Well, today is J's last day working as a complex crimes investigator for the Public Defenders Office. I'm proud of the work she's done for some of the most vulnerable people in our society: people who cannot afford attorneys.

You might be surprised (or perhaps not surprised at all) to learn that there are plenty of folks who are arrested without evidence of a crime. J got the prosecution to drop the very first case she investigated, after showing that the defendant could not possibly have been in two places at the same time, 40 miles apart. As a former police officer, she knows how the system is supposed to work, theoretically, but that is often not the case.

Sometimes the case is solid.
Sometimes the case is fubar.

It's hard to even tell people that you work for defense attorneys. There's always someone who says "How can you defend these people?!?" They never for one second think about the fact that this exact scenario could happen to them. Ever been accused of something that you didn't do? It's infuriating, isn't it? Now imagine that you are arrested and booked for it, possibly losing your job, having to make bond, maybe having your name in the paper. Whether you did what you were accused of or not, significant damage has already been done. And God help you if you have to wait in the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, where there have been a concerning number (30) of inmate deaths among those simply awaiting trial, who can't afford bond, and who end up trapped in appalling, dangerous, overcrowded conditions.

We can call it a justice system, but that doesn't make it so.

It reminds me a lot of what ICE is doing.