During the young man’s trial, several witnesses helped tell the story of his life. The jury’s decision restored Laura’s confidence in the love and openness of people to really listen and to reach a verdict based not just on the incident at hand, but instead on a person’s whole life.

Laura discusses how she doesn’t grow bitter and cynical representing clients who sometimes have done terrible things. She shares that often her clients have had difficult childhoods and are suffering from addiction or mental health issues and are facing a system that has failed. She’s learned from her clients that people have different needs, and sometimes a need is to be heard. Her role is not to control, but instead “to do the best (she) can and to help her clients through what is probably one the most difficult times in their lives.”

Laura then turns to her work on constitutional challenges in Missouri.  “Missouri’s public defender system is 49^th out of the 50 states in terms of funding. So, we have an underfunded and overworked public defender system. We have more clients than we can handle. What we’ve done in Kansas City is to look at our ethical obligations and the constitutional rights of our clients to have an attorney.”  Clients, attorneys, and the ACLU sued various state offices.  An update can be read here.

Laura finishes with a story about a client who was a representation of the strength of heart and strength of mind.

Transcript of Episode 60, with Laura O’Sullivan

Scott Glovsky:

Welcome to Trial Lawyer Talk. I’m Scott Glovsky, and I’m your host for this podcast where we speak with some of the best trial lawyers in the United States. We simply have great lawyers tell great stories from cases that had a profound impact on them. So let’s get started.

I’m very glad to be sitting with Laura O’Sullivan, a friend who I’ve known for many years. She’s a wonderful criminal defense lawyer, who practices in Kansas City and is really leading some very important constitutional challenges that we’ll talk about in a bit. Laura, thanks so much for being with us.

Laura O’Sullivan:

Thank you so much for having me.

Scott Glovsky:

Laura, can you share with us the story of a case that had a profound impact on you?

Laura O’Sullivan:

Yeah, actually it’s a recent case that I handled with a client, it was a young man, had been in foster care all of his life and really had a tumultuous childhood and he was charged and we took his case to trial. He was facing some pretty serious and lifelong consequences, and there were allegations of inappropriate behavior with some other children. We fought a valiant fight, I think, on his behalf and the jury ended up returning verdicts of guilty, one of a lesser crime, so of a misdemeanor, and another one of a serious felony.

And in Missouri, we got a sentencing phase for people who have no prior convictions. And so we went to that sentencing phase and I will never forget it, because I started that sentencing phase before the jury crying. And telling them that obviously we were devastated by the verdict, but that we saw how long they were out and that we accepted their verdict and that we really hoped that they would listen during this phase to information about his life, and that they would sentence him as an entire person, not just as a result of the acts that they had found him guilty of.

And the jury really paid attention and really listened. And we had several witnesses and they went up and they deliberated for a very long time. And they came back in this extremely difficult case with verdicts that really did take into account the information that we provided to them in a very difficult case. And so they ended up sentencing him to the minimum on the felony and within the range on the misdemeanor.

My confidence in the love and the openness of people, to really listen and make a determination based on somebody’s whole life was really restored.

Scott Glovsky:

Let’s deconstruct that a little bit and back up because for you to get there, you must have listened. So take us back to that courtroom when you started crying and how did you get there?

Laura O’Sullivan:

Well, one way I got there is because I loved my client, and it’s a difficult thing when you’re a public defender getting enough time with your clients. This client happened to be out on bond. And so I was able to count on him to come by my office and to help me really … And he would come by my office and we would spend time together and I got all of his background information. So, the first place is coming from a place of truly loving him and really understanding and listening to his childhood.

Scott Glovsky:

Well, tell us his story.

Laura O’Sullivan:

He grew up in a sort of large family, but his family had addiction issues. And so it ended up that he was taken away by the division of family services and he was placed in a group home because he was too old to be adopted. So he had grown up in a super tumultuous family, where the mom and dad are not really there. They’re gone for periods of time and he and his brothers and sisters are fending for themselves as young kids.

So then they end up getting taken into foster care or group home, and he never had a family until the very end when he was about 18. He moved in with this family. And for the first time he’s living with this group of people at what he thought was a family, and they really ended up betraying him. And he was the odd man out in this whole family dynamic.

So, because of his trauma through his childhood, the way he would react to situations is he would withdraw. He wasn’t the kind of person who would defend himself. He would withdraw within himself and so he was really a loner. And had some difficulty in those skills of getting along with people. And so it sort of made him an easy target for this allegation. And I think that’s what ended up getting him to my office.

But in the sentencing hearing, the other things I learned about him were that when he got out on bond, his therapist from when he was in foster care offered to have him live at his home. And that told me so much about him, about both the therapist and about my client. So, he had that support, he had a job and the people who gave him a job, that couple would have him over for dinner, and they came and testified.

And his sister who had really fought for him when she was younger, but well she was too young also. She came in and spent all of her money, including her money for rent to get to court, to be able to be there to testify for him. So, it was an interesting look at a young man’s life, who had this tumultuous past, but also had all of these relationships from people who really loved and cared for him.

Scott Glovsky:

How do you not become bitter and cynical when you’re spending your life representing lots of folks who’ve done some terrible things?

Laura O’Sullivan:

I kind of consider those two different questions. So, I often am representing people who, most of the people that I represent have committed some sort of crime. So, the statistics bear out that the majority of my clients have committed some sort of offense and my job is to work with them, to educate them on the system and to come out with, hopefully to help them come to the best possible result for them.

And that may mean that they’re not charged correctly. The charge is way too high and really their offense is much less, or it could be that they have things in their life that are, what we call mitigating or there’s good parts about them that they should get credit for, sort of.

And so, generally I am there to help the person in front of me. And for the most part, I get along very well with most of my clients. They’re often suffering from some sort of addiction issue or mental health. Those are the two primary issues and they’re rampant. And so, but also I would say there’s a great percentage of the people that I represent that have grown up in, had difficult childhood and really, haven’t had certainly the benefits that I had.

The second part is how do I represent people and not become bitter? I think really, I find that to be the more challenging aspect. Because I do get to know my clients, and I do care for them. And when I see a system that I think has failed. So the story I just told you, I don’t agree with their first verdict. But I have to set that aside, so that I can get the best possible results, even though I disagree with their first verdict of guilty.

So, that happens and it happens more often than I’d like, but I also have to remember that I’m not in charge. I’m not in charge of this big world. And oftentimes I think I know what the right thing is, but the one thing I have learned is, I don’t always know what the right thing is.

And so all I can do is be there to provide the best information to my client who’s it’s their case, not my case. I’m there to guide them and to provide