- The line between what is right and what is just isn't always clear.

Today's guest is a former Federal Prosecutor who describes how she reconciled ideas of justice, race, the role of law enforcement in our society and her own role in the US justice system.

She's Laura Coates this week, on 'Story in the Public Square.'

(bright upbeat music) Hello and welcome to a 'Story in the Public Square,' where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller with the Providence Journal.

- This week, we're joined by Laura Coates, who you might know from her appearances on CNN or her SiriusXM Satellite radio show, she's also the author of a powerful new memoir of her time as a federal prosecutor, 'Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness.'

Laura, thank you so much for being with us and congratulations on the book.

- Thank you, I'm so happy to be with the both of you, I appreciate it, thank you.

- The book, 'Just Pursuit' it's searing and it's personal, tell us why you wrote it.

- I think it's not the kind of book people expected me to write, I think the assumption with lawyers is that we're going to write a book about a Supreme Court case, we're gonna provide it the context in history and we're gonna go from there.

But for me, it was really, really important to have a deeply personal introspective look at the criminal justice system because I face so many competing battles of allegiance as a woman, as a black woman, living in the experiences that I've had and having that oftentimes come at odds with the directives I was given in the Department of Justice.

And I think it's important for people to understand that if you're really gonna speak truth to power and you're going to demand justice, you ought to first know what justice is really looks and feels like and also know what the truth is.

And I endeavor to do this by using the different stories that I tell about the people who were so deeply impacted by the justice system, including myself and really personifying the issues that are in the national conversation.

- We're gonna talk about some of those stories in a moment, but as I read this, I could hear the anguish in your voice and you're a brilliant woman, you are compassionate and humane, but you also have the strong sense of justice and why you served.

If a person like you feels like the system is that broken, how do we redeem it?

- By knowing precisely what this system really is, oftentimes we think about it as a justice system, when in many respects it is aspiring to be a justice system, it really is a legal system.

And how we bridge that disconnect in that chasm is important understanding who has what roles to play.

And I write this, obviously talking about the truth, then really I pull back the curtain on a number of things, but there are extraordinary moments of humanity and optimism that are contained in the book as well and I think did that deliberately because that's as very much as part of our system as anything else.

However, they're often overshadowed by the reality that you might think you know what disproportionate impact looks like, you may think you know and assume that because we have a constitution and because the mascot of the Department of Justice is a blindfolded woman, it does not mean that in all ways and every instance, actually live up to what we are on paper, in many ways it's analogy to who we are in this country, in and of itself.

Who we are on paper versus what we aspire to be and if we have optimism in our patriotism, even knowing the truth, we should have optimism in our justice system when we do know that same truth.

- When you were writing this did you have a sense that this was a particularly timely time to write this book?

I mean, there's a long history obviously of the issues that you raise here, but in the last several years, they have really come to the forefront, was that in your mind writing this, Laura.

- When I wrote a lot of this, part of it was journals from what I had remembered from when it actually was happening, other times recollections through insomnia and moments where I was watching what was unfolding before me, having the conversation with really the country with CNN, about what we were seeing in terms of officer involved shootings and police encounters that turned deadly or conversations about voting rights in this country, all things we were talking about, victim blaming in the Me Too movement and victim shaming, mistaken identity, all these things were happening and I was talking about it.

So it became almost cathartic for me to write about what my personal perspective was on it, what my experiences had been, what those blink moments are when I brought myself into the room.

And I think it's one thing to talk about the law and we all do when I explain the law, certainly in my field that I am, but I wanted people to understand what was actually happening and how it's one thing to talk about it and another thing to actually experience it.

And so it was really intentional in the sense of I thought it was timely in the unfortunate sense that these issues would always be on the forefront of our minds until we actually solve these problems.

But I had my children looking up at me, I mean, I like many of you, I was working from home during the pandemic and while I was having these...

I have a studio at my home at times and when I was looking to the camera, explaining something, I'd have my children looking up at me and asking supplemental questions.

During the killing of George Floyd, I was talking about in one instance, how he called for his mother and I had my little boy who turns and says, I heard you talking about this, would you come if that were ever me?

It's just that those were of questions about what that looks like was what I felt was really important to write it and it was timely for me personally and for my children and I think for the nation and really the globe.

- So you write with incredible power about the cases that you prosecuted, is there one that sticks out in particular are two or three or- - We got 30 minutes.

(all laughing) - Whether 20 or a thousand, I think this is funny because- - How about one, how about one?

- I'm often asked about how I curated sort of all these of all the stories that I had, and you can imagine and that really thousands of matters that a prosecutor will oversee, you run into instances that are going to be jarring and are gonna stick with you and that was really the true for me.

For me, I began the book frankly, with the one that I think made me feel like I had to question who I was in the justice system, it was the one in involving what it felt like when I was asked to aid in a deportation of somebody who was a victim of a crime.

And as I suffer no fools in my commentary and asking people to evaluate the facts of an issue and decide for themselves, I do not spare myself in the criticism and that was one of those instances where in a run of the mill car theft case, which frankly is very light work for most prosecutors, particularly you have the person who is the suspect.

You do kind of a background check on everyone who might go into a courtroom because you wanna alert the Marshal, there's an open warrant or you have to have some safety precautions or whatever it might be, maybe it helps your cases in other of the office.

And so I ran a routine background check on a case that I had recently inherited right before trial and in doing so it pinged that the victim of the car theft was illegally in this country and had been for decades and the deportation warrant was decades open when he was a teenager.

Since that moment in time, he had led a upstanding life of a law abiding person in this country, had not much a sneezed in direction of a police officer.

But a crime was done to him and in that moment, I was alerted that I had to inform the ICE agents and have this man placed into custody because we knew there was somebody with an active warrant who was in our presence and would soon be in our... Ability to assist us.

And I can tell you, I grappled with that for so many reasons, because it was one of those examples of where the pursuit of justice created an injustice and it was an imbalance to me that the person who had committed a crime who had been involved in a very long rap sheet of other crimes would now be treated in the same respect as somebody who had come to this country as a teenager looking for a better life and had been victimized by this other person, but they would be treated not only similarly, but the person who had the deportation warrant would be placed in custody as opposed the person who was out and free waiting for trials and we see all of the time.

And so that was one of those moments when I really had that recognition and if I didn't realize it before, I certainly knew it now that when I was the person to say, Laura Coates on behalf of the people of the United States, that included obviously the victim, it includes the defendant, it includes the idea of trying to uphold what is fair and there is sometimes a disconnect between what is fair and what is lawful.

And at point out that case, to really lead off the collection of stories, because it was one of those moments that became a theme where my moral compass pointed one direction, but the orders I was given pointed a different way.

And so how do you reconcile that as a black woman, as a person who feels a sense of a kindred spirit with those who have been marginalized by our society, it was difficult and I launched the book in a moment thinking about how impactful that really was.

- Laura, I wonder if we could take a step back and maybe you could share with our audience what led you to first study law, but then ultimately to work for the Justice Department.

- I was always draw drawn interesting enough to the storytelling aspect to the law, I was drawn to the idea of hearing about the civil rights icons and the legal architects I call them of the Charles Hamilton Houston and thinking about Brown versus Board of Education and thinking about the fascinating ongoing civil rights era.

I mean, I know it's not just an era it's ongoing, it continues to be incumbent on all of us to really recognize that.

But I knew those stories of Ruby Bridges and Medgar Evers and Emmett Till I knew them the freedom writers, of the Tuskegee Airmen, I learned about these probably with the more frequency than even the stories of Dr. Seuss, that I was drawn to them because I was really enchanted and just revered the minds of those few who were in that position of power to wield it in the right direction.

And so I was drawn to the law based on a civil rights background.

I started out in private practice though in intellectual property litigation, loved the idea of sort of the Wild West of the novelty of the laws that were coming in and figuring out how to use one's mind to navigate the constitution and the laws to think about the way forward.

But my calling remains for me to do civil rights work and to be in the courtroom and I had an opportunity to join the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division after being in prior practice for a number of years.

And I was so excited to do so and so thrilled of the opportunity, it was under the Bush administration, it was gonna be the year when you had Barack Obama on the ballot for the presidency and it was a very exciting time in America and I had frankly written my senior thesis in college on the rights of voting rights to be restored to former felons, which you could imagine didn't go over that well, in my interview- (all laughing) And little did I know it would be one of those moments when I was challenged on, I wanna hear what you believe, here's the law says, can you reconcile the two?

And I ended up leaving Civil Rights Division, 'cause I was tired of the bureaucracy and the ideas of the political thumbs on the scale... As you can imagine, I was there when Section 5 was still in existence, it still had the force and weight of the government, the pre-clearance authorization.

Section 2 had not been rendered virtually anemic by the Supreme Court's last July holding and even then it was difficult to be able to navigate in a way that provided access to the polls and fairness universally.

And so I wanted to make a difference in the courtroom and have a more of what I thought would be a more tangible role in pursuing justice and maybe catching it and that's how I ended up as Criminal Prosecutor under the same umbrella of the Department of Justice.

- I wanna just follow up on a piece of that and I think that this question speaks to the whole scope of the book, but you just used the phrase, you said, "Reconciling what you believe versus what the law says."

How do you do that?

- I think we're all doing that in some respect over the last several years when we all had the questions of isn't that illegal?

Or shouldn't that be illegal?

Or gosh, I feel like that must be illegal.

And we have this gap between what ought to be illegal and what actually is codified in the law and we see it in terms of presidential power or the abuse of it, we see it in the form of what an officer is able to do in terms of executing search warrants or seizing a person or even stopping and having the encounters.

And so I think in a way we all grapple with this idea of what we assume the law would stand for and protect versus the times that it in fact is not.

And so at times I read about this in the book of how there have been prosecutors who had a moral objection to certain laws and wanting to pass it on to someone else because they did not want to reconcile that or follow a directive.

And I think the way I continued to grapple with it is in thinking and taking a step back like we just did and wondering how I can on the one hand uphold my oath of office, sworn to protect the laws United States and to execute them fairly and also to unpack that word fairly, what does that look like?

And that's where discretion comes in of a prosecutor to be able to understand what it means to have a seat at the table, but bring your whole self in and your whole sense of justice and fairness.

- So you're talking about the tension that you felt as a criminal prosecutor, when did you first begin to feel that?

Was there one apocryphal moment, was there one case?

Was it there from the beginning?

- The second I walked into a criminal courtroom, I immediately faced the tension, I mean, it's one thing to go from being a civil rights attorney under DOJ, where frankly it's assumed which side so to speak, you're on, it's a foregone conclusion that you are a champion of the people who is having their civil rights infringed, right?

So it's assumed.

There's a very big transition in the perception of how people see you in terms of being a criminal prosecutor, even though your victims are also often black and brown, the idea of having a parade of black and brown men and women who are coming into the courtroom and I'm talking about in Washington DC, where they do not represent the majority of the population nor the black and brown people have a monopoly on crime and yet you saw...

I can count on one hand and don't even need every single digit of those hands to tell you the number of white defendants that came into a courtroom that I ever saw, ones that I was handling were any of my colleagues.

And seeing and watching that in full view, I equate it almost to being on a train platform and you know the power of a locomotive, you know the pistons firing and the energy and force that it will bring, but until it actually passes you at full speed on a platform, you take that step back and realize the weight of the moment and just the force that it comes with, you don't really know and understand what the disparate impact and disproportionate impact of criminal justice systems on black and brown communities looks like until you see hundreds and thousands of people coming in to a courtroom and it becomes almost a hamster wheel and being questioned by the defendants and the families about why it was me a black woman was standing where they assumed a white man would be and feeling as though I was the man so to speak or being challenged by black defense counsel I read about it in the book as well.

And I think it was from that moment of just seeing that shift in the real tangible impact of a legacy of laws and circumstances that got us this point.

- And of course, it's not just in the courtroom, you also write about how black communities are policed differently, have been forever, still are.

How does that tie into what you're writing here?

I mean, this is part of the larger picture and it's a very disturbing picture, of course, as we've seen in the last several years, particularly.

- Well, you make an important point that I echo in the book and the idea of how it's really an ecosystem, so it's not just the courtrooms and the more we focus on for example, when we talk about criminal justice reform, oftentimes people say, okay, we must be talking about an officer civilian encounter, right?

We'll focus on that, but in reality, it's also about who the judges are, it's also about who the policy makers are, it's also about the local ordinances that are in play, the prosecutorial priorities that come from political appointees on down to the career prosecutors, it's from the people who are in positions of power overall.

And so I think we stop looking at it in this way, much like people envision justice as the binary choice between conviction or acquittal.

When we're talking about the experiences and why we need to have reform, it's outside of the courtroom as well, it comes down to voting rights that being able to have an equal access, not guaranteed to vote for the winner, but having an opportunity to participate equally and meaningfully in the process.

The guardrails that are in place, the guardrails that are removed to guard against infringement, it really is part of a larger system that needs to be addressed from the ways in which we have a police presence in communities of color, to the animosity and lack of trust between these communities to even thinking about police officers, which I am at time is very sympathetic towards the very important work they do, but they're often perceived as a Jack of all trades or a panacea and they shouldn't be and it breeds further tension and opportunities to abuse power.

- So this is reform that's needed of a tremendous magnitude, there's no question about that.

How do you assess the chances that that can actually happen in our divided America today?

- Well, I think and I remain an eternal optimist, not because I'm naive or wear rose-colored glasses, but because we don't have a choice, but to believe that our country can still move forward.

I refuse to be someone who was going to throw up my hands and say, well, this looks difficult, that important a jazz song, the difficult I'll do right now, the impossible may take a little while.

And I think that we're talking about reform, but often feels impossible, but it's about bit by bit looking at issues of qualified immunity, looking at issues in terms of the Supreme Court's own decision to not only create qualified immunity, but also to provide a benefit of the doubt to police officers in the form of judging their action to a reasonable officer's beliefs and views, as opposed to a reasonable person.

It comes in the form of bail reform and trying to look at the idea that we believe in this notion of a presumption of innocence, then why must people in nonviolent crimes in particular have to pay for that presumption of innocence?

It comes in the form of the power of unions, it comes in the form of having databases, it comes in the form of correcting sentencing guidelines and dealing with mass incarceration.

These are all different angles that people can pursue and it might mean that we have to break it up in different parts, perhaps prioritize different aspects that can be accomplished bipartisanly, but we can't give up because it's a daunting task, it's necessary nonetheless.

- Laura, what was the final straw for you that led you to leave the Justice Department and go a different route?

- There were so many moments I questioned whether and I had these sort of aha epiphanies that were unpleasant to experience.

I wondered if it would be better for me to be a part of this system and advocate from within and using my discretion in a way that abided by my oath and serve the people, but also a rest injustices or as somebody who was more of a spectator from the outside being able to change it.

But the moment for me that really changed it was when I had a supervisor who came to one of my verdicts, which often happened that you'd come and just sort of cheer one another on or you hear about these cases and think about all the time you're talking in our virtual to water cooler experiences and we all were very familiar with the facts of each other's cases and it was a lot of comradery for that reason and shared experience.

But I had a supervisor come after I won yet another trial and give me a high five and say, "We got another one."

And those words, "We got another one," those four words for me was life changing.

In that moment, I questioned had I been indoctrinated into some world that I inadvertently entered?

I wasn't thinking that I not had any regrets or had questioned some choices, but I thought that it was known that us and the thems it was right versus wrong, not we got another one and just in the way that was phrased, the thought of again, it was another black defendant, I couldn't go back from there, I had so many questions about what my role was and had I been complicit or had I been a champion, had I been somebody who was helping justice or was I helping to continue the status quo of the imbalance of justice?

And for me, those four words changed everything.

- So Jim mentioned at the beginning of the show that one of the great things about this book beyond the issues that you examine is the power of storytelling and you're obviously a great storyteller.

The reviews have been much in the same area as well The 'New York Times' had a cover review that was really good.

We don't have time to get into a whole lot of these stories unfortunately, you've got into the first one, talk about chapter eight, there's still time, which is an intensely personal chapter as all of these chapters maybe- - Yeah, that was a story where I was showing that I don't have the luxury certainly of checking who I am at the door when I enter a room, I don't shed nor do I seek to shed the different facets of myself.

It's an experience I think that so many people and women in particular have in their respective workplaces where you are expected to be perfect, there's no time to be, you're expected to be able to compartmentalize and yet your personal life can lead in into those moments and those different categories.

And here I was prosecuting a mother for a horrible child abuse, a series of them, frankly and I stepped away from moment, I had a call from my OBGYN, it was not my normal OBGYN, it was some who was standing in.

And she contacted me to let me know that there had been an issue with some test and that it looked as though my first child, my son was going to have or might have spina bifida, a very serious medical condition.

But don't worry, there's still time you're in the window to still abort and the pace at which I'm relaying that information was about the pace at which I received the information in the hall of a courthouse, looking at the door, prepared to go back in and try the rest of the case.

And fortunately my son was born healthy and strong and the tests were were wrong.

But in that moment of just the idea and then being walking back in the courtroom and the judge not realizing why I had stepped away for a little longer than expected and being berated for what she perceived as my indifference to the schedule of the court, my indifference to the case before me, my indifference to the suffering of a child or a mother having to have been accused of making the wrong decisions.

In that moment, everything blurred together in this way and I write about it because I think it's important not only for us to share the stories and those intimate moments of our lives to help others, but also people to understand that, you never know what somebody is going through while they're asked to advocate for anything else.

I mean, here I was prepared to be a champion for a child that was harmed and had no idea what kind of champion I might need to be for child I carried.

- That's an incredibly powerful place for us to leave it.

Laura Coates, thank you so much for being with us today- - Thank you too.

- The book is "Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness' and it is a powerful read.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about 'Story in the Public Square,' you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more 'Story in the Public Square.'

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