jobless men. He saw the pawnshop and decided to pawn the derringer to buy some food for Elaine and Kamisha. He stood in line, but the pawnshop was crowded and it seemed to be taking forever. He left, walked another block, and stood in front of the First Western Bank. He saw that the bank was empty. Then, as if propelled, he was inside the bank.
The next morning Steven sat in a jail cell on the seventh floor of the courthouse known to Bay Area radicals as “The Hall of Injustice.” At the same time Dee Reid sat at her kitchen table scanning the San Francisco Chronicle for an article about the bank robbery. She had been in the crowd when Steven had been taken out of the bank. She had seen him pull up suddenly, stopping the two policemen in their tracks. She felt that he had carried himself with dignity and had spoken with pride. As a community activist she wanted him to have good legal representation. She found the short news clip and wrote down Steven Robinson’s name. She recalled a small radical law firm called the San Francisco Community Law Collective and one of its lawyers, Paul Harris. She looked up his number and called.
I was sitting in our storefront office, across from Mission High School. Bernadette Aguilar and Ricky Jacobs were hard at work, Bernadette interviewing a woman in Spanish about her car accident, Ricky editing and typing a brief in a draft resistance case. The other attorney, Stan Zaks, was talking to Francisco, one of the members of Los Siete (a leftist group named after seven Latinos who had been charged with killing a policeman). Francisco had been harassed by police for passing out the organization’s newspaper, Basta Ya (Enough Already!). I took Dee Reid’s call and agreed to go to the jail and interview this bank robber.
The loud, harsh clanking of the steel doors, the stink of food and sweat—I was entering San Francisco County Jail, where federal prisoners were held in custody. Steven and I met in one of the tiny, airless rooms set aside for lawyer-client conferences. Steven was both mistrustful and happy. He didn’t know me or Dee Reid, but he sure needed a lawyer and didn’t want a public defender. We went over the facts briefly. I agreed to take the case, hoping I could get the federal magistrate to appoint me so I could get paid. I told him I’d meet him at the bail hearing and would get some references from people at Sacred Heart and the Urban League. He said that the teachers at the Malcolm X School would not talk to a white lawyer they didn’t know without him first paving the way.
As I left the jail I had no idea how I would fight the case. He had been caught red-handed. So I focused on the bail hearing and two days later persuaded the magistrate to release Steven on his own recognizance.
Over the next two months I got to know Steven and Elaine. As I learned of Steven’s life, a plan began to form in my mind. I did not call it a black rage defense, but I did believe I could fit together three elements: Steven’s personal life history, what it means to be black in America, and the law of temporary insanity. I grew more and more excited. I read Black Rage by black psychiatrists William Grier and Price Cobbs. I reread Wretched of the Earth by Algerian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. These books have a common theme: Oppressed people fill with rage, which they turn upon themselves, causing mental illness and crime.
I knew that rhetoric alone would not persuade a jury. Yet the truth of these books, written by men who had examined and treated hundreds of people, could not be denied. There was a link between social existence and acts of criminality. There was a nexus between racism and crime. Steven Robinson had broken the law, but he was not a criminal. He was not classically insane, either, but his mental state at the time of the crime could fit within the then prevailing definition of temporary legal insanity. I felt I had a defense. Steven didn’t agree.
“How many jury trials have you had?” Steven asked me on April Fools’ Day.
“None,” I replied, “but I spent a year as a law clerk for Federal Judge Alfonso Zirpoli, and I watched lots of trials and discussed and dissected them with the judge.”
“How old are you, Paul?”
“I’m twenty-eight, but I won my practice trial in law school at Berkeley, and I’ve won both judge trials I had in federal court.”
“Do you know anyone who has done the kind of defense you are suggesting?” Steven asked.
“No, but Clarence Darrow brought the reality of racism into court when defending Henry Sweet, who shot into a mob outside his house. And Charles Garry did the same when defending Black Panther Huey Newton for shooting a cop. Of course, those were self-defense cases. This is different.”
“It’s too different—it wont work,” said Steven.
And then he left. He really left. In twenty-eight years of practice, Steven Robinson is the only client I’ve ever represented who jumped bail.
Six weeks later Steven was arrested in Savannah, Georgia. He and a friend had been stopped for a traffic violation. When the police found a gun in the car, they ran a warrant check and found out that Steven was a federal fugitive. He was returned to San Francisco County Jail, where I once again sat with him in the small, airless interviewing room. Steven was depressed and could not be consoled. He had no hope; he just wanted to plead guilty and do his five years in prison. A black rage defense was the furthest thing from his mind.
A few days later I walked through the long Kafkaesque hallways of the federal building on my way to court. I could not help but recognize that in this hallowed building of the law, all eight judges were white, all the U.S. attorneys were white, all the federal public defenders were white, all the probation officers, bailiffs, law clerks, and secretaries were white. Everyone was white except the defendant.
We stood in court facing U.S. District Court Judge Stanley A. Weigel.1 Judge Weigel was a liberal in matters of civil liberties and civil rights, but he was strict with criminals and even stricter with lawyers. He was an intelligent and thorough jurist. His Yale law clerks read every motion and brief and prepared detailed memos for him. A lawyer had to be completely prepared when appearing before him. He also had a reputation for running a dictatorial courtroom. He would fine a lawyer for the violation of any one of over a hundred technical, local court rules. At times, he would lash out at attorneys, humiliating them in open court. One lawyer I knew often threw up before working a trial at which Judge Weigel presided. But you could rely on him to give a defendant a fair trial.
The judge began to take Stevens guilty plea: “You know you have a right to remain silent and not incriminate yourself,” he said. “Do you waive that right?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Steven.
“You have a right to call witnesses in your behalf. Do you waive that right?”
Yes, I do.
“You have a right to confront and, through your lawyer, cross-examine all witnesses. Do you waive that right?”
Yes, I do.”
“You have a right to a jury trial, a jury of your peers. Do you understand that right?”
“If I had a jury of my peers, I would be found not guilty,” replied Steven.
There was a pause as the judge stared at the defendant. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“If I had twelve people who were really my peers they would understand my action,” Steven answered.
The Judge leaned forward, his eyes piercing into mine. “This is not a guilty plea. Counsel, I thought you told the court this was a guilty plea?”
I had been taken completely off guard by Steven’s statements. I quickly
