While at Penn to deliver the annual Hon. A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Lecture, Charles J. Ogletree Jr., founder and director of Harvard’s Criminal Justice Institute, recounted a pivotal exchange in his life. It occurred while interviewing for a job at the Washington, D.C., public defender’s office two decades ago:
“I said, ‘I don’t think I can represent just anyone, because I’m concerned as a black man about what I can and cannot do …
I don’t want to represent anyone who has been responsible for killing
anyone or using a gun or knife to injure someone. I don’t want to
represent anyone who’s actually broken into someone’s home … And I
certainly couldn’t represent anyone who has sold or used drugs … ‘”
“Mr. Ogletree,” his future employer replied sharply, “we don’t need someone to represent those charged with petty larceny.”
“That was for me a crossing of the Rubicon — an understanding
that if I was going to do this work, I had to do it with a real
commitment,” Ogletree told the audience at Penn’s Law School in
November. Ogletree, who went on to represent such clients as Anita Hill,
the late Tupac Shakur, and convicted mob boss John Gotti, described how
he came to represent Gotti — who, shortly before his arrest in 1992,
happened to see Ogletree on a public-television ethics forum:
“He was watching this African-American lawyer go through what he
called this ‘blistering cross-examination’ of [Supreme Court] Justice
Antonin Scalia. He said, ‘Gosh, I’d like that lawyer. He’s very ethical’
… He wanted me to represent him. I don’t think John ever saw the
irony of that.”