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Motif
Explanation and Analysis—Incompetent Lawyers:
Stevenson regularly takes on appeals cases in which the defendant clearly had incompetent lawyers in their initial trial. For example, in Chapter 14, Stevenson meets a man who was imprisoned for rape 18 years earlier, at the age of 13:
Joe was convicted by a six-person jury after a trial that lasted only one day. Opening statements began sometime after 9 A.M., and the jury returned its verdict at 4:55 P.M. Joe’s appointed counsel was later suspended from practice in Florida and never reinstated. The defense lawyer had filed no written pleadings and uttered no more than twelve transcript lines at sentencing. There was a great deal to say that was never said.
Joe initially admitted to burglary but claimed that he did not assault anyone. His accuser could not even identify him, other than that she remembered her assailant being Black. The speed of Joe's conviction suggests that the jury may have been biased, but it is also clear that he had ineffective counsel. Even though his lawyer lost their job, Joe's conviction and life sentence remained legally valid.
As a motif, incompetent lawyers like Joe's help Stevenson challenge the idea that just because someone has been convicted of a crime, they have been "proven" guilty or deserve the punishment they have received. The legal system purports to be fair, but Stevenson shows that unfair trials may in fact be the norm and not the exception. Corrupt prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers far more routinely than most people know. Even worse, far too many defense lawyers fail to take their clients' defenses seriously and present all the exculpatory evidence that is available to them. Stevenson's office is overwhelmed with requests for assistance from inmates whose initial trials were conducted with little regard to their rights as defendants. However, because the court system is overly confident in its ability to be fair, these inmates face an uphill battle to get their sentences reduced.
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