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By Kathy Pharr
pharr@uga.edu
On any given day, you read the headlines: defendant charged with murder, parent accused of drug sale. If the details of the alleged crime are all you know—and all the courts know—then
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| As director of the School of Law’s Legal Aid and Defender Clinic, Russell Gabriel supervises 14 attorneys, support staff and a cadre of law students as they handle more than 4,000 criminal defense cases each year. Photo by Peter Frey |
you have a very limited view of the human story that is behind every case, says Russell Gabriel, now in his fifth year as director of the School of Law’s Legal Aid and Defender Clinic.
“There needs to be at least one person in the courtroom willing to speak up on behalf of the poor man or woman accused of a crime, and I’ve never minded being that person,” says Gabriel. “There are a lot of people who are simply forgotten and that no one wants to help. They’re still people who deserve dignity and respect, even if they haven’t afforded others that same dignity. We lower ourselves if we don’t treat them with dignity. I think that fundamental respect is part of our system of law.”
Gabriel supervises 14 attorneys, support staff and a cadre of law students as they handle more than 4,000 criminal defense cases in Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties each year, cases running the gamut from misdemeanor shoplifting or public intoxication to felony assaults, burglaries and even capital murder. The common denominator for all the public defender office’s clients: poverty. But the stereotyping stops there, as Gabriel says the law students who gain practical training through the clinic quickly learn.
“The students are all changed by working with the clients because our clients are never what they expect,” he explains. “By the time they leave the Legal Aid Clinic, it’s no longer ‘these people.’ Our students realize that criminal defendants don’t all look alike; they are not all of the same race, gender, age or educational background; and their personalities are nowhere near alike. They are very different people.”
Gabriel developed his own appreciation for the individual through a host of diverse experiences. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he served as a resident manager at a halfway house for recovering substance abusers in his hometown of Wooster, Ohio. An interest in pottery inspired him to enroll at Ohio State, where he met a visiting art professor, Jerry Chappelle of Happy Valley Pottery in Farmington. Chappelle invited Gabriel to work out of his Oconee County studio, and the young potter stayed two years until “a constellation of motivations” prompted him to apply to law school at UGA. Gabriel graduated cum laude and was selected as one of a handful of American students to participate in Harvard Law School’s master of laws program.
Gabriel’s multifaceted résumé struck a chord with the head partner of a small firm in Washington, D.C.--a fellow Harvard grad whose wife was a potter. Gabriel spent the next 18 months suing oil companies. Then, while walking in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, he ran into a UGA law professor. Al Pearson was in Washington on a fellowship with the Court and would direct the Legal Aid and Defender Clinic upon his return. Gabriel soon joined him as a Legal Aid attorney and found himself engulfed in a trial by fire.
“I learned how to choose a jury from the bailiff in the first case that I tried,” he says. “Fortunately, the bailiff knew what he was doing, and my client and I both walked out the door at the end of the trial.”
Each director, including himself, has made headway in managing the massive caseload, but Gabriel says it still seems insurmountable at times.
“It’s like being in the ocean waves. You just went into the water for a big one that swells over your head and you stand up and the next one’s already there, and you barely have time to catch your breath,” he says.
And there is the emotional toll. “The fact of the matter is that 80 percent of these cases result in a plea and sentencing,” he explains. “Even where the plea is to a lesser offense and the punishment is reasonable, you’re still watching punishment being imposed on someone you know and to some degree care about. There’s nothing fun about that, and it can be tough to handle.”
Gabriel juggles many responsibilities as director of the office—supervising attorney, budget and personnel administrator, clinical director and teacher among them. He was lured away from the office in 1994, when he was its associate director, by the Federal Defender Program in Atlanta, but returned as director in 1996. The Legal Aid and Defender Clinic was awarded the Commitment to Excellence Award by the Georgia Indigent Defense Council in 1999, an honor Gabriel particularly appreciates.
“The commitment to excellence probably best describes where we are now,” he says. “We’ve come a long way, but we can be better. It’s not fair to our clients to say that it’s enough. They still deserve something more.” |
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