Joe is a Good Man - and a Criminal
By Jack Rice

It’s about one in the morning and the bars are closing down. This is when the drunks start hitting the streets. And everybody knows it, including the cops. So the officers watch. And wait.

My client is the first one stopped. A police officer in his blue uniform sees him - a nondescript man about 50 driving his white pick-up down the street, his truck weaving between lanes. It could be happening on any street in the nation but this one is in St. Paul, Minnesota. The officer stops the man and smells alcohol on his breath.

“Have you been drinking?” the officer asks.

“Yes. Yes I have.”

The Defendant

Soon, the nondescript man about 50 is in handcuffs, under arrest. Another drunk? Another criminal? Maybe. Don’t all drunk drivers deserve our disdain, our contempt, our loathing? Does this guy have any idea that he could have killed somebody?

According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, in 1997, Minnesota drivers with blood alcohol concentrations over .10, the legal limit, were involved in about 15,800 crashes. Of those numbers, approximately 161 people were killed and another 8,800 were injured. Nationally, the numbers are even more staggering. In 1998, approximately 999,000 people with blood alcohol levels over .10 were involved in crashes which resulted in 12,530 deaths and 719,000 injuries.

To some, these numbers come as a shock. Have you ever considered ... maybe this drunk driver knows these numbers all too well.

This man tells me what happened as we sit around a small table in a hot, foul-smelling jail cell surrounded by off-white cinder block walls, fluorescent lights, and a couple of green plastic chairs. The only object on the walls is a red panic button that people are supposed to push in case an inmate attacks them. Me, this man’s attorney, in a black suit, starched white shirt, and a yellow tie I put on within the last hour. He, in the clothes he was arrested in some ten hours before: the same dark jeans, flannel shirt and work boots he has now been wearing for a day and a half, the ones that reek of booze and sweat, minus the shoe laces and belt. The officers always take the shoelaces and belt so people don’t use them as weapons or hang themselves with them.

The man in front of me is 51; about medium height and build; short brown hair, graying at the temples and sprinkled gray throughout. His mustache too is as much gray as brown. Much like the stubble on his face. Nevertheless, he looks just like my neighbor, my barber, my accountant. Like me. And yet, he does look ... different: Beaten. Broken.

A tear drops from his right bloodshot eye, down his cheek and onto the small table between us. The tear spreads on the laminate table top as I stare at it. He wipes it away. This unexceptional, anonymous man, at least for purposes of this story, is Joe.

Joe is charged with a misdemeanor DWI.  In Minnesota, he is facing up to 90 days in jail and up to a $1,000 fine. And we are getting ready to go before a judge this morning for Joe’s first appearance.

The Interview

Joe is scared. You see, he has never been in jail before. Never even a parking ticket. I learn that he is from a small town outside of the metropolitan area and rarely leaves those familiar surroundings. Here, in this jail, nothing is familiar. The crowding. The pushing. The stench. And yet, the idea of a DWI, of the fact that he could have killed somebody when he was driving down the road makes him retch. I see it in his face. Seems odd coming from somebody just charged with a DWI? Frankly, it seemed odd to me, at first!

He wipes away the tears from his face and stares into my eyes.

“My only son was killed in a car accident two months ago.”

The tears come again. “I can’t bring him back and I don’t know what to do.”

What do I say? Out stumbles a ... “I’m sorry.” It sounds lame.

He continues, not really listening to me. “I come from the oldest of eight kids. When I was ten, a drunk driver killed my father.  We were poor and it got worse from there.”

His lips tremble.

I look down at the black pen I am supposed to be using to write down “important information.” I just can’t look him in the face. I am powerless to ease his pain or do anything constructive.

“I quit school after a while to help take care of the family. It changed everything. That drunk driver changed everything.”

I look at him but stay silent.

Joe goes on to explain that he is still lucky. He has a good wife and until two months ago, had a great son.

“He was 22 when he died.”

As the tears come again, he seems to be growing older in front of me.

“I could have killed someone out there last night. Just like my Dad. Or my Son. I’m guilty!” With these last words, Joe looks closer to 70 than 51.

I explain to Joe about the presumption of innocence and that the state must prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That he has the right to a jury trial. I tell him everything I have learned about constitutional rights while in law school and since I became a criminal defense attorney. And yet, looking into his face, they just feel like empty words that catch in my throat. Words that taste bitter in my mouth.

“I did it Jack. I deserve whatever I get. Just help me fix it as best you can.”

I try.

The Outcome

My purpose for this piece is not to justify Joe’s behavior, but rather, to explain it. At first, I think that if anybody should know better, it’s Joe. But it’s never that simple. Sometimes, the shadows and pain that should teach us seem to chase us throughout life and eventually catch us, ripping our flesh. Tearing open old wounds and creating new ones. This is Joe. Maybe it is all of us!

Eventually, after some weeks, we are able to resolve the case. Joe pleads guilty. I try to put myself in Joe’s position but you can never understand such grief as the death of your child. Or of your dad.

But it makes me feel proud to stand up next to him and say what he cannot. That he is a good man. A good husband. A good father. And whatever sentence a judge imposes is nothing compared to the anguish he suffers. Joe knows this and never wants others to feel the loss that he himself feels today, everyday.

The judge seems to understand. He requires Joe to undergo a chemical dependency evaluation and treatment and lets him go home to his wife. I’m confident he will never need to call me as his criminal defense attorney again.

Sometimes, it is easy for some of us to look down on people charged and convicted of crimes. And sometimes, it is easy for some of us to see these people as somehow less respectable, less deserving, less noble people. That’s natural. But then, these people never met Joe.

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JACK RICE is a criminal defense attorney, former CIA agent, and writer.  His firm, Rice Law Office, P.A., is located in Minneapolis.