On Friday a group of us listened to David Baugh, a criminal defense attorney from Richmond. He's a 60-year-old black man who's been representing accused criminals for many years, though he started practice as a prosecutor. He's semi-famous because about 10 years ago, he agreed to represent a man named Mr. Black, who just happened to be a Grand Dragon of the KKK. Mr. Black (isn't that ironic) had a habit of burning crosses on his own property. The Commonwealth of Virginia said that was offensive. David Baugh disagreed, and he took Mr. Black's case all the way to the Supreme Court, where he argued that the First Amendment protected Mr. Black's right to burn a cross on his own land so long as it didn't do actual harm to anyone else. Baugh won the case.
I can't say how dynamic this guy truly is. He spoke for an hour and a half without any notes, just going on with all sorts of anecdotes and his overarching philosophy, which is that the Bill of Rights is the most important thing about our country. If we fail to protect the free speech of others, we give up our own right to free speech. Baugh said he never became friends with Mr. Black but the more he listened to him, the more he realized how much it would help our country for people like Mr. Black to be heard — because Black's ideas are so stupid! It's kind of a funny argument, but I think it works. By constraining Black's speech, you make him and people like him martyrs for their racist cause. But by letting them burn crosses and talk freely, others are free to listen to them and decide for themselves how stupid the message is.
In his own words, Baugh's argument comes down to whether we can trust in the basic goodness of people. After representing hundreds of accused criminals, he still believes that we can. He says that our failure to uphold the Bill of Rights leads us down that horrible road to oppression, and that we should never sacrifice freedom — our own or others' — for security. He said that the Nazis made Germany extremely safe, but at what cost? Of course, they didn't make it safe for everyone. They had to exclude certain groups, like Jews, blacks and the people who sympathized with those minorities.
If you truly believe in the rule of law, then the First Amendment is paramount to any concern about security. Now that doesn't mean that we can't prosecute criminals. Baugh was adamant that the person who hurts someone else (physically) has broken the law. So if you stand in front of me saying how much you hate a certain kind of person, and I punch you in the face, I'm the one who goes to jail.
During the Q&A, Baugh had a great back-and-forth with this young conservative, who argued that all al-Qaeda members should be put in jail, no matter what it takes. He asked her if she were a doctor, and she knew the patient was a member of al-Qaeda, would she let him die on the operating table? She replied that she wouldn't. He said that shows that our society is hypocritical, in that it holds doctors and lawyers to different standards. If a doctor saves a person who breaks the law, he's doing his job. But if a lawyer defends someone who breaks the law, we think the lawyer agrees with that person. In fact, the lawyer is just doing his job, too.
Baugh asked that same woman, the conservative, if she would want that al-Qaeda member going to jail without a trial. She asked if he was guilty. Baugh said, "I don't know, there hasn't been a trial." She at first said that she would, but she later relented. The point is, we can't deprive people of their basic constitutional rights, no matter how bad we think they are.
At the very end, I asked Mr. Baugh what a young lawyer who believed the same things he did might do for a living, if not criminal defense. He said the following: "Son, I wasn't always a criminal defense attorney. Before this, I was a prosecutor. You may try several jobs. But sooner or later, you'll look around and you'll realize that you're doing something better than everyone else. Then you know you've found your job. Son, you don't pick your job — your job picks you."
So, Mom and Dad, if you ask me what kind of law I'm going to practice, that's the story you're going to get. I'm waiting for my job to pick me.
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