“Don’t Come—Your Sister’s Boyfriend Is a Judge,” My Dad Texted—Monday Morning, He Learned Who Really Was

down and went back to work. I had a sentencing hearing at two—the nineteen-year-old facing eight years for a drug offense. I’d read his file a dozen times over the weekend. I’d read the sentencing memorandum his public defender had written, laying out every reason why incarceration would destroy rather than rehabilitate.

The public defender was young,continue reading …