry fee.
When you’re talking about tax breaks or negotiating a car loan, the playing field is disparate but reasonably level enough. “Regular people” can participate. Maybe not equally, but they’re in the game.
But the moment any of these circumstances rise to the level of needing an attorney, and many do, the game changes.
Now it’s not about who’s clever. It’s about who can afford to file motion after motion until the other side runs out of money; who can afford the lawyer who knows which judge likes which arguments, or who can wait out the clock while someone else loses their house paying legal fees.
Same courthouse. Same laws. Different experience.
I’ve seen this from the inside.
Years ago, I worked deep cover on a federal conspiracy case with the FBI in a major U.S. city… Two years of my life were spent living amongst gang members committing violent crimes in a part of the city that had been terrorized for too long. When it wrapped, fifty-one people were convicted. I believed in that case. Still do.
But one aspect of the process that troubled me was that most of my defendants ended up with court-appointed attorneys. This wasn’t because they were all broke. Some had money… some even had tons of money. But in these cases, the government further disrupts the criminal enterprise by seizing their financial resources… bad-guy assets gained through illegal activity. So even the guys who once had something certainly had nothing by the time they walked into court.
So, why would I be troubled about that? On its surface, this is not an issue at all. Bad guys are bad guys. Their choice, right? For me, it turned out to be what that circumstance produced.
When the sentencing came down, I watched people who roughly committed the same crimes get wildly different outcomes. One had a sharper public defender. One judge was in a particular mood that day. Hell, even a particular federal judge each defendant drew led to a natural sentencing disparity… Some were sentenced as far as 50 years apart.
But by then, I had no control over any of it. My job was to establish a case and free the innocents from the violence. What happened after that was the machine doing what machines do.
Those convictions weren’t necessarily wrong, but the system that delivered them isn’t as buttoned up as we’d like to think.
Here’s where most of us become hypocrites, regardless of age, demographic, beliefs, or politics:
We celebrate the friend who found a technicality to get out of a traffic ticket, while vilifying the politician who leverages an obscure law to achieve a political goal. Both did the same thing… saw an opportunistic path and took it. Neither is absolutely right nor wrong, though integrity plays its part in all of this. And we know the level of integrity we possess varies widely from person to person.
So, is the system broken? No. But, it’s not fine, either.
Most of us believe in fair play and justice… at least we do right up to the moment the rules aren’t favorable. Then suddenly, the rules are the problem.
So pause next time before pointing someone out and passing judgment… Because sooner or later, we’ll be standing in their shoes.
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Tegan Broadwater spent 13 years with the Fort Worth Police Department, including two years assigned to the FBI working deep undercover inside a violent Crip organization. That operation, detailed in his book Life in the Fishbowl, resulted in 51 convictions. He has since founded Tactical Systems Network, an armed security & protection firm primarily staffed by veterans, is a creative writer and musician, and hosts The Tegan Broadwater Podcast. All book profits benefit children of incarcerated parents. Learn more at TeganBroadwater.com
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