Devils Bargain | BONUS | Season 2

Former Louisiana public defender Colin Reingold unpacks the impossible decisions people face when charged with a crime: take a plea deal or risk a life sentence at trial. Sometimes, the choice a public defender helps their client make doesn’t feel like a choice at all. You can reach out to the Burden of Guilt team at [email protected]. For more Burden of Guilt, follow us on Instagram @glasspodcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  Hi, I'm Jade Abdul Malik, another producer on Burden of Guilt. You might recall in an earlier episode when Jermaine Hudson's public defender urged him to take a five-year plea deal for the armed robbery. Jermaine didn't take it because he knew he was innocent, but his attorney at the time wanted him to take the plea deal.

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  He even sent a young lady that was a court reporter, clerk, back there where I was waiting to go to trial. He sent her back there to talk to me. She said, Jermaine, these people is not playing. I don't want to see you get your life thrown away. Man, take them five years. I say you gonna help me do them? Are you gonna help me do five years?

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  When we first heard this, we were shocked that a defense attorney would push their innocent client so hard to a plea. During our reporting, we got a chance to talk with a former Louisiana public defender about this, and what he had to say shifted our perspective. Colin Ryan Gold represented Jermaine in his lawsuit against the state of Louisiana, seeking restitution for false imprisonment. Colin helped Jermaine recover the maximum amount from the state, $400,000.

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  I think that as a society generally, and particularly in the deep south and in New Orleans, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, we have used incarceration as a crutch and as a way for politicians to score points on the campaign trail without really ever looking at the damage that's done to society and whether or not incarceration is a public safety benefit. Certainly not the way we've been going about it.

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  After seeing it with his own eyes, Colin wonders if there's any logic to the system at all.

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  The number of times you see just elderly people in prison for things they did when they were 20 makes you really question the wisdom of the money we are spending and the communities and families we're ruining. With the current version of our criminal legal system, I've been saying criminal justice system, but there's not a lot of justice in it the way it's operating in a lot of places in our country.

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  Colin wasn't the attorney who represented Jermaine back in 1999, when he was offered the five-year prison sentence if he pleaded guilty. For people charged with serious crimes in Louisiana, the consequences of going to trial can be huge. Because if a jury finds you guilty, the punishment is often devastating, sometimes decades, sometimes the rest of your life. The vast majority of cases never make it to trial at all. Instead, they end with a plea deal. But what if, like Jermaine, you're accused of a crime you didn't commit? Do you take the plea? We asked Colin about this.

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  In Jermaine's case... He has the choice of, do you stand by your values of maintaining your innocence? Or do you take the opportunity after 20 years, you're handed a ticket out?

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  You get a conviction, but you get your freedom. I've never spent a night in jail or prison, but I've spent a lot of time visiting people in both. And I can't imagine the clients I have who are willing to do more time because they're steadfast in maintaining their innocence have a strength that I can't imagine. Because I wouldn't want to spend any, a single extra night in prison, especially not Angola. So, you know, anyone who, who makes that trade off, I 100% understand. But when I had clients who wanted to go to trial because they were innocent.

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  Louisiana has such harsh sentencing laws that my job as a lawyer is to say, look, I'll take you to trial. I'll do a pretty decent job, I think. We have a strategy. But if we lose, you're looking at often 20 years, 30, 40, sometimes life, 99 years. And they're offering you, you know, sometimes it was reasonable, sometimes it wasn't. But it was always less than what I could be fairly certain the judge was going to give them if they go to trial and lose.

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  So lawyers like Colin, who genuinely care about their clients, are sometimes in the position of urging them to make a really hard choice.

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  So you're arrested on murder that you say you didn't do? And we can't slam dunk, prove you're innocent? And the jury could go either way. Do you pick the possibility of life in prison? Or guaranteed what you'll get is 20 and maybe you'll get out in 15 if you do well and get parole?

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  How does a person make a choice like that?

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  We're talking 20 whole years, maybe 15 with good behavior. That's still a massive chunk of someone's life. But compared to life in prison, especially Angola, it can feel like the only option. Colin says this dynamic creates something that many defense attorneys know all too well. A kind of impossible calculation.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  I mean, my job as a lawyer is to try to help them. But I know I have clients who probably didn't do what they were charged with. Or certainly not, or certainly there was more to it than the state was alleging. But took a this kind of devil's bargain because they'd seen what happened to friends, other people who were in jail with them awaiting trial, who said that they were gonna go to trial and prove their innocence and then off to go to Angola for the rest of their life. And you see that happen enough times, you think, I know I didn't do it, but I also don't want to go to Angola for the rest of my life. So maybe I'll just go to Angola for 10 years and I can make it and then I'll come back and see my, my mom and dad and my brother

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  and sister again, or my kids. So many people have little kids when they're arrested and do they want to see them graduate middle school, high school? Those are the markers we use when we're talking to people about making these hard choices. And oftentimes, my job is to say it's probably the smart thing to do to take it, even if I believe them that they didn't do it.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  If Jermaine had taken that guilty plea back in 99, he would have likely served five years instead of 22. But he took the chance of going to trial because he wasn't going to confess to a crime he didn't commit. His wife Kristen says that this decision is what convinced her of Jermaine's innocence. Louisiana's darker past must reckon with a more hopeful and just future. Find out how things shake out in the next episode of Burden of Guilt. Subscribe to season two of Burden of Guilt so you don't miss any of our bonus content. And check out our Instagram at Glass Podcast to go behind the scenes.

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