Filmmaker, lawyer and social activist Dawn Porter spoke to students about public defenders and racism in the American criminal justice system as the keynote speaker for the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) Black History Month event series on Tuesday.
In her talk, titled “Defending America,” Porter focused on her most recent documentary, Gideon’s Army. The film follows three public defenders in the Deep South assisting poor, African-American clients in criminal trials.
The documentary premiered on HBO in July, 2013 and was an official selection for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It won several awards and honors and received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Informational Programming.
The title of the film refers to the 1963 Supreme Court Case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which held that any arrested felons who cannot afford a lawyer will be provided one. Despite this, the film alleges that public defenders are underpaid and overworked and that the defendants often are not given adequate legal counsel.
Porter challenged preconceived societal notions of public defenders. When she asked the audience to describe the profession, audience members used a variety of words, from “overworked” and “underpaid” to “lazy” and “disheveled.”
In a clip from the film that Porter showed the audience, Public Defender Brandy Alexander shares her uneasiness about the potential outcome of her client’s case.
“The stakes are as high as they could possibly be,” Alexander said in the clip. “I mean, we have cases that haunt us. This case will haunt me if we lose. It’ll haunt me. He is a kid. He’s facing a lot of time. If he’s found guilty, it will break him. Mentally and emotionally, he will be broken.”
Gideon’s Army describes flaws in the current system, highlighting challenges that many public defenders encounter because of their large caseloads of poor clients.
“We don’t see ‘happily ever afters’ very much in this profession,” Alexander said.
Porter also shared many facts and figures pertaining to America’s prison system. She said that since 1972, the prison population has increased more than tenfold, with over three million Americans currently incarcerated.
Porter also spoke about the racial breakdown in the American prison population. While African-American males make up only 20 percent of the American population, they make up 60 percent of those arrested.
According to Porter, roughly one-half of all African-American men will be arrested by the age of 23. Only five percent of these arrests will be on account of violent crimes.
“A shocking number of people in the criminal justice system are under the age of 20, and if you think about that, that’s incredibly important,” Porter said. “That means those are the people that we’re looking at to lead the next generation of scientists and lawyers and doctors and social workers and artists. What if we’re removing them from society? How are we crippling ourselves? Who else is going to teach our kids?”
Porter also said that communication and discussion of such serious and lasting issues is of the utmost importance. She stressed the necessity of open debate and conversation both amongst friends and acquaintances.
“Where we get our information matters. It’s not like my opinion is the only opinion — far from it,” Porter said. “But there should be a lot of opinions, so that you are curious and you can go look for yourself.”
She also urged the audience to reject certain media portrayals and to question the motives behind norms in both Hollywood and the news.
“I challenge all of you to not just reflexively accept the images that are put out to you, but to question them and ask who’s putting them out there,” Porter said. “Ask who filmed them. Ask who has an interest in you seeing a certain type of image over and over and over. It’s hard to admit that you’re biased and stereotyped. It’s very hard, and it’s painful, but if we can start to unpack and think about that, then we can address it.”
Porter also spoke about her professional transition from law to the media. A graduate of Georgetown Law School, she said was inspired to leave her legal firm after her best friend died unexpectedly of ovarian cancer.
“I looked up at my very nice life; I was one year married, living in Washington on Capitol Hill, and I had this future all laid out with a nice husband and a nice office, and I thought, ‘Is this all I’m going to be? Is this what my contribution is going to be to the world?’” Porter said.
Porter started her media career as a journalist for ABC specializing in Ethics & Standards. She said that she immediately became aware of the negative portrayal of persons of color in the media. She then worked for the History Channel under the A&E network, where she was a part of the diversity team.
