How Can You Defend Those People: The Making of a Criminal Lawyer [Hardcover]

James S. Kunen (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: Random House Inc (T); 1st edition (October 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394411846
• ISBN-13: 978-0394411842
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,559,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James S. Kunen is the author of popular and critically praised books that grapple with legal and political issues in a personal way. A prize-winning journalist, he is best known for his 1968 memoir, The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary--his account of the antiwar student strike at Columbia. It has been translated into four languages and widely used in college history and writing courses. MGM's film version of the book won the Jury Prize at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.

Graduating from Columbia in 1970, Kunen was sent to Vietnam by True magazine to write a series of articles, which led to his book Standard Operating Procedure: Notes of a Draft-Age American (1971).

After working as a freelance journalist, Kunen earned his juris doctor degree from the New York University School of Law and joined the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., where he moved from misdemeanor cases to representing people accused of serious crimes, including murder. He recounted his experiences in 'How Can You Defend Those People?': The Making of a Criminal Lawyer (1983).

Returning to journalism, Kunen worked as an op-ed editor for Newsday, a contributing writer for Time magazine, and a featured writer and senior editor for news at People magazine, where he reported and wrote cover stories on Donald Trump, Tawana Brawley and Abbie Hoffman, among others. His reporting on a tragic school-bus crash led him to write a book, Reckless Disregard: Corporate Greed, Government Indifference, and the Kentucky School Bus Crash (1994.

Kunen left People in 2000 to serve as a director of corporate communications at Time Warner Inc. in New York City, where, among other things, his job was to maintain employee morale during the company's merger with AOL and the rounds of layoffs that followed. In 2008, after being laid off himself, he embarked on a search for meaningful work that led him to his current position teaching English as a Second Language at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, N.Y. He describes the journey from corporate PR man to teacher of immigrants in his new memoir, Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life.

Kunen's Time magazine cover story on the resegregation of America's schools won him a First Place in Features award from the New York Association of Black Journalists and an award for reporting in education from Unity Awards in Media. As a freelance writer, he has written for The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Harper's, New York, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Magazine, and other leading publications. He was a columnist for a national magazine, New Times.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved this book!!!!!, April 25, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: How Can You Defend Those People: The Making of a Criminal Lawyer (Hardcover)

Kunen is a fascinating storyteller! This book was amazing... heartwarming, inspirational, and informative about what goes on "behind the scenes" as a public defender. This book cemented my desire to go to law school (I'm finishing up my 1L year now), but is a touching true narrative for any reader.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Career of a Public Defender, January 25, 2012

By 

Acute Observer (N. Jersey Shore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Can You Defend Those People: The Making of a Criminal Lawyer (Paperback)

How Can You Defend Those People?, James S. Kunen

This book is an answer to those who don't understand our criminal justice system and the part of a defense attorney in defending the accused. Kunen worked at the Public Defender Service in the District of Columbia. The stories here are real, the details were changed to preserve client confidentiality. This 270 page book has no Table of Contents or Index. The `Notes' are legal citations. You should be surprised and shocked by the first case: an 18-year old girl was arrested while making a telephone call! Mistaken identity? Arrested for no reason at all? Law student Kunen signed up for the criminal clinic to get practical experience, and tells about the cases. What happens when a man collapses in front of a courtroom (p.11)?

Lawyer-client confidentiality takes precedence over the duty to reveal fraud (p.15). Fundamental rights are "inalienable", but governments often refuse to recognize them (p.27). The public prosecutor's duty is to seek justice, not merely to convict (p.36). Defense lawyers prevent the government from trashing the Constitution (p.37). Polygraph examinations are not allowed as evidence because they vary greatly in their accuracy (p.82). Could someone be arrested because of lies (pp.87-88)? "Misidentification is a common phenomenon" (p.89). "Rehearsing a witness is not only proper, but absolutely necessary to effective representation" (p.94). It can be useful to a lawyer to take the opposite view from what someone else says (p.134). Kunen explains the definition of insanity on page 155. It's the jury's decision. "It is impossible to devise a system which will result in all the innocent going free and all the guilty being punished" (p.157).

Can you be arrested if you only resemble a wanted suspect? Yes (p.174). ["Voir dire" means "see speak" (p.183).] How honest are the people in a trial? See page 188. Are all men created equal (p.197)? A man was shot in a public building. Later another man was arrested and questioned. He talked too much (p.209). It happened on an Air Force base so the military was responsible for prosecution. Was it self-defense (p.213)? Kunen explains his work. [This trial is the highlight of the book.] A defendant's claim of sanity can be proof on insanity (p.258). Kunen tells about the other cases. The `Afterword' says in Washington DC most of the guilty are convicted and nearly all of the innocent go free. The importance of this book is to explain what really happens in the justice system. "The only limit n the number of people in prison is the space available" (p.265). [Isn't that an interesting fact?] "The courts cannot reduce crime or establish justice."