From Truthout:
“They’re offering you 40, I think you should take it.” This was Kwaneta Harris’s first interaction with her lawyer. Forty years in prison for protecting her life from a man she once cared for deeply. She declined the plea offer, and her lawyer promptly left.
Writing about criminalized survivors often focuses on the harms inflicted by prosecutors, judges, prisons and parole commissions. But the work of defense attorneys must be carefully scrutinized as well. Many defense attorneys receive no training on gender-based violence, how trauma affects their clients, or how to introduce evidence of gender-based violence at trial. When defense attorneys fail to understand the dynamics of gender-based violence and how trauma impacts their clients, or fail to use that information to help decision makers understand the context within which criminalized survivors committed their crimes, they deprive survivors of what can be powerful arguments against their criminalization.
During his next visit, Harris’s lawyer introduced himself and a female attorney who would second chair her case. Harris waited for either attorney to ask her what happened. They never did. Eventually, around the third visit or so, the male attorney told Harris his trial strategy would be to suggest that she discovered the victim after his death. Harris asked about arguing self-defense. The lawyer was not receptive. Continue reading >>>
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