TWELVE

WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF I MADE DEAN’S LIST?

I HAD A WEEK LEFT of my vacation on Saint Croix when I found out I had received a failing grade in Criminal Law. I kept saying to myself, I’m going to block this out of my mind. I’m going to do all I can to enjoy the last week I have here on this island. When I go home, I’ll resolve this. Something has got to be wrong. Maybe that grade really was a mistake. . . .

I tried my best to enjoy myself, but always in the back of my mind was, I have some business I have to take care of when I get back to Miami.

When I finally returned to school, I went straight to see the professor who had given me the F. I remember sitting down in his office. He told me that my answers weren’t wrong; they just weren’t in the format that he wanted them in.

I was stunned when I heard that. “What does that even mean?” I asked him. “What was the right format?”

It turned out that different professors had different styles of writing they favored. One of the major formats for legal argument is called IRAC: issue, reasoning, analysis, and conclusion. That was the style he favored. The style I wrote in was not the style he liked.

When I was honored at the law school five years after graduating, that same professor approached me and apologized. He said he was wrong. At that moment, though, I was in total disbelief. If I got the right answers, at least give me a C or a D. But to give me an F? F means you didn’t try. To give me an F, I thought, was totally unfair. But what could I say?

__________

WHEN I CHOSE A LAW SCHOOL, ONE OF THE REASONS I’D PICKED FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL University was its location in Miami. I thought, Wouldn’t it be poetic for me to graduate law school in the same city where I was at my lowest, where I was contemplating suicide, where I was a homeless crack addict?

The other reason I picked FIU College of Law was because it was a fairly new school. I truly believed I could be a catalyst in shaping a type of law school that would be a little bit different. My first year, I ran for office and was elected as the 1L (first-year) law student representative. I used my position to try to convince as many of my peers at law school how important community service is. Giving back is even more important when you’re a lawyer. We are the last line of defense for the human race. When you can’t resolve an issue with somebody, you bring in a lawyer. When you’re harmed, you seek out a lawyer. When you’re accused of a crime and imprisoned, you ask for a lawyer. When you’re looking for compensation for something you feel you earned, you go to a lawyer. A lawyer is that defender of the people, the guardian of civility in our society. With a role that important, I felt there should be an element of community service that’s attached to it. When you’re defending the people, you really have to understand the people. You’ve got to really be a part of the community. You have to consider yourself a servant.

We have to treat everybody with dignity and respect. I remember one of the things that I did was for Valentine’s Day, when I went around and collected money from as many of my classmates as I could. I bought roses and chocolates for all the female custodians at the law school. I even gave some chocolates to the male custodians. I was the type of person who felt they deserved just as much respect as the dean of the law school would get. It was very important to me that they knew that they were not invisible and to encourage my classmates to remember that these folks clean up after us. They keep our school looking clean, and every now and then we should thank them.

I always made it a point to speak to the custodial staff and to ask how they were doing, to let them know they were no different from me, because at the end of the day, guess what? I had been in a worse position than they were just a few years before. I’m definitely not one to look down on anyone. Those relationships came back to me after I returned from Saint Croix. Even the janitors knew what happened to me, and they were so supportive. They asked me if there was anything they could do on my behalf, anyone they could speak to.

That really touched me, and they were not alone. There were so many people who offered to write me a letter of support. Some of my classmates and professors wrote about how prepared I was for class. That was something I had committed to in undergrad and continued all the way through law school. Have you ever seen the shows where they’re depicting law school, and the professor is engaged in the Socratic method? Where he or she calls on somebody and that person is not prepared, and the professor eats them alive? Visions of that haunted me, and one thing my professors would tell you is that I never entered into a classroom without being prepared. If I walk in there, I’m going to be ready to handle the questions.

So a lot of people were shocked and confused that I had been dismissed, because they knew I was always prepared. I was an intelligent guy who helped others with their studies. So how, they wondered, could I have failed? How could I be dismissed? And they wondered if there was anything they could do to get me back in.

I went to the assistant dean of the law school to find out if I had an opportunity to appeal the dismissal or somehow ask for a reconsideration. There was, but it was a long shot. The person in charge of my hearing was actually my Contracts professor from my first semester, so we knew each other. Before the proceedings started, he came out to tell me what to expect. He finished his description of the procedures by telling me that it was harder for someone to get reinstated in law school than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. That hit me in a way I will never forget.

Here I was in law school, and the first person I was advocating for was me. In a sense, I had been preparing for this since my first days of undergrad. Then I was fully expecting someone to come tap me on the shoulder and say, “You don’t belong here. You’re an addict. You’re homeless. You have a criminal record.” In my head, I was always pleading my case and saying, “Look at the good work I’ve done. Look at the A’s I’ve gotten. Make an exception for me.” I never had to argue that in undergrad, but now I had to speak forcefully, yet humbly, on my own behalf.

I went into the hearing room and pled my case. As it turns out, I wasn’t alone. A number of my professors had vouched that I was never unprepared for class. They knew, based on my class participation and level of understanding, that I grasped the legal theories and concepts we were discussing. A few days later, the school informed me they were going to reinstate me on a conditional basis. I wrote letters to everyone on that committee, thanking them for reinstating me and promising to do my best. At the end of each note, I said, “Wouldn’t it be fitting that I would go from academic probation to making the Dean’s List?” One of the professors with a reputation in the school as being a really tough, no-nonsense educator wrote back and said, “Just get it done.” He meant, “Listen, thank you’s are all good and fine, but at the end of the day, you need to graduate law school.”

Besides being put on academic probation, there were a couple of other stipulations to my return to law school. One was that I undertake some special testing. These tests revealed that I had a high IQ, but that I had a learning disability. In classes where the final exam was multiple choice or fill in the blank, I’d do well. In classes where the exam was a series of written essays, I would struggle. Basically, it was hard for me to take what was in my head and write it down on paper.

That was very revealing. I wondered how I had been able to do so well in my undergraduate studies. It was explained to me that because of my intellectual gifts I had been able to power through them. But law school is so intense, it exposes any flaw that you have. I had gone through life with a learning disability and I didn’t even know it. When they were able to give me special accommodations, such as an extra hour on a timed written exam, my test scores rose dramatically. It was like new life was breathed into me. Law school can never be characterized as a cakewalk, but my appreciation for being there kept a smile permanently spread across my face. It was a great honor and privilege to be there, knowing all of the odds that were against me.

I doubled down on my commitment to do my best. I worked even harder on being prepared for class discussion. Most of these discussions are held in the Socratic method, which means you have to do a ton of reading in casebooks for every subject. You not only have to read them, but you have to take notes on the key points so that when you go into class you’ll be able to defend one side or the other; you’ll be able to actually engage in discussion about legal principles or theories or tactics. If you’re talking about anticipatory breach of contract that day, for example, the professor might ask you regarding a case that deals with that: “Well, what did the court say? Why did the court rule that way? Could the court have ruled differently? Why?”

Ever since undergrad, I had believed that whenever I was assigned any work, I started on it right then and there. Now I took that to another level. I was not only prepared; I was ahead of schedule. I knew what pages I had to read to be prepared to discuss them in each class that I had. What I did now was make sure that I had read and briefed—that’s what the process of taking notes about the cases is called—the cases all the way up to about two weeks ahead of time. That way, when I had spare time, I could go over my notes one more time before class.

It allowed everything to sink in on another level. At the end of my first semester in my second year, I knocked my exams out of the park. One of the classes I took was the Contracts class I had gotten a C in previously. Because of the stipulations of my probation, I had to take that class again and this time I got an A. Everywhere, those As and Bs started coming in. I never got anything lower than a B again.

AS THE YEARS WENT ON, I GOT MORE FLEXIBILITY IN THE TYPE OF CLASSES I COULD TAKE in law school. There were clinics designed to assist people who could not afford attorneys who had certain specialties, and I was able to take one of those.

One of the classes that I remember vividly from the end of my time at law school was Trial Advocacy, which taught people how to prepare for and conduct a trial. We were given a fictitious case. Some of us were the defense, representing a person charged with a crime; some of us played the role of the state, prosecuting the accused. They gave us the facts and some evidence. We had to take that material and, without making anything up, figure out how we were going to either prosecute this person or defend them. I was assigned to be the defense attorney for a lady who was accused of killing her married lover. Throughout the semester, I put my case together. We were taught how to give an opening and closing statement, when and where to object, what the legal reasoning was behind certain objections. These were things I’d seen on Perry Mason all those years before, but now it was becoming real life for me.

The final exam was to conduct the actual trial in a courtroom. We were to be graded on how well we examined the witnesses, either by helping our own witnesses to express themselves in beneficial ways or by cross-examining the witnesses of the opposition. Of special importance was whether we could give a closing argument without reading from notes. We would be in front of a real judge, with a jury made up of other assistant state attorneys or assistant state defenders. That room would be full of people who do this for a living, which added to the pressure we all felt. My pressure was particularly enhanced by the fact that our final exam was going to be at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, where I had spent some time in my past life.

The day of the final exam was a Saturday. In the morning, we headed to the courthouse. They assigned us a courtroom randomly, from thirty to forty possible courtrooms. Everything was going as planned until we got to the point of the trial where both sides rest their case. Then the (pretend) state went first with its closing argument.

The state stands in front of the jury, talking to them. What typically happens is, because each side has these big poster boards where they lay out their case, the rest of us would move over and sit next to the jury box, to see what the state is showing the jury in case we need to object to something. Sometimes you might object even when you know you may not win, but the objection might be impactful or strategic.

I moved over there and sat down, although I wasn’t planning on objecting to anything. I was just trying to rehearse my own closing statement to myself. I didn’t want to get points knocked off by going up there with a piece of paper in my hand. I happened to look up and noticed that on the opposite side of the courtroom, behind where I was previously sitting as the defense attorney, there was a picture hanging on the wall. When I looked at the picture more closely, I saw it was a picture of this judge named Manny Crespo, who had passed away. This courtroom, which used to be his, was now dedicated to him. It was at that moment that I felt like the roof caved in on me.

What I realized at that moment was that I was actually in the same courtroom where, in 2001, I had stood before that very judge. They used to call him Let-’Em-Go-Crespo, because he was known to be lenient. Well, he wasn’t that day. I remember his exact words: “The people of Dade County have spoken. As a result, I remand you to the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections for 15 years.” When he said that, my knees buckled. What flashed through my mind was, My life is over. Desmond is done. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison. It was only fifteen years, but that is an eternity to a man in his prime.

Now there I was, sitting as a law student in the same courtroom where I had been sentenced to fifteen years. My mind went totally blank, until the voice of the judge pierced through: “Defense, are you ready?”

What do I say? Judge, right now, I’m having a moment. I don’t know anything. Everything had disappeared. The only thing that came out of my mouth was, “Yes, Your Honor.” I had to walk in front of the jury with these thoughts still in my head. I couldn’t remember my closing argument. I was stuck.

I stood in front of the jury and I looked at each and every one of them, one by one, stalling while I tried to remember the beginning of my argument. The only thing that came back to me was that I was going to show them the palm of my hand and say, “If I were to ask you what you were looking at, chances are you would say that you were looking at my hand.” And after I said that, I was going to twist my hand back and forth and show them both the back of my hand and the palm of my hand, and say, “But that would not be entirely accurate. Just like this story, the hand has two sides. Just like this case, there’s two sides to the story.”

After I put my palm out, it all came flooding back to me. I went into the zone. I banged out a killer closing statement. It was a drop-the-mic moment. After the end of the trial, I went over to my professor and told him what happened. He said, “My gosh, Desmond, why didn’t you say something? We could have made a different arrangement.” I said, “No, it’s good. It’s all good.”

I left the courtroom and got in my car. I called Sheena and started crying. I was crying remembering being in that courtroom and thinking that my life was over almost exactly fifteen years ago. Now, here I was, as a law student, in the very same courtroom, arguing a case the same year I would have been scheduled to be released if I had served the entire fifteen-year sentence

Of all the courtrooms in that building, of all the places to sit in that courtroom, that this was how things unfolded amazed me to the core. If that was not God showing me that there is some purpose for me, I don’t know what would be. I don’t know what other explanation you could offer. I took that as a sign that I was heading in the right direction, to keep doing the things I was doing, to keep feeling the things I was feeling. It was one enormous confirmation.

When I had graduated from college, I remembered pausing for a moment before walking across the stage to get my diploma. I stood there because I wanted to give my mother in heaven a chance to bask in that. My mom’s belief in education was a driving, if belated, motivation for me to finish school. When she died, I wasn’t all the way right. I was a drug addict. I felt like I didn’t make her proud the way I had planned to when I was a little kid. I had missed that opportunity before, so I had to take advantage of it now.

When I graduated from law school, I paused on stage in a similar fashion. But this time, it was not just for my mom. This time it was for every person who’s ever had a felony conviction. For every person who’s ever been addicted to drugs or alcohol. For every person who’s ever been homeless. For every person who’s ever been told they won’t amount to anything. I walked across the stage for all of those folks, and I wanted the audience to see it. There were parents in the audience who had sons and daughters who were incarcerated or had disappeared into the wilds of addiction. I wanted to show the world that in spite of the mistakes we may have made, in spite of the situations that seem hopeless, there is hope. There is an opportunity to accomplish great things. I had made the Dean’s List in my final year after all. And now I was going into the world with my doctor of jurisprudence degree.