As a new lawyer with the Public Defender’s Office, I learned more about my job from their investigator than from any lawyer. Bob was an ex-cop from Chicago who had retired down south and was grumpily working the system on behalf of indigent accused felons. One of his duties was to go to the jail and interview new clients that the court had appointed our office to represent. He taught me the tricks of the trade, so to speak. From him I learned all the necessary elements of a decent client interview: be direct, be assured, don’t BS the client, and don’t believe protestations of innocence.
After a while, I was on my own doing the interviews. I’d go to the jail & the jailers would take me up to the second floor interview room and lock me in with my new client. Whenever I was ready, I’d hit the buzzer on the wall to let them know to come get me out, which they typically did in their own good time, being jailers.
One day my new client was a guy charged with attempted robbery of a convenience store. They took me up and locked me in with the guy. This was a little L-shaped room with one light bulb overhead, a duct through which air entered the room, and the aforementioned buzzer. There was a small table and two metal chairs.
Not too long after our interview commenced, the jail power went out. TOTAL DARKNESS! Add to that the fact that air no longer entered through the duct and the buzzer now was dysfunctional. I was trapped with this idiot.
I could not see him sitting across the table from me, but I could smell him real well. I kept asking him questions in order to be sure that he was still on his side of the table. I started to worry how he would react to me puking from how badly he smelled. It clearly never occurred to the jailers to come relieve me or, perhaps, they were amused by the situation of me trapped in there with this unsuccessful robber.
But here’s the upshot of the thing, and why I really wasn’t too worried. My client was no Clyde Barrow. He had tried to rob the store clerk at knife point and been set upon by a customer he hadn’t noticed who came up behind him and bopped him over the head with a bottle of Pepto Bismol.